The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [85]
“You’re smoking around Mom,” Rose hissed. “You want her to get lung cancer, too?” She made a move as if to grab the offending butt from Bean’s hand, but Bean dropped her arm, her fingers drooping lazily over the edge of the chair’s arm, and the cigarette remained between her fingers.
“I figured we’d go for the cancer trifecta. Skin, lungs, breast.”
“It’s not funny,” Rose said, frustrated by Bean’s obvious callousness, by our mother’s unwillingness to speak up for herself. Rose waved her hand in front of her face, fanning away the smoke in a melodramatic motion. She was wearing another one of her seemingly endless supply of tunics and loose-waisted pants. The pattern made her look like an angry art teacher.
“It’s fine, Rose,” our mother said. She flipped a page in the magazine. “I’m upwind of her anyway.”
“It’s not fine,” Rose insisted. Bean took a final defiant drag and crushed the cigarette in an ashtray by her feet.
“Relax, Rosie. I have to go to work anyway.” Bean stood up, gathering the jelly jar from which she had been drinking, and kissed our mother on the forehead. “Have a nice day.” She breezed inside, smelling of coconuts and sweat and the burning sting of cigarette smoke. She’d been going to thank Rose for putting in a good word for her at the library, but the constant attacks made it hard to be grateful. We were all hoping that whatever was bugging Rose would get resolved, and soon. It was like living with an unusually bossy thirteen-year-old. Again.
With a melodramatic sigh, Rose dropped into Bean’s empty chair, still warm from her body and slightly slick with suntan oil. “It’s not fair,” Rose said.
“What’s not fair?” our mother asked. She leaned the magazine against her chest, where it hung, lopsided. Rose averted her eyes. Somehow, the intimate act of helping our mother bathe was not as hard as looking at the empty spot inside her clothes.
Rose pursed her lips. “How is it that they get everything? I did everything right, and they do nothing right, and it all turns out okay for them.”
“You’d rather they be punished for their mistakes?”
Rose considered this. Some shall be pardon’d, and some punished. She pictured Bean stretched on the rack, charm bracelet jangling, stilettos askew as her torturers pulled her limbs farther and farther apart. For Cordy, perhaps water torture, a slow, painful dripping. Neither of these thoughts gave her any pleasure. She rather thought less of herself for having them in the first place.
“Not punished. Just . . . how come it always comes out right for them and not for me?” Rose stood up and pushed her chair back away from the heat of the sun.
“What is it that hasn’t come out right for you? You have a career, a lovely fiancé. You’re beautiful and bright and you’ve earned everything you’ve worked for. You have a blessed life, Rosie.”
Rose grumbled something disagreeable under her breath, and our mother reached out and put her fingers lightly on Rose’s hand.
“We’ve always been so proud of you. Of all of you. And if your sisters have had a little more trouble finding their way, then it’s nothing to be disappointed in them for. They just need a little more support than you do. You’ve always been so independent. Even when you were a baby, you stopped breast-feeding so much earlier than Bean and Cordy. You wanted the bottle, because you could look around while you were drinking it.” She paused for a moment, then laughed. “I swear, you started crawling out of sheer spite because I didn’t move fast enough for you.” Her hat, wide and floppy, threw a tremble of shadows across her face when she moved her head. She smiled, and Rose could see the lines traced along her eyes, her lips.
Despite the sour curdle inside her, Rose smiled. She loved to hear stories of herself as a baby. The memories made her feel warm and special, like she was the One again, instead of one of Three.
“It just doesn’t seem fair,” Rose sighed. Bean had the beautiful clothes and the body to wear them, Cordy was the one everyone wanted to be around, the one whose smile seemed to