The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [47]
Some nights, Rose ignored their scheduled call and set her alarm for the wee small hours, slipping it under her pillow so she wouldn’t wake anyone else. When the beeping jarred her from whatever pale sleep she had tempted her body into, she got up and padded downstairs, the ghost of Hamlet’s father in the darkest of midnights, to call Jonathan, dialing the extended series of numbers and listening to the strange double buzz of the transatlantic ring.
He didn’t usually head into the lab until nine or so, and if she timed it right, she could catch him as he lingered over his coffee, a tradition she respected him for maintaining in the face of all that infernal tea-drinking. Rose found the time difference extremely inconvenient—if he called before he went to bed, or when he got home, it was the middle of her day, her mind occupied with the thousand things she came up with to keep herself busy during the long, slow stretch of summer. The darkness of early morning made the conversations magical, sealed on either side by sleep, her tone low and hushed, both of them still in the cradle of home before the violation of the world penetrated the steady pace of their souls.
“’Allo,” he said, in the ridiculous Cockney imitation he reserved (she hoped) for answering the phone when he knew it was her.
“Good morning,” she whispered, smiling at the warmth that spread through her, unbidden, when she heard his voice.
“How’s my favorite midnight caller?” Jonathan asked. He had sent pictures of his tiny student rooms, the kitchen with its funny half-sized refrigerator, the dining table against the wall of the living room, the bedroom only a nook, an afterthought between the bathroom and the back of the worn sofa. She liked to picture him there, the dull English sun pouring its syrupy way across the carpet, catching the glints of gold in his eyelashes. “Couldn’t sleep?”
“Never can,” Rose said. “How’s the weather?”
“Gray with a chance of charcoal,” he said. “What’s it like there? Disgustingly humid?”
“As ever.”
“Have you thought at all about coming over here?”
“For a visit?”
He paused. “Sure. For starters.”
“Jonathan, I can’t move to England.”
There was silence across the lines. She could picture him pinching the bridge of his nose, a gesture of frustration she had always found curiously familiar until she realized our father had the same habit. Hello, Freud. “Okay. Fine. Not to stay, then. Just for a visit. When can you come?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Mom’s surgery is coming up.”
“That’s great news.”
Rose furrowed her brow. “I don’t see how.”
“It’s great news that the tumor has shrunk enough that they can operate. Not great that it all has to happen in the first place. So after the surgery, maybe you could come over for a while. A few weeks?”
“Weeks?” Rose squeaked. Her mind was instantly filled with the potential disasters we could wreak without her around to take us firmly in hand. “I don’t know about weeks.”
“Why not? If Cordy and Bean are going to be around, and you don’t have to be back until the end of August . . .”
“I’ll think about it,” Rose said doubtfully. If all went well, our mother could be up and around within three weeks. But if it didn’t go well? And even if it did, who would go grocery shopping and pay the bills and schedule our mother’s doctors’ appointments and the dozens of other things we would need to do to care for her while she recovered?
We would, we whispered to her. And we’d be just fine.
“Okay,” Jonathan said, resigned.
“I miss you,” she whispered, suddenly, passionately.
He laughed, warm and low, surprised by her uncharacteristically free expression. “I miss you, too. You’re lovely to let me go do this.”
Rose shrugged, the phone brushing against her shoulder. “What would I do? Say you couldn’t go? That you had to stay