The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold

  I saw Jake sitting on the teacher's desk in the classroom opposite. He made a move to stand up, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

  "Your husband is answering a few simple questions for us," Detective Broumas said. "I'd like you to do the same."

  I focused on his shoulders. Flecks of dandruff were scattered over the midnight-blue wool. His eyes, a deep hazel surrounded by long lashes, reminded me of a therapist I'd gone to five years after my father's death. "Probe, probe, probe," I had said to this doctor. "Is that all you ever do?"

  A student, late for class, headphones blaring, walked by, turning her head like an automated camera, then passed on.

  "We're ready to leave," Natalie said.

  "Leave?"

  "Yes, Detective," she said. "I would like to accompany her to the station."

  The detective smiled. "Nothing so fancy," he said. "We'll just find an empty classroom and make the best of it."

  I was watching Jake. His feet dangled over the edge of the desk. For all his height and maturity, he seemed to me, in that moment, a child. By coming to help me, by climbing through that window, he would be inextricably linked to whatever happened to me. I remembered our story. He had tried to fix my mother's window, doing me a favor for old times' sake.

  "Shall we go in here?"

  "Here?" I said, pointing to the door Natalie and I had just stepped out of.

  "That is, if you don't mind."

  Natalie was asked to wait outside. Detective Broumas called for one of the uniformed officers, and the three of us went into the classroom.

  "It was a very confusing morning for the neighborhood," Detective Broumas said.

  Surveying the room and seeing few places to sit, he pointed toward the platform.

  "There's a chair there, I guess. Does that suit you?"

  "Sure. There's another chair behind the partition," I said.

  "Will you get that, Charlie? We can move them over here."

  "Actually," I said, "Professor Haku would prefer that you didn't move that one chair. He has it set up so the pose can continue on Monday."

  Detective Broumas smiled. He removed his navy blazer and hung it off the back of one of the easels in the first row. "We were talking to your husband in there. An artist. Is that how you got into this line of work?"

  "Yes," I said.

  The policeman named Charlie brought the chair I'd just been sitting on and put it in front of Detective Broumas.

  "Put it up there with the other one," he said. "Shall we?"

  As I stepped up on the platform and took the seat that was meant to substitute for a tub in Woman Washing in Her Bath, Detective Broumas turned to retrieve a notebook from the pocket of his blazer.

  I remembered finding a small notebook that must have fallen from Jake's jacket pocket. Inside he kept a sort of journal of his time outside in the cold.

  Dripped icicles for forty minutes in snow. Used tree as cover.

  Can I break up ice and solder it together by melting it with my hands?

  Leaves as thin as parchment. How to embellish what is already perfect?

  "Are you ready?" Detective Broumas asked. He sat across from me. The uniformed policeman had taken up his post near the door. I noticed, as I glanced at him, a certain boredom, as if this were a day like any other.

  "My friend says my mother was killed," I said.

  "Somebody had a hand in it, yes."

  "Who?"

  "We aren't sure yet," he said. "She was found in the basement by a neighbor of hers."

  "Mrs. Castle," I said. "She has a key." Answering, for myself, my own open question.

  "Actually, she doesn't. She found a window open in back that had been jimmied and asked a young lady to help her."

  Detective Broumas referred to his notebook. It was a small leather-bound book with a red ribbon to mark his place.

  "Madeline Fletcher. Her father lives next door."

  For a moment I thought of the tattooed wonder snaking into my mother's house, how it would have upset her.

  "Yes," I said, "that's the window my husband tried to fix yesterday."

  "It was wide open," Detective Broumas said.

  "It shouldn't have been."

  "Mrs. Castle also said that you were there last night. That she saw your car as late as seven p.m. outside the house."

  "That's right."

  "What were you doing there?"

  "She's my mother, Detective."

  "Just go through what you did and how you left her, if you can. Was she sleeping? Up? What was she wearing? Did you get any phone calls? Hear any strange noises? Had your mother been frightened of anyone or anything?"

