The Almost Moon - Alice Sebold [97]
“You’ve told me.” She threw the beer can down, smashed it flat with her foot, and then tucked it inside her coat pocket. “Now let’s get out of here.”
She turned too sharply and a second later was down on the ground. I saw her lying there. I thought of my mother. I thought of tiny Leo bouncing off the back of the chair.
“Honey,” I said, stooping over her.
“It’s my fucking ankle.”
“Is it broken?”
“No,” she said. “That is, unless you’re in the mood for more.”
“Sarah?”
“It’s a joke,” she said flatly. “Get it? Ha-ha.”
“You can lean on me until we get to the car,” I said.
“I sort of don’t want you touching me right now.”
I helped her to stand regardless, but within three or four hops, I knew we should sit.
“Can you make it to that log? We’ll rest awhile first.”
It would be dark soon, and the animals, who had slept all day in the woods behind us, would come alive. I had always preferred the fall. In providing shorter days, it was more merciful than spring or summer.
The two of us sat on a long fallen tree that looked as if it had once blocked access to the road but had been shunted to the side. Part of me wanted to keep walking, to see who or what lived at the end of Forche Lane.
We were quiet. Sarah took out her stowed beer and popped the tab. While she sipped, I looked at the ground between my feet.
“Emily doesn’t know yet,” I said. “Your father told her that Grandma was dead but not how. I went to Natalie’s house afterward, but she wasn’t there. She’s dating someone pretty seriously. Hamish thinks they’ll get married. He was home. I needed someone, Sarah, and so I made love to him. I’m not proud of any of these things.”
I could hear her breathing beside me. Imagined what my life would be like if she chose never to speak to me again. Thought of the pain I had once put my own mother through.
“But I’m not ashamed either. I don’t know how to explain it. I knew that she was at the end, and when I realized that, it just seemed a very natural thing to do. Her eyes opened, but it wasn’t her; it was her amphibian brain—pure survival instinct. I know it was wrong, but I’m not sorry.”
“Do the cops know?”
“I think so.”
“I’ll stay here if you want me to,” Sarah said.
“What?” I looked over at her. She too was keeping her eyes trained on the ground.
“Things aren’t working out for me in New York.”
“But your singing,” I said.
“I’m broke. I could help out and be here for you. The cops and stuff.”
In a day or two, I would slip out of the house, put the duffel bag in my car, and back out of the driveway, claiming I would soon return.
I had a flash of myself walking down the streets of some foreign city. Children frayed by poverty were begging me for money by holding out old plastic bags. Slapping against my emaciated body underneath voluminous clothes would be bags too, bags of all kinds, holding my fluids, giving and receiving, an in/out system of effluvia, shit and urine, saline and blood, and illegal remedies—the ground bones of animals, the pits of stone fruits mixed with liquids in someone’s mortar and pestle, and broths that I would drink that would never slake my thirst.
“I think we shouldn’t make any decisions just yet,” I said. “We’ll see how the next few days play out.”
I stood and offered her my hand. She took it and wobbled up.
“Better?” I asked.
“Good enough.”
As we walked slowly up the incline and back to the car, I felt as if we were being watched from behind. As if Mrs. Leverton and a thousand ghosts were standing in the woods, advancing as we left, wanting to get a look at the woman who had killed her mother in the same way you would turn the light off in an empty room.
“I never really knew Grandpa,” Sarah said as we came within sight of the car.
“I hate the phrase ‘You never get over it,’ but that’s a hard one. It stays.”
“And Grandma?”
“She lost her connection to the world,” I said. “And I replaced it.”
“No, I mean, did you love her?”
We stopped for a moment before crossing the road.
“That’s a hard one too,” I said.
“If you had to answer it,” Sarah said. “If you were asked in a court of