The Weird Sisters - Eleanor Brown [89]
Inside her, the tiny thing turned, and Cordy could see the articulated vertebrae of its spine, the swell of a head like an alien, and in its unformed ugliness, she instantly loved it.
“Mine,” Cordy whispered to herself, her fingers reaching toward the screen. “Mine.”
Nothing had ever been just hers before. Clothes, books, toys, jokes, once Rose’s or Bean’s—or worse, both—then were Cordy’s. The curse of the hand-me-downs. New-to-me, not just plain new. Cordy remembers in particular a dress she had coveted, watching it go from Rose to Bean, waiting impatiently for the day it would be hers. A soft brown plaid, Peter Pan collar, puffed sleeves, skirt like a ringing bell around our knees running home from church.
She had wanted it desperately, had traced its lineage through her sisters, had counted the times they wore it, ticking away the wears until it would become hers. The fabric washed into softness, the lace at the collar pulled away from the fabric, our mother mended it. Good as new. But not new. And then, finally, the day Bean had outgrown it, cast it aside. Cordy grabbed it from the pile of clothes in the laundry room, ran to her own room, slipped it on.
It was too small. Bean had bloomed late, Cordy early, both of them springing into their teenage bodies at the same time, and it did not fit her. The tiny pearl-sheen buttons gaped at the chest, the delicate sleeves strained when she reached her arms forward, the feminine collar choked her. Cordy ripped the dress off, stuffed it in the garbage can, mourned it bitterly for years afterward, lime on chapped lips.
But this baby, this would be hers forever. That sense of wonder kept her warm as she dressed, pulling her clothes on with a tender respect for the swell of her belly, as she floated out of the sterility of the office into the parking lot to Dan’s car. He’d wanted to drive her, but she’d insisted on going alone. A thrust of nausea hit her hard, and she braced herself, one hand on the car door. Swallowing the sick rush in her mouth, she turned and leaned against the warm metal.
There would be no more leaving now. No more drifting on the jetstream, no more picking up on a whim and skipping out on unpaid bills and unwanted lovers and unsatisfying jobs. This hand-me-down was staying. Forever.
Cordy’s eyes watered, and she wiped them with her shirt cuff, blinking into the sun. The edge of the car key pressed against her skin, a reassuring pain.
But she could go, couldn’t she?
She could leave right this minute, disappear into the darkness of the map, shudder into a new town, another new life. The promise of a full tank of gas and an empty future ached inside her.
No. She couldn’t. Because even in that new incarnation, she would still be carrying a baby inside her. She’d never be able to disappear again.
She drove back to Barnwell, through acres of waving sheaves, green in the water-swollen summer. She walked through the empty kitchen and dropped the keys on Dan’s desk in the back of the Beanery without stopping to say hello, and walked home, her hands resting on her stomach. Though it was neither physically possible nor technically true, she felt as though she had started the day with nothing to her name and ended it with something to call her own. When Dan came by after work, she was standing in the kitchen, punching down dough, and staring out the window at the sprinkler, which was spitting arcs of water into the dissolving sunlight.
Dan leaned against the counter, arms crossed, hair hobbit-thick on his arms. His voice was low, deep, and Cordy thought of the rumble a man’s voice made when her head rested on his chest. “What are you going to do?” Dan asked, leaning forward. Above his eyes, his eyebrows furrowed dark and wide.
The dough stretched warm and elastic