Veronica Read Online Free PDF Page A

with a young person.”
    A car rolled up and got stopped in traffic in front of us. Music poured from the radio, carrying a voice that was all smooth and elegant, except burps and grunts kept popping out of it, like a baby trying to talk. “She says I am the one,” it sang. The music was a dark bubble in which the singer danced and twitched. An arm came out of the backseat and a hand pointed at me; a voice yelled, “You! You!” and the car roared off.
    Now time for the windows. I only do them once a month because it hurts my arm to reach over my head, which means by the time I do clean, I have to press hard, which also hurts my arm. Every now and then, John gets mad at me for not doing the windows every week and we have a fight. He stands there yelling, “What sense does it make to put it off? You’re telling me it hurts when you press hard? Spray it and wipe it every week and you’re fine!” He’s a short guy with a big head on a long rubbery neck that operates like a rotating turret, and words spray from his mouth like bullets. “Do you even think?” he’ll yell, and I’ll go into my thing of how I have to spare my shoulder, how much it hurts, and he’ll yell about why don’t I go to the doctor, why don’t I get physical therapy, and I’ll remind him of how hard it is with my insurance, how I have to get all these forms, and how it never helps anyway. Crying will come into my voice and he’ll get this wet, harried look in his eyes, and the turret will work uselessly, not knowing what to shoot at.
    You. You. When I knew Veronica, I was healthy and beautiful, and I thought I was so great for being friends with somebody who was ugly and sick. I told stories about her to anybody who would listen. I can just hear my high, clear voice describing
    her antics, her kooky remarks. I can hear the voices of people congratulating me for being good. For being brave.
    I drag the bucket across the room. Rain hits the dirty windows in great strokes. The people outside are blurred and runny: a middle-aged woman trying to pull a teenage girl under an umbrella, the girl pulling back and yelling. A car swishes around the corner, filling a fat wet drop with a second of headlight. The girl breaks away and runs into the rain. I think of the Mexican woman with rain running down her face. I spray the window and rub.
    Now I’m ugly and sick. I don’t know how long I’ve had hepatitis—probably about fifteen years. It’s only been in the last year that the weakness, the sick stomach, and the fever have kicked up. Sometimes I’m scared, sometimes I feel like I’m being punished for something, sometimes I feel like I’ll be okay. Right now, I’m just glad I don’t have to deal with a beautiful girl telling me I have to learn to love myself.
    I stretch up to the top window and breathe into the pain, like it’s a wall I can lean against.
    When I say that the songs we listened to at the hostel had a feeling of sickness in them, that doesn’t mean I don’t like them. I did like them, and I still do. The sick feeling wasn’t in all the songs, either. But it was in many songs, and not just the ones for teenagers; you could go to the supermarket and hear it in the Muzak that roamed the aisles, swallowing everything in its soft mouth. It didn’t feel like sickness. It felt like endless opening and expansion, and pleasure that would never end. The songs before that were mosdy about pleasure, too—having it, wanting it, or not getting enough of it and being sad. But they were finite little boxes of pleasure, with the simple surfaces of personality and situation.
    Then it was like somebody realized you could take the surface of a song, paint a door on it, open it, and walk through.
    The door didn’t always lead to someplace light and sweet. Sometimes where it led was dark and heavy. That part wasn’t new. A song my father especially loved by Jo Stafford was “I’ll Be Seeing You.” During World War II, it became a lullaby