Read Online The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold - Free Book Online
Authors: Alice Sebold
Tags: Fiction
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gray hair that she chose to color hers what I thought of as an alien shade of red, Natalie had been the blonde to my brunette. When I stood by her son, I saw the same brown eyes his mother had, heard the same easy laugh.
"Why doesn't she sell these things?" Hamish asked. "She could make a mint."
I could barely hear him. He had taken the only pistol out of a felt Crown Royal bag and, holding it, had spread his legs wide as if it were something he'd seen cowboys do. As he aimed at a point on the opposite wall and put his finger to the trigger, I screamed and grabbed the barrel with my hand.
He held on, and we collided. Hamish took my right shoulder in his hand.
"What? You look so upset. What is it?"
I came very close to saying something. Words I had not spoken to anyone but Jake.
"My father taught me not to point a gun at anyone."
"I was pointing it at that lamp shade!"
He set the pistol down behind him on the meat freezer. He cupped my cheek as if I were the child and he the parent. "It's all right," he said. "No one's hurt."
I was shaking. He turned to slip the pistol back inside the purple bag, then cinched the gold braid closed at the top.
"I'll take this one," he said.
With Hamish's help, I put the rifles, which were much more valuable, back in their mounts. The pistol sat in its bag on a stack of starched linen napkins I had folded and left on top of the meat freezer. I remembered turning around and seeing it, imagining the dulled platinum barrel, the scarred brown grip, and thinking of my father lifting it, loading it, raising it to his head.
[ S 5 1
Alice Sebold
* * *
I positioned my mother's body so that, standing three steps down into the basement, I could grab her around the shoulders and, walking blind and feeling for each stair with my foot, could use my body to keep her from tumbling into the no-man's-land below.
I breathed in and tried to make my muscles strong, not rigid.
I pulled my mother's upper body out over the edge of the stairs and walked down one stair and then another. Her weight against me increased with each step. I smelled the lilac scent of her hair through the sheets. I felt my eyes watering but would not blink.
Down two, three, four, five. Her bundled feet thumping their arrival.
My mother's cocoon was unraveling. No hospital corners here.
Her feet, first cleaned, were poking out of the sheets at the halfway point on the stairs. Her toes seemed blue to me in a way they hadn't before, and I wondered if that was the light of the basement playing tricks on me. I took another step. Another. I knew, because I had counted them dozens of times as a child, that there were exactly sixteen steps. I saw the meat freezer humming to my left. On top of it was a stack of Sunset magazines, hoarded hand-me-downs from Mrs. Castle, who had relatives on the West Coast. Also left, from the previous Christmas, were the prop gift boxes lined up in rows in their sun-faded finery of ribbons and bows. I imagined Mrs. Castle taking them down the stairs for her, or perhaps it had even been me. My mother may have indeed instructed me to bring them down and put them in the giant plastic bags that she kept them in eleven months of the year. I would have failed to do that for some reason. I would have taken the time the task was supposed to occupy and sat in the old wicker-and-iron lounge chair near the washer and dryer, calculating exactly how many minutes I could let go by
[ } 6]
The Almost Moon
before I should reasonably appear upstairs to keep my mother company.
Until she was eighty-six, my mother persisted in using the basement.
It was the idea of her becoming disoriented or lacking the energy to climb back out that inspired me to buy her a cell phone.
Until then, my mother would descend the first three stairs one at a time, bracing her hands against the wall and preparing herself to go unassisted. Then, setting her jaw, she would pivot and continue down sideways, stair by stair. It could take her
"Why doesn't she sell these things?" Hamish asked. "She could make a mint."
I could barely hear him. He had taken the only pistol out of a felt Crown Royal bag and, holding it, had spread his legs wide as if it were something he'd seen cowboys do. As he aimed at a point on the opposite wall and put his finger to the trigger, I screamed and grabbed the barrel with my hand.
He held on, and we collided. Hamish took my right shoulder in his hand.
"What? You look so upset. What is it?"
I came very close to saying something. Words I had not spoken to anyone but Jake.
"My father taught me not to point a gun at anyone."
"I was pointing it at that lamp shade!"
He set the pistol down behind him on the meat freezer. He cupped my cheek as if I were the child and he the parent. "It's all right," he said. "No one's hurt."
I was shaking. He turned to slip the pistol back inside the purple bag, then cinched the gold braid closed at the top.
"I'll take this one," he said.
With Hamish's help, I put the rifles, which were much more valuable, back in their mounts. The pistol sat in its bag on a stack of starched linen napkins I had folded and left on top of the meat freezer. I remembered turning around and seeing it, imagining the dulled platinum barrel, the scarred brown grip, and thinking of my father lifting it, loading it, raising it to his head.
[ S 5 1
Alice Sebold
* * *
I positioned my mother's body so that, standing three steps down into the basement, I could grab her around the shoulders and, walking blind and feeling for each stair with my foot, could use my body to keep her from tumbling into the no-man's-land below.
I breathed in and tried to make my muscles strong, not rigid.
I pulled my mother's upper body out over the edge of the stairs and walked down one stair and then another. Her weight against me increased with each step. I smelled the lilac scent of her hair through the sheets. I felt my eyes watering but would not blink.
Down two, three, four, five. Her bundled feet thumping their arrival.
My mother's cocoon was unraveling. No hospital corners here.
Her feet, first cleaned, were poking out of the sheets at the halfway point on the stairs. Her toes seemed blue to me in a way they hadn't before, and I wondered if that was the light of the basement playing tricks on me. I took another step. Another. I knew, because I had counted them dozens of times as a child, that there were exactly sixteen steps. I saw the meat freezer humming to my left. On top of it was a stack of Sunset magazines, hoarded hand-me-downs from Mrs. Castle, who had relatives on the West Coast. Also left, from the previous Christmas, were the prop gift boxes lined up in rows in their sun-faded finery of ribbons and bows. I imagined Mrs. Castle taking them down the stairs for her, or perhaps it had even been me. My mother may have indeed instructed me to bring them down and put them in the giant plastic bags that she kept them in eleven months of the year. I would have failed to do that for some reason. I would have taken the time the task was supposed to occupy and sat in the old wicker-and-iron lounge chair near the washer and dryer, calculating exactly how many minutes I could let go by
[ } 6]
The Almost Moon
before I should reasonably appear upstairs to keep my mother company.
Until she was eighty-six, my mother persisted in using the basement.
It was the idea of her becoming disoriented or lacking the energy to climb back out that inspired me to buy her a cell phone.
Until then, my mother would descend the first three stairs one at a time, bracing her hands against the wall and preparing herself to go unassisted. Then, setting her jaw, she would pivot and continue down sideways, stair by stair. It could take her
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