The Almost Moon Read Online Free Page A
better home. In my mother's and Mrs. Leverton's life, it came down to who would be the oldest when she died. I felt like saying, Congratulations, Mrs. Leverton, you've won!
"You amaze me, Mrs. Leverton," I said.
"Thank you, Helen." Is it possible to hear preening?
"I will encourage my mother to come in," I said. "But she does what she likes."
"Yes. I know," she said. She had always been careful with her words. "Stop by anytime and give Clair my best." Her best, I did not point out, was as improbable as my mother's wave.
I hung the phone back on the upright cradle. Like my mother, Mrs. Leverton probably still insisted that phones were most efficient when they were connected by cords. I knew that she had been weakening in the previous year, but she had informed my mother that she still did exercises daily and quizzed herself on state capitals and ex-presidents.
"Unbelievable," I said to myself, and I heard the damp echo of it bounce off the green-and-gold linoleum. I wanted to rush out and tell my mother about the phone call, but when I looked her
[21]
Alice Sebold
way through the screen door, I saw the marmalade torn standing on her chest and playing, like a kitten, with the ribbon of her braid.
Inside me, the child who had protected her mother ran to the screen door to shoo the marmalade torn from the porch, and yet, as I watched the huge scarred cat that my mother had taken to calling "Bad Boy" fall on her chest with his full weight and bat her braid with the ribbon attached to it with his front paws, I found myself unable to move.
Finally, after all these years, my mother's life was snuffed out, and I had been the one to do it—in the same way I might snuff out the guttering wick of an all but extinguished candle. Within a few minutes, as she struggled for breath, my lifelong dream had come true.
The marmalade torn played with the ribbon in her hair until he freed it, and it went sailing up into the air and landed on her face. It was then, the red ribbon on her cheek, the cat claw reaching out to grab it, that I shoved my fist in my mouth to cover my scream.
[22]
T H R E E
I sat on the floor of the kitchen. My mother's body lay positioned outside the door. I felt like turning on the bug light above her but didn't. Look upon this, I imagined saying to the neighbors.
This is where it all ends up.
But I didn't really believe that. I believed, as my mother always had, that there was them and there was us. "Them" were the happy, normal people, and "us" were the totally fucked.
I remembered throwing water in her face when I was sixteen.
I remembered not talking to her and seeing her dismantled, as she had never been, by trying to learn the language of apology.
Watching her do that—admit that she was wrong—was one of the most helpless moments in my life. I had wanted to save her with a rush of talk about high-school chemistry and my recently failed algebra exam. To fill the silent moments while she toed the edges of the carpet with her foot as I sat in my bedroom chair and restrained myself.
Suddenly I spied, through the thick hedge that bordered my Alice Sebold
mother's yard, Carl Fletcher coming outside with a plate of steak.
As his own screen door banged and he plodded down the three wooden stairs to his lawn, a beer in one hand, a portable radio tuned to WIP sports in the other, I pictured a circle of tiki torches and throbbing white people in loincloths raising the remains of my mother high on a special catalog-ordered all-weather funeral pyre.
"I like the man next door," my mother had said when Carl Fletcher moved in six years ago. "He's pathetic, which means he keeps to himself."
Now he was on the other side of the latticework, in a yard that had been empty only moments before.
If Hilda Castle had called one day later, Sarah would have been visiting for the weekend, and she would have helped me carry my mother up the stairs to the bath. But more likely, Sarah would have made phone calls. The
"You amaze me, Mrs. Leverton," I said.
"Thank you, Helen." Is it possible to hear preening?
"I will encourage my mother to come in," I said. "But she does what she likes."
"Yes. I know," she said. She had always been careful with her words. "Stop by anytime and give Clair my best." Her best, I did not point out, was as improbable as my mother's wave.
I hung the phone back on the upright cradle. Like my mother, Mrs. Leverton probably still insisted that phones were most efficient when they were connected by cords. I knew that she had been weakening in the previous year, but she had informed my mother that she still did exercises daily and quizzed herself on state capitals and ex-presidents.
"Unbelievable," I said to myself, and I heard the damp echo of it bounce off the green-and-gold linoleum. I wanted to rush out and tell my mother about the phone call, but when I looked her
[21]
Alice Sebold
way through the screen door, I saw the marmalade torn standing on her chest and playing, like a kitten, with the ribbon of her braid.
Inside me, the child who had protected her mother ran to the screen door to shoo the marmalade torn from the porch, and yet, as I watched the huge scarred cat that my mother had taken to calling "Bad Boy" fall on her chest with his full weight and bat her braid with the ribbon attached to it with his front paws, I found myself unable to move.
Finally, after all these years, my mother's life was snuffed out, and I had been the one to do it—in the same way I might snuff out the guttering wick of an all but extinguished candle. Within a few minutes, as she struggled for breath, my lifelong dream had come true.
The marmalade torn played with the ribbon in her hair until he freed it, and it went sailing up into the air and landed on her face. It was then, the red ribbon on her cheek, the cat claw reaching out to grab it, that I shoved my fist in my mouth to cover my scream.
[22]
T H R E E
I sat on the floor of the kitchen. My mother's body lay positioned outside the door. I felt like turning on the bug light above her but didn't. Look upon this, I imagined saying to the neighbors.
This is where it all ends up.
But I didn't really believe that. I believed, as my mother always had, that there was them and there was us. "Them" were the happy, normal people, and "us" were the totally fucked.
I remembered throwing water in her face when I was sixteen.
I remembered not talking to her and seeing her dismantled, as she had never been, by trying to learn the language of apology.
Watching her do that—admit that she was wrong—was one of the most helpless moments in my life. I had wanted to save her with a rush of talk about high-school chemistry and my recently failed algebra exam. To fill the silent moments while she toed the edges of the carpet with her foot as I sat in my bedroom chair and restrained myself.
Suddenly I spied, through the thick hedge that bordered my Alice Sebold
mother's yard, Carl Fletcher coming outside with a plate of steak.
As his own screen door banged and he plodded down the three wooden stairs to his lawn, a beer in one hand, a portable radio tuned to WIP sports in the other, I pictured a circle of tiki torches and throbbing white people in loincloths raising the remains of my mother high on a special catalog-ordered all-weather funeral pyre.
"I like the man next door," my mother had said when Carl Fletcher moved in six years ago. "He's pathetic, which means he keeps to himself."
Now he was on the other side of the latticework, in a yard that had been empty only moments before.
If Hilda Castle had called one day later, Sarah would have been visiting for the weekend, and she would have helped me carry my mother up the stairs to the bath. But more likely, Sarah would have made phone calls. The
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