Read Night at the Fiestas: Stories for Free Online Page A

was appropriately ungrateful.
    Likely, Monica thought, Cordelia would grow to resent this trait in her sister, this assumption that her needs would be met, that the world had a place for her. But for now, Cordelia nestled around Beatrice, her body curved protectively. To keep her from the cold, or from Monica? If Monica wasn’t careful, the two of them would grow ever closer, in league against her.
    After lunch—tomato soup that chilled almost as soon as it touched the bowls—Beatrice fell into a fierce sleep: fists balled up tight, brow pinched, her red cheeks splotched and tear-streaked.
    “I hope she doesn’t freeze,” said Cordelia.
    “Just a few more hours, then Elliot will fix the heater.”
    “What if he doesn’t know how?”
    “He probably will. And if not we’ll drive to buy a new one.”
    Bleakly, Cordelia said, “You love him more than you love us.”
    Monica put her arm around the girl, gave a gentle shake. They’d been down this road before. “That’s silly. I love you differently. You two are my precious daughters.”
    Cordelia was stiff and muffled under her arm. She was looking at her sleeping sister. “But you love him more than you love me.”
    “Want me to read to you?” Monica tapped her Riverside Shakespeare , which she had planned to study cover to cover months ago and still hadn’t touched, except to read aloud, at Cordelia’s insistence, scenes featuring her namesake. Now Cordelia just shook her head.
    “I have an idea,” Monica said. “We can play dress-up!” Actually, it was an idiotic idea—it was far too cold to be changing in and out of clothes.
    “Fine,” said Cordelia, listless.
    Monica dropped down from the loft and began rummaging in the tiny particleboard closet, while Cordelia peered over the bunk. There wasn’t much worth dressing up in. Some scarves: heavy, knitted, utilitarian. A cotton skirt. Elliot’s felt Indiana Jones hat, brim stained with dirt and sweat. Monica didn’t even like to touch it.
    She reached for her dress. It was in its dry-cleaning plastic, hadn’t been worn in years, not since Monica had left Cordelia with her mother and gone with her first husband to one of his parents’ gallery openings in Los Angeles. Black, elegant, heavy with beadwork. Silk embroidery ringed the hem and climbed the length of the dress to the deep neckline. She remembered her mother-in-law handing her the box, the shock of being given a gift so absolutely perfect, as though the woman had been a fairy godmother, able to gauge her aspirations along with her size. And the attention: that night, the gallery lights glinting off the beads, Monica had felt as though she were as essential to this evening as the artist, and it seemed the dress itself had had the power to transform her.
    “Do you like it?” Monica held it against her body, rocked her hips so the skirt swung.
    Cordelia shrugged.
    Monica was surprised at her disappointment. She’d imagined Cordelia reaching out to touch the hem with a single reverent finger.
    “Your dad’s parents bought this for me when you were a baby.”
    Cordelia’s face was shuttered, as it always was when her father was mentioned, as if, knowing how little interest he had in her, she’d decided to show none in him. “It’s ugly,” she said finally.
    “Oh, come on. It’s not ugly. It cost over three hundred dollars.”
    The dress was the most expensive item Monica owned—except for her car, which had been her father’s before he died. God knows why she’d brought the dress when the rest of her belongings went to her mother’s basement. Did Monica think there would be any place within three hundred miles where a dress like this would be appropriate? Did she think Elliot was that kind of man?
    “Want to try it on?” She slipped it off the hanger. “We can pin the straps.”
    “No,” said Cordelia, her cheek pressed into her forearm. “You put it on.”
    Monica slid out of her down vest, peeled off the two sweaters and