The Moon Around Sarah (2 page)

Sarah lay down on her bed without unmaking it or putting on a nightgown. The breeze was free and the fog-clouds twisted crazily, forming and unforming patterns before the moon; sketching intricate dreamscapes. The moon danced and teased, lulling her to drowsiness.

Only once did Sarah glance toward the corner of her room where the cradle had been. That too they had tried to take away from her so many times, hiding it in the garage or the attic, but always Sarah had found it and brought it back. Until Edward, in a fury one day, had taken a sledge hammer and smashed the cradle to bits, burning the remnants in the fireplace.

And then Baby’s ghost had had no place to sleep. And that was the night Sarah had learned that there would never be ghosts in her life again, but only moon-fogged memories seen darkly in far-distant places of half-
concealment
. Peeping voices, soft whispers, a little hand reaching out for her breast….

Tomorrow, Mother would buy her a pretty thing, she thought, and fell off into silent sleep.

Morning was the cold gleam of sunlight across the
dew-sparkling
grass; a golden spray shining through the deep pines, the new sun striking tiny flickering beacons in the tips of the sleeping gray elms.

Poppsy lay beside the sagging toolshed, where the warmth of morning would first reach and be reflected from the warped old planks. The creek wound lazily past, green and leaden, weary from the night’s meandering, yet not ready to awaken to the glittering day.

Sarah had been sent to bed early and so she had risen early to stand before her window in the pre-dawn light for a long while, before slowly and carefully dressing for a special day.

She chose her favorite dress. It was cotton with a
cream-colored
background. It had small blue butterflies, their wings edged with gold, drifting amongst a field of tiny pink roses and fern. Daddy had bought it for her a long time ago.

She sat in the dress now in front of the maple-framed oval mirror, brushing her hair as the nurse had taught her in the long-ago. Fifty … sixty … the brush streaking through her long chestnut hair until it crackled and shone, catching an errant beam of sunlight, bright with new promise.

She clipped on her blue necklace, its beads the same color as the dancing butterflies of her dress. It was made of lapis lazuli. Her brother Eric had brought it back from his travels to some far place on one of the occasions when Daddy had let him return to the old house. A lost Christmas, cold and rummy, filled with terrible shouts. Eric had run out into the night, his coat twisted around his shoulders, cursing at a dark, evil sky. Sarah remembered standing by the fire with the necklace in her hand, as Daddy cursed back at Eric and raised a fist, his face red and the blood vessels on his throat bulging. What a sorrowful Christmas, she had thought, before she went out barefoot to wander the chilly night looking for Eric and never finding him, as Poppsy yapped and bounced around, believing it was some strange and incomprehensible human game.

‘Are you dressed, Sarah?’ Mother asked, sounding uncharacteristically ebullient, as she knocked sharply on the door. ‘You haven’t forgotten that we’re going to town today, have you? It’s time to get dressed!’

But of course, Sarah was already dressed, and so she
continued to sit on the padded bench by her bureau, her hands folded between her thighs, watching the shifting patterns of bright gold and shadow the rising sun beyond her window cast among the boughs. One silver squirrel climbed a damp pine tree, paused, looked one way and then the other, continued his climb, and disappeared somewhere into the foliage.

Downstairs, they racketed about. Aunt Trish’s voice could be heard, rising excitedly. Why she sounded so happy, Sarah could not guess; certainly not because Mother was going to buy
her
a present. Sarah listened more carefully and heard her aunt continue.

‘Finally,’ Trish said with a tremendous sigh, ‘we are going to get this all over with! What time does Dennison’s office open?’ she asked, meaning the attorney who was handling the sale of the property for them.

‘I’ve told you three times. Eight o’clock,’ Edward said with thinning patience. His fat aunt, wearing an outrageous dress of deep magenta with a matching hat and bag, paced the kitchen heavily, drinking numberless cups of sweetened tea.

His mother, frail and anxious and looking nearly as
helpless
as Sarah, sat in the corner of the kitchen, her terribly out-of-date blue straw hat pinned on at an angle, her eyes bright with uncertain anticipation. Edward knew why of course, who was responsible for that, but no one broached the subject.

God
, Edward thought, this is my family. Poor, wrecked, troubled and each alone. They seemed to really believe that
selling the house and property, and moving away would somehow retrieve their lives from this biological morass.