  "My mother has been declining for some time," I heard myself say. I used the passive vernacular I so hated in reference to the elderly. "She had a grim bout with colon cancer a few years ago and never really recovered. Her doctor says that if people live long enough, cancer of the bowels gets them in the end. It's his little joke."

  Detective Broumas cleared his throat. "Yes, well, that sounds difficult. We've talked to Mrs. Castle, and I know she assisted her a great deal. Was there anyone else who frequented the house?"

  I looked down at my hands. I had stopped wearing jewelry of any kind. I didn't like the weight of it on my body, and whenever I found myself out at a restaurant, by the end of the meal I would have piled everything, from rings to earrings to watch, to the left of my place mat. I was unable to talk with it on.

  "Not recently," I said.

  "Mrs. Castle mentioned an incident in the house not too long ago," he prodded.

  I looked back up at him.

  "I found a condom in my old room."

  "And?"

  "We all assumed it had to be the boy who ran errands for my mother and sometimes did things around the house that she couldn't manage herself."

  He referred to his notebook. "Manny Zavros?"

  "Correct."

  "Fifteen twenty-five Watson Road?"

  "That's his mother's house," I said. "He disappeared after Mrs. Castle put the congregation on him."

  "Disappeared?"

  "Do you think it was him?"

  "We're following every lead."

  "I don't want to get Manny in trouble, but . . ."

  "Yes?"

  "There's something else that I didn't share with anyone."

  "I'm the person to share things with," he said.

  I knew this was the moment to plant the seed. As I spoke, I felt my face flush.

  "Around the same time, the contents of my mother's jewelry box went missing."

  "You didn't report it to the police?"

  "I didn't notice it for a few weeks, and by that time Manny was gone and I'd had the locks changed. Anyway, I didn't want to upset my mother. She hadn't worn most of the jewelry for years."

  "I see. By the way, your mother isn't the only one who died in the neighborhood in the past twenty-four hours."

  I knew what he was going to tell me and tried quickly to hide any expression that might indicate this.

  "It wasn't Mr. Forrest, was it?"

  "Why do you ask about him?"

  "Because I'm very fond of him," I said. "I've known him since I was small."

  "And Mrs. Leverton?"

  I drew a quick inhalation of breath and covered my mouth with my hand. The action--too calculated--made me immediately self-conscious.

  "She was found in her bedroom this morning by a cleaning woman."

  Though I knew what I had seen--Mrs. Leverton alive and leaving in an ambulance--I couldn't help thinking that at least I'd been present when my mother died.

  "How did they die, exactly?" I asked. I felt a light layer of perspiration spread beneath my sweater. My hands grew clammy. Why hadn't I asked this at the start?

  "Very differently. Mrs. Leverton was unconscious but breathing when the maid found her. She died in the back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital."

  "And my mother?"

  "What time did you leave yo
ur mother's house last night?"

  I sat up straighter and looked for signs that he was on the verge of accusing me. But he glanced at me mildly and pulled at the crease of his right trouser leg with the same hand that held his pen.

  I remembered a phrase Sarah had taught me. Weak Handsome. It was a show-business term that stood for men who were shadows of truly handsome men. They held all the proportions and qualities--hair color, height, etc.--but there was just enough flat or off about them that they were never cast as leads. A weak chin, eyes a bit too far apart, ears that stood out from the sides of their heads. I decided that Robert Broumas was Weak Handsome.

  "I want to know how she died," I said.

  "I'll answer that in a moment. What time did you leave your mother's house?"

  "Shortly after six," I said. I stopped short of flinching. Mrs. Castle had said she'd seen me at seven.

  Detective Broumas flipped back a few pages in his notes. He adjusted himself in the chair, cleared his throat.

  "Did you go straight home?"

  "No."

  "Where did you go?"

  "Mrs. Castle may have told you how badly off my mother was," I said. "That she hadn't recognized her yesterday."

  "She did."

  "I knew I would have to call the hospice. That once they took her away, she would never see her house again."

