The Marcotte Sisters Meet on Zoom

By Adèle Saint-Pierre

The Marcotte sisters meet on Zoom every Wednesday evening at seven o’clock.

Jeannine, the one they call four-eyes, but also Bertrand, Rocky, Muff, and occasionally Blue for some reason, runs the meeting. She sends the invite. She comes up with the question of the week. She creates the agenda. She makes sure people stay focused. If the meeting devolves into chicken-house madness, or the conversation transgresses into stories about themselves or people they know either farting, pooping or throwing up in public, then Jeannine is right there to steer them back to the agenda.

Charlotte, the shy one who has always preferred animals to humans, rarely opens her mouth. It is easy to forget she’s there, in fact. Except on show-and-tell nights. On show-and-tell nights, you can hardly get that woman to shut up already about this knick-knack or that afghan, these striped rocks or those pinecone dolls.

Bernadette, the anxious one whose constant earlobe pulling and hair twisting and handwringing makes everybody so nervous, will talk about her falling arches and bunions and fungal toenails if nobody stops her. She gets to the waiting room at 6:59. If she is first to the meeting, then no one can talk shit about her in her absence.

Fernande shouldn’t drink or smoke or ingest any edibles before these Zoom meetings. But she does. And she hates herself for it since it means that she will inevitably go off on some tirade about politics. Nobody likes these tirades about politics, least of all Fernande. First, they are incredibly boring. Second, they don’t get anybody anywhere. Third, all they do is make Charlotte cry, throw Bernadette’s earlobe pulling, hair twisting and handwringing into overdrive, and give Jeannine the excuse she has been waiting for to start pounding her gavel all over the place and yelling things like, “Decorum, gentlemen! Decorum!” or “Order in the court! Order in the court!”