The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [40]
In love, too, Cordy had always been compliant. While Rose searched, and Bean made herself available, Cordy had rarely bothered to seek anything out. Her sweet and comical nature had drawn men to her, true, but mostly she took them as they came, and did not let herself be drawn into the drama falling in love entailed. She accepted these suitors, but did not care about them, not really. She had found herself, more than once, below the body of a sweating, heaving man whispering endearments in her ear, hot breath on her skin, and wondered idly how she had gotten there, and what all the fuss was about anyway. Sex had given her a bed more often than not in the past few years, but it had never held any passion, and Cordy always felt it was more companionable than anything else.
To Cordy, life was filled with things that were simply what you did when they were required of you, like sleeping with someone in exchange for a bed, or working as a hotel maid to get money to go to the next town, or marrying the king of France and leading his troops into certain death.
Rose will tell you that Cordy, being the youngest, has always gotten away with murder, and that this is entirely unfair.
Bean will tell you that Cordy, being the youngest, has always been the favorite, and that this is entirely unfair.
Cordy will tell you that both of these things are true.
Example. New Year’s Eve, Cordy is fifteen years old. Rose is with her boyfriend and his family in Connecticut. She thinks she might marry this one. (She is wrong.) Bean is out somewhere unspecified. She has told our parents that she’s with Lyssie (short for Lysistrata—whenever we complain about our unfashionable names, we remember that we could have been the daughters of a classics professor), that they’re going to a movie, but we know she is at a party. At this party, no one will know who our father is, or care, and the house will be dirty, with peeling wallpaper and furniture racked into slanting, exhausted postures. There will be beer and pot and mattresses in unlikely places, and long before midnight Bean and Lyssie will be wholeheartedly ’round the bend and in the sweaty, beer-soaked arms of some boy they will forget the next day. This adventure is possible only because Bean has always been an excellent liar, and not because our parents would ever approve of such an outing.
Cordy and her best friend had decided they wanted to go to a New Year’s festival in Columbus, a party with a band, fireworks, and thousands of drunk celebrants, courtesy of the beer company sponsoring the event. Cordy has never been a big drinker, really, so we didn’t think she was escaping for the alcohol, the way Bean was. But still, a fifteen-year-old girl and her barely pubescent escort loose on the streets on a night known for its debauchery?
Our parents said yes.
When Rose heard this, she was a teakettle at full steam. When, having won a prize in the state history fair, she and her friends wanted to go to Columbus for the day to compete at the next level, our mother had insisted on going along as a chaperone. “For an academic event!” Rose screeched.
Our parents once grounded Bean for a week after she stole a stick of penny candy from the bookstore, sneaking it inside the arm of her winter coat. Her crime was discovered when, upon returning to the house, she refused to remove the coat, despite