The Almost Moon

by Alice Sebold

  "Cash and carry," I said. "Make it quick."

  "I'm liking this new you," Sarah said, all lit up. She grabbed my purse from the floor and headed inside. No one could claim that when I broke bad news, I didn't make sure people had something to prop themselves up with.

  I could see her through the window, talking to Nick Stolfuz at the counter. She was using her hands to make a giant circle over her head. Nick laughed and handed her a six-pack with her change. When she reached the door, she turned to wave good-bye.

  "What was that all about?" I asked.

  "I was telling him about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade."

  I backed out of the lot and got onto the road. Sarah popped the tab on a can of Schlitz and slurped the foam with her mouth.

  "What led you to that?"

  "I told him I lived in New York. He's always wanted to go up for the parade."

  "The things you don't know."

  We passed under the keystone tunnel and onto the other side.

  "You have to take an interest, Mom. Nick is single, you know."

  "No, thank you," I said.

  "Damn," she said, and punched her thigh. "I could have had my own bar. Are we going to the towers lookout?" she asked, getting her bearings.

  "Yes."

  "Whatever floats your boat," she said. An expression I had taught her.

  I pulled off the road and onto the gravelly patch where last night Hamish and I had had sex in my car. I was glad for the rental, for the swinging scented tree that hung from the cigarette lighter.

  I turned off the ignition.

  Sarah sipped at her beer. "Can you open the windows?"

  "Better yet, let's get out," I said.

  "Beer?"

  "No."

  She stashed an extra in her coat pocket anyway.

  When I stood up, my legs buckled, and I stumbled, whirling around to put my hands on top of the car to steady myself. Sarah came rushing over.

  "Mom, are you okay?"

  I had seen a detective show on television in which the trademark maneuver of a tough-talking cop was to slam the criminal's chest so hard into the roof as he pinned him to the car that it made a thumping sound. I watched this show with my mother, and every time this happened, the two of us would giggle. "They call them 'perps,' " she said one night, and I had thought how our moments of ease were so rare anymore that even this stupid television show was something I was grateful for.

  "I'm weak, Sarah."

  "Weak? What are you telling me?"

  "A weak person," I said.

  I gained my breath. I had begun.

  "Let's go for a walk," I said, and crossed the road. I had never set foot on Forche Lane in all the times I had driven here, but I decided that's where Sarah and I would walk. It was a one-lane road that was privately owned and full of gaping potholes, from which weeds and wild grass poked out.

  "What are you talking about, Mom? Slow down." She caught up to me, holding the open can of beer in her hand.

  "I have to keep walking if I'm going to tell you everything."

  "I hate your exercise shit. Don't make me pump my arms."

  "I'm weak morally. And who I am does not reflect on you and Emily. That needs to be said up front."

  Sarah ran in front of me and spun around to block my path. The Schlitz foamed up, and a few drops spilled on the ground.

  "Don't," I said.

  "Mom, what is it?"

  "Move."

  "No."

  I pushed her aside, then moved to my left a bit to regain the road. Sarah joined me a moment later.

  "Okay, I'm listening," she said.

  "I don't know where to begin."

  On our right, a flock of grouse fled the bushes where they'd been hiding. The air was filled with the beating of wings.

  "How about why Dad is here?"

  "I called him. He flew out from Santa Barbara last night."

  "Why?" She took a preparatory slug of Schlitz.

  I could not do it. Not yet.

  "Remember Hamish?"

  "Of course."

  "I slept with him last night in my car. Twice. Once in his driveway and once back there, where we parked."

  "No shit!" Sarah said.

  "No shit."

  "Hamish, our blond-god doofus?"

  "Yes."

  "That's your moral weakness? Granted, not the usual thing, but cool, very very cool."

  We walked on. Forche dropped down after the part of the road that I had always been able to see from my car. Here the pavement gave way to dirt.

  "So is that it?" Sarah asked.

  "No."

  "Well, what?"

  "Your grandmother is dead," I said.

  "What?"

  "She died last night, and I called your father."

