The Moon Around Sarah (15 page)

Walking to the motel hadn’t been such a great idea, Edward Tucker reflected miserably, and there was no way he was going to find a cab now – not in this fog. It wasn’t that long a walk from Dennison’s office to the motel, but his suit was damp and heavy. His underwear chafed his crotch and inner thighs. His shoes had got soaked that morning and wet socks and misshapen leather threatened blisters.

He felt uncomfortable and less than secure walking the empty streets; the six checks he was carrying in his
briefcase
totaled $164,853 – no small amount. There was $36,000-plus apiece for Mother, Raymond and Aunt Trish; three checks for $18,317 for each of the younger Tuckers. He tried to stride on confidently, but he was wary. The neighborhood was no longer among the best, and in this thick fog….

‘Tucker?’

Edward nearly jumped out of his skin. A tall man
wearing a red baseball cap and a green quilted jacket approached him from across the street.

‘Oh, it’s you, March. What are you trying to do, scare me to death?’

‘Sorry.’

‘What is it you want?’ Edward asked suspiciously.

‘I was out looking for Sarah,’ Don answered. ‘I saw you and figured that you would know where she is.’

‘I do.’

Edward had started walking on his way again. Don fell in beside him, hands in his jacket pockets, cap tugged low.

‘Look, March,’ Edward said in exasperation, ‘I believe that you were trying to help Sarah, I really do. But she’s not lost now. She’s with her parents, and believe me, they do not want to see you.’

‘Tough,’ Don said, and he was grinning. ‘I want to see them. I want to settle a few things.’

‘Leave well enough alone, will you? You’re not needed or wanted. Raymond would punch your head off. He doesn’t like you at all.’

‘Raymond doesn’t like anyone as far as I can figure,’ Don said. ‘That doesn’t matter either. I’ll just tag along.’

Edward halted. ‘Look, I don’t need you around to make a bad thing worse. Get lost, March.’

‘No. I think I’ll just walk along behind you if you don’t care to talk to me.’

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake,’ Edward said, ‘come on, then.’

He marched on in squishy shoes. Don stayed with him, following three steps back.

Well, it figures, Edward thought. The most screwed-up day of his life. Well, maybe the second most … the night Raymond had caught Eric in Sarah’s bed had been worse. But that was long ago. As brutal as it had been, time had softened the impact. It’s my own fault for trying to take care of their legal matters, Edward decided. Well, it was the last time he would attempt to manage any ‘family business’. In half an hour, with luck, he would be away from them all for good … if only March could be persuaded to be rational about this.

‘Look, March,’ Edward said, slowing to talk to him. ‘Will you do me this courtesy? Let me go in and take care of the business end of things first.
Then
you can visit Raymond and say whatever it is you have to say to him.’

‘You want me to give you time to make your getaway?’ Don asked.

‘It’s … yes! If you want to put it that way. I just don’t want anything more to do with them, this town, or you.’

Don nodded, ‘That doesn’t seem like too much to ask. OK, we’ve got a deal, Tucker.’

‘Thank you,’ Edward said, with deep relief.

They went on in silence. At one corner, a car driving with only its parking lamps on nearly clipped them. The fog was deeper than ever, smelling of salt and kelp and distilled oil.

‘Tell me, March,’ Edward said after a while, ‘what is it you’re after? What is it you want?’

‘Sarah – it just sort of came to me suddenly, Tucker. I want Sarah.’

‘You…!’ Edward tried to laugh, but was too astonished. ‘Have you been drinking?’

‘Some. Earlier. I’m sober now.’

‘And you are going to walk up and say that to Raymond – that you want Sarah?’

‘Not in those words.’

‘You’re insane.’

‘Could be.’

‘He’ll kill you, or at least have you arrested.’

‘I don’t honestly think he can do either.’

‘Maybe I won’t take you over there with me,’ Edward said.

‘What’s it to you? I said I’d let you clear out before I talk to them. Hey, I’m sure not going to do anything to hurt Sarah. I know she has to go away to a hospital, at least for a while. It’s not like I’m planning on abducting her, running off with her or something. I am
not
actually crazy, Tucker, I just am in awfully deep.’

‘Jesus! If it’s not insanity, it’s the next thing to it. This is wild-eyed optimism, friend, bordering on criminal
recklessness
.’

