The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [48]
The Y was the murderer imploring the Gods, his arms raised up and his head visible only from the pitched-back chin as he screamed. And the Z had no human figures in it at all, only a series of lances interconnected over and over again, and at the very end, an anvil.
“You make money this way?”
“Yes. I travel to different antiquarian book fairs, and I try and find things at estate sales. I always take a pair of gloves along. I’ve plundered just about every nook and cranny within a hundred miles.”
“How much is this worth?”
“Do I see a burgeoning collector before me?”
He began to gather up the letters, starting with the Z and moving up toward the middle of the alphabet, where the box sat. He placed the latter half of the alphabet inside and then continued from the M up to the A.
“All I’ve got at this point are pictures of my mother in slips.”
“Do you know what a muse is, Helen?”
“I guess.”
“What?”
“Poets have them.”
He placed the stacked letters inside the cardboard box and put the lid on it. “Other artists do too.” He walked over to the shelves along the back wall and went immediately to a large white-spined book. He turned and brought it over to me, delivering the hefty volume into my hands.
“The Female Nude,” I read.
Mr. Forrest pulled out a round-backed wooden chair. “Here, sit. Many artists have muses. Painters, photographers, writers. There is something very muselike about your mother.”
I sat at the shiny wooden table and looked at page after page of nude women. Some lay on couches and some sat on chairs, some smiled demurely and others had no heads at all, just legs, breasts, and arms.
“My father works with sediment.”
“That doesn’t mean Clair can’t inspire him.”
“In what?”
“She keeps him going, Helen. If you can’t see that, you’re blind. They are interlocked—each sustains the other.”
On the pages in front of me were two paintings of the same woman. “The Clothed Maja,” I read aloud. “The Nude Maja.”
“Yes. Goya,” Mr. Forrest said. “Aren’t they wonderful?”
I looked at the two paintings side by side, then hurriedly closed the volume.
“Mr. Warner said everyone thinks we should move,” I said. I saw the holes in the wood of the table now, where iron must have been driven through to secure the bridge’s beams. They were filled with perfectly cut pegs made from a wood that was lighter in color.
“Do you want to move?”
“I don’t know.”
He was quiet for a moment, and then he offered me his hand.
“I think you should allow me to help you learn how to drive.”
“In the Jag?”
“Are there other cars? I wasn’t aware.”
I flushed with happiness.
On my way home, I carried two things: the picture of my mother in her ecru slip, which I would replace, and an open invitation to come play with Tosh. But what preoccupied me most were visions of myself at the wheel of Mr. Forrest’s car. I would wear a colorful scarf around my head and huge sunglasses, and, somehow, I would smoke.
It was dark out now, but there were no lights on downstairs at our house. Inside, I saw that the bathroom off the kitchen was empty and that the radio had been left, along with my mother’s knitting, at the base of the stairs. I went up to my bedroom and took a pair of pajamas from the bottom dresser drawer.
I changed and went down the hall to brush my teeth. I thought of the nudes hidden in Mr. Forrest’s house. He had forgotten to give me a book to take to my mother, and somehow this delighted me, as if I’d won a competition, as if his loyalty, however obliquely, had been transferred to me. In the bathroom I filled my pink plastic glass with water and brought it back to my room.
I could hear the snap of the metal blinds as I entered my bedroom.
“Where did you waltz off to?” my mother asked. She walked to the second window, directly over my bed, and snapped shut the blinds.
I did not respond. Instead I walked past her and sat down in an old chair I kept in the corner of my room. It was piled with half-dirty clothes, as it always was, but instead of moving them, I sat high on my mountain and looked over at her.