Well, no, he thought reconsidering – although Trish, flushed with excitement, might believe it, he did not know what Mother thought, frail and birdlike as she was, distant and too dependent on a straw-built reality. He had never really known, he realized. It was like trying to penetrate Sarah’s secret world. How had he ever managed to grow up in this environment? It was no wonder that his brother, Eric, had come to be a lunatic. Rambler, poet, twisted into instability….

‘
He
won’t be there, will he?’ Trish asked in a taut whisper. ‘When we sign the papers, I mean…?’

He knew who she meant. Sarah’s father. His father.

‘No. Dennison will meet separately with Father. It’s all been arranged so that no one has to encounter anyone else to do this.’

Trish smiled with weak relief. From the corner of his eye, Edward had seen Mother tense, her slender figure become erect. In that dress, she resembled an alerted blue egret ready to take wing at the slightest sound or movement. He walked to where she sat, took her empty coffee cup and saucer from her hands and put them on the counter. He put both hands on her narrow shoulders, looked down into her bright eyes and said, ‘That is all taken care of, Mother. All you have to do is sign the final papers and have a pleasant little shopping day in town. After all, you can afford a little spree now.’

He bent his head and kissed her gently, his lips coming
away from her cheek with the taste of scented powder on them.

Sarah entered the room just then and they fell to furtive silence.

‘I suppose we’ll be taking the Buick?’ Trish asked.

‘It’s the only car with room enough for all of us to sit comfortably,’ Edward answered over his coffee mug.

‘I don’t like that car,’ Trish said, ‘it’s a
dinosaur
.’

‘Don’t be silly.’

‘It’s because it was Raymond’s car,’ Mother said
unexpectedly
, using the name she always avoided speaking. ‘That’s why.’

Sarah looked up eagerly, her eyes shining.

Raymond.
Daddy
. The big blue Buick convertible they used to go picnicking in. Laughing and singing songs along the crazily winding ocean bluff road. He had simply left the car there the night he had gone away to stay: Eric screaming from the porch for his Daddy, Sarah following him down the long dark road for as far as she could until her small legs finally wore out, Daddy never looking back to see her. Mother had collapsed and started crying. ‘I didn’t mean for him to go,’ she had said over and over, but he was gone.

‘I don’t like that terrible thing,’ Trish said again, and they all knew she didn’t mean the big old Buick Roadmaster convertible, but Daddy.

Trish feared that there was every chance, no matter how Edward and Dennison had arranged things, that she might encounter Raymond Tucker that morning.

‘It’s time we were going, isn’t it?’ Mother said. ‘We should be going.’ Her eyes were sharply bright. She wrung her narrow hands together as she stood looking out the kitchen window to where the hugely brilliant sun shone through the trees. How many mornings had she seen this view? The red sun lifting itself lazily over the crest of the knoll and cut at the cold night-shadows which pooled around the skirts of the big old house.

Edward and Aunt Trish, noting Ellen’s mounting anxiety, glanced at each other. Trish was tight-lipped, stirring her tea furiously.

‘It’s still too early, Mother,’ Edward said gently. ‘We don’t want to waste the morning sitting around Dennison’s office.’

‘Why not?’ Ellen turned from the window, backlit by the warm bluish-gold glow through the windowpane. ‘There’s no sense in waiting here either, is there?’ she laughed lightly, meaninglessly. ‘Sarah’s ready; I’m ready.’ She patted at her hair, smoothed her blue dress over her hips. ‘She and I can walk around and look in the shop windows. Trish wanted to buy some fresh crab, didn’t you Trish? Early morning’s the only time to buy crab. We can take a chest of ice for them … yes. Sarah, get your straw hat, the big floppy one with the pink ribbon. That will pick out the roses in your dress nicely.’

Ellen made hurrying motions toward Sarah and smiled at Edward who shrugged. It didn’t matter really, she would do it in the end anyway. He could see through her eyes into her troubled mind.

Aunt Trish rose without drinking her tea and ambled
heavily toward the hall closet, where she kept her shawl. Passing Edward, she spoke:

‘No more! All of this has to end today. I can’t take it anymore.’

