The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [137]
“And you,” Bean said, nodding at Cordy, “surviving all those years without anything, really, but your hands and your brain. I never could have done it.”
“I couldn’t have, either,” our mother said, shaking her head.
Cordy had never considered those years as an achievement. She had, in the days when it was still heady and romantic to her, believed she was a sort of anthropological pioneer, that she was breaking trail and broadening her horizons with each new person she met, each story she heard, but she had never thought of that time as a success. And to hear it from Bean was even more of a surprise.
“That’s why you’re going to be a good mother,” Bean said, nodding as though she knew whereof she spake. “Because you’re a survivor, Cordy. You’ll do what you need to do to get it done.”
“Daddy doesn’t think so,” Cordy said sadly.
Our mother cast this thought aside as she brushed a lock of hair from her forehead. “It’s not about you, Cordy, really. Not about your capabilities. Your father is just concerned. He doesn’t want it to be difficult for you.”
“That’s what he said to me,” Bean said. “He said he didn’t understand why we made it so difficult for ourselves. Why we always chose the hard way.”
“And end up doing nothing,” Cordy said. “Except Rose.”
Our mother shook her head. “By whose calculations? You girls are all the same like that. I don’t know what we did to give you the idea that you had to be some master in your field by the time you were thirty.”
She might not have known, but we surely did. The idea had come from living in the shadow of our father, in this tiny community where nothing mattered but the life of the mind, when the greatest celebrity came not on the movie screen or the world stage but behind the lectern, in the footnotes of journals.
“I don’t really want to be a master in my field,” Bean said. “But I’d like not to be a complete and total fuckup.”
Here we expected our mother to rebuke Bean for her language, but she didn’t. She just smiled indulgently and said, “Oh, honey, we’re all fuckups in our own special ways,” which made Cordy laugh so hard she sat down on the floor in a pile of flour, which caused Bean to laugh so hard she started to cry, and the only thing we wished was that Rose had been there to see the whole thing.
TWENTY-THREE
In the library, Bean hoisted a heavy monitor up onto the circulation desk. She had pushed all of the tools of Mrs. Landrige’s trade to the side: stamp pads, stamp with tiny rolling digits, tiny pencils shaved to within an inch of their lives, and oh the paper, paper, paper.
Her first order of business as officially knighted, coronated, and installed Barnwell Public Library Librarian (Head of All Matters Library, Cordy called her) had been computerizing the system. Surprisingly, the great town fathers were not only willing, they had set aside money years ago, waiting for the rather Luddite Mrs. Landrige to see the technological light. Which had, of course, never happened. So there the funds had sat, and all Bean had to do was ask for them, and lo, she received.
She had just finished aligning the wires, crawling out from under the desk, brushing the dust and burn from her knees, when the door opened and Aidan came in. “Madam Librarian,” he greeted her with a nod.
“Father Aidan,” she returned with an achingly poor Irish accent. He winced, winked. “What can we do for you today?”
“Just need a quiet place to work,” he said.
“Saturday procrastination?”
“No, standard-issue weeklong procrastination leading to emergence of Saturday work ethic. Speaking of which, are you on for service next Saturday?”
“I’m in. What are we doing?”
“Driving