Things You Should Know Read Online Free PDF Page A

a blue gel pack strapped to her face. “Headache.”
    There is dark soil on the carpet. She goes to get the Dust-buster. The television in the kitchen is on, even though no one is watching: “People often have the feeling there is something wrong, that they are not where they should be….”
    The dirt is in a small heap, a tiny hill on the powder-blue carpet. In her white crocheted bathing suit, she gets down on her hands and knees and sucks it up. Her mother watches. And then her mother gets down and brushes the carpet back and forth. “Did you get it?” she asks. “Did you get it all?”
    â€œAll gone,” she says.
    â€œI dropped it on its head,” her mother says. “I can’t bear it. I need to be reminded of beauty,” she says. “Beauty is a comfort, a reminder that good things are possible. And I killed it.”
    â€œIt’s not dead,” she says. “It’s just upside down.” Her mother is tall, like a long thin line, like a root going down.
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    In the front yard they hear men speaking Spanish, the sound of hedge trimmers and weed whackers, frantic scratching, a thousand long fingernails clawing to get in.
    There is the feeling of a great divide: us and them. They rely on the cleaning lady and her son to bring them things—her mother claims to have forgotten how to grocery-shop. All they can do is open the refrigerator door and hope there is something inside. They live on the surface in some strange state of siege.
    They are standing in the hallway outside her sister’s bedroom door.
    â€œYou don’t own me,” her sister says.
    â€œBelieve me, I wouldn’t want to,” a male voice says.
    â€œAnd why not, aren’t I good enough?” her sister says.
    â€œIs she fighting with him again?”
    â€œOn speakerphone,” her mother says. “I can’t tell which one is which, they all sound the same.” She knocks on the door. “Did you take your medication, Julie?”
    â€œYou are in my way,” her sister says, talking louder now.
    â€œWhat do you want to do about dinner?” her mother asks. “Your father is late—can you wait?”
    â€œI had carrots.”
    She goes into her parents’ room and checks herself in the bathroom mirror—still there. Her eyes are green, her lips are chapped pink. Her skin is dry from the chlorine, a little irritated. She turns around and looks over her shoulder—she is pruny in the back, from lying on the wet raft.
    She opens the cabinet—jars, tubes, throat cream and thigh cream, lotion, potion, bronze stick, cover-up, pancake, base. She piles it on.
    â€œMake sure you get enough water—it’s hot today,” her mother says. Her parents have one of those beds where each half does a different thing; right now her father’s side is up, bent in two places. They both want what they want, they need what they need. Her mother is lying flat on her face.
    She goes back out to the pool. She dives in with a splash. Her mother’s potions run off, forming an oil slick around her.
    Her father comes home. Through the glass she sees thefront door open. She sees him moving from room to room. “Is the air filter on?” His voice is muffled. “Is the air on?” he repeats. “I’m having it again—the not breathing.”
    He turns on the bedroom light. It throws her parents into relief; the sliding glass doors are lit like a movie screen. IMAX Mom and Dad. She watches him unbutton his shirt. “I’m sweating,” she hears him say. Even from where she is, she can see that he is wet. Her father calls his sweat “proof of his suffering.” Under his shirt, a silk T-shirt is plastered to his body, the dark mat of the hair on his back showing through. There is something obscene about it—like an ape trying to look human. There is something embarrassing about it as well—it looks like