The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [136]
A very long time passed before she took them.
When our mother came home from the hospital, we put her to bed immediately. We changed her compression bandages, massaged her arms and legs, led her through the exercises they had given us. The radiation was done, the medications were tapering off, but we could not do enough to try to make up for how we had been so wrapped up in ourselves that we had nearly lost her.
After a week or two of our exhaustive caretaking, our mother had had enough. She got out of bed one day, did her physical therapy exercises herself, demanded that Cordy help her shower, and then stalked down to the kitchen, where she and Cordy began to bake bread as though it were an Olympic event.
Cordy and our mother had transformed the kitchen into their workspace. On every available surface, and some unavailable, were bowls of rising dough, cooling breads. The air-conditioning was no match for the heat of the oven, and the still air held the scents of yeast and bitter chocolate in a thick sweat on our skin, unstirred by movement. Our mother had finally recovered her taste buds and her stomach, and Cordy was always hungry. They were in an ecstasy of creation, testing, sampling, trying combinations and recipes and taking pleasure in the rush of discovery.
Bean wandered in and out, complaining they were determined to make her fat, but accepting eagerly the rich, steaming slices they handed her to try. The living room was cooler, so she retreated there, letting the smells tempt her back in mid-chapter, when her mind wandered.
Hands sticky with dough, Cordy was hand-kneading a loaf of heavy gingerbread when she paused, putting her hand to her stomach, where it left a floury handprint on her shirt. “Mom,” she said.
Our mother was whisking icing, her good wrist spinning expertly inside the bowl, churning the sugar into a sweet froth. “What?” she asked, not looking up.
“Do you think I’m going to be a good mother?” Cordy asked. She pressed the gingerbread into a pan and then checked the oven. Her hands fluttered to her stomach again.
“I believe you will be an excellent mother.” She poured the icing over a Bundt cake resting on tinfoil, watching it drip and streak its way artistically down the sides.
“You don’t think I’m too irresponsible?” Her mouth pulled down, her eyes shaded.
Our mother put down the bowl again and rested her hands on her hips. “Oh, Cordy, it’s so hard for us, you know? You’re our baby—all of us. Your father and I—we look at you girls and we don’t see the adults. We see the children, the nights awake with you with colic, lost teeth, skinned knees, all those handmade cards. And with you I suppose it’s even harder, because you were Rose and Bean’s baby, too.” She shook her head, carried the bowl over to the sink where it clattered, the dirty dishes resettling like silt shifting to the bottom of a pond.
“But they’re right, aren’t they?” Cordy looked around the kitchen, her hands held wide, helpless. “I’ve pissed away my whole life.”
“That’s Rose talking.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Rose would never say ‘pissed,’ ” Bean said, coming in and poking a finger into the icing that had pooled on the tinfoil. Our mother idly smacked her hand away.
“What do you think all those years were for if not for this?” our mother asked. “We don’t just come from the womb bearing our talents. They grow from all the things we learn. And if you hadn’t worked at restaurants, or you hadn’t learned to throw together meals from whatever you had, you’d never be the kind of cook you are now.”
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them,” Bean said. “And some of us couldn’t find it with both hands. But we survive.”
“I don’t want to be great,” Cordy said. “You were the one who always wanted to be famous. I just want to be happy.”
Our mother had not heard either of us; she was sitting sidesaddle in one of the chairs by the kitchen table, having moved a loaf of dark wheat from the