The Half Life: An Eshort Story by Jennifer Weiner

Author:Jennifer Weiner [Weiner, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781451640625
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Published: 2010-12-21T08:00:00+00:00

Read an excerpt from Little Earthquakes.

Lia

I watched her for three days, sitting by myself in the park underneath an elm tree, beside an empty fountain with a series of uneaten sandwiches in my lap and my purse at my side.

Purse. It’s not a purse, really. Before, I had purses—a fake Prada bag, a real Chanel baguette Sam had bought me for my birthday. What I have now is a gigantic, pink, floral-printed Vera Bradley bag big enough to hold a human head. If this bag were a person, it would be somebody’s dowdy, gray-haired great-aunt, smelling of mothballs and butterscotch candies and insisting on pinching your cheeks. It’s horrific. But nobody notices it any more than they notice me.

Once upon a time, I might have taken steps to assure that I’d be invisible: a pulled-down baseball cap or a hooded sweatshirt to help me dodge the questions that always began Hey, aren’t you? and always ended with a name that wasn’t mine. No, wait, don’t tell me. Didn’t I see you in something? Don’t I know who you are?

Now, nobody stares, and nobody asks, and nobody spares me so much as a second glance. I might as well be a piece of furniture. Last week a squirrel ran over my foot.

But that’s okay. That’s good. I’m not here to be seen; I’m here to watch. Usually it’s three o’clock or so when she shows up. I set aside my sandwich and hold the bag tightly against me like a pillow or a pet, and I stare. At first I couldn’t really tell anything, but yesterday she stopped halfway past my fountain and stretched with her hands pressing the small of her back. I did that, I thought, feeling my throat close. I did that, too.

I used to love this park. Growing up in Northeast Philadelphia, my father would take me into town three times each year. We’d go to the zoo in the summer, to the flower show each spring, and to Wanamaker’s for the Christmas light show in December. He’d buy me a treat—a hot chocolate, a strawberry ice cream cone—and we’d sit on a bench, and my father would make up stories about the people walking by. A teenager with a backpack was a rock star in disguise; a blue-haired lady in an ankle-length fur coat was carrying secrets for the Russians. When I was on the plane, somewhere over Virginia, I thought about this park, and the taste of strawberries and chocolate, and my father’s arm around me. I thought I’d feel safe here. I was wrong. Every time I blinked, every time I breathed, I could feel the ground beneath me wobble and slide sideways. I could feel things starting to break.

It had been this way since it happened. Nothing could make me feel safe. Not my husband, Sam, holding me, not the sad-eyed, sweet-voiced therapist he’d found, the one who’d told me, “Nothing but time will really help, and you just have to get through one day at a time.

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