The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [41]
Having knocked one of the new Middle Eastern Studies professor’s children off of his bicycle in order to commandeer it for herself, an act that left him with a split lip and a lifelong fear of the Andreas girls, Cordy received a stern talking-to.
“See?” Rose asks.
But what Rose does not so much see is that this permissiveness is also a sign of neglect. Cordy’s insistence upon conception surprised our parents, who had decided Bean would be the last subatomic particle of our particular nuclear family. And they were, in many ways, worn out by the time Cordy came along. So if they allowed her to go places and do things they would never have allowed Rose or Bean to do, it would be fair to take that as a measure of preference, yes, but preference toward the older of us, not the younger.
We think, too, by the time Cordy came along, they had figured out that pretty much no matter what they did, she would turn out okay. She was cuddled and loved more, photographed more, laughed and played with more, but she was a little like a new toy in that way; as often as we adored her, we equally ignored her.
These things in concert are understandably why Cordy developed what she calls her performing monkey traits. At family dinners, preferably ones in which important college officials or visiting lecturers sit at our table, she will be the one who encourages us all to hang spoons from our noses, to test the level of the table by rolling peas across it, to stage a reading from the Berlitz travel book of important Spanish phrases such as, “Meet me at the discotheque,” “Do you have any coconuts?” or, most vitally, “Please leave me alone.” And Cordy being Cordy, everyone at the table (visiting dignitaries included) will participate.
She became, unsurprisingly, the actress among us, and directed, produced, and starred in every possible vehicle at our school. Puberty left her heartbroken, because up until then the theater department had called upon her to play the child’s roles in every production at Barney as well, male or female. She can still sing the lisping songs from The Music Man. “If anyone is going to Broadway,” people would say after the show had ended, “it’s her.”
But going to Broadway would have required a tenacity Cordy just did not possess. We were too easy on her, yes, and when she forgot to do her chores and skipped off to the pool, or pulled us away from our own work to build a fort in the dining room, we forgave her those trespasses, and did her chores for her. We helped her with her homework, we babysat for her, we let her sit in the library at Coop and read for hours at a time, and when it finally came down to it, Cordy was sorely underprepared for the fact that her smile and her ability to get an entire room full of Shakespearean scholars to do the Macarena (true story) would not necessarily guarantee her perennial success.
Still, Rose would tell you Cordy always got the best Christmas presents.
Bean would tell you Cordy never lost a board game in her life, even when she did.
Cordy would tell you all these things are true.
SIX
Our father does not cook. This had always been the way. Both he and our mother would have objected to the idea of the kitchen being the wife’s domain, but they clearly had no problem with it in practice. So with our mother’s being out of commission, barely able to eat, let alone cook, it fell to us. Bean cobbled together a vegetable soup from the odds and ends in the refrigerator, and Rose defrosted some bread from the freezer and made a cheese plate. Cordy moped around, getting in the way.
“What are you doing?” Rose asked our father. She was finishing setting the table, and he was wrestling one of the armchairs from the living room through the door into the dining room.
“Getting a chair for your mother. She won’t be able to sit in one of the wooden ones long enough to eat.”
“We’ll take her a tray. Put that back.”
“Your mother wants to eat with us. We must needs dine together.”
And so it was.
She came downstairs under her own power, tired and delicate