The Slow Moon (13 page)

Twenty-three

B
EFORE GOING OUT
with Crow on that March night, Sophie had bathed and put lotion all over her body. She had seen Crow almost every day for the past three weeks, and it seemed that they talked on the phone more times a day than she talked with her mother.

“This might be getting out of hand,” Rita told her. “After tonight, I want to put a limit on the number of times you can go out in one week. It’s ridiculous. You are too young.”

Sophie didn’t want to argue with her mother. She knew what she and Crow planned to do tonight, and she didn’t want to bring on any suspicion. “Okay,” she agreed. “But there’s this party tonight, and we—”

“Where is it?”

“At the Fairchild house. He’s a doctor.”

“Is Crow driving? Anybody going with you?”

“He’s driving. But I don’t know. We’ll probably be going with some others.”

“Crow’s too old for you, honey. Why don’t you go out with somebody your own age?”

“But I like him.”

“Well, I know that.” Rita softened. “He hasn’t tried anything, has he?”

“Mom.”

“Well, has he?”

“No.”

“All you have to do is call me. If you want to come home, you call me.”

“I will,” Sophie promised. Her face shone, and Rita could see that Sophie’s excitement was about more than a party.

“I want you home early,” she said.

“I will,” Sophie agreed.

That night had changed everything for Sophie, and since then her mother had kept everyone away.

“Just until after the trial,” Rita said. “I don’t want anyone around, except maybe Nikki or Stephanie.”

But a few weeks before the trial, Sophie looked up one afternoon and saw Lester in the driveway. He did not approach the door to come in, just stood beside his car, motionless, as if he had been there a long while.

Sophie opened the door. “Lester?” Her voice scratchy, not recognizable.

Lester startled, his restless brown eyes intent on her. He took off his glasses and wiped them on his shirt, then walked to the doorway. “I was afraid to knock. I thought you might be sleeping.” A soft breeze eddied against them and lifted Sophie’s hair.

“How long have you been out here?” she asked.

“About a half hour.” He had stood meditative, his face grim, blank of expectation. He breathed heavily. “I called your mother and she said I could come over.”

“Is that true?”

“No. She didn’t say I could come over.”

“She wouldn’t mind your being here though.” Sophie grimaced, and she turned to go back inside. Lester followed her in.

“I hate what happened to you,” said Lester, shuffling his feet. A gloomy mist emanated from him, and he looked about to cry. “I hate whoever did this. I want to kill them.”

“Shhh.” Sophie looked around to see if her mother had heard. “Close the door,” she said.

He did. “Do you know who did it?”

Sophie shrugged, fixing her eyes on the blue carpet. “I can’t remember anything.” Sophie spoke uneasily.

“You mean you really don’t know?”

Sophie released a low moan. “If I can’t remember, I can’t accuse anybody, but my mother wants me to.” Her eyes had grown prominent in her skull. She could not help but remember how the figures had lingered over her, the musk of their sweat, the twinge before they fell off her. They thought she was unconscious when she saw them leave, not seeing their faces, but just a band of tall shadows walking away, then another shadow coming to her, the tenderness of a touch.

“I saw somebody on the ground that night,” Lester said. “Did you know that I was the one who called 9-1-1?”

“Yes, I knew that.”

“I didn’t know it was you. I wish I had known.”

Sophie’s hands began to shake, and she sobbed without tears.

Rita came downstairs, surprised to see Lester. “What’s going on here?” Her full face regarded them from a distance. Lester sat down in a chair, middle-aged. Rita looked for motive in his face, looked for something not to trust, but didn’t find either.

“He came to see me, he’s just visiting me,” Sophie said.

“Well, I don’t think you need any visitors yet.” Rita motioned for Lester to leave.

Lester left the room without turning around, but as he got to the door he said, “I’ll be back again, Sophie. Is that okay?”

“Yes.” Sophie wanted her mother to hear her invite him back.

“I don’t want you getting her upset, Lester,” Rita said, but Lester had already gone.

Rita led Sophie upstairs, and they changed the sheets on their beds. Regular rituals around the house seemed to calm Sophie. “You want me to wash your hair?” Rita asked.

Sophie nodded.

That night Rita tucked Sophie into bed and lay down beside her. The night hung precipitously above them, as though it might fall at any moment and crush the house.

Twenty-four

C
ROW’S TESTIMONY HAD
gone well, but on the day of summations, Aurelia awoke ready to perform the ritual she always performed on difficult days. She ground coffee and poured four cups of water into the coffeemaker. She took the special mug she always used on days she wanted luck.

Bobby came into the kitchen followed by Dog, his toenails clicking on the linoleum floor. “You using that County Fair mug?” he asked.

“I guess so.” She spoke as though it didn’t really matter. She felt shy about her superstitions and didn’t want Bobby to tell anyone.

Bobby tossed two scoops of kibble into Dog’s bowl, filled the water dish, then dropped into a kitchen chair. “You’ll drink three cups, then you’ll eat something, then you’ll go upstairs and brush your teeth, gargle, shower, dress, and drink one more cup. Right?”

Aurelia smiled at how well he knew her. He hadn’t teased her this way in how long? A year? She reached for his favorite cereal and brought a carton of milk to the table. He drank from the carton.

“So what do you think would happen if you didn’t do all that stuff?” Bobby asked, wiping his mouth with his sleeve.

“Catastrophe probably.” She felt happy having him in this mood. “Earthquakes, high winds, lightning.”

Bobby got up, dripping cereal, and poured her a cup of coffee, implying, she thought, that he too believed in her charmed habits. This day might go fine after all. She felt grateful for his playfulness, and wondered if he had any rituals that he himself believed in. She worried about his sulky moods and the look of slyness that had lately crept into his eyes.

“You’ll be in court today, won’t you?” She was breaking their light banter.

He didn’t answer but got up to let Dog outside. He stood with his back to his mother.

“Bobby? You’ve only come once.”

“I don’t think he wants me there.”

“Why would you think that? Did he tell you he didn’t want you there?”

“I think he’s embarrassed.”

“If you don’t go, it will seem strange,” she told him. “How can you even consider not going?”

There were questions Bobby wanted to ask. He wanted to ask if Crow could be found guilty. He could not imagine it. Whenever he spoke, words started and stopped.

“Jail…I just don’t…what if…wild…messed up.” Simple and edgy, random words came out without composure, like fire, then collapsed. His mouth turned downward into the mouth of an old man, the mouth he would have as an old man. But he was seventeen. He was still a dream dreaming itself, but lately he felt like a nightmare inside another nightmare, spiraling until he became wide, wide awake.

“I’ll probably go,” he said. “He’ll get off, don’t you think he will?” Bobby asked tentatively.

“His testimony went well,” she said.

“Yeah,” Bobby said. “There’s not a chance they’re gonna find him guilty.” He poured a large glass of orange juice and drank it like it was whiskey. “You think it’ll be decided today?”

“Probably not today,” she said. “But soon. Maybe today.” She smiled hopefully. “I’ll just be glad when it’s all over.”

At four o’clock Aurelia came home. The jury had deliberated for three hours, and Crow had been acquitted. Bobby had been there. And though Aurelia felt glad, her mind stayed riddled with doubt—not about Crow, but about the broader implications: something terrible was still out there. Something not yet seen. She had watched the judge from Jasper dismiss the jury, saying Crow was free to go. She congratulated Raymond Butler and the Davenport family, but as she left the courthouse Aurelia felt afraid of what had already entered this town. And now, as she entered her house, the rooms, the ceilings, looked different to her.

She ate dinner alone: two hard-boiled eggs, some buttered toast, and tea. She went upstairs wanting to take a bath, but as she passed Bobby’s room, she looked in. She had never before snooped through his things, never had an urge to do something she thought was beneath her dignity. But tonight she began to leaf through some papers on his desk and bed. What was she looking for?

“Please, God,” she said aloud. “Please. Please.”

She kept saying these words, an incantation. As she lifted his covers to straighten the bed, she saw stuck between the headboard and mattress a shiny black gun, a pistol. She jumped, as if it were a snake. She lifted it up, holding it away from her body, and left the room, closing the door quietly.

Aurelia laid the gun on her dresser and ran a bath. She slipped into the tub, moving her body down to let water brush against her breasts. She held soap in her hands, running it over her arms and legs, letting the milky film form on her shoulders. She rubbed her armpits, then her shoulders, the length of her arms, her breasts. She soaped her feet last, wanting to massage them, felt the instep and the tissue surrounding the anklebone. Then she lay back, submerging herself up to her neck.

Was it Bobby’s gun, or might it belong to one of the other boys? She imagined Bobby might be keeping it for someone. That was probably it. She tried to remember Bobby as a two-year-old, holding a toy. Do all parents, when they imagine something monstrous their child might have done, think of that child as a baby, or as a one-year-old, a two-year-old struggling to stand, to run, to reach for doorknobs, to pull the tablecloth off onto the floor?

She lifted herself out of the tub and dried her body carefully, as if she were a baby herself. From the bathroom window the last edges of the sun went behind the mountains, and she closed her eyes. She thought of what lay beyond the mountains. She dried her hair and legs with her eyes still closed and thought finally of contacting Robert.

She had loved Robert for eighteen years. But in the end she didn’t know what love meant. Love came in so many forms. We love for weakness or strength, she thought, for security or wildness, for money, or beauty, or sometimes for sadness. Whatever reason, the brain turned giddy with self-worth, and self-worth became indelibly linked to the one who was loved.

Then when that person does something outrageous, do we still love him? Do we move away, kill off the loved one, because we can’t find ourselves anymore in the definition love provided?

Aurelia had done just this. Robert’s actions were finally something Aurelia was not able to absorb. Even back then, when she was still a practicing lawyer, she could not easily allow an infraction of the law or unethical behavior to invade her private world. She prided herself on hard-heartedness. Robert would go to jail for ten years. She would not wait for him. She planned to never see Robert again. She was that moral.

A divorce agreement was drawn and signed, and she moved back to Tennessee, where she had grown up. Aurelia Bailey’s career as a judge had earned her a reputation for fairness in her decision making; and the verdicts declared in her courts accorded very well with the principle of justice. For the past six years she had made promises to the community, saying that “the violence creeping into other communities would not urge its way into South Pittsburg, Tennessee.” She developed an after-school program and raised money for a youth center, still to be built. She was tough on crime.

Bobby liked to tease his mother about being a “crackdown” judge. He seemed proud of her, but that was last year. Lately he had grown secretive, sullen.

For years Aurelia had refused to answer Robert’s letters, but after a time she relented, writing, sending him pictures of Bobby, giving him news of Little League championships, the Bandits. Still, she never allowed their arrangement to change. She felt confident in her decision to raise her son alone. She felt obliged to keep Robert’s past from Bobby, and couldn’t think of any good that would come from Bobby knowing. But now she felt the urge to ask for Robert’s help. Robert had built a new life in Kentucky, and his disgrace (which Aurelia once thought would never leave her mind) was receding.

As she opened her eyes she saw the reflection of her face in the mirror. Her wild auburn hair curled in all directions. The pins she used to tame it in the courtroom had come out, and her hair framed her face like a wreath.

She heard tires on the gravel driveway. She slipped a nightgown over her head, tying her robe around her, and quickly pinned flat some loose strands of hair. She waited for Bobby in the chair where, when he was young, she had rocked him.