‘Yeah.’ Don was still smiling. ‘I’m not going to say this again, Tucker: I am not going to harm Sarah in any way. If Raymond and I get into it … well, you don’t care if I get whipped. Why should you? And I don’t think you’d care much if your father got his butt kicked. Besides,’ Don said with a wink, ‘as far as not taking me there – that looks like a motel right up ahead, doesn’t it? I’d bet I could probably find my way there from here, wouldn’t you think?’

‘I think….’

From around the corner, an ambulance appeared, red lights flaring against the fog, siren blaring piercingly. The banshee wail covered Edward’s words.

‘Christ,’ Edward said a moment later, ‘it’s the motel! The ambulance is pulling in there!’

Both men started running. It could be anything; a heart attack, someone with food poisoning. It could be anyone at all in the motel that the ambulance had come for, but they both knew something had happened to the cursed Tucker family.

‘Why in God’s name did she have to follow him here!’ Edward shouted to the skies.
Why?
He had tried to talk Ellen out of it, but Mother’s mind had been made up. What was he supposed to do, tie her down?

Don was thinking only of Sarah as they ran between two brooding olive trees and out onto the damp asphalt parking lot. People were crowded around the white ambulance. The two-way radio inside crackled; a blue light rotated lazily on top of the vehicle. The ambulance attendants were wheeling a gurney out from one of the rooms. Raymond and Ellen Tucker walked along beside them.

Sarah!

Don and Edward fought their way through the gathering crowd. Everyone was talking at once; nothing could be heard. Edward was cursing – his parentage, his fate, the Universe – Don couldn’t tell which.

March frantically shouldered his way past two
middle-aged
people in bathrobes and reached the ambulance just as Sarah was being lifted up and into it.

‘What happened? How is she?’

The attendants only looked at him. No one answered; they were trained not to. One tall, freckled ambulance guy pushed Don away with a hand to his chest, not angrily, but firmly.

Don could see the bloodstained bandages on Sarah’s arm, the blood on her face. She lifted her head and her uncertain eyes met his briefly before the door was closed in his face. He grabbed the ambulance driver’s arm.

‘Which hospital are you taking her to?’

‘Northshore.’

Don turned away in a daze. The ambulance was on its way within seconds, the siren screaming. Don ran to where Edward stood speaking to his parents. He grabbed the lawyer’s arm.

‘Are you going out to the hospital?’

‘I don’t know … let go of me.’

‘I need a ride.’

‘Get the hell out of here!’

‘What’s
he
doing here?’ Raymond Tucker demanded.

‘I don’t know!’ Edward said. ‘I don’t care!’

‘We have to get to the hospital!’ Ellen said. Her hair was in wild disorder. Don noticed that she smelled of whisky as did Raymond Tucker; his eyes were red, bleary and hateful.

‘You get out of here,’ he hollered, leveling a finger at Don.

‘What happened?’

‘… Glass,’ Ellen was saying to Edward, ‘she just threw herself at the window!’ She was gripping one of her son’s hands tightly with both of her own.

‘… Be all right,’ Raymond said, ‘they’re taking her where they can help her.’

‘
Why
did you bring her here!’ Edward shouted. Still a knot of spectators hung around, listening.

Don asked in anguish, ‘Are any of you people going to the hospital?’

‘I told you to just get out of here!’ Raymond bellowed in response.

‘Let’s go into the room,’ Edward said, not liking this public forum.

Ellen began to cry.

Now Don could smell sex all over her as well as liquor; everything about her was disarranged.

The ambulance’s siren had faded into the night, and Don turned and began running through the fog toward Jake’s house. He had to be with Sarah. There was nothing to be had from that family. Nothing. They had done something once again to hurt Sarah. What, he did not know, but they had hurt her, and he hated each and every one of them. He ran on through the endless, darkly unfolding fog.

‘Get inside,’ Raymond Tucker said sharply. The gathered crowd infuriated him. ‘Let them find their own little crises to slaver over.’ He grabbed Ellen roughly by the arm and turned her back toward the motel room. Edward followed with his briefcase, moving heavily, repeating to himself endlessly, ‘No more. No more….’

Inside the room, Raymond despondently inspected the empty whisky bottle. Ellen sat on the bed, trembling.

