The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [45]
“Be quiet,” Rose said, looking up, though Bean had made hardly a sound. “Mom’s resting.”
Bean made exaggerated tippy-toe motions, placing her finger over her lips. Cordy giggled. Rose huffed and went back to her book.
“Hello, Bianca,” our father said, intoning, as he often does, like a preacher in a pulpit. “Did you have a pleasant run?”
Bean shrugged, sat down in an ancient wing chair and stretched her legs, wide and muscular underneath her brief shorts. “It was okay. I’m getting out of shape. No health club.”
“They stumble that run fast,” our father said, peering over his bifocals. He held his book in one hand, the other resting on his belly, pushing agreeably at the buttons on his shirt. Cordy dropped her book down so it rested on her nose, and spoke.
“What about the gym at Barney, Dad?” Her words were dulled by the pages of the book. “Couldn’t Bean go there?”
“Well are you welcome to the open air,” he said cryptically, and returned to his book.
Cordy shoved him with her foot. “Dad-dy,” she whined.
“All right, Cordelia, I will look into it. Okay?” He replaced her foot on his knee, turned back to his book, and, in an instant, had disappeared back into the pages. Ever like this, a moment here, a moment gone into the land of print and text, and woe to her who tried to pull him back out. You could be calling for a half hour and he’d never notice.
“You’re tracking grass all over the floor,” Rose said. She held her book open with her thumb.
Bean lifted one shoe, then the other, admiring the grass clippings decorating the bottom of her shoes like green tinsel. Then she looked pointedly at the floor, which was, while not exactly squalorous, not exactly clean, either. “I can’t see how it makes a difference,” she said, one well-plucked eyebrow raised.
Cordy watched us, eyes flicking back and forth, watching the Ping-Pong match. “Why don’t you take off your shoes and make her happy?” Cordy asked, ever the peacemaker. “What’s the big deal?”
Bean considered that for a moment and then slipped off her sneakers, flexing her toes wide within her white socks. She made an exaggerated seated bow. “I willingly obey your command,” she said.
“Thank you,” Rose replied, clipped. She turned back to her book, but we could see her heart wasn’t in it. Sometimes she didn’t know where it came from—she didn’t mean to be so harsh, only to help keep us in line. She wanted to apologize for her sharpness, but something in her heaved up and cut off the words.
“What’s wrong, Rosie-Posie?” Cordy asked, pulling herself up on the sofa and adopting Rose’s posture: knees bent, feet resting at her bottom. It was so like her, to call Rose something that our oldest sister would not have tolerated from anyone else. Cordy, the darling, the favorite.
“Nothing,” Rose sighed, still staring into her book.
“Methinks the lady doth protest too much,” our father murmured, turning a page in his book. Rose looked at him, surprised he was paying attention.
“Okay, fine. Something’s wrong, and I don’t want to talk about it,” Rose snapped, somewhat unceremoniously, and went back to her book.
“Where’d you go running?” Cordy asked, smoothly changing the subject.
“Oh, you know. Down by the creek, and then through town the back way.”
“By Saint Mark’s, right?” Cordy asked, a rhetorical exercise. She knew exactly where the path led. Its course had been our escape on Sunday mornings when we were younger. We’d tear off our tights and shoes, leaving them dangling like octopuses in our mother’s hands, and sprint off, a study in contrast between our pretty little girl dresses and bare, dirty feet. By the time we got home, our dresses might be stained with blackberry juice, or smeared with grass stains, but they were never torn, never beyond the mildest of repairs. We weren’t that foolish. And we became adept with stain removers from a