Read Online A Parallel Life by Robin Beeman - Free Book Online

mouth—miss and then be a vegetable but not dead. She talked about poison. I told her that I couldn’t even listen to her talk this way, that I hoped she wasn’t really serious. I begged her not to ask me to help her.”
    I held onto the counter as he tightened his grip. Hisright knee, the bad one, buckled, and he tilted like a toy. Using my arm, he pulled himself up. “She said that if I loved her, I’d put a pillow over her face. ‘I love you, Roxie,’ I told her, ‘I’ll be here for you. I’ll try to see that you don’t have any pain, but I can’t help you die.’ ” His fingers bit into my arm. He licked his lips.
    His eyes were having a hard time focusing, shifting from the memory inside his head to me standing in front of him. A twitch on the left side of his face followed each shift. “She turned away from me and looked at the wallpaper. It’s a print paper with roses all over the wall. Big fucking cabbage roses. We put the paper up together when we first moved into the house. She stared at the damn roses and wouldn’t look at me anymore, as if I wasn’t worth looking at. She just stared—all slumped over, and I knew I’d failed her again.”
    â€œDon’t Jack,” I whispered. “Don’t tell me any more.”
    â€œShut up,” he said. His hand was a tourniquet on my arm. “I mean I’ve just failed her over and over and over. Finally, minutes later, she said, ‘It’s okay, Jack.’ The way she said it made my heart sink. ‘It’s okay,’ she said, dismissing me, you know, like one of the kids in her class who couldn’t ever get things right. ‘You do what you have to, Jack.’ ”
    â€œI don’t want to be here,” I said. I was sweating but beneath the sweat my skin was icy.
    â€œI understand, Ellen. But I need company now. I don’t want to be alone now.”
    â€œGo back to her Jack. Go back to Roxie.”
    â€œI can’t. Not now. She won’t have me now. I need to be with someone. You’re in this, too.”
    â€œNo.” I shook my head and tore away from him and went to the living room and knelt by the broken glass.Gingerly, I began picking up the bright slivers, the shards. “No. I’m on the outside, Jack. I’m not in that part of your life, Jack. Did you forget that?”
    â€œShe knows about you. You’re involved.”
    â€œIf it hadn’t been me it would have been someone else, and you know it.” I had the pieces of glass resting in the palm of my hand. I got up and went to the wastebasket but he grabbed my wrist.
    â€œDo you know what she’s doing at this very moment?” he asked, holding my wrist so I couldn’t drop the glass. I swayed and shook my head. “She asked me to leave the house. She’s been saving pills. All this time in the hospital, they’ve been bringing her two pills, she only takes one and saves the other.”
    â€œLet me go.” I hadn’t meant to scream but I heard my voice echo back from the hard gray walls. I twisted away and the glass spun from my hand. His face looking into mine was fierce. Fierce and without recognition. His odd, almost pupilless eyes swam in their whites. His tan was like a filthy mask. He seemed to grow taller, become attentuated, and in an odd way almost purified by his rage. I ran out into the hall and down the steps onto the sidewalk where the sudden May sunlight wiped out the world.
    I forgot that I had a car. When I arrived at my mother’s apartment, I was shivering and my teeth were chattering. She let me in without a word and I fell onto her couch. “I’m sick,” I said. “You have to take care of me.”
    â€œWhat do you mean, you’re sick?” She frowned and stayed by the door, leaving it open as if there was a chance that I’d need to bolt as quickly as I’d come in.
    â€œI