Read Online The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Alice Sebold
Tags: Fiction
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There it was, an almost-empty ice cavity for one.
Jake had asked me questions concerning lividity, stiffness, what signs there might be of how she had died, but I was done with that. I had now not only broken her nose but managed to mangle her body postmortem. There was no reason why I shouldn't fulfill my childhood dreams.
"At what point did you give up?" I said out loud, my voice, as I said it, startling me. In the corner opposite was the metal cabinet, full of my father's old suits. Tattersall; summer seersucker; flannel; dark, itchy wool tweed. I remembered the day I'd come down to fold the laundry several years ago, and opened up the cabinet. When I crawled inside, I was a child again, my upper body encased in his old suit coats. I had taken the tweed, with its suede elbow patches, and rubbed it along my cheek.
The cool air coming up from the meat freezer felt good against
/ 5 9 ]
Alice Sebold
my face. I saw the amber bottles set on the windowsill above the washer to keep belly-crawling burglars out. I saw the purple glass bottles on the ledge of its mate.
I had never thought of how one cut up a body, only of the freedom to be had postsevering. The grisly reality of the sawing and the butchering had never preoccupied me. It was the instant flash, the twitched nose of Bewitched, the magic of going from having my mother to not having her that held me in its thrall.
More than butchering her, if I could have chosen it, I would have changed her body from solid to liquid to gas. I wanted her to evaporate like water. Rising up out of my life and leaving everything else intact.
"If you aren't careful," my mother would say, "you'll fall in."
At eleven, twelve, thirteen, I would be in the kitchen, leaning over, looking into the refrigerator for what I could eat. I perused the food with such care only when I thought it was safe. At other times I tried to act as if food didn't matter to me, as if it were too much of a bother. "Oh! There! That's food? Hmmm." But with my head in the refrigerator, I was the perfect prey, and as she listed my flaws—the ballooning ass, the "near matronly"
thighs, the swinging arms I'd eventually have, like "a dimpled flesh bat," if I went on in my way—I would look at the tiny light in the refrigerator and wonder, Could I move in there? Could I hide behind the cottage-cheese container and the orange juice made from concentrate? It would be quiet inside the refrigerator once my mother closed the door. I could disappear in there.
I was staring into the meat freezer, at the millions of ice crystals built up along its sides and covering the two hams and lean patties in a shimmering mink of ice, and then I wasn't. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blue Pigeon Forge bowl.
"Mrs. Castle, will you take that downstairs?" I could hear my mother saying. "Maybe bring something else up."
I walked over to the card table and picked up the bowl. Nearby,
[ 6 07
The Almost Moon
hanging from a hook on the wall, I found a heavy rusted pair of shearing scissors. I turned the bowl upside down on the table and brought the handle of the scissors down hard, like a hammer.
The blue-glazed shards scuttled off the table and across the floor.
I could not cut my mother up, so I walked over to her body and bent down near her head. I hovered over her briefly, then unwrapped the blankets around her face. There were her eyes, staring up at me, milky and blue. With the scissors poised in my right hand, I dug out her silver braid and sheared it off at the root.
[61]
F I V E
While my mother lay on the floor only a few feet away, I opened the old brown refrigerator and sat on the bottom step of the stairs with its light shining on me.
I grabbed blindly at the metal tins, not looking at the age-old and carefully punched-out labels. I ripped off their worn lids and sent them crashing to the concrete floor like spinning cymbals.
Then, and only then, when faced with the used and reused wax paper, did I slow down and
Jake had asked me questions concerning lividity, stiffness, what signs there might be of how she had died, but I was done with that. I had now not only broken her nose but managed to mangle her body postmortem. There was no reason why I shouldn't fulfill my childhood dreams.
"At what point did you give up?" I said out loud, my voice, as I said it, startling me. In the corner opposite was the metal cabinet, full of my father's old suits. Tattersall; summer seersucker; flannel; dark, itchy wool tweed. I remembered the day I'd come down to fold the laundry several years ago, and opened up the cabinet. When I crawled inside, I was a child again, my upper body encased in his old suit coats. I had taken the tweed, with its suede elbow patches, and rubbed it along my cheek.
The cool air coming up from the meat freezer felt good against
/ 5 9 ]
Alice Sebold
my face. I saw the amber bottles set on the windowsill above the washer to keep belly-crawling burglars out. I saw the purple glass bottles on the ledge of its mate.
I had never thought of how one cut up a body, only of the freedom to be had postsevering. The grisly reality of the sawing and the butchering had never preoccupied me. It was the instant flash, the twitched nose of Bewitched, the magic of going from having my mother to not having her that held me in its thrall.
More than butchering her, if I could have chosen it, I would have changed her body from solid to liquid to gas. I wanted her to evaporate like water. Rising up out of my life and leaving everything else intact.
"If you aren't careful," my mother would say, "you'll fall in."
At eleven, twelve, thirteen, I would be in the kitchen, leaning over, looking into the refrigerator for what I could eat. I perused the food with such care only when I thought it was safe. At other times I tried to act as if food didn't matter to me, as if it were too much of a bother. "Oh! There! That's food? Hmmm." But with my head in the refrigerator, I was the perfect prey, and as she listed my flaws—the ballooning ass, the "near matronly"
thighs, the swinging arms I'd eventually have, like "a dimpled flesh bat," if I went on in my way—I would look at the tiny light in the refrigerator and wonder, Could I move in there? Could I hide behind the cottage-cheese container and the orange juice made from concentrate? It would be quiet inside the refrigerator once my mother closed the door. I could disappear in there.
I was staring into the meat freezer, at the millions of ice crystals built up along its sides and covering the two hams and lean patties in a shimmering mink of ice, and then I wasn't. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the blue Pigeon Forge bowl.
"Mrs. Castle, will you take that downstairs?" I could hear my mother saying. "Maybe bring something else up."
I walked over to the card table and picked up the bowl. Nearby,
[ 6 07
The Almost Moon
hanging from a hook on the wall, I found a heavy rusted pair of shearing scissors. I turned the bowl upside down on the table and brought the handle of the scissors down hard, like a hammer.
The blue-glazed shards scuttled off the table and across the floor.
I could not cut my mother up, so I walked over to her body and bent down near her head. I hovered over her briefly, then unwrapped the blankets around her face. There were her eyes, staring up at me, milky and blue. With the scissors poised in my right hand, I dug out her silver braid and sheared it off at the root.
[61]
F I V E
While my mother lay on the floor only a few feet away, I opened the old brown refrigerator and sat on the bottom step of the stairs with its light shining on me.
I grabbed blindly at the metal tins, not looking at the age-old and carefully punched-out labels. I ripped off their worn lids and sent them crashing to the concrete floor like spinning cymbals.
Then, and only then, when faced with the used and reused wax paper, did I slow down and
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