The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [32]
Since they were first built, the Limerick nuclear towers, lit up in the distance, had become an ominous presence. So much encased power. The large white udders cut off and opening out like craters.
I sat in the car with the sleeping Hamish and looked out over the rolling farmland and past the treetops backlit by the lights surrounding the towers. Natalie and I had talked of taking a field trip to the plant to see how close we could get, but the plan never came to anything. It seemed we had silently and mutually agreed that this distant image was best, that the reality of the thing could not help but be disappointing. We had always called this view the “future that was no future.”
When I’d found out I was pregnant with Emily, I had called my father at his office. I had been to the student health center in Madison and taken a blood test. The nurse who called with the results recommended that I sign up to receive counseling on birth control. I sat in a circle of other girls, some of whom were pregnant and others who had had a close call, and found myself the only one smiling. I wanted it—her, him, whoever was inside me who was one part Jake and one part me.
“Not everyone wants a child so young,” my father said. “I am happy, Helen. Is Jake?”
Jake sat at our rickety dining table, silently offering me support.
“Yes.”
“Girl or boy?” he had asked me. “Which would you prefer?”
“It doesn’t matter, Dad. I thought about it, but I don’t care either way.”
“Then I’ll selfishly say I’d love a granddaughter. It would be like having a little Helen to visit us.”
Next came the call to my mother. When I rang the house, I could hear KYW in the background. It was an all-news station she listened to throughout the day. Bulletins of murders and fires and peculiar deaths.
“Well, are you proud of yourself?” she asked.
“What?”
“You’re throwing your life away, you know that? Pissing it down your leg.”
I stared at Jake.
“Mom?”
“What?”
“I’m going to have a child.”
“There are no awards given out,” she said.
Something about the expression on my face made Jake stand and take the phone from my hand.
“Mrs. Knightly,” he said, “isn’t it wonderful news? I’m incredibly happy at the prospect of being a dad.”
I took his seat at the table and looked up at him, marveling. Though I had entered the confused state my mother often put me in, I sensed that if I watched his face and listened to his voice, I would come back to the new world that Jake and I had made. A world my mother didn’t rule.
Nearly eight years later, it had also been my father whom I sought out at the local Catholic church. I was in town, but I didn’t tell my mother this when I called. I didn’t want to see her until I’d spoken to him.
A man he worked with had told my father about the rising cost of maintenance at St. Paul’s Parish, and my father had suggested the vestry consider keeping sheep. With all the ancient headstones jutting up and out in uneven rows, the sheep could keep the grass down better than any mower, and their munching was exact, my father said. “No clippers needed.” He had even volunteered, though he had no connection with the church, to come and tend them when he could.
The girls and I approached him from the parish parking lot. I carried Sarah in my arms, though in Madison I had told her that, at four, she had grown much too old for Mommy to carry her around. Emily, however, smiled for the first time since I’d packed the two of them and three suitcases in the Bug.
“Granddaddy!” she yelled. As we reached the churchyard wall, Sarah slid down my side to the ground. My father turned and dropped his rake at the sight of us. Emily scrambled