The Half Life by Jennifer Weiner Read Free Book Online Page A

gotten smoother with every trip through the washing machine. I pull the pillow over my head, noting that the case has acquired a not-so-fresh smell. This is possibly related to my not having showered or washed my face or hair for the last three days. I have left the bed only to use the toilet and scoop a handful of water from the bathroom sink into my mouth. On the table next to my bed there’s a sleeve of Thin Mint cookies that I retrieved from the freezer, and a bag of Milanos for when I finish the Thin Mints. I don’t want to cook. I don’t want to move. It’s spring, and sunny and mild, but I’ve pulled my windows shut, drawing the shades so I can’t see the mom brigade ostentatiously wheeling their oversized strollers down the street, and forty-year-old guys with expensive suede sneakers and beards as carefully tended as bonsais tweeting while they walk, or the tourists snapping pictures of the snout-to-tail restaurants where everything’s organic and locally sourced. The bedroom is dark; the doors are locked; my daughters are elsewhere. Lying on these soft sheets that smell of our commingled scent, hair and skin and the sex we had two weeks ago, it’s almost like not being alive at all.
    Knock knock knock . . . and then—fuck me—the sound of a key. I shut my eyes, cringing, thinking that my mother or, worse yet, my Nana will come storming through the door, full of energy and advice and plans to get me out of bed.
    Instead, someone comes and sits on the side of the bed, and touches my shoulder, which must be nothing but a lump underneath the duvet.
    â€œRachel,” says Brenda, the most troubled and troublesome of my clients. Oh, God. I’d given her youngest son, Dante, a key the year before, so he could water the plants and take in the mail over spring break, a job for which I’d promised to pay him the princely sum of ten bucks. He’d asked me shyly if I could take him to the comic book store to spend it, and we’d walked there together with his hand in mine.
    â€œSorry I missed you,” I mutter. My voice sounds like it’s coming from the bottom of a clogged drain. I clear my throat. It hurts. Everything hurts.
    â€œDon’t worry,” says Brenda. She squeezes my shoulder and gets off the bed, and then I hear her, moving around the room. Up go the shades. She opens the window, and a breeze ruffles my hair and raises goose bumps on my bare arms. I work one eye open. She’s got a white plastic laundry basket in her arms, which she’s quickly filling with the discarded clothing on the floor. In the corner are a broom and a mop, and a bucket filled with cleaning supplies: Windex and Endust, Murphy’s Oil Soap, one of those foam Magic Erasers, which might be useful for the stain on the wall from when I threw the vase full of tulips and stem-scummed water.
    I close my eyes, and open them again to the sharp-sweet smell of Pine-Sol. Brenda fills the bucket to the top with hot, soapy water. I watch like I’m paralyzed as she first sweeps and then dips her mop, squeezes it, and starts to clean my floors.
    â€œWhy?” I croak. “You don’t have to . . .”
    â€œIt isn’t for you, it’s for me,” says Brenda. Her head’s down, her brown hair is drawn back in a ponytail, and it turns out she does own a shirt that’s not low-cut, pants that aren’t skintight, and shoes that do not feature stripper heels or, God help me, a goldfish frozen in five inches of pointed Lucite.
    Brenda mops. Brenda dusts. She works the foam eraser until my walls are as smooth and unmarked as they were the day we moved in. Through the open window come the sounds of my neighborhood. “The website said Power Vinyasa, but I barely broke a sweat,” I hear, and “Are you getting any signal?” and “Sebastian! Bad dog!”
    I smell hot grease from the artisanal doughnut shop that just opened down the block.