  I found myself crying now. Tears rolled down my cheeks, and I wiped them with the sleeve of my sweater. She never had to leave her house, I wanted to say. Do you realize how important that was to her?

  "I drove around a lot," I said. "I went to a spot I go to, to think."

  "Where is that?"

  "It's near farmland up near Yellow Springs Road. You can see the Limerick nuclear plant from there."

  "And you stayed there for how long?"

  I calculated in my head how long I had been with Hamish and added the extra hour or so I'd still been at my mother's.

  "About three hours."

  "You sat and thought for three hours?"

  "I'm afraid to admit that I fell asleep. My mother can be very exhausting."

  "And you went home after that?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you make any phone calls or talk to anyone?"

  "No. Will you tell me how my mother died?" My lies were mounting, and I knew it.

  "Her body was found in the basement."

  "The basement? Did she fall?" I stopped. Even to my own ears, I sounded false.

  "We aren't certain yet. We have an autopsy scheduled for this afternoon. What was your mother wearing yesterday?"

  I mentioned the skirt I had cut open, the blouse I had ripped, and her putty-colored bra. They must have already collected them from the kitchen floor.

  "Was she in the habit of dressing herself?"

  "Yes," I said.

  "Did your mother go outside the house much?"

  "She was agoraphobic," I said. "It was very hard for her to leave the house."

  "I mean around the yard or, say, taking the trash down the steps outside the kitchen, that sort of thing."

  "She was very willful. She wouldn't let Mrs. Castle and me do everything."

  I thought we had barely begun, but after placing the thin red ribbon on the current page, Detective Broumas closed his notebook. He visibly relaxed, waving a sort of postural off-duty flag.

  "Can I ask you a personal question?" he said.

  "Can I see her?"

  Detective Broumas stood. I stayed in the model's chair.

  "Tomorrow, after the autopsy," he said. "What's this like?" He gestured to indicate the room.

  "What's what like?" I asked.

  "Doing what you do for a living?" His smile came easily. I hated it. I hated it because I could not tell him to fuck off, because I knew the kind of interest he had. There was sincere and there was prurient.

  "Like any other job, but that much more exposed," I said.

  He chuckled to himself and stepped off the platform. I took this as my cue that I could stand.

  "We have a few people we still haven't tracked down who we want to talk to. Neighbors at work, that sort of thing." He took his jacket off the easel and slipped it on. "There are fingerprints and a footprint to run. We found a small bit of blood on the side porch. It could be your mother's. Her body had been moved."

  I stepped down from the platform. I felt myself floating.

  I pictured myself nude and curled up in the bathtub of my father's workshop. The tools and hooks that had fallen from the walls were sticking halfway out of my bloodless flesh.

  Coldness kills. I saw it as an entry in Jake's journal, scribbled in his hurried hand. I thought of my mother leaning out my bedroom window when I was a teenager, to braid and rebraid the vine outside. Protecting me from Mr. Leverton had seemed so crucial to her that she had regularly risked falling from the second story of her home. Why hadn't she been frightened? Had she loved me that much or had it had nothing to do with me? Had my birth merely created an extension of her fear?

  The uniformed police officer opened the door.

  "I'll let you get back to your friend and your husband. Oh," Detective Broumas said, "I'm sorry. Your ex-husband, correct?"

  I nodded my head. I had gotten down off the platform only to find myself desperately in need of a chair. I leaned, as nonchalantly as I could, into the carpeted edge of the platform.

  "Yes."

  "And how long have you two been divorced?"

  "More than twenty years," I said.

  "That's a long time."

  "We have two daughters."

  "You're close enough that he would come and repair your mother's window."

  "Yes."

  "All the way from Santa Barbara?"

  "Actually," I said, "he's in town to meet his--"

  Detective Broumas cut me off. "Yes, yes, he gave me a name. Let's go, Charlie."

  I stood then and walked toward the door. I thought of the game of shadow the girls had played when they were small, in which one of them walked right behind the other, turning left when the other turned, leaning right when the other leaned, so that the one in front could never see the shadow girl.