  Sarah grabbed my arm.

  "Mom, that's huge. Were you there?"

  "We're not walking," I said.

  "Were you?"

  "Yes."

  Sarah dragged me toward her and tried to hug me. Despite her bloodline, she had always been one for touch. Emily had called her "Face Invader" when they were teenagers because Sarah didn't know when close was too close.

  "You're all bones," she said.

  I pulled back and looked at her. I felt the tears in my eyes and knew they would fall.

  "And you're my beautiful child," I said.

  "Mom, it's okay. You did everything for her." She offered me her beer, but I shook my head.

  "I killed her, Sarah."

  "That's ridiculous. She sucked you dry."

  "Don't."

  "I'm sorry. And I'm sorry she's dead, but come on, you sacrificed yourself to her."

  "You're not understanding me," I said. I turned out of her embrace and looked back in the direction of the car. We were so far down in a hollow I could not see the main road.

  The fields were wheat or barley. I had spent my life surrounded by them, but they were only various colored patches of earth to me, things that were good mainly because they were not buildings being built. I'd never known a farmer in my life.

  "Listen. I'm sorry. I know you loved her, but Emily and I both think she's why you never had a life."

  "I had a life," I said. "I had the two of you."

  She paused. "Dad came all that way because Grandma died?" Something had twitched in her brain.

  "Yes."

  "But he hated her."

  "That's not why," I said.

  "Then what?"

  "I've been trying to tell you. Because I," I said, pointing to myself and waiting a beat, "killed her."

  I could see it begin to sink in. I could not make it go away. No Bactine for this wound, no soothing salve or spray.

  "You what?"

  "I suffocated her with a hand towel."

  Sarah backed away from me and dropped the beer can.

  "She was very out of it," I said. I thought of my mother's eyes looking up at me, of her ruby rings flashing in the porch light, and of the sound of her nose as it snapped. "I don't think she even knew it was me."

  "Stop talking," Sarah said.

  "The police are investigating. Mrs. Leverton died this morning after they took her away in an ambulance."

  "Mom, shut up! What are you saying?"

  "That I killed my mother."

  Sarah picked up the beer can and started walking back toward the car.

  "Sarah," I said, "there's more."

  She pivoted.

  "More?"

  I felt suddenly heady with it.

  "Your grandfather killed himself."

  "What?"

  "My father committed suicide--your grandfather."

  "You're smiling," Sarah said. "Do you know how sick you look?"

  "I'm just happy to finally tell you the truth." I walked toward her. A butterfly-shaped barrette was coming lose from her hair. "Your father knows, but we agreed never to tell you and Emily." I reached up to fix her barrette. She flinched.

  "Honey?" I lowered my arm.
/>   She felt for the barrette and ripped it out, a clump of her hair coming with it.

  "Don't do that," I said.

  "How?"

  "He shot himself."

  "And you blamed her for that?"

  "At first."

  "And later?"

  "She was my mother, Sarah. She was ill. You know that."

  "I don't know anything," she said. "You said something about police."

  "The thing is," I said, "Mrs. Castle found her, and she was, well . . ."

  "Yes."

  "I washed her."

  Sarah's face distorted, her lip curling as if she might soon be sick.

  "Before or after?"

  "After."

  "Oh, Jesus," she said. She walked away from me but this time across the potted road and into the edge of the woods on the other side.

  "Ticks," I said.

  She walked quickly back. "You killed Grandma, and you're worried about Lyme disease?"

  "She had soiled herself. I knew she wouldn't want anyone to see her like that."

  She stared at me. It took me a moment, and then I realized.

  "Not afterward," I clarified. "She soiled herself that afternoon. I was trying to figure out how to clean her before I called hospice. That's why I had the towels."

  "I want to see Dad."

  "I wanted to tell you myself. I thought it was important."

  "You've told me." She threw the beer can down, smashed it flat with her foot, and then tucked it inside her coat pocket. "Now let's get out of here."

  She turned too sharply and a second later was down on the ground. I saw her lying there. I thought of my mother. I thought of tiny Leo bouncing off the back of the chair.

