The Almost Moon (29 page)

At Crescent Road, I was stopped by a matronly crossing guard with a white sash and a whistle—the full effect. I watched a mass of children—the "primaries," they were called at Lemondale—

walk in front of my car in a swirling pattern that reminded me of shifting clouds on a TV weather map. Only a few kids walked by themselves, heads bent, knapsacks towing their shoulders down. The others ran or pulled at one another's coats and shirts, dropped their knapsacks, and yelled names and taunts across to those on the other side.

I drove on,

I passed the old music store, which was now a shop called The Ultimate Cupcake, where I had once purchased Emily's muchdespised clarinet. I thought of how when the girls were growing up, their friends would thunder through my house and think nothing of having me make sandwiches to order. This one liked

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mayo, but this one would have only mustard. One of Emily's friends, disappointed in her sandwich, had stood in the kitchen and pointedly explained the difference between jelly, which she had requested, and jam, which I had given her.

The most convenient train for Sarah to take from Manhattan stopped in Paoli. This way she could avoid switching in Philadelphia and arrive via Amtrak. Instead of crossing the bridge to the side where the passengers were let out, I checked my watch. I counted out the minutes and double-parked outside Starbucks.

I walked briskly into the station and over to the Amtrak counter.

I asked for a current schedule for the Northeast Corridor. On the way past the local SEPTA booth, I took two or three of their schedules as an afterthought. I did this by rote, as I had done my stretches, as I had packed my duffel bag and stowed it in the garage. My brain had divided in half, half focused on the tasks of normalcy—picking up my daughter from the train—and half focused on escape.

I got back into the car and turned it around. Driving the red rental car made me feel even more conspicuous, but it had sat in the driveway, blocking any other choice. I thought of the promise I had made to Hamish—that I would see him tonight—and wondered if I was insane. I pictured Natalie in a crossing-guard outfit, holding a stop sign and blocking my way.

Sarah was standing at the top of the platform stairs, scanning the parking lot. She had on a ratty sheepskin coat, beneath which I saw an old pair of my Frye boots that she had confiscated on her last trip home. "These are so urban hippie retro," she'd said.

"I can't believe you wore these." When I told her that apparently she was now going to be wearing them, she said, "Yeah, but not seriously."

Her hair was braided into two pigtails that reached to her waist, and clustered about the crown of her head were what

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seemed an infinite number of rhinestone barrettes. She would not recognize the car, and so I cruised up beside her, ducked my head across the passenger seat, and called her name.

"Mom, oh my God, this is a horn-dog car!" she said as she threw her bag in the backseat and got in beside me.

She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek. It carried a shock, as if she had been rubbing her feet on carpeting.

"Sorry," she said.

We left the parking lot.

"How was the train?" I asked.

"Is this, like, a midlife crisis thing? " she said. "Go out and get a sports car? I thought men did that."

"Women get Botox," I said.

"Right, so what gives?"

"Actually," I said, "this isn't my car. It's a rental."

"The smell. I should have guessed that! Where's yours?"

We were stopped at a light across from Roscoe Automotive and the Mail Boxes Etc. store. Cars and mail, I thought. Trains.

"Your head looks like a disco ball," I said.

"Don't avoid the question."

"My car is in the garage, and your father is asleep in my bed."

I could not help baiting her. It was a game we had played since her childhood, who could get the other's goat, who could create the best exaggeration. Sarah, I knew, had hoped to make this early skill into an art. She was a child of embellishment and stylish turns. What Emily had in stolid substance, Sarah possessed in her ability to distract everyone from the main topic of conversation.

That way, no one ever thought to get a real answer to the question of how she was doing. It was what she'd carried into voice classes like a blank check. She could sing well enough, but—and the "but" held everything, both a buoyant magnetism and what I feared might be her incipient version of the family's insanity.

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"Tell the story," she said.

We passed the hospital, and I picked up speed. I could tell she was feeling good. Her cheeks were flushed as if she had just come from a run. But Sarah didn't run. She didn't exercise. Not for her what she called my "gym crucifixion." She starved sometimes, and sometimes binged. She drank and smoked, and I was sure did other things.

"There is a lot to tell," I said. "I'd rather not go home just yet.

Your father needs to rest anyway. It might be easier if it's just the two of us."

"I sense intensity," she said.

"We'll go somewhere," I said, "then I'll tell you all you want to know."

" Yow!" she said, but she did not follow up with anything else.

As we passed Easy Joe's Restaurant, I saw her check each rhinestone barrette with her hands. She took its shape between her thumb and forefinger and then tested it to make sure it held.

"Why the braids?" I asked.

"Oh, I don't know. My hair was wet. Like or not like?"

"They remind me of your grandmother."

"Not like, got it."

I knew where I was headed. Hamish had been the first person I'd gone there with in years. In the daytime the farmland invited the eye, and then the towers between the treetops stopped it cold.

As we passed by the Ironsmith Inn and turned left to crest the hill, Sarah sighed loudly.

"No Schlitz?" she asked regretfully.

Without looking in my rearview mirror, I threw the car into reverse and swung backward into the general store's lot.

"Cash and carry," I said. "Make it quick."

"I'm liking this new you," Sarah said, all lit up. She grabbed my purse from the floor and headed inside. No one could claim

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that when I broke bad news, I didn't make sure people had something to prop themselves up with.

I could see her through the window, talking to Nick Stolfuz at the counter. She was using her hands to make a giant circle over her head. Nick laughed and handed her a six-pack with her change. When she reached the door, she turned to wave good-bye.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"I was telling him about the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade."

I backed out of the lot and got onto the road. Sarah popped the tab on a can of Schlitz and slurped the foam with her mouth.

"What led you to that?"

"I told him I lived in New York. He's always wanted to go up for the parade."

