The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [34]
Between Hamish’s collarbone and his left biceps, there was a tattoo I had never noticed. I thought tattoos were highly stupid—a way, like ordering an upside-down Frappuccino, that people lacking direction claimed identity in the world. I stared at it now as a wave of nausea and hilarity rose in my gut. It was a circular tattoo, very suburban-mall “oriental” in look and no doubt inked at Thad’s Parlor next to the auto-body shop. You could pick out in the minimal blue the tail of a dragon, and if you followed it, you swiftly arrived at the head, biting that tail.
“Jesus, Hell,” Hamish breathed beside me. “Fuck.”
“Thank you, Hamish,” I said.
“You’re most awesomely welcome.”
“I should get home,” I said.
Hamish moved to glance at his watch and sat up. I thought only then of Natalie. I pictured her out on her date with the contractor from Downingtown. I remembered her quoting, when we were girls, from an Emily Dickinson poem. “Because I could not stop for Death—/ He kindly stopped for me.” She had been en pointe in her despised toe shoes, and at the end of each line, she spun in a circle until, dizzy and slightly drunk from the brandy we had stolen from her mother, she fell into my arms on her bed.
“Death?” she queried, looking up at me.
“Nice to meet you, sister,” I said in a warbling baritone.
In the scattered moments after dropping Hamish off, I didn’t know whether to congratulate myself or break out the ice packs. It had been two decades plus since I’d had sex in a car with a man who hadn’t yet reached an age when he coughed or spit or groaned when he woke up. We had agreed, vaguely, to see each other again, and his eyes had focused on me with what I can only call a Vaseline-on-the-lens acuity. He saw sex and experience. Through my own clouded perceptions, I saw, when I looked his way, the last vestiges of grace.
It was deep night. Clouds covered the moon, and in my neighborhood, unlike Natalie’s, outdoor lighting had not become a competitive sport of motion sensors and solar-powered path spotlights. There was the occasional faux carriage lamp, and the Mulovitches at the end of the block kept a bare bulb on over their front door that was bright enough to interrogate their pothead son by, but my lawn and the lawns surrounding it were pitch-black.
My father and Mr. Forrest had found a home for me in the very neighborhood where my father had once looked when I was a teenager. On move-in day, he had driven the three of us over in his car and snapped photos as the Realtor handed me the key. When I walked inside, I was able to ignore the walls that needed to be painted and the floors that needed to be cleaned because my father had come the day before and had had delivered two beds for the girls and a mattress and dresser for me.
Barefoot, I left my car and walked onto the lawn. The grass was cool but dry against my feet, the heavy dew still hours away. All in all, it was early. Somewhere, Westmore students vomited in the shrubs at the edges of half-acre lots in which kegs sat on back porches. Teenage girls passed out in places they shouldn’t, and Sarah would be, if I knew her, just starting her night out in the East Village. It took me a moment to remember her current boyfriend’s name, but as I reached up to touch the branch of the dogwood tree, I remembered its fill-in-the-blank quality. Joe or Bob or Tim. A one-syllable, easily replaceable name. Like Jake.
I walked to the center of my front lawn and lay down, spread-eagled. I looked up at the stars. How did I end up in a place