  "Honey," I said, stooping over her.

  "It's my fucking ankle."

  "Is it broken?"

  "No," she said. "That is, unless you're in the mood for more."

  "Sarah?"

  "It's a joke," she said flatly. "Get it? Ha-ha."

  "You can lean on me until we get to the car," I said.

  "I sort of don't want you touching me right now."

  I helped her to stand regardless, but within three or four hops, I knew we should sit.

  "Can you make it to that log? We'll rest awhile first."

  It would be dark soon, and the animals, who had slept all day in the woods behind us, would come alive. I had always preferred the fall. In providing shorter days, it was more merciful than spring or summer.

  The two of us sat on a long fallen tree that looked as if it had once blocked access to the road but had been shunted to the side. Part of me wanted to keep walking, to see who or what lived at the end of Forche Lane.

  We were quiet. Sarah took out her stowed beer and popped the tab. While she sipped, I looked at the ground between my feet.

  "Emily doesn't know yet," I said. "Your father told her that Grandma was dead but not how. I went to Natalie's house afterward, but she wasn't there. She's dating someone pretty seriously. Hamish thinks they'll get married. He was home. I needed someone, Sarah, and so I made love to him. I'm not proud of any of these things."

  I could hear her breathing beside me. Imagined what my life would be like if she chose never to speak to me again. Thought of the pain I had once put my own mother through.

  "But I'm not ashamed either. I don't know how to explain it. I knew that she was at the end, and when I realized that, it just seemed a very natural thing to do. Her eyes opened, but it wasn't her; it was her amphibian brain--pure survival instinct. I know it was wrong, but I'm not sorry."

  "Do the cops know?"

  "I think so."

  "I'll stay here if you want me to," Sarah said.

  "What?" I looked over at her. She too was keeping her eyes trained on the ground.

  "Things aren't working out for me in New York."

  "But your singing," I said.

  "I'm broke. I could help out and be here for you. The cops and stuff."

  In a day or two, I would slip out of the house, put the duffel bag in my car, and back out of the driveway, claiming I would soon return.

  I had a flash of myself walking down the streets of some foreign city. Children frayed by poverty were begging me for money by holding out old plastic bags. Slapping against my emaciated body underneath voluminous clothes would be bags too, bags of all kinds, holding my fluids, giving and receiving, an in/out system of effluvia, shit and urine, saline and blood, and illegal remedies--the ground bones of animals, the pits of stone fruits mixed with liquids in someone's mortar and pestle, and broths that I would drink that would never slake my thirst.

  "I think we shouldn't make any decisions just yet," I said. "We'll see how the next few days play out."

  I stood and offered her my hand. She took it and wobbled up.

  "Better?" I asked.

  "Good enough."

  As we walked slowly up the incline and back to the car, I felt as if we were being watched from behind. As if Mrs. Leverton and a thousand ghosts were standing in the woods, advancing as we left, wanting to get a look at the woman who had killed her mother in the same way you would turn the light off in an empty room.

  "I never really knew Grandpa," Sarah said as we came within sight of the car.

  "I hate the phrase 'You never get over it,' but that's a hard one. It stays."

  "And Grandma?"

  "She lost her connection to the world," I said. "And I replaced it."

  "No, I mean, did you love her?"

  We stopped for a moment before crossing the road.

  "That's a hard one too," I said.

  "If you had to answer it," Sarah said. "If you were asked in a court of law."

  I don't know, I thought. "I will say yes," I said aloud.

  I led her to the car and opened the passenger-side door. I heard a musical gurgling sound.

  "That's me," she said, retrieving her phone from the pocket of her coat.

  "Your grandmother thought the cell phone I gave her was a grenade."

  "I know."

  I went around to my side of the car and got in.

  "It's from Dad," she said, after getting into the passenger side. "A text message."

  She held up the phone so I could see the screen. I ignored her face and focused instead on Jake's words.

  "Helen--search warrant," it said.