Edward nodded; he couldn’t take much more of it himself. With the money from the developers, Aunt Trish planned to move to Southern California and buy a quiet condominium. Edward was going to put his share into his fledgling new law business. They had found a little home for Mother. And Sarah…. Edward looked toward the stairs where his sister had ascended to get her hat as instructed. She always did as she was told, so maybe this would not be as wrenching as he anticipated. He had been up most of the night worrying about her. He knew that some people might consider him heartless, but what could be done with her? Mother could not take care of her, they all knew that; honestly, Ellen could barely take care of herself. Aunt Trish, no matter that she was occasionally abrasive and generally slovenly, had been holding the old house together for the three of them for a long time. But the time had come when someone finally had to make the decisions for all of them, and that someone was Edward. And did he not have a right to his own life as well? He hadn’t been to his office for four days. Though there was really very little requiring his attention there, he should be there. He had left the old house four years ago. He had no intention of being
entangled
in its decaying womb and strangled ghosts again.

He was doing what must be done. He had an inordinate fear of dealing with his own father at Dennison’s. He
supposed that was some hangover of childhood. Edward did not wish to see the tall, distant man at all.

Nor his brother, Eric.

Edward’s mouth tightened as he thought of Eric. He supposed Eric’s self-image was that of a sort of wandering poet-troubadour. What he was was an inefficacious,
whimsically
irresponsible tramp. Edward paused; maybe the definitions were synonymous. Edward knew that both of them – his father and his own brother – thought he was an officious prig. Yet who had managed Mother’s affairs and finally sold the old property for them? Which of them cared in the least about Sarah or had offered to take care of her…?

The old dog, Poppsy, bumped its head gently against the door, pushing it open to enter. Edward patted its scarred head, noticing the new spread of mange along Poppsy’s back, its morning-stiff walk as it went to where its
breakfast
was served and waited patiently, as Edward found the sack of dried dog food and poured some into the plastic bowl on the floor.

‘Poor old Poppsy,’ Edward said with a fondness
remembered
from childhood. ‘Poor old everyone,’ he added under his breath.

They drove toward town along the old coast highway, the ancient Buick rumbling confidently. Sarah watched the
far-glittering
sea and the white curls of surf butting heads with the high dark promontory. She held her big floppy straw hat on with one hand. The convertible’s top was up, but Mother,
riding in front with Edward, had her window rolled down, and the fresh morning-cool salt air whipped past her head in an intoxicating rush. Next to Sarah sat Aunt Trish, tightly wrapped in her striped woven shawl, her teeth
chattering
.

‘
Can’t
we have that window up, Ellen? For God’s sake!’

Mother turned. Her eyes were very bright.

‘It’s a glorious morning, Trish. It’s going to be a glorious day. Let’s enjoy it, right, Edward?’

‘Sure,’ Edward muttered. He was fighting the windshield glare as the road snaked briefly eastward. His jaw was tight. It would be a glorious day, yes. Once it was over.

‘Sarah and I want to get off near the pier,’ Mother said, ‘don’t we, Sarah?’ She turned and smiled at her daughter. ‘We want to watch the fishermen for a while, watch the surf booming past the pilings. We like that, don’t we, Sarah?’

Mother always included Sarah’s wishes in these whims of hers as if weight was added to her notions, having consulted Sarah.

‘All right,’ Edward said without inflection.

‘Then we’ll be able to have the window up anyway,’ Trish said to herself, but loudly enough for everyone to hear. The sea air, she considered, might be invigorating, but it was damned cold at this time of the morning. She had had enough of sea air on cold November mornings to last her the rest of her life. Her joints were too old for it any longer. She wanted her condo in a dry, airless Southern California valley.

This was the last day she would suffer this, she reflected;
the last day she would suffer Ellen’s whims. Trish leaned back on the leather-covered seat of the old Roadmaster and drew her shawl still more tightly around her.

The town was a sprawl of dark cubes and a few hazy smokestacks slowly withdrawing from the predawn shadows of the cove. The Buick with its passengers floated down the last winding grade, virtually the only car on the road. Now and then a big Peterbilt or White truck hauling fish or produce southward would blast past them on its way to the freeway, their drivers all wearing baseball caps or cowboy straws, cigarettes dangling from their lips; but that was all.