The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [55]
“Harpier cries, ’Tis time, ’tis time,” our father announced loudly. Cordy raised her book, her face gone red from suspension, as Rose started awake with a loud gasp. Bean continued to snore contentedly until Cordy flipped herself right side up, kicking Bean as she moved. Bean started, blinked sleepily.
We processed upstairs in silence, Birnam Wood to Dunsinane, our father’s shoes squeaking officiously on the wheel-worn floors. Cordy trailed her fingers along the wide blue lines spreading along the walls. When we reached our mother’s room, our father paused, turned to face us. “I just want to warn you. She doesn’t look good.”
We nodded in acceptance and filed in after him, lined up along the wall as though preparing to be captured in a group mug shot. Everything was white. The walls, the sheets, the curtain separating our mother’s bed from the empty bed and the window beyond, her skin, her lips even. Colorless, ash white, cracked. The fluorescent light sputtered, angry bee, above her head. Bean bit her nails. Rose cried. Our mother looked so tiny, so drained, her bare head skeletally naked against the pillow, the normal blooms in her cheeks faded to paper.
Our father sat down on the far side of the bed, the sheets folding around the curve of his body. He took our mother’s hand, stroked it gently. Bean, avoiding looking at our mother’s face, noticed again how old our mother’s hands were becoming, the knuckles going broad and bony, the skin traced with sparrow tracks and loose flesh around the backs. Her eyes fluttered open and she looked at our father, her eyes watery mud, pupils wide. A table stood against the wall, a cup of ice collapsing into an exhausted pool of water, a straw, a pitcher, a tiny fluted cup of apple juice, the foil peeled back. Rose busied herself by moving these items around in a Three-card Monte.
Cordy sat down on the other side of the bed, and the combined pressure made our mother’s legs, wide and sturdy, stand out in relief beneath the tight-pulled sheet. After a moment’s hesitation, she took our mother’s other hand and copied our father’s movements, stroking along the bony knuckles Bean had just been eyeing. “Hi, Mommy,” she said, and our mother turned her head slowly toward her.
“Hi, honey,” she said, her voice a dry, leafy whisper. She turned her head again, a stiff doll’s rotation, and smiled at Bean and Rose. “Hi. How are you?”
Bean grinned. “We’re great. But we’re not in the hospital. How are you?” She tugged at the bottom of her jacket, cropped red linen above a long denim skirt. Trust Bean to be perfectly turned out in a crisis.
Cordy continued to stroke our mother’s hand as though coaxing something from within her.
Our mother smiled. “Tired,” she said, turning back to Cordy.
“I know, Mommy,” Cordy said. “Why don’t you sleep? We’ll be right here.”
She turned to our father like a child looking for permission. He nodded, picked up her hand and kissed it, his beard brushing against her skin. Rose watched them, thinking she had never seen him look at her so lovingly, and her heart gave a soft pang for Jonathan. Our mother’s eyes closed and we watched her breathe.
When visiting hours ended, we left our father snoring happily in the empty bed in our mother’s room and drove home, Bean behind the wheel, Rose in the passenger seat, gripping the dashboard in horror every time we changed lanes, Cordy poking her head between the seats, still the family dog. It was strange, being just the three of us, and we spent most of the drive home arguing about what to eat for dinner. Cordy claimed vegetarianism (mostly to make things more difficult, we surmised), Bean fretted about the imaginary half pound she had gained since returning to a diet consisting of more than tapas and martinis, and Rose had been dreaming all day about mashed potatoes with butter, which fit Cordy’s requirements, but