whoever it was had been giving my mother time to get to the door between knocks one and two, and even between knocks two and three. It was late, after all. She was an old woman. I stared down at her. She could be sleeping with her gown pushed up around her hips.
"Mrs. Knightly?"
It was Mrs. Castle.
"Mrs. Knightly, it's Hilda Castle. Are you in there?"
Where else would she be? I thought with annoyance. She's lying on her kitchen floor. Go away!
Then I heard a rattling on the front window in the living room.
The noise of her heavy platinum wedding band against the glass.
I had asked her once why she continued wearing it after her divorce.
"It reminds me not to remarry," she said.
Only when I heard her voice—a loud whisper—did I realize she had pushed the window open from the outside.
"Helen," she whispered loudly. "Helen, can you hear me?"
Bitch! I immediately thought in solidarity with my mother.
What right had she to lift the window sash?
[ 3 5 ]
Alice Sebold
"I know you're here," she whispered. "I see your car."
How very Lord Peter Wimsey of you, I thought.
But my muscles relaxed as I heard the window closing. A few seconds later, I heard Mrs. Castle regain the concrete pathway. I looked at my mother's feet and legs.
"What did you have to give away to her?" I asked. I wasn't thinking of possessions but of the privacy that had always been so precious to my mother. That she had exchanged for the security of Mrs. Castle's daily visit.
I knew that Mrs. Castle would be back in the morning. I knew it as surely as her whispers had caught at my ankles like ropes.
It was obvious that I needed help. I got up slowly and stepped over my mother's body to the phone. I breathed in and closed my eyes. I could see, projected, a reel of film in which the sped-up figures of neighbors and police all clambered into the house.
There would be so many of them that they would get stuck in the doors and windows, their limbs jutting out in bent, awkward poses like a group of Martha Graham dancers, only squished together by doorjamb and window sash, and dressed in uniforms or perma-creased tweeds.
I have never liked the phone. Ten years ago, during a misguided fit of self-improvement, I pasted smiley-face stickers on the phone in my bedroom and on the one in the kitchen. Then I typed out two labels and taped them to the handsets. "It's an opportunity, not an attack," they read.
The last address I had for Jake was at a college in Bern, Switzerland, but that had been a temporary teaching post at least three years ago. The easiest way to find Jake was to follow his former students, his acolytes, his day laborers, his worshippers. I knew it might take hours, but I also knew Jake was my only hope.
[3 6]
The Almost Moon
A body changed rapidly even in the span of a cool October evening, and I could not dispose of my mother by myself.
I hovered near the phone for what seemed like thirty minutes before I picked it up. Knightlys never called for help, and Corbins, my mother's blood, would rather use forks to stab out their throats. We dealt with things in private. We cut off our fingers and feet—our hands, our legs, and our lives—but we did not, no matter what, ask for help. Need was like a weed, a virus, a mold. Once you admitted to it, it spread and ruled.
As I lifted the receiver, I could feel myself as a little girl again, walking into the snow and disappearing, lying down in a giant snowdrift and listening to my mother and father calling for me—liking the sensation as I began to freeze.
[37]
F O U R
I was eighteen and in my freshman year of college when I met Jake. He was twenty-seven and the teacher of my art history class.
He could pinpoint the moment, he said, when his heart started helplessly charting a course to my groin.
He had been lecturing on Caravaggio and the idea of lost work when he turned from the board and saw me fumbling with my new glasses. I handled their gold-wire rims like I might a praying
"Mrs. Knightly?"
It was Mrs. Castle.
"Mrs. Knightly, it's Hilda Castle. Are you in there?"
Where else would she be? I thought with annoyance. She's lying on her kitchen floor. Go away!
Then I heard a rattling on the front window in the living room.
The noise of her heavy platinum wedding band against the glass.
I had asked her once why she continued wearing it after her divorce.
"It reminds me not to remarry," she said.
Only when I heard her voice—a loud whisper—did I realize she had pushed the window open from the outside.
"Helen," she whispered loudly. "Helen, can you hear me?"
Bitch! I immediately thought in solidarity with my mother.
What right had she to lift the window sash?
[ 3 5 ]
Alice Sebold
"I know you're here," she whispered. "I see your car."
How very Lord Peter Wimsey of you, I thought.
But my muscles relaxed as I heard the window closing. A few seconds later, I heard Mrs. Castle regain the concrete pathway. I looked at my mother's feet and legs.
"What did you have to give away to her?" I asked. I wasn't thinking of possessions but of the privacy that had always been so precious to my mother. That she had exchanged for the security of Mrs. Castle's daily visit.
I knew that Mrs. Castle would be back in the morning. I knew it as surely as her whispers had caught at my ankles like ropes.
It was obvious that I needed help. I got up slowly and stepped over my mother's body to the phone. I breathed in and closed my eyes. I could see, projected, a reel of film in which the sped-up figures of neighbors and police all clambered into the house.
There would be so many of them that they would get stuck in the doors and windows, their limbs jutting out in bent, awkward poses like a group of Martha Graham dancers, only squished together by doorjamb and window sash, and dressed in uniforms or perma-creased tweeds.
I have never liked the phone. Ten years ago, during a misguided fit of self-improvement, I pasted smiley-face stickers on the phone in my bedroom and on the one in the kitchen. Then I typed out two labels and taped them to the handsets. "It's an opportunity, not an attack," they read.
The last address I had for Jake was at a college in Bern, Switzerland, but that had been a temporary teaching post at least three years ago. The easiest way to find Jake was to follow his former students, his acolytes, his day laborers, his worshippers. I knew it might take hours, but I also knew Jake was my only hope.
[3 6]
The Almost Moon
A body changed rapidly even in the span of a cool October evening, and I could not dispose of my mother by myself.
I hovered near the phone for what seemed like thirty minutes before I picked it up. Knightlys never called for help, and Corbins, my mother's blood, would rather use forks to stab out their throats. We dealt with things in private. We cut off our fingers and feet—our hands, our legs, and our lives—but we did not, no matter what, ask for help. Need was like a weed, a virus, a mold. Once you admitted to it, it spread and ruled.
As I lifted the receiver, I could feel myself as a little girl again, walking into the snow and disappearing, lying down in a giant snowdrift and listening to my mother and father calling for me—liking the sensation as I began to freeze.
[37]
F O U R
I was eighteen and in my freshman year of college when I met Jake. He was twenty-seven and the teacher of my art history class.
He could pinpoint the moment, he said, when his heart started helplessly charting a course to my groin.
He had been lecturing on Caravaggio and the idea of lost work when he turned from the board and saw me fumbling with my new glasses. I handled their gold-wire rims like I might a praying
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