The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [18]
Outside, there was a scuffle in the trees and then a cat’s low growling. Bad Boy was facing down another cat at the edge of our property.
I stood again and walked to the kitchen sink to dump and replace the water. I thought of the uncared-for bodies that lay strewn in the streets and fields of Rwanda or Afghanistan. I thought of the thousands of sons and daughters who would like to be in the position I was in. To have known exactly when their mothers died, and then to be alone with their bodies before the world rushed in.
I listened to the cats’ intermittent noises in the trees near the work shed. When I was growing up, there had been a hoot owl that came around every year and sat in the oak out back. My father would stand in the yard, holding me piggyback style, and hoot back at it. If it grew late and we stayed in the yard, my mother would join us, with lemonade for me and a neat scotch for the two of them.
I turned, resigned to finish quickly now, when the phone rang. I dropped the bowl, and the hot soapy water splashed out across the floor.
“Hello?” I said softly, as if the house were sleeping.
“You’re there!”
“Jake,” I said, “how did you know?”
“I couldn’t get you at your house, and I still have your mother’s number in my address book. How are you?”
I looked at my mother’s body. It seemed almost to glow in the darkened kitchen. “Good?” I said.
“Avery just called me. He said something might be wrong.”
“And you called here?”
“It seemed the place to start,” he said. “What’s wrong, Helen? Is it the girls?”
“My mother’s dead,” I said.
There was silence on his end. He had been my champion against her for the entire eight years of our relationship.
“Oh, Helen, I’m so sorry. When?”
I found I couldn’t speak. I made a gulping sound instead.
“I know how much she meant to you. Where are you?”
“We’re in the kitchen.”
“Who is?”
“Mother and me.”
“Oh, Jesus! You need to call someone, Helen. What happened? You need to hang up the phone and dial nine one one. Are you sure she’s dead?”
“Very,” I said.
“Then call nine one one and tell them that.”
I wanted to get off the phone and enter the nowhere state I’d just been in, where no one knew anything and my mother and I were alone together. There was no easy way to say what came next.
“I killed her, Jake.”
The silence was long enough that I had to repeat it.
“I killed my mother.”
“Describe to me what you mean,” he said. “Go slowly, and tell me everything.”
I told Jake about Mrs. Castle’s calling, about the Pigeon Forge bowl, about my mother’s accident. When I said “she had an accident,” he stopped me, his voice hopeful, and asked, “What kind of accident, Helen?”
“She lost control of her bowels.”
“Oh, God. Before or afterward?” he said.
“And then she called Mrs. Castle a bitch and raved about how people were stealing things from her.”
“Are they, Helen?” he asked, his voice leading discreetly into an adjoining room where sanity might dwell.
“No,” I said. “She’s lying here right in front of me on the floor. I broke her nose.”
“You hit her?” I could tell I was shocking him. It made me feel good.
“No, I pressed too hard.”
“Helen, are you crazy? Do you hear what you’re saying to me?”
“She was dying anyway. She’s been sitting up, dying, for the past year. Is it better that she should go to a hospice, babbling, and die in a pool of her own waste? At least I care. At least I’m bathing her.”
“You’re what?”
“I’m in the kitchen, bathing her.”
“Just a minute, Helen. Don’t go anywhere.”
I could hear the sound of Jake’s dogs. Emily had told me that every time she and the children visited, Jeanine spent the next week barking like a dog.
“Helen, listen to me.”
“Yes.”
“I want you to cover your mother’s body