The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [75]
I had managed to blurt out the words, not yet able to use the more exact word of “suicide.” So Jake described the water on the lake. How the back door of his house opened onto a short flight of concrete stairs that led directly to the water; how, depending on the season, the water came to within inches of his door.
“Where are the girls?” he asked.
“With Natalie,” I said. “I’m in the kitchen. Mom’s upstairs.”
I clutched the cord of the phone so tightly that my nails turned white.
“Say anything,” Jake said. “Just talk.”
I moved over to stand in front of the window. I could see my father’s workshop and the Levertons’ backyard.
“Mrs. Leverton’s grandson was outside, weeding the flagstones,” I said. “It was Mrs. Leverton who called the police.”
I felt the clutch in my throat but strangled the sob. I was blindingly angry and confused. I hated everyone.
“I thought of him this morning, once, just a half thought really. I was driving the girls to the Y. Emily got her Flying Fish Badge yesterday, and I heard music coming from the car behind me when I stopped at the light. It was Vivaldi, the sort of overdramatic stuff that could make my father smile. Mr. Forrest would know the exact piece.”
I dragged the red step stool away from the wall and put it in the middle of the kitchen. I could sit there and look out through the dining room and across the street.
“He used my grandfather’s old pistol,” I said.
I could hear, if I let myself, a momentary crackle on the line or the hum of Jake’s breath—the baffled noise of the distance between us. I told him everything I knew, how my father had looked when I’d come in the door; how my mother had seemed almost erased, I had such difficulty focusing on her; how the police and the neighbors had been so decorous, so kind, and all I’d wanted to do was rip off each face and throw it, fleshy and wet, onto the floor where my father lay.
Finally, when I had talked for a very long time, Jake spoke. “I know he loved you.”
My mouth hung open. I thought of the vodka in my freezer at home. I wondered what medications—sedatives and pain-killers—might lurk upstairs in the bathroom cabinets and the dresser drawers.
“How is this proof of love?” I asked.
Jake had no answer for me.
I thought of the Catholic minister. My father told me that the minister had never gotten his name right. “He called my father David instead of Daniel when he saw him tending the sheep.”
“Helen?” It was Tanner. He was close to me.
I heard commotion at the back of the classroom. Painfully, I sat up from my bending position on the chair.
“Here,” he said, “put this on.”
He draped the papery hospital gown over me. “There are men here to see you,” he said.
“Men?”
“Police, Helen.”
Over Tanner’s shoulder, I saw into the back of the room. Standing just inside the door, and trying not to look in any one direction for all the drawings of my nude body they might see, were two men in uniform. Beside them, just as ramrod straight but in a sport coat and slacks, was another man. He had thick white hair and a mustache. He looked once around the room, his eyes coming to rest on me.
“Class,” Tanner announced, “we’ll end early and pick up next time.”
The easels jostled while sketch pads were collected and charcoal was put down. Knapsacks were opened and cell phones were turned on, emitting songs and beeps and whistles to let the students know that yes, just as they’d thought, something more exciting had been going on while they’d been locked inside the classroom.
I thought of a handmade felt Christmas ornament my mother had sent me in Wisconsin one year in the middle of July. It was meticulous in every detail, from the sewn-on beads in the shapes of ornaments, no two alike, to the loop at the top, which had been braided from silk floss. The card, tucked inside the box, had said, “I made this. Don’t waste your life.”
As the students filtered out, the man in the sport jacket came up to the platform. “Helen Knightly,” he said, extending his hand. “I’m Robert Broumas, Phoenixville police.” His hand hung in the air, and I motioned