You or Someone Like You Read Online Free PDF Page A

simply left her plastic tray behind.
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    It was shortly after we met that I told Howard a story about a teacher who had taught me Greek mythology. Howard loved the myths. At the time, it was simply something I mentioned to him, casually and entirely abstractly, one of the bits and pieces that had happened to me that he absorbed avidly.
    I was in England, I think age thirteen and almost seven months atthis particular school just outside London, for me a relative eternity in one place, and I listened with fascination as she spoke about the gods. She was an older, starched woman, but she would allow me to linger with her after class, when the other girls had recrystallized into their well-established structures that did not include places for me. I was one of the prettier ones, just beginning to fill out, but in that single-sex school there were no boys around to elevate my status. She was, for example, the only logical person I could tell of my father’s announcement at dinner that, once again, we’d be going overseas.
    For seven months I had hovered by her desk. She would murmur to me bits and pieces about the myths as she frowned at her papers and jotted notes on things. The Greek god Proteus, she said, when he fought with you, had the power to change himself into any shape he wished—lion, serpent, monster, fish—trying to twist away and escape. But there was a trick, she explained sternly. If you could just hold on to him throughout his transformations, he would be compelled in the end to surrender, and resume his proper shape.
    She had paused. “This is a new posting for your father.”
    Yes. (I would be gone within the week.)
    â€œAnd where are you going this time, Anne?”
    My parents, I said, would be transferred to Jakarta, myself to a British boarding school in Kuala Lumpur.
    â€œRemember Proteus,” she said, fixing me, looking into my eyes. “Just keep tight hold of him, and it will all be all right.”
    Despite the hole I felt in my chest, despite the incipient loneliness of another distant country that would soon replace the present loneliness, I understood what she was doing. She was giving me strength via erudition, a particularly, and particularly lovely, British tradition. She was sharing her secular faith. A literate knowledge of the Greek myths to get one through. Very English. I nodded. When she was satisfied, she turned back to her desk. “Right. Off you go,” and she was back to work.
    I told Howard this story.
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    ON THURSDAY MORNING, HAVING FINISHED a few other things, I called Stacey.
    One of her assistants put her on. “Anne.” Her voice was hopeful.
    I’ve made a list. If you’re serious.
    â€œOf course!” She was thrilled, she said. I realized her voice had quickened my pulse. She had the unique, fresh hope that springs up in us when we are about to begin reading a good book.
    Oh, said Stacey. A small cloud passed over the voice. She had been at a meeting the other day and in the parking garage had run into Melanie Cook. Melanie had heard I was starting a book club.
    Yes, I said that Melanie had called me, we’d straightened that out.
    Ah, she said. Well. The thing was, what Stacey and Melanie were wondering was whether, if I had time of course, if it wasn’t an imposition, would I like to read with them? Obviously I’d already read the books, it was my list after all, but they were thinking an evening every month or so—they would come to me, of course! I wouldn’t ever have to get in a car.
    I thought about it. Well, maybe I could do that. Once every month. Or so. Why not. Perhaps we could start three weeks from today? I was looking at my calendar. Thursday evening. At my house.
    Stacey said, “Josh, pick up, please.”
    A click on the line. “Hi, Mrs. Rosenbaum.”
    Hello, Josh.
    Josh would make the entry on her calendar. I told Stacey I would leave it to her to coordinate all this with