She Is Me Read Free Page A

smile had been revealed and the people, or Greta, who was the only one present, had rejoiced.
    Greta had existed in the baby’s beauty, in her moods, in her needs. Now, she realized, she existed in Lotte in the same way. Her mother’s comfort, her spirits and moods, her demands, and her sad, vulnerable needs had been transformed into the air she breathed, a steamy atmosphere as real as the mist that poured from Lotte’s humidifier, which Greta was careful to clean every day.
    Lotte’s voice had wormed its way into Greta’s head. Lotte’s pain was as clear to Greta as if she felt it herself. The disappointment Lotte felt with each failed treatment, each unsuccessful doctor’s appointment, weighed heavily on Greta’s chest. Lotte’s joy, the intermittent, glorious moments when she struggled up from her illness and courageously enjoyed a new pair of shoes, a huge, garish sunflower, or a cookie—this was Greta’s joy.
    “It’s like having a two-year-old,” she said to her husband. But how could Tony know what she meant?
    “You have to separate yourself from her a little bit,” he suggested.
    Greta looked at him, disturbed. Separate?
    “Why is that a goal, I wonder?” she said. “I know it is. I know it’s what we’re always supposed to be doing, all our lives. The therapists so rule. But why?”
    “Self-preservation?”
    Preservation? Should she zip herself up in a plastic Ziploc bag and preserve herself in the vegetable bin in the refrigerator? Even though she wasn’t the one whose face was rotting?
    “Don’t you think ‘self-preservation’ is just a nice contemporary phrase for selfishness?” she said.
    “No,” Tony said. “I don’t. People need boundaries.”
    She hated the way he said “boundaries.” It sounded as though it should be written with a capital B. Tony often seemed to capitalize his nouns.
    “People
need
Boundaries,” he said again.
    Perhaps People do, she thought. Tony would know. He was an authority on People. He looked authoritative, too, standing there, his rather large head with its pleasantly crow-footed blue eyes and firm, reassuring, smiling lips.
    “Fuck people,” she said.
    Elizabeth walked out of Larry Volfmann’s office still gripping her bottle of water, now empty, now warm. Most people thought Elizabeth willful, but she often felt her will was not entirely her own. She was a person who appeared arrogant and unmovable not because she made up her mind and then stuck to it but because she found it so difficult to make up her mind to anything at all. Elizabeth waited, and waited, and waited, hoping for that elusive bit of evidence that would finally and utterly convince her.
    Sometimes there was no alternative before her, and then she would rush down a path as if pulled by gravity. It made people think she was ambitious and energetic. But I’m passive, don’t you see? That’s why I studied so hard in school—too lazy not to. And now this. I’ll do this because Larry Volfmann told me to.
    “Elizabeth?”
    Elizabeth realized she was still standing in the waiting room with her empty plastic water bottle. A young man stood in front of her, short, preternaturally tanned, his thinning blond hair gelled into alarming spikes.
    “I’m glad I caught you,” he said.
    Elizabeth was not glad, somehow, although she did feel caught.
    “I’m Elliot.” He took her by the elbow and led her to another office. “Elliot King.”
    “Look,” said Elliot King. “I’m sorry.”
    He sat at his desk and put his feet up, motioning her to a chair.
    “I’m just a businessman,” he said.
    Elizabeth sat and looked past the soles of his Adidas at the businessman who was sorry. His brows were knit. He put a pencil to his lips.
    “I have to warn you about Larry,” he said.
    “You do?”
    “I love him dearly,” he said.
    Elizabeth nodded.
    “He’s the boss,” he said.
    She nodded again.
    “The studio head.”
    “Right.”
    “I love him dearly.” Elliot stared at her.