The Middlesteins Read Online Free PDF Page B

attempted to change one bit even though her doctors, everyone
     around her, had issued serious warnings about it. Legs, teeth, heart, blood. Everything
     about her was collapsing. She weighed well over three hundred pounds. If she did not
     alter her diet and begin to exercise, she might die: the doctor had said as much to
     all of them. A bypass might soon be an inevitability rather than just a possibility.
     How many more surgeries would she have to have before she would change her life? Did
     she value her life so little? To Rachelle, to Benny, to everyone they knew, it was
     unimaginable. One surgery would have been enough for them.
    Benny’s father had said, uselessly, more than once, “You know your mother, I can’t
     get her to do anything she doesn’t want to do.” And that was all he was willing to
     say on the matter. He simply was not willing to take on his wife. While Edie was wonderful
     to her own children, the grandchildren, and Rachelle herself, she pecked at Richard
     constantly, as if she were a sparrow and he was some crumb just out of reach; it made
     Rachelle like her less.
    Still, Rachelle was certain it was Richard’s responsibility to help his wife get healthy,
     and yet here she was, driving through one long subdivision of new homes, and then
     another, until she arrived at a tiny side street still full of homes that were built
     in the 1960s, the owners of which had never sold out to developers, or had sold directly
     to younger families. Every third house looked exactly alike. Many were ranch style,
     and they all had fenced-in backyards. In the warmer months, robust American elms bloomed
     in the front yards. It was a fine, quiet block. Rachelle had seen pictures of the
     house from thirty years ago, in family photo albums, Benny and Robin standing in front
     of a massive willow tree in soft petal bloom, Robin chubby, poky little breasts in
     a polo shirt, half smiling, squinting from the sun, and Benny with a Cubs hat and
     a baseball glove, a big grin, a brace face, sparkling next to his sister. How had
     Benny turned out so cheerful and Robin so sad? Nobody knew. It was in their genes;
     that’s all anyone could guess. That willow tree was gone, and now there was just a
     low row of unevenly manicured bushes in front of the two-car garage, poorly maintained
     by Edie, who, in the spring, occasionally hacked at them with a giant set of clippers.
     “I do love the fresh air,” she would say.
    Rachelle parked across the street from the house, but did not get out of the car;
     her legs would simply not move, and she could not even bring herself to turn off the
     engine. Unfair , she thought, the word hotly blinking in her head, branding her with each throb.
     Why had she said yes? Because they were all in it together. Because her mission in
     life was to keep her family happy and healthy. Because where she failed, her husband
     would pick her up, and she would do the same for him. Just as she was doing now.
    The front door to the house opened; it was Edie, wrapped in her enormous mink coat
     and matching hat, an inheritance from her own oversized mother. (“I am morally opposed
     to fur,” Edie had told Rachelle once. “But since it’s already here, what am I going
     to do? Throw it away?” Rachelle had fingered the coat delicately with her fine, manicured
     hand, and imagined having it taken in—dramatically—someday for herself. “You can’t
     waste mink,” agreed Rachelle.) Edie got into her car, and before Rachelle could get
     out of her own car to stop her, drove off.
    Rachelle didn’t hesitate. She followed her mother-in-law, past the high school—a digital
     marquee in front of the school flashing GO TEAM! again and again—until she pulled into a McDonald’s parking lot. She made it through
     the drive-thru swiftly and then pulled out onto the road back to the subdivisions,
     but instead of heading home she went in the other direction, and Rachelle still followed