The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [30]
“Jesus, Rose,” Bean moaned. “It’s not even seven. Shut the hell up.” A lock of hair caught on her dry lips and she shoved it out of the way before rolling over and burrowing back into her pillow.
“Mom has an appointment in Columbus at eight. We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”
“Goody. Shove off.”
Rose’s nostrils flared and she put her fists on her hips, glaring down at the covers piled on top of Bean. She was clearly the one who’d turned the air-conditioning down so low last night, buried as she was under a feather duvet. In June. Out of pure meanness, Rose reached out and yanked the covers off of Bean, who howled in protest and yanked them back.
“Your mother is sick, you selfish brat. I told you last night we were going up for her next round of chemo, and you said you’d come.”
“I did?” Bean asked curiously, peering up at Rose’s glowering silhouette against the sunlight. It seemed remarkably unlike her to have agreed to something like that. And frankly, she didn’t remember it. Ever since the night at the bar, she’d been putting herself to sleep by drinking, and last night had gotten a little fuzzy after she’d polished off the bottle of wine she’d found in the refrigerator. Maybe she’d been in one of those happy drunk moods. Or more likely she’d agreed with whatever she assumed would make Rose shut up fastest.
“Yes, you did. Now if your highness would kindly get dressed, we can leave. It’s not bad enough I’ve got to get them ready, now I’ve got to worry about you, too?”
“I’m up,” Bean said, tossing aside the covers and sitting up. “I’m up.” The “bitch” at the end of the sentence was understood.
Our parents listened to the radio the entire drive, while Rose sat in the back and fumed, and Bean marinated in the fumes of alcohol seeping out of her skin and tried not to vomit. The toothpaste had helped with her breath, but not at all with the dehydrated headache of white wine the morning after, and the minty taste on her thick tongue made her throat feel clogged.
Inside the hospital, Rose led the parade. Bean veered off toward a coffee cart, Rose yanked her back in line. Bean watched our parents walking together, the stroll of the long-partnered. Our father is an inch shorter than our mother, his hair shot through with gray, his neatly clipped beard gone respectably salt and pepper. They always walk with her arm in his, his free hand darting up a thousand times an hour to adjust his glasses, their steps matched perfectly, knowing each other’s gait. But at the doors to the outpatient clinic, Rose halted and sent our parents through alone. As the doors slid open, our father turned and kissed our mother lightly below the line of the silk scarf on her forehead. She accepted the tenderness like a benediction.
“We’re not going in?” Bean asked. She’d found the end of a roll of mints in her purse and popped one, only slightly linty, into her mouth. She snapped it with a firm crunch and grinned at Rose’s frown.
“Only one visitor allowed. There’s not enough room. We’ll wait outside.”
“We can’t go in? Then what the hell did we come up here for?”
“Moral support.” Rose hoisted her bag onto her shoulder and about-faced toward the seating area.
“I could have been moral support at home,” Bean grumbled quietly, but she followed along, procuring coffee on the way. “How long does this take?” she asked, settling into the seat beside Rose.
Rose glanced at her watch. “We’ll be out of here by noon, I’d say. They have to check her blood first, and then the pharmacy has to put together the treatment, and then the chemo itself takes a few hours.” She produced a book from her bag and opened it pointedly.
“What are they going to do?”
“He reads to her, usually. You did bring a book, didn’t you?”
Bean reached into her purse and pulled out a thick paperback, the covers hanging by the barest edges. Rose nodded and turned to read her own book. Inside, our mother would sit in one of the forgivingly vinyl hospital recliners while a tube dripped benevolent poison into her veins, and our father perched his reading