She Is Me Read Online Free PDF Page B

in for a test,” her father said. He rarely called Greta “Mommy” to the children anymore, though Elizabeth and Josh called their mother “Mommy” far more often than one might have expected from two adults.
    “You do?” Elizabeth said. She assumed her mother was on another extension. Elizabeth tried to call them only when she thought one or the other might be out, though there was nothing she could do when they were the callers. She hated it when both of them were on the phone. It was like talking to neither one. Her words were projected into uncertainty, into thin air.
    “I do,” Greta replied from the ether.
    Elizabeth had no idea what they were talking about. Was her mother becoming a real-estate agent or something? Did she need to renew her driver’s license?
    “Don’t worry,” Tony said.
    “It’s nothing,” Greta said. “I told him we didn’t have to call you. I told you not to call, Tony.”
    “She has a right to know.”
    “There’s nothing to know,” Greta said in a sharp voice. “That’s why they do a test. If we knew, we wouldn’t have to do a test, would we?” Then she began to cry.
    “Right, yes, that’s right,” Tony said. His voice was soft, soothing. “To rule it out,” he said. “Just to rule it out.”
    Gradually, Elizabeth was able to ascertain that her mother had a lump. Elizabeth listened to them discuss the lump (in her colon), the test (to rule things out), and the timing (as soon as possible). Their voices, joined together in their customary telephone duet, seemed even farther away than usual—one strange, garbled, disconsolate articulation.
    The night before she was to fly out to be there for the biopsy, Brett held Elizabeth as she fell asleep, her cheek sweaty and crumpled against his chest.
    “Imagine hearing that your mother might have cancer and responding with an overwhelming sense of crankiness,” she said. She was ashamed.
    He kissed her forehead. “You’re not cranky,” he murmured. “You’re angry. And why not?”
    She felt his lips, still pressed lightly against her skin, shift into the faintest of smiles, a smile she knew well—his modest (for he was modest) but honest (for he was that, too) appreciation of his own easy temperament, his good humor. Elizabeth knew she gave him too many opportunities to display his patience. Perhaps it was one of the things he liked about her. She hoped so, hoped his amused forbearance would not wear out before she could morph into a more balanced, even-tempered sort of person, something she was always aspiring and planning and attempting to do.
    “Thank you,” she said. She held on to him. He was wearing pajamas, one of his quaint customs. She had never known a man who wore pajamas, not even her father, who wore boxer shorts to bed. She buried her face in the clean, starchy smell of the pajamas.
    “I love you and your pajamas,” she said.
    “I love you and yours,” he said, stroking her naked body beneath the sheet.
    Elizabeth welcomed the surge of desire, an enormous wave of physical emotion. She smiled at the image of a wave, imagining a tidal wave with pickup trucks and mobile homes and shacks on its foaming crest.
    “Thank you,” she said again, pulling him against her.
    He kissed her throat. “You’re very, very welcome,” he said, his voice soft and husky and muffled.
    Later, rolling away from him, she said, “You’re making me sweat,” though he was already asleep. She listened to his breathing. She heard the familiar gurgling with each exhale. It sounded almost like speech. She tried to synchronize her own shallow, rabbity breaths to his.
    She flew out to L.A. the next morning and took a taxi to the hospital. She sat for hours with her father waiting for the verdict, sure that the tumor would be benign and certain that it would not. Her father was wearing his white lab coat with his name stitched across the left breast pocket, like a bowler or a gas-station attendant or a security guard. Or a