The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [92]
I found one of these coats easily enough and placed it back in the bag before shoving the remaining knitting on top of a file cabinet I kept in the corner. Then I looked at my jumble of shoes and chose the ratty sneakers I wore for gardening. I heard Jake walking down the hall toward my door. Three shirts. Over to my dresser, long underwear, underwear, one cashmere sweater. I had my good jeans on, and I put a second pair into the bag. In the bottom drawer were the slips and a nylon running suit with reflector stripes that I had thought was stylish in the store. I shoved the nylon suit in the duffel bag and zipped it up.
Jake knocked very lightly on my door.
“Helen? Are you awake?”
I left the duffel on the floor and closed the closet.
“Of course,” I said.
I saw the doorknob jiggle.
“It’s locked,” he said.
When I opened the door, Jake was bleary-eyed. He swayed slightly to the right.
“Did you shower with the vodka?” I asked, and led him by the hand across the room, where he slumped into a sitting position on the bed.
“You lie down and close your eyes for a while,” I said. “I’ll wake you when it’s time to go get Sarah.”
He nodded his head up and down. “I am tired,” he said.
“Of course you are. Where’s the poison?”
“Don’t have any, Helen,” he cautioned. “You need to stay sober.”
I smiled.
“I know. I just want to put it away.”
“We should call Phin. Phin could help us.”
I put my hand against his chest and pushed. He fell backward on the bed.
He brought his knees up and curled up on the unmade sheets.
“You’ve been wonderful,” I said.
“Milo and Grace love to lick faces,” he said. “Phin doesn’t like that.”
I grabbed a pillow from the headboard for him to put under his head. “You sleep for a bit,” I said.
A moment or two later, I heard his breathing shift into light snoring. I reached out to touch him. I realized I had forgotten socks, but I didn’t want to risk waking him. I tiptoed to the closet, grabbed the duffel bag, and crept down the stairs through the back hall—Who knows, Caracas?—and out into the garage. I tucked the duffel behind the lawn mower and a few empty plastic pails that were left over from the last time I’d had the house painted. It would go unnoticed there.
I had prepacked a bag for the hospital before Sarah was born. I had made a day of it. New toothbrush, new nightgown, even a powder compact, because all the pictures of me holding Emily had featured my face flush with perspiration. I had been the rare mother, the doctor had said, who had had a more difficult delivery the second time around.
“My big head,” Sarah would concede.
“Your big, beautiful head,” I would correct.
I noticed that the sticky trap I’d set out early in the week was no longer in its place near the trash cans. I stood very still and listened. Wherever the mouse had dragged itself, it would have to be dead or close to dead by now.
Back upstairs in Sarah’s bedroom, I saw the vodka bottle on the windowsill. There was still at least a third left. Jake had always been an easy drunk. On our first real date, he had slipped under the table within an hour after a salty full professor had challenged him to a drinking contest.
I did my best to straighten the room in preparation for Sarah. I had kept her room the lavender she had wanted years ago. All the other rooms had been repainted a stark white, even Emily’s.
I moved my hand briskly against the deep-purple coverlet, smoothing out the wrinkles from where Jake must have sat to put on his shoes. I adjusted the alarm clock by one hour, having failed to do so at daylight saving time, and I used the bottom of my sweater to dust around the items on her bureau.
In this room, three years ago, I had unleashed a violence I had never thought myself