  I could see Natalie and Jake talking in the room opposite. Both of them had taken seats in the front row of what was a more traditional classroom used for art history and Western thought classes. The desk part of the molded chairs was a light lemon yellow and curved around their bodies.

  I saw the policemen walking down the hallway, Detective Broumas slightly behind the two uniformed officers. He was talking on his cell phone. I heard him say "hair ribbon" to someone in a directive tone and then the word "braid."

  Jake, who was facing toward the door, spied me first.

  Natalie turned awkwardly around in the school chair and looked at me. "I don't even know who you are sometimes," she said.

  I felt my stomach drop. I started to speak but then saw Jake vigorously shaking his head side to side and mouthing, No.

  There was only one other thing Natalie could be referring to. Why would he have told her?

  "I'm sorry," I said.

  "You've known him since he was a baby."

  This didn't matter to me. Plenty of fifty-year-old men slept with thirty-year-old women, and I was certain that among their number were those who had known their conquests as infants. Unfortunately the only person I could think of just then was John Ruskin and a ten-year-old named Rose la Touche.

  "It was mutual," I said.

  "Jesus," Natalie spat out. She looked away from me and toward the blackboard. I followed her glance. One of the students had taken advantage of an emptying classroom to draw a giant penis on the board. The caricature fellating it looked an awful lot like Tanner.

  "You slept with Hamish?" Jake asked, incredulous.

  "Last night, in her car," Natalie said. "I called home to tell him about your mother, and he comes out with that! He says he's in love with you."

  "Did you tell the police I was with him?" I asked, knowing that
it conflicted with what I'd just said.

  "That's what you care about? That's all you have to say?"

  Jake was staring at me now. "You took him to the Limerick spot." It was not a question.

  I nodded my head.

  Natalie's dress, as often happened, had loosened, and the deep overlapping V of the neckline now hung low and open, revealing her bra and her ample cleavage.

  In comparison I felt like a twig that could be snapped underfoot--brittle, insubstantial, combustible. Fodder for fire or lust. "There's an autopsy scheduled for this afternoon," I said. "She was killed somewhere other than where her body was found."

  Natalie stood. She walked over to me.

  I bowed my head, avoiding her gaze.

  "I guess I should congratulate him," she said. "Hamish has wanted a run at you for a long time."

  "And me?" I asked.

  "Truth?"

  "Yes."

  "I'm tired. I'm tired of living in that stupid house and of this job, and I'm seeing someone."

  "A Downingtown contractor," I said.

  "Of course you don't approve."

  "I'm not in a position to judge anyone right now," I said.

  Natalie brought her hand up to my cheek. A gesture, I was aware, that Hamish also used. "But you do."

  The three of us left the Art Hut. In my joints I felt the ache of tension--the accruing of the previous night's deeds with posing and the police questioning. I wanted desperately to go and sit where I had that morning, overlooking the rotten oak tree behind the building.

  "Remember my father's plywood people?" I said to Natalie. We stood in the parking lot. Jake's red car glistened in the sun.

  "Yes." She had seen them only once, shortly before they'd finally been demolished. Jake had only heard about them.

  "They were more real to him than my mother and me."

  "I feel sick looking at you," she said.

  She dug in her shoulder bag for her keys. They were easy to spot. After she had lost them dozens of times, Hamish had presented her with a key chain topped off by a giant red cat.

  Jake tried to fill the space. "Sarah is coming on one of her visits today. We won't have the happiest news to greet her with, I'm afraid."

  He had put his hands in his pockets, which he had always done to keep himself from fidgeting. Out of nowhere I thought of the shirt he was wearing beneath his sweater: "Life is good."

  "I'm headed up to York with my contractor. I'm meeting his mother for the first time," Natalie said to Jake. She would not look at me. I had suddenly become the unstable one to their upright citizens. Had I killed the only person who, in comparison, made me appear sane?