  I imagined Jake standing in the downstairs bathroom, unable to speak for fear he might be heard.

  Sarah slipped the phone back in her pocket. "We should go home."

  "Do you think you could drive?"

  "Not with my ankle."

  "Right."

  I started the car and did a U-turn, taking us back in the direction of the Ironsmith. I can drop Sarah there was my first thought. I would tell her what? That I wanted to face the police alone? She would never buy that. I knew her well enough to know she would not let me out of her sight, not for one moment. For reasons that I feared could only spell her doom--because I was her mother and because I needed her--she would stick to me like glue.

  Natalie was in York. This meant Hamish would be alone. Jake had told me he had friends in Switzerland in a town called Aurigeno. He had gone to the trouble of spelling it out. But I no longer had a passport. It had expired years ago.

  "You're taking the long way," Sarah commented.

  "I always do," I said.

  "Are you frightened?" she asked.

  When I didn't respond, she volunteered, "I am."

  We passed a new corporate complex whose landscaped lawns still had the checkerboard pattern of freshly laid sod. They did them better now than when the girls were growing up. No more metal boxes surrounded by wide loops of easy-access road. Now there were mature trees brought in by the truckload.

  People came out of the buildings and approached their cars. I would wait until very late at night, when no one but the security guards were about. I could park my car and walk around unnoticed. Virginia Woolf walked into the River Ouse. Helen Knightly, into the Chester Corp
orate Center's false pond.

  I did not want to leave my children. I had loved them both immediately. They were my splendor and my protection, both something to safeguard and something to safeguard me.

  I saw a familiar neon sign up ahead.

  "I have to go to the bathroom," I said. "I'm going to pull in here."

  Easy Joe's was full of the silver-haired happy-hour crowd that filled up on cheap booze to mask the flavor of their meals. The arrival of someone my age, unaccompanied by a parent, was an event. When Sarah followed, it caused a hush. It was the opposite of a biker bar, but it could make you feel just as unwanted. What I knew about Easy Joe's was that they had a pay phone by the bathrooms and an exit opening onto the back.

  I set Sarah up on one of the plush leather stools, facing a mirror lined with booze.

  "I may be a while. I need to collect myself."

  "Should I order something?"

  I opened my purse. I would need all the money I had, but I had never been stingy with my younger child.

  "Will a twenty do?" I asked.

  "Do you want anything?"

  "Just to wash my face. I'll come back for you," I said. I placed the keys to Jake's car on the bar.

  "Mom?"

  "I love you, Sarah," I said. I reached out and touched her hair and cheek.

  "It will be okay, Mom. Dad's here to help."

  "Hey, do you have that butterfly barrette?" I asked, brightening.

  She dug into her pocket and brought it out. I took it from her outstretched hand.

  "For luck," I said, holding it up. I knew I would cry then, so I turned and quickly rounded the corner of the bar.

  At the phone, I put in my change and dialed.

  "Hamish, it's Helen," I said. "Could you come pick me up?"

  "Where?"

  I thought quickly. It was a walk I could easily make.

  "Vanguard Industries. Twenty minutes."

  "You know," he said, "Mom told me about your mom."

  I leaned my head into the reflective surface of the phone. Pressed it hard into the return-change knob.

  "Yes. Vanguard, okay?"

  "I'll be there."

  I hung up. The voices in the restaurant area behind me grew louder.

  I did not turn but proceeded down the back hall toward the "Heifers" and "Bulls" rooms, as if it weren't clear by a bit of translation that this meant women were cows. The back door was propped open with an ancient gray milk crate turned on its side. Carefully, I stepped over it, opening the door only a little further to squeeze past. There were a few beat-up cars parked at odd angles in back--The kitchen staff, I thought--and a Dumpster on the edge of the lot before it turned to grass and trees. As I climbed up the hill out back, I saw a large paper sack on top of the Dumpster. The top was open. Inside were rolls of bread, perhaps a day old. I thought for the first time, How will I live? and saw myself in a month, two months from now, grabbing a bag like this and ferreting it away.