Read Online The Believers by Zoë Heller - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Zoë Heller
Tags: Fiction, General, Fiction - General, Psychological, Psychological fiction, Family Life, Domestic Fiction, New York (N.Y.), Married People, Parent and Adult Child, English Novel And Short Story, Older couples
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tragic, Rosa thought, about this intransigent filial loyalty. Karla had always been the least noticed of the Litvinoff offspring, the one who had had to work hardest to elicit the palest ray of her parents' approval or interest. But by some strange process, her lowly status within the family had only inflamed her ardor for the institution. She reminded Rosa of one of those people who spend four utterly miserable, unfriended years at college and then turn up years later as president of the alumni club.
Down in the strip-lit melancholia of the cafeteria, they each took a tray and shuffled along the winding counter, inspecting the contents of the plastic display cabinets. Karla hovered for a while over a group of elderly cheese Danishes.
"I wouldn't," Rosa said. "They look as if they've been there a week." She stole a sidelong glance at her sister. Karla had put on more weight lately. The cowl of extra flesh around her jaw was slowly expanding, and she was beginning to walk with a fat person's arduous, backward-leaning swagger. Rosa did not like to think of herself as being overly concerned with appearances. She disapproved of physical beauty, in fact. The reckless goodwill that her own looks inspired in total strangers had always been an embarrassment to her; she tended to regard other conspicuously attractive people as participants in a con game that she was doing her best to renounce. But Karla's weight was not an aesthetic issue; it was an ethical one. It bespoke a repugnant level of greed: a fundamental lack of self-respect.
She moved over to the fruit island now, hoping to lead by example. After examining a basket of wrinkled apples and blackened bananas, she settled, reluctantly, on a pinched-looking orange. Karla was already at the cash register, purchasing the Danish. She put it hurriedly away in her handbag as Rosa approached.
"My God!" Rosa said, glancing into the crowded interior of Karla's bag, "you've got a whole life support system in there." She pointed at a tin of medicated talcum powder. "What do you carry that around for?"
Karla blushed and snapped her bag shut. "It...it's for my legs, actually. When I'm on my feet too long, the inside of my thighs get, you know, chafed...."
"Oh, right," Rosa said, trying not to sound aghast. "Bummer."
Upstairs, Joel had been brought back from his tests, and Audrey and Lenny were standing at his bedside in one of the ICU rooms. "You're not going to stay here, love," Audrey was saying, when Rosa and Karla came in. "I'm going to phone Dr. Sussman tonight and see about getting you moved to NYU."
Joel lay motionless on the bed, his white hair pressed flat against his skull in damp, yellowish strands, his knobbly wrists sticking out from the wide sleeves of his hospital gown like clappers in a bell. In some childish part of Rosa's mind, she had been expecting the largeness of her father's personality to have survived this physical catastrophe. She had pictured him sitting up, making jokes, imposing himself on a new environment with all his usual commanding ebullience. But whatever remained of that man in this frail, speckled creature had gone into hiding. In the frayed, faded blue of hospital issue, her father had become just another enlistee in the vast army of the sick and dying.
"You sure you need all these, love?" Audrey was asking him in a teasing tone, pointing to the profusion of tubes sprouting from his scalp and mouth and wrists. "I think you're showing off with all this stuff--" She broke off suddenly. "What are you grinning at?" she demanded of Karla.
Rosa glanced at her sister. One of the unfortunate by-products of Karla's obliging personality was an unconscious tendency to take on the facial expressions and, in some cases, the speech patterns and accents of people around her. Just now, she had been so immersed in her mother's labored performance of good cheer that she had allowed her face to become frozen in a rictus of foolish, sympathetic gaiety.
"I'm
Down in the strip-lit melancholia of the cafeteria, they each took a tray and shuffled along the winding counter, inspecting the contents of the plastic display cabinets. Karla hovered for a while over a group of elderly cheese Danishes.
"I wouldn't," Rosa said. "They look as if they've been there a week." She stole a sidelong glance at her sister. Karla had put on more weight lately. The cowl of extra flesh around her jaw was slowly expanding, and she was beginning to walk with a fat person's arduous, backward-leaning swagger. Rosa did not like to think of herself as being overly concerned with appearances. She disapproved of physical beauty, in fact. The reckless goodwill that her own looks inspired in total strangers had always been an embarrassment to her; she tended to regard other conspicuously attractive people as participants in a con game that she was doing her best to renounce. But Karla's weight was not an aesthetic issue; it was an ethical one. It bespoke a repugnant level of greed: a fundamental lack of self-respect.
She moved over to the fruit island now, hoping to lead by example. After examining a basket of wrinkled apples and blackened bananas, she settled, reluctantly, on a pinched-looking orange. Karla was already at the cash register, purchasing the Danish. She put it hurriedly away in her handbag as Rosa approached.
"My God!" Rosa said, glancing into the crowded interior of Karla's bag, "you've got a whole life support system in there." She pointed at a tin of medicated talcum powder. "What do you carry that around for?"
Karla blushed and snapped her bag shut. "It...it's for my legs, actually. When I'm on my feet too long, the inside of my thighs get, you know, chafed...."
"Oh, right," Rosa said, trying not to sound aghast. "Bummer."
Upstairs, Joel had been brought back from his tests, and Audrey and Lenny were standing at his bedside in one of the ICU rooms. "You're not going to stay here, love," Audrey was saying, when Rosa and Karla came in. "I'm going to phone Dr. Sussman tonight and see about getting you moved to NYU."
Joel lay motionless on the bed, his white hair pressed flat against his skull in damp, yellowish strands, his knobbly wrists sticking out from the wide sleeves of his hospital gown like clappers in a bell. In some childish part of Rosa's mind, she had been expecting the largeness of her father's personality to have survived this physical catastrophe. She had pictured him sitting up, making jokes, imposing himself on a new environment with all his usual commanding ebullience. But whatever remained of that man in this frail, speckled creature had gone into hiding. In the frayed, faded blue of hospital issue, her father had become just another enlistee in the vast army of the sick and dying.
"You sure you need all these, love?" Audrey was asking him in a teasing tone, pointing to the profusion of tubes sprouting from his scalp and mouth and wrists. "I think you're showing off with all this stuff--" She broke off suddenly. "What are you grinning at?" she demanded of Karla.
Rosa glanced at her sister. One of the unfortunate by-products of Karla's obliging personality was an unconscious tendency to take on the facial expressions and, in some cases, the speech patterns and accents of people around her. Just now, she had been so immersed in her mother's labored performance of good cheer that she had allowed her face to become frozen in a rictus of foolish, sympathetic gaiety.
"I'm
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