She Is Me Read Online Free PDF

that term fit Elizabeth and Josh. Groups of complete strangers were, of course, ideal. Tony had briefly succumbed to the lure of Mao in college, and he still retained a great compassion for and interest in the needs of the People. It was a shame, Greta thought, that he was so vague about any person in particular. Elizabeth, on the other hand, was as loyal as a dog to her friends and family, as wary as a dog toward the rest of the world.
    “You’re just like Daddy,” Greta said, and Elizabeth looked so pleased that she did not have the heart to add, “in reverse.”
    For the next six months, Elizabeth flew back and forth to Los Angeles in a frantic shuttle that accomplished nothing, never did anyone any good, and still seemed vital. She met once with a young agent who was the nephew of one of her mother’s clients and willing to sign up just about anybody, but most of the monthly visits were a simple attempt to help her mother out.
    Now, sitting in her own living room, a long, dark rectangle with windows facing an air shaft, she dialed her grandmother’s number, sure that Greta would be there as well. She always was. It was a bright, sunny day outside, but the room was so dark that Elizabeth could barely see the toys mounded like the banks of a river along the walls. Her mother answered Grandma Lotte’s phone.
    “Grandma’s pretty good today,” Greta said. “I just gave her a shower.”
    “A blessing,”
Elizabeth heard Lotte say in the background.
    “What about you, Mom?” Elizabeth said. “You’re exhausted.”
    “How’s Harry?”
    “You can’t keep running over there every five minutes, sleeping on Grandma’s couch, cooking for her and for Dad . . . And you’re working, too . . .”
    “What am I supposed to do?” Greta said. “Grandma has to eat, she needs to shower . . .” Then her tone changed abruptly from a tense and defensive rumble to a tight, higher-pitched sound of controlled, straining rage. “Mother, I told you before,” she was saying to Lotte, “the pills are lined up on the dining-room table. In order. Look. See? You check off the box on the pad when you’ve taken it. . . . No, you will not die of liver disease because you took your Tylenol twenty minutes early . . . Yes, I will fix your lunch as soon as I’m off the phone with Elizabeth . . .”
    “Mom? Hire someone?” Elizabeth said, as she always did.
    “Easier said than done,” Greta said, as she always did.
    “I want Jell-O,”
Grandma said.
    “It’s like having a two-year-old,” Greta said into the phone to Elizabeth.
    “I’m three,” Harry said. He had picked up the extension in the bedroom.
    “Yes. You’re Grandma’s big, good boy.”
    Elizabeth was glad she could bestow solace in the form of Harry, because her mother would accept little else. Whenever Elizabeth went out there, she of course took Harry with her. Greta was so happy to see him that she seemed to cling to him, pressing her cheek against his head the way she still did with Elizabeth sometimes, so perhaps the trips really were restorative in some way. Her mother was not feeling well, rushing to the bathroom every minute with nervous diarrhea, but when Elizabeth offered to take Grandma to the doctor or to spend a night with her or to cook her a special dinner, or even to heat up a can of soup for her, Greta would agree gratefully, then insist on coming along and doing it all herself.
    “Poor Elizabeth,” she would say, doing all the work Elizabeth was supposed to take off her shoulders. “You’ve got Harry to look after.”
    “What about Brett?” Elizabeth said on one occasion when Brett had come with them.
    “Yes, you’ve got him to look after, too.”
    “Mom, that’s not what I meant.”

two
    I t was late February, and Elizabeth stared at the Christmas tree in the living room, which was somehow still standing in the corner, a sad, desiccated betrayal of her ancestors as well as a fire hazard. The phone startled her.
    “Mommy has to go