The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [19]
“Me, either. Is that odd? Do little girls really dream about their weddings and dress up like brides?”
“I have no idea. Certainly no one we know did. But then again, we’re hardly a representative sample. And neither Jonathan nor I would want the kind of wedding a little girl would dream of anyway. All that foof,” Rose added dismissively.
“Foof,” Bean repeated, trying out the word, unconsciously letting it slip over the tip of her tongue. Rose shot her a doubtful glance, and they both laughed. “Sorry, it’s a funny word.”
There was a pause. Rose put her hand in her pocket, checking to make sure her wallet was still in there.
“So where will you have it?” Bean asked.
“Oh, the chapel on campus, you know. And then the reception in Harris. The college doesn’t usually rent the space over holidays, but Dad got them to make an exception.” Bean nodded, remembering vaguely a concert she had attended in the Harris ballroom, during her sophomore year, she thought. The band had been some hippie-folk experience, probably one of the ones Cordy had seen recently at some mud-flung venue, and Bean had spent most of it pressed up against the back wall, drunkenly permitting some boy to fondle her. She tried to remember his name for a moment, and then mentally waved her hand, dismissing it. O, is it all forgot? All school-days’ friendship, childhood innocence?
“So how will it work, everything? With Jonathan being in England and all?”
Rose gritted her teeth and looked over at one of the houses across the street. “We haven’t worked that all out yet exactly. The wedding’s still scheduled for New Year’s Eve. I didn’t want to lose the deposit. So maybe I’ll go over there a bit for a honeymoon, and then when he’s done with his fellowship there, he’ll come back.”
Bean couldn’t honestly imagine anyone wanting to come back from Oxford to Barnwell, but she didn’t say anything. Just hummed a few bars of “How ’Ya Gonna Keep ’Em Down on the Farm? (After They’ve Seen Paree).”
“Have you started looking for a dress yet?”
Rose laughed. How like Bean, to go directly for the clothes. “No. I fear it, actually.” She tugged self-consciously at her shorts, which were threatening to ride up the insides of her pale thighs. “I can’t see myself in one of those big white monstrosities.”
“No one says you have to wear a big white dress. Wear what you want. It’s not going to be a big formal wedding, right? Not black-tie or anything?”
Rose shook her head.
“Then it doesn’t matter if it’s not traditional.”
“I guess,” Rose said, but looked slightly confused by the idea.
They had come to the head of Main Street, and Bean stopped. “I’ll look with you. We’ll go to Columbus; there won’t be anything here,” Bean said. She turned to Rose for a moment and smiled, a sharp-toothed strangeness that was nonetheless kind. “You’ll be beautiful,” she said, and squeezed our older sister’s sweaty palm.
Rose smiled back, a more genuine smile of surprise and pleasure, and came to a stop in front of the post office. “Thanks.” She wanted to say more, but the moment had passed, and it wasn’t in our nature to prolong sentimentality. She felt, for a moment, that she could tell Bean about how betrayed and confused she felt about Jonathan’s departure, how torn she was about what she would do, that somehow Bean would understand, would be able to help. But then she pushed it aside. Bean couldn’t help her with something like that. A dress, Bean could do. A life, no. “I’ve got to go in and mail this.”
“Okay. I’m gonna walk down the street and check things out. I’ll meet you in the Beanery in, like, a half hour?”
“Sure,” Rose shrugged and watched Bean walk away, her hair still bouncing back and forth, the creases in her clothes unbeaten by the heat. Rose shook her head and went inside to buy the stamp to mail a letter to Jonathan in Oxford.
The library drew Bean down the street, as it had drawn all of us over the years. Our parents had