The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [111]
I could not go back to the kitchen.
I carried my spoils carefully through the hallway, picking out the dark shapes of a grandfather clock and a half-circle table, on which objects of different sizes sat. I heard my mother’s voice: “Tchotchkes is the woman’s middle name.”
I saw a small light on at the top of the stairs—enough to write by, I thought, and climbed. Her stairs were padded with plush carpeting. I wanted to take off my shoes and walk about, but I had what countries called an exit strategy to pursue.
I spilled the boxes of cards and the crayons at the top of the stairs near a hope chest, on which the brass reading lamp illuminated the hall. I knelt down in front of it. Fanned across the surface of the hope chest were back issues of AARP, with an occasional Woman’s Day or Ladies’ Home Journal as bright spot. I felt I was kneeling at a foreign altar and then imagined myself flailing around, stuck to a giant glue trap.
I needed a pen. I could not write to Emily with a crayon. For Sarah, yes, the rainbow effect seemed appropriate, but for Emily, no. I needed ballpoint. On the windowsill behind the hope chest, there was a light-blue cup—the blue of my mother’s Pigeon Forge bowl—and in it there was an emery board, a tire gauge, and three Bic pens.
I extracted a pen and grabbed an AARP. I crawled back to the boxes and crayons, three feet away, and sat with my feet two stairs down, using the magazine as my desk. Quickly I chose a piece of ecru-colored paper with gilt edges—elegant for Em—and bent to my task.
Dear Emily,
How can I begin to explain to you what you already know? That though I am prouder of you and your sister than anything else in the world, I have found myself at the end, with no other choice.
I stopped. I knew how she scrutinized. She spent hours in front of a mirror, finding flaws. Her house was spick-and-span, and she had once pointed out to me that the best thing about having a cleaning woman was that they did what she called the “first wave” and left her free to focus on the details.
I cleared my throat. It echoed in the hall.
By the time you get this, I will be dead. I hope you are spared having to see me. I had to see my father, and it never left me. Sarah will have told you by now that my father killed himself. That he did not fall down the stairs, or rather he did, but only after shooting himself.
I don’t know why he left me.
Did you know my mother kept her hair long for your grandfather? He loved it. He would brush it every night one hundred times. In hindsight I came to think of it as their nightly Prozac. Yes, I know, I know—meditation, not medication. In theory I agree, but sometimes . . . don’t you think?
What I want you to know is that I did not kill my mother out of vengeance or even, really, pity. It was the right thing to do, though I didn’t plan it. If I had, I obviously would have thought of where I am now. All day today, I’ve been thinking of you and your sister.
It was unforgivable—how I forced you to grow up, to take the place beside me that your father’s absence left.
I applaud you in your life. That’s what I really wish to say. You have your own house and family, and you live very far away. Keep it like that. Never come back. With me gone, there will be nothing to come back to. That’s the gift I want to give your sister. Don’t let her live in the house, Emily, or fritter her life away. Sell both houses. Your father will help.
I paused. I thought of my father, sitting beside me the day we cosigned the papers