Moonbog (37 page)

Sylvia sat on the couch. Her hands moved expertly as she knitted the sleeves to a sweater, but she kept her eyes mostly on her husband. The TV was on low volume, and she waited for Virgil to break the silence. After more than a half an hour, she decided to start the conversation.

“Anything on your mind you want to talk about?” he said soothingly.

Shaw sighed deeply. Remembering the cup of coffee, he took a sip and wrinkled his nose.

“I know you’ve got a lot on your mind,” Sylvia said.

Shaw forced a smile, looked at her, and nodded. “Umm.”

Sylvia’s knitting needles continued their steady clicking, almost as if they were moving by themselves while her attention was elsewhere.

“You’re pretty much up against a stone wall with those . . . incidents with the children.” She found she couldn’t quite bring herself to say the word
murders
.

Shaw sighed again and shook his head. “That ain’t all.”

Suddenly, realization dawned on Sylvia. She put her knitting down, and reached over to her husband. “Sidney again?” she asked.

Shaw’s eyes flashed at her and he nodded. “Yeah, Sidney again.” Then he fell silent.

“What did he say?”

Shaw turned his eyes again to the TV, but she could tell that he wasn’t watching, that he was using it as a blank to help him focus his twisting thoughts.

After a moment, he looked back at his wife, took a deep breath, and said, “He called just as I was leaving the office today. . . .”

“And?”

“And he said that at the next town meeting, he was going to ask the selectmen for a vote of no-confidence to ask for my resignation.”

“Hummm.” She picked up her knitting again, but the pace of her knitting was now much slower. “When is the next meeting?”

Shaw sighed. “Two weeks from yesterday,” he said wearily.

“Well, then,” Sylvia responded brightly, “that gives you quite a bit of time to . . . to find a solution.”

Shaw didn’t answer.

“Or if you don’t think you want to stay with the job, it gives you plenty of time to write your resignation.

Shaw grunted and then stood up quickly. He held his hand out to his wife, who put her knitting back down and stood up beside him. Her arms snaked around his body and pulled him closely to her.

He smiled down at her upturned face. “You think that’s what I should do?” he asked earnestly.

“I’d say it’s your decision,” she answered.

“I’m so tired and . . . and I’m just not sure anymore.”

She broke away from his hug, went over and clicked off the TV. “I know you, and I know you can get to the bottom of it. You’ve got a lot of help behind you from the state; you don’t have to carry it all by yourself.”

“Sometimes it feels it, though,” he said.

“I know,” Sylvia answered. “Come on, let’s go to bed early. You need the extra rest if you’re getting up early again tomorrow.”

X

“W
hat’s it like when you’re dead, Mom?” Georgie asked once he was safely tucked in under his covers.

Leah stood beside the bed, smiling down at her youngest son. His question had frozen the smile on her face. “Well. . . .”

She looked at him, