Alice Sebold - The Almost Moon

Fusk’s work was my immortality. The fact that it was headless had never bothered me.

Hamish stopped suddenly.

“You’ve got to give me something, Helen.”

I reached for his penis, hoping this time for the ejaculation that I could wipe off of my stomach and pretend was disappointing.

After his initial pleasure, he stilled my hand.

“I’m more than my dick,” he said. “Touch me.”

I could feel how small and desperate my eyes had grown. “Don’t ask too much of me, Hamish. I can’t give too much right now.”

“You’re doing this for the car.”

I did not contradict him.

Something changed then. He parted my legs farther than was truly comfortable. He worked at me roughly, as if I were one of the action figures that had littered his floor as a child.

I tried to help him along. I pulled my own string and spoke to him in phrases I’d heard myself say in the midst of actual passion dozens of times. I stared at the small tattooed dragon below his collarbone and mimicked my former self for him.

Finally, just as the muscles on the insides of my thighs felt strained beyond recovery, the joints in my hips the dry ball bearings of a woman my mother’s age, he came.

He shuddered and fell on top of me with all his weight. My breath went out of me, and for a brief second I thought of the prostitute in Arthur Shawcross’s car, how she had spent the next three days doing speedballs.

I pushed at Hamish’s chest.

“Car,” I said.

“You’re a good fuck too,” he said bitterly.

As he zipped up his pants-chinos, I noted, instead of his usual jeans-I thought how I could ruin anything.

“Give me a few minutes to check everything out,” he said.

I lay undressed on his bed and listened to him take the stairs down to the first floor, walk through the family room, and go out the garage door.

I did not move until the air filter cycled on, making a light breeze cross my body. I turned on my side and propelled myself up with my left arm. I sat on the corner of Hamish’s bed and began to clothe myself. I was staring at the louvered doors of his closet when I thought of it. Because it was not his house but his mother’s, he must store everything that mattered to him inside his room. Hurriedly I stood and pulled open the doors. I reasoned that it would not be down low or even immediately accessible. He was not the type to show off that way. I pulled out a milk crate stuffed with CDs and turned it on its side-so much for stealth. On the shelf above his clothes, he had an extra blanket, a sleeping bag, and a shoe box, inside of which were shiny wing tips he had worn the day of his father’s funeral. I did not find what I was looking for.

I was crazed now. During sex I had barely broken a sweat, but now I felt perspiration spring up along my brow. How long Hamish would take and when he would come looking for me, I could not predict. I scanned his room. I assessed. Where would he have put it?

And then, of course, I knew. He would see himself as the man of the house. He was not a freeloader; he was his mother’s protector. It lay in the drawer of his bedside table, still in the Crown Royal bag my mother’s father had kept it in, and beside it was an unopened box of bullets. I picked up the bag by its braided rope and grabbed the bullets before closing the door.

I saw the jumble of the bed, how our sex had made the fitted sheet pop off its corners and collapse into a jellyfish in the center. At another time I would have corrected this, but that was when I was not trying to leave behind everything I knew.

I took the stairs slowly, my thighs aching, knowing they would ache more the next day and wondering where I would be by then. Sarah and Jake would be together, perhaps still watching the police go through my house. I hoped Sarah had enjoyed her drink at the bar and only then gone looking for me in the ladies’ room. I had to get the Crown Royal bag back to my purse before Hamish saw it. I sat down at the bottom of the stairs. My purse was in the kitchen. I knew I had to move but couldn’t.

No one would be at Mrs. Leverton’s, I realized. Her son had always avoided coming to the house, and if he was there, his Mercedes would be prominently displayed in the driveway. I could rest there, and given the food stores I was sure she must have, I might hide there for days.

I heaved myself up and walked through the hall and into the kitchen. I found my purse on the dining table and plunged the gun into my bag. I breathed.

Natalie had had the back wall redone that year. Now a long window ran across the kitchen, above all the counters. “He’s convinced me,” she’d said, “to have only under-counter cabinets to create an indoor-outdoor feel.” She called him a charmer. What was his name?

I could see a reflection of myself in the glass. I turned my back on my spotlighted ghost and walked to the fridge. I was as hungry as I’d been the night before and realized that except for what I’d managed to eat of Natalie’s breakfast in the student union, I had not eaten all day.

I grabbed what seemed easiest and most full of protein-hot dogs and cheese sticks-and methodically stuffed myself with them, one after another. I ate mindlessly, looking blurrily at the items tacked to Natalie’s fridge. There was an invitation to a wedding for someone I did not know. She had yet to RSVP. The little card and envelope were under the magnet with the invite. It was a Christmas wedding, and I wondered if Natalie and her contractor would go. If the ceremony might put thoughts in his head or if, like Hamish said she hoped, they were already there.

Beside this was a picture of Natalie and me at a party at Westmore eighteen months ago. I remembered the day. Emily and John and Leo and Jeanine had left the day before, three days earlier than originally planned. I had kissed Leo good-bye on the one bare spot of his forehead that was not covered by gauze. I had tried to hug Emily, but her shoulders were stiff and resistant, and reminded me of me.

In the photo there was no sign of any of this, or the argument I’d had with my mother before I’d doubled back to pick up Natalie. Natalie looked radiant, and I, I felt, looked as I always had, the dutiful sidekick.

Hamish walked in just as I was pushing the last of the hot dogs into my mouth. He came over to me and turned me around to face him. My cheeks full of food.

“I’m sorry for up there.”

I chewed and made a waving motion with my hand to indicate that it was fine, that it hadn’t meant anything.

“It’s just that you can be so cold, and I know you’re not at heart. I’ve always known.”

I looked at him. My eyes bulged as I swallowed.

“It wasn’t Manny, was it?”

I saw the phone hanging on the wall near the kitchen table. Wondered who I could call to help me if Hamish refused. And I saw my purse sitting upright in the middle of a gingham place mat. Why had I taken the gun? What did I think I was going to do?

“It just makes sense. I was out working on the car and I thought, What is she doing here? Why is she borrowing a car? Mom told me Jake was here, and you said Sarah was too. The only reason why you’re not with them is because they don’t know where you are.”

“You’re very smart today,” I said.

“Chalk it up to postcoital genius,” he said. He turned and opened the fridge. “Besides, it fits. You came looking for my mom last night.”

He grabbed a quart of chocolate milk and brought it over to the counter, where he stooped to get a glass.

“Are you going to tell?” I asked.

He poured his milk and faced me again, leaning back into the counter.

“You asked me yesterday if I ever thought of killing my father. Well, I did. I think a lot of people do,” he said. “They just aren’t honest about it. You actually went ahead and did it.”