I'm Not Julia Roberts Read Online Free PDF

“Amazingly enough.”
    “That’s the thing,” One says, nibbling thoughtfully at a hangnail. “It’s not amazing at all.”
    Alan is methodical about taping before a paint job. Okay, he’s downright anal, but that is, Beatrix knows, the only way to get the job done right the first time. These are things she wishes she’d understood when she was younger: details, follow-through.
    “Remember the sides of the windowsill, Beatrix. You can take smaller bits of the tape and piece them together so that you get the right shape.”
    Beatrix rips off a shred of the brown tape, keeping an eye on the Problems. Problem Two is taping crookedly along the moldings in a way that will drive Alan nuts, though he won’t comment on it. Problem One, who is supposed to be taping, is obsessed with the paint she disdains, stirring it over and over again, like a witch over a cauldron.
    “Hey!” Alan says. “Are you helping or what?”
    “I’m mixing.”
    “You’re done mixing. How about some taping. The doorway, okay?”
    Problem One heaves one of her impressive sighs, grabs a roll of tape, and goes to the doorway. She holds the ring of tape in both hands like a crown and considers the door, as if someone infinitely more interesting—say, Prince William—were about to waltz through the opening. “Dad? Do you remember that time that you, Mom, and me turned the basement into an opium den?”
    Alan glances at Beatrix, who is concentrating on her windowsill. “Not really.”
    One turns, threading her thin wrist through the tape ring. “Yes, you do. We painted the paneling maroon? And then we bought all those beads and hung them in the doorways? And Mom went out and got those huge throw pillows that we used instead of couches?”
    Alan nods. “Sounds vaguely familiar.”
    “And when we were done decorating, we stayed up all night watching horror movies and smoking those candy cigarettes. I made you watch
The Exorcist
twice, remember? That was a funny movie.”
    One’s mother is a rather strange woman named Roxie, a woman Beatrix has no trouble believing would turn a room into an opium den at the whim of her satanic offspring. Perhaps Roxie actually used opium, or something only slightly less toxic. Perhaps she puffed suspicious substances from a long thin pipe while pregnant, and One was the result.
    One is now twirling the roll around her arm. “It was when Mom still had a sense of humor, remember? Right before you guys went insane and screwed up my life.”
    “Oh, then,” says Alan. “I’ve blocked out everything before I went insane and screwed up your life.”
    Problem One gives up and drops the tape ring to the floor. “I’m thirsty. Is anyone else thirsty?”
    “Now that you mention it,” Beatrix says. “A diet something, whatever we have.”
    “Diet,” says Problem One, her dark eyes sliding over Beatrix’s overall-clad figure. “Dad?”
    “Water would be great. I’m sweating already.”
    “You’re always sweating already,” says Problem One. She turns to the other Problem, who is using his fist to pound the tape onto the wall. “What about you?”
    “Huh?”
    “You want a drink or not?”
    Problem Two barely glances at her. “Whatever,” he says. He examines his fist, rubs it.
    Problem One stares at his back, her eyes narrowing. Problem One is not used to being ignored. Beatrix wants to tell her that, though it is difficult at first, a person
can
get used to such things. A person can grow accustomed to addressing the backs of heads, a person can become inured to blank stares and aggressive silences.
    Problem One leaves the room as Beatrix finishes taping and admires her own handiwork, admires how careful she has become. This admiration—for her work, for herself—must be all over her face, because out of the corner of her eye she notices that her son is smirking at her. Beatrix sees this smirk more and more; she saw it earlier that morning when Two handed her a letter from his father, the flap