The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [45]
“I hoped I might see you,” Mr. Forrest said. “Come in, come in. Let me take your coat.”
“I brought you something,” I said.
I reached into my jacket and pulled out the framed photograph.
Mr. Forrest took it from me. I stood in the hallway and looked around, past the porcelain umbrella stand and into the drawing room, which I had seen only from the outside, and into the dining room behind that, which was elevated by three wide wooden steps.
I had been fuming on my way over, and inside his house I could feel the heat of it on my cheeks.
“She’s a beautiful woman, your mother,” Mr. Forrest said, looking at the picture.
“Right.”
“Let’s sit down in the drawing room, shall we?”
It had taken me this long to notice that Mr. Forrest was being incredibly nice to me, even solicitous. I knew how extraordinary this was. Mr. Forrest had no use for almost anyone in the neighborhood other than my parents. He was never rude, but he was perfectly pleasant in a way that, I would realize as an adult, was the suburban equivalent of a stiff-arm.
He had been in our house multiple times over the years, but I had never stepped inside his home. Now I stood on the edge of a silk rug in front of his fireplace, uncertain what to say.
“Sit,” he said. As I did, he whistled loudly, and bounding into the room came Tosh. “I know who you really came to see,” he said, and smiled.
Tosh slowed to an obedient halt in front of Mr. Forrest and sat down on the floor beside him, facing me.
“I owe you a deep apology,” Mr. Forrest said. “I shouldn’t have run away. I’ve never felt exactly comfortable here. In that, I’m not unlike your mother.”
I spied an oval tray near the mantel. It sat on a spindly cherry-wood table, and arrayed upon it were crystal bottles that refracted light. Mr. Forrest followed my eyes.
“Yes, you deserve a drink,” he said nervously. “I know I’d like one. Come, Tosh.” He led Tosh over to the white-slipcovered couch where I was sitting and patted the space beside me. Tosh jumped up and immediately leaned into my side. “That’s a good boy,” Mr. Forrest said.
While Mr. Forrest’s back was to me, I hugged Tosh and held him to me, petting his floppy ears.
“Port is my choice for you,” he said. “We can sip it and talk about disgusting people before putting them aside.”
He handed me the bloodred liquid and went to sit opposite me on a gold velvet chair that made his knees jut up into the air in front of him.
He laughed at himself. “I never sit in this chair,” he said. “It’s called a slipper chair, and ladies used to have them in their boudoirs. It belonged to my great-grandmother.”
“I see you through the window sometimes,” I said.
“A dull thing to look at,” he said.
I had my arm around Tosh and was scratching the space beneath his right ear. His mouth hung open in a panting smile, and occasionally he would tip his head back and look at me. I took a mouthful of the port and immediately wanted to spit it out.
“Sip,” he said, seeing my face. “I did say that, didn’t I?”
What felt like the longest minute in the world passed as I tousled Tosh’s fur and swerved my head around the room.
“Helen, what happened after I left?”
“Forget it,” I said, suddenly not wanting to talk about it, wishing instead that I could be alone with Tosh.
“I’m sorry, Helen,” he said. “In general I leave the neighbors alone, and if I don’t go flouncing over to their houses, they let me be.”
“His friend hit me,” I said.
Mr. Forrest put down his glass on the marble-topped table beside him. He looked as if he too had been hit. He inhaled.
“Helen, I’m going to teach you two very important words. Ready?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And then I’m going to get you something else to drink because you obviously detest that.”
I had held the port in my hand but could not bear even to pretend to sip.
“Here they are: ‘fucking bastard.’ ”
“Fucking bastard,” I repeated.
“Again.”
“Fucking bastard,” I said, more surely.
“With verve!”
“Fucking bastard!” I said, almost yelling.
I sat back into the couch, on the verge of laughing.
“There are millions of them. You can’t beat them, believe