"The things you don't know."

We passed under the keystone tunnel and onto the other side.

"You have to take an interest, Mom. Nick is single, you know."

"No, thank you," I said.

"Damn," she said, and punched her thigh. "I could have had my own bar. Are we going to the towers lookout?" she asked, getting her bearings.

"Yes."

"Whatever floats your boat," she said. An expression I had taught her,

I pulled off the road and onto the gravelly patch where last night Hamish and I had had sex in my car. I was glad for the rental, for the swinging scented tree that hung from the cigarette lighter.

I turned off the ignition.

Sarah sipped at her beer. "Can you open the windows?"

"Better yet, let's get out," I said.

"Beer?"

"No."

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She stashed an extra in her coat pocket anyway.

When I stood up, my legs buckled, and I stumbled, whirling around to put my hands on top of the car to steady myself. Sarah came rushing over.

"Mom, are you okay?"

I had seen a detective show on television in which the trademark maneuver of a tough-talking cop was to slam the criminal's chest so hard into the roof as he pinned him to the car that it made a thumping sound. I watched this show with my mother, and every time this happened, the two of us would giggle. "They call them 'perps,'" she said one night, and I had thought how our moments of ease were so tare anymore that even this stupid television show was something I was grateful for.

"I'm weak, Sarah."

"Weak? What are you telling me?"

"A weak person," I said.

I gained my breath. I had begun.

"Let's go for a walk," I said, and crossed the road. I had never set foot on Forche Lane in all the times I had driven here, but I decided that's where Sarah and I would walk. It was a one-lane road that was privately owned and full of gaping potholes, from which weeds and wild grass poked out.

"What are you talking about, Mom? Slow down." She caught up to me, holding the open can of beer in her hand.

"I have to keep walking if I'm going to tell you everything."

"I hate your exercise shit. Don't make me pump my arms."

"I'm weak morally. And who I am does not reflect on you and Emily. That needs to be said up front."

Sarah ran in front of me and spun around to block my path.

The Schlitz foamed up, and a few drops spilled on the ground.

"Don't," I said.

"Mom, what is it?"

"Move."

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"No."

I pushed her aside, then moved to my left a bit to regain the road. Sarah joined me a moment later.

"Okay, I'm listening," she said.

"I don't know where to begin."

On our right, a flock of grouse fled the bushes where they'd been hiding. The air was filled with the beating of wings.

"How about why Dad is here?"

"I called him. He flew out from Santa Barbara last night."

"Why?" She took a preparatory slug of Schlitz.

I could not do it. Not yet.

"Remember Hamish?"

"Of course."

"I slept with him last night in my car. Twice. Once in his driveway and once back there, where we parked."

"No shit! "Sarah said.

"No shit."

"Hamish, our blond-god doofus?"

"Yes."

"That's your moral weakness? Granted, not the usual thing, but cool, very very cool."

We walked on. Forche dropped down after the part of the road that I had always been able to see from my car. Here the pavement gave way to dirt.

"So is that it?" Sarah asked.

"No."

"Well, what?"

"Your grandmother is dead," I said.

"What?"

"She died last night, and I called your father."

Sarah grabbed my arm.

"Mom, that's huge. Were you there?"

"We're not walking," I said.

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"Were you?"

"Yes."

Sarah dragged me toward her and tried to hug me. Despite her bloodline, she had always been one for touch. Emily had called her "Face Invader" when they were teenagers because Sarah didn't know when close was too close.

"You're all bones," she said.

I pulled back and looked at her. I felt the tears in my eyes and knew they would fall.

"And you're my beautiful child," I said.

"Mom, it's okay. You did everything for her." She offered me her beer, but I shook my head.

"I killed her, Sarah."

"That's ridiculous. She sucked you dry."

"Don't."

"I'm sorry. And I'm sorry she's dead, but come on, you sacrificed yourself to her."

"You're not understanding me," I said. I turned out of her embrace and looked back in the direction of the car. We were so far down in a hollow I could not see the main road.

The fields were wheat or barley. I had spent my life surrounded by them, but they were only various colored patches of earth to me, things that were good mainly because they were not buildings being built. I'd never known a farmer in my life.

"Listen. I'm sorry. I know you loved her, but Emily and I both think she's why you never had a life."

"I had a life," I said. "I had the two of you."

She paused. "Dad came all that way because Grandma died?"

Something had twitched in her brain.

"Yes."

"But he hated her."

"That's not why," I said.

"Then what?"

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"I've been trying to tell you. Because I," I said, pointing to myself and waiting a beat, "killed her."

I could see it begin to sink in. I could not make it go away. No Bactine for this wound, no soothing salve or spray.

"You what?"

"I suffocated her with a hand towel."

Sarah backed away from me and dropped the beer can.

"She was very out of it," I said. I thought of my mother's eyes looking up at me, of her ruby rings flashing in the porch light, and of the sound of her nose as it snapped. "I don't think she even knew it was me."

"Stop talking," Sarah said.

"The police are investigating. Mrs. Leverton died this morning after they took her away in an ambulance."

"Mom, shut up! What are you saying?"

"That I killed my mother."

Sarah picked up the beer can and started walking back toward the car.

"Sarah," I said, "there's more."

She pivoted.

"More?"

I felt suddenly heady with it.

"Your grandfather killed himself."

"What?"

"My father committed suicide—your grandfather."

"You're smiling," Sarah said. "Do you know how sick you look?"

"I'm just happy to finally tell you the truth." I walked toward her. A butterfly-shaped barrette was coming lose from her hair.

"Your father knows, but we agreed never to tell you and Emily."

I reached up to fix her barrette. She flinched.

"Honey?" I lowered my arm.

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She felt for the barrette and ripped it out, a clump of her hair coming with it.