‘We should go to the hospital. We have to go,’ she said in a whisper.

‘There’s nothing we can do at the moment, Mother,’ Edward said, ‘except sit and wait. She’s in good hands. Raymond will drive us up there after a while.’ He patted his mother’s shoulder consolingly. Edward had no intention of going out to the hospital tonight or any other time. ‘Let’s do what we can here for now.’

He opened up his briefcase and sorted through the papers, solemnly handing each of his parents a copy of the property papers with a check in the amount of $36,034 attached.

‘Aunt Patricia’s check will be sent to her in the morning. I will keep Sarah’s money in trust. Eric’s.…’

Edward offered the blue check made out to Eric Tucker to each of them. Neither accepted it.

‘For God’s sake!’ Edward said in exasperation. ‘I am leaving tonight. Tonight! I have a law practice to see to if you all have somehow forgotten. I refuse to continue this hide-and-seek game any longer. I’ve done enough, haven’t I?’ he asked nearly pleadingly.

‘You should’ve left his check with Dennison,’ Raymond said coldly. He was carefully folding his own check, placing it in his worn wallet … they had all given him that wallet at Christmas so many, many years ago….

‘Eric’s here,’ Ellen said suddenly.

‘What?’ Edward stumbled through momentary confusion. Would this
never
end? He had a legal practice and Jill, a stenographer with sharp humor and lazily emphatic moves
in bed, waiting for him at home in Barrett Point. Home! It seemed moon-miles, centuries away.

‘What do you mean, he’s here?’ Edward asked.

‘Somewhere around,’ Raymond said, rising to shove his wallet down into a front trouser pocket. ‘We saw him earlier. Drunker’n shit. Staggering around out there. I don’t know what he was doing – looking for his check, I suppose. He must’ve spotted my car out there.’

‘Well … then I’ll leave his check here,’ Edward said.

Anything
. Anything to detach himself and get out of this town!

‘We don’t know if he’s coming back,’ Raymond said, reaching for the jacket he had left over the back of a chair.

‘We have to go see Sarah!’ Ellen said, her voice bordering on a shriek.

‘Mother,’
Edward said sternly, reviving what was left of his patience, now strained and ragged, ‘you will still be staying up at the old house for a few weeks. Let me give you Eric’s check to hold for him. Please!’

Please
! No more of this!

He forced the oversized check into her hand; she accepted it as if it were a repugnant thing.

‘OK, god-damn it,’ Raymond Tucker said, ‘that’s settled. Let’s go up to the hospital.’

It was all nearly solved now. He had his check – they all had their rotten checks. He would drive Ellen up to Northshore to check on Sarah. Then he would leave.
Go
! Leave Ellen there at the hospital. She could afford a cab, right?

All that the evening had taught Raymond was that no
matter how you looked at it, a piece of ass always cost
something
.

Eric, still waiting in the shadows as the commotion died down, was thinking other thoughts as he watched most of the guests wander back to their rooms, switch on TVs or roll into the darkness to make love. His thoughts were that, in time, every sin a man commits will be paid for. In time, all of the dirty, fumbling, crimes, the secret offences of the soul garner a retribution, and retribution – in time – gains its own inevitable urgency.

‘Drunk. I must be stone drunk,’ he thought, snickering at the mock-philosophical, pseudo-Biblical turn his thoughts had taken.

Revenge is resolution
, he told himself, not bothering to pause to examine the maxim to see if it made any sense. He understood it well enough, and he liked the sound of it. He repeated it silently.

He was standing next to one of the motel’s row of old,
far-branching
olive trees. The night had returned to its silent coolness; the flashing lights and jumble-garble of voices had drifted away on night-fog wings.

The gun was heavy in his hand. Cold and damp; inert. One could almost disbelieve that it was a deadly thing promising heat and destruction; a sudden rearrangement of reality. It was even capable of producing Truth.… Eric walked forward, the old pistol tightly in his grasp, some indefinite, eager dream of redemption in his wildly beating heart.

Revenge is love.

‘I love you, Raymond.’

T
HE FIGURES IN
the motel room now formed a grim tableau. Washed in murky light, poised on the rim of activity, yet somehow unable to move as if the corrupt night had enervated their lives, ambitions and souls. Their faces were lost in accusing shadow, except for the intermittent flash of neon impulses striking at their eyes like a distant remembrance of morality.

Edward spoke first. He stood near the open door, watching the creeping fog, foolish in his damp and rumpled suit. A bit of his own reflection, caught in passing in the shoddy bureau mirror, disgusted him. He had been
transformed
in one day from dapper, quite talented young attorney to a shabby never-was. All he could do was drag his Hydian replica home. Away….

‘Are you going out to the hospital tonight?’ Edward asked the shrunken woman in the disarranged dress; his mother. She looked up at him – hopefully, despairingly? He didn’t know which.

‘Are you, Edward? Are you taking me to see Sarah?’

‘No….’ He shook his head. ‘No, I’m not. Nothing can be done.’

‘Oh,’ she said simply.

‘Of course I’ll still be managing all of her affairs.’

‘Of course.’

‘Edward’s right,’ Raymond said, sounding confident again. ‘Sarah’s in the best of hands; there’s nothing we can do for her tonight.’

‘She’ll need a nightdress,’ Ellen said, but it was obvious that she did not want to go to the hospital either. She sat looking at her hands, the carpet, sparing only one
meaningless
glance for Raymond.

‘Well, then….’ Raymond told his son. ‘You have my home number. There’s nothing more we can do here. Not tonight.’

That was the moment Eric entered the room.

He was a bleak and battered fog-wraith. It took Edward a full half-minute to recognize his own brother.

When Raymond Tucker lifted a warning finger, Eric raised the gun.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ Raymond demanded. He took a menacing step forward. Eric cocked the pistol and Raymond froze in mid-stride, not liking the crazed look in his son’s eyes at all.

‘Look here!’ Edward said, attempting to intervene.

‘Shut up, Edward!’

The muzzle of the pistol briefly drifted in Edward’s
direction
. Then Eric returned his attention to his father; there was a hard focus in his eyes. Now he spoke with soft contempt.

‘How can you say “There’s nothing more to do here”, Raymond? There is so much to do.’

‘Like?’ Raymond asked suspiciously.

‘Like getting at the truth, Raymond.
Daddy
… get back a little! I mean it!’

Raymond tried to laugh, but it was mock bravado at best – more likely it was simply nerves. There is nothing funny about anyone with a gun in his hand.

‘What did you come here for?’ Edward asked.

Eric looked at him. There was an unhealthy glimmer in his eyes.

‘Why, Edward! To kill our father, of course.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Eric mocked. ‘Don’t go crazy. Live and die in your father’s shadow.’ He spoke as if reciting Commandments.

‘Eric, don’t do it,’ Ellen pleaded, but she was not begging for Raymond’s life; she had a premonition of what was to come.

‘Oh, yes, Mother. It can’t wait any longer.’

‘What can’t wait?’

‘Don’t you know, Edward? Can’t you guess?’

‘No, damn it! What?’

‘What…?’ Eric’s face became a stony copy of his father’s as his rage spread. ‘
Sarah
, you goddamned idiot!’

‘Sarah…?’ Edward spread confused hands. ‘What about her?’

‘Eric, no….’ Ellen said burying her face in her hands. They saw her shoulders begin to tremble.

‘Shut up, Mother!’

‘All right,’ Raymond said, ‘I give up! What in hell is this
all about? Maybe you can tell me when you’re sober. First you tell me that you want to kill me, then you want to talk about Sarah.’

‘It’s because of Sarah that I’m going to kill you, you bastard!’

‘What in hell are you talking about!’ Raymond asked. He was growing a little hysterical himself.

‘Tell him, Mother!’ Eric demanded.

Ellen only wagged her head heavily, remaining silent.

‘For God’s sake, Eric!’ Edward shouted. ‘Why don’t you just come out with it?’

‘Mother?’ Eric asked again. ‘Mother!’ Then with disgust, ‘God, what a faithful bitch you were.’

‘Eric….’

‘Shut up, Edward.’

‘That’s your mother.’

Eric said, ‘Yes, and that is my father. And Sarah is his daughter.’

‘Eric….’

‘And I am their son,’ Eric said, wheeling on his brother. His eyes were cold, his voice brittle. ‘But my mother made me pay. My father’s sins were visited upon me.’

Edward saw his mother curl up more tightly into herself, and he believed he was slowly beginning to understand.

Eric began to laugh crazily then abruptly broke off. The gun’s muzzle continued to drift about from one point to the other. Eric stepped nearer to his brother, reeking of alcohol, puke and madness.

‘Yes, Edward. I can see it in your eyes. You understand
now, don’t you? Raymond was the one who raped our sister.
Daddy
is the one who begat that deformed creature buried in our basement. The thing Mother and Aunt Trish
smothered
to death one night and buried without a solemn ritual or a single muffled prayer.’

‘You’re crazy!’ Raymond shouted. He stood, his fists clenched, his body bent forward aggressively.

‘Am I? Am I, Mother?’

Ellen still would not speak. There seemed to be nothing left of her but a hunched skeleton draped in a rumpled winding sheet.

‘You came home drunk as usual, Raymond. You climbed into Sarah’s bed and raped her. She couldn’t cry out, could she? The bed was bloody and you had wandered off,
stumbled
to your room and Mother cleaned up after you – tell them, Mother! And Sarah was sobbing in bitter silence and I went to her to hold her for a little while to comfort her. Mother! And you came and found me there in the morning.
Daddy
!’ Eric’s voice had become a labored panting. ‘And then, Raymond, you beat me for your own crime. And Mother…’ his voice became a soft whisper in a long tunnel, ‘just let you do it. She was that afraid of losing you. Your faithful bitch was willing to sacrifice one of her whelps, the least favorite.’

‘God, Eric!’ Edward moaned.

‘
God
, yourself, you fool!’ Eric backed against the wall beside the door. Behind him still the fog rolled and still neon burst silently against it. No one had come to their door to see what the shouting was about. The pistol had grown
heavy in Eric’s hand, and for a moment he lowered his arm, but when Edward made a slight movement, he raised it again.

‘That was the culmination, you see, Edward?’

‘The culmination of what?’

‘You stupid bastard! Are you really that blind, Edward, or did you just choose to be – like Mother? It was always Raymond –
Daddy
– wasn’t it, Mother! Raymond who had begun creeping into Sarah’s bedroom when she was only four? Helping her dress and bathe in private. Yes, Edward, Daddy is the reason behind it all, behind Sarah’s sickness. Sarah loved her Daddy, didn’t she! How could she tell anyone that he was
bad
! And so she chose to say nothing at all.’

‘That’s all a bunch of….’ Raymond began, but it was in his eyes. Not even shame, really; the look in a captured criminal’s eyes when he must lie, yet has no real hope of being believed.

‘Mother!’ Eric demanded. ‘Tell them! Tell them how you let it go on like that, how you let him live on while Sarah and I died as unborn and malformed as the baby in the cellar! Mother!’

‘All right! It’s true!’ Ellen screamed. Uncoiling and coming to her feet in one movement, she shouted at Raymond. Her eyes were penitent, but her apology was not to Eric but to his father.

‘I loved you, Raymond! I do love you.…’ A pathetic hand reached weakly for Raymond’s arm.

‘Christ,’ they heard Edward murmur as he turned away
to face the wall, leaning his forehead against the cold plaster.

Eric felt no triumph. His legs felt rubbery, the gun in his hand impossibly heavy. His mother had sunken to her knees, clinging to Raymond’s legs. Eric felt as if he might be sick again; bile coated his throat. There should have been some joy in his heart, some sense of release, but there was only infinite disgust. He had only managed to make himself feel unclean. Raymond’s eyes still challenged him, slapping at his son’s weakness. If he could free himself from Ellen’s arms, he would beat Eric again … and again. Where there should have been a swelling of triumph, Eric felt only a flood of panic. The same ancient fear! Terror. Raymond would surely beat him to death and then go on his way, Mother tagging along – if he would have her.

‘Well,’ Raymond said, ‘are you satisfied now?’

Eric’s terror had become uncontrollable. His mouth was dry. His knees quivered, his hand shook.

Raymond, stern and terrible – inexorable – took one hobbled step toward him and Eric pulled the revolver’s trigger.

The ancient gun misfired for the second time that night.

Eric howled in frustration, a keening animal wail. Raymond made a furious lurching move toward him, but came up short as Eric careened against the door jamb and ran off wildly into the night and fog, Raymond’s curses pursuing him.

In the motel room, it was incredibly still for a moment. Ellen sat on the floor, her skirt over her raised knees, her
arm flung over the bed, murmuring indistinctly. Raymond stared out the door for a long minute and then walked back to the other bed where he sat down, lacing his shoes.

Edward picked up his briefcase. He found no words at all to offer either of them; none of shock, horror, shame or censure. Not even of goodbye. He started silently for the door.

From beyond the parking lot the gunshot rang out with the roar of cataclysm.

Edward dropped his briefcase and without waiting for the others, without caring if they followed or not, he ran in the direction of the sound.

Lights were coming on again in the motel rooms; doors were being opened. A sailor in a pea coat and watch cap yelled and pointed.

‘It came from over there … I just saw a guy with a gun.’

Edward ran on, stumbling through the night. The sailor was at his heels. Already a siren was sounding in the distance.

They found Eric in the alley. The back of his head was only a fragmented memory of existence smeared across the cinder block wall, where he sat, slumped, his eyes open and oddly peaceful. The pistol lay on the asphalt beside his outflung hand.

Edward stood over his brother. The sailor was asking excited questions. Edward did not answer. He suddenly believed that he
could not
answer.

He did not speak at all as he sat against the damp
pavement
, and as the sirens and the lights drew nearer, he took
his brother’s bloody body onto his lap and stroked his ravaged head, and for the first time in his memory began softly crying in the long and inexpressibly futile night.

All the people bustle around her, the men and women in their white smocks, and there is the sound of metal
utensils
clinking into metal bowls and they make soft sounds as they bend over her, so near that she can feel their breath on her skin. The injections make her so sleepy that they all seem to be moving behind a gauzy veil. The lights are so hot and bright that she cannot look up, and somewhere on the other side of the curtain, a child is crying and a woman is praying very loud, perhaps thinking that if she prays very loud God will hear her. They put her in a funny gown that ties in the back, and one nurse who keeps saying, ‘Oh, my. Oh, my,’ under her breath, uses a little sponge and warm yellowish water to wash her scalp. Another nurse has unwrapped Mother’s hastily applied bandage and swabs her arm with green, strong-smelling stuff that stings a lot.

Another doctor comes. This one is very dark with a long name on a brass plate pinned to his white coat. He never looks at her face, but only at her arm and the only time he speaks is to ask, ‘Can you move your fingers? Can you make a fist, Sarah?’ which seem like very funny questions. His accent is very funny too. He looks like a gypsy. He takes her hand as if he were going to tell her fortune…. One nurse gives her another shot in the arm and then the dark doctor bends very low and starts sewing on the arm like an ardent
tailor. It doesn’t really hurt, but still she doesn’t want to watch him sewing her flesh together so diligently.

They brought her here through a night filled with
spinning
colored lights. A siren wailed. She was strapped down on a bed with wheels – that part was scary; she did not like being strapped down. One ambulance man who was black and very gentle kept saying, ‘You’re OK. We’ll get you to the hospital.’

Sometimes there were fragments of conversation she was not meant to hear.

‘What d’ya have?’

‘Female, twenties….’

‘Attempted suicide?’

‘Family says accident….’

‘Well, they always do, don’t they?’

‘Nasty lacerations … still, she’s lucky.’

Sarah didn’t like being the center of so much attention, and her arm had hurt so bad at first. Then they had given her the injections and everything had become almost dreamlike; it was all happening to someone else.

Later, they took her to a room where it was very silent. There were four beds in a row, separated by curtains. She was placed on one of them and a cool sheet drawn up to cover her. A little while later, a small nurse with quick movements came in and hung a bottle on an aluminum stand beside her bed. The nurse stuck a needle in the back of Sarah’s hand and taped it there. She patted Sarah’s shoulder and went away, her skirt swishing, leaving Sarah alone in the drowsy night.

Several times people came by. A man who was not a doctor stood over her. He had a small black notebook in his hand.

He asked, ‘Can you hear me, Miss Tucker? Can you tell me what happened? Why were you trying to kill yourself?’

Sarah smiled at him. Why in the world would she ever want to kill herself? As to what had happened – why, she was a silly girl and a clumsy one. Mother had told her to stay in the room and she hadn’t minded. She had gone out instead. The sidewalk was very cold, and it was very slick. She remembered that. Somehow she had slipped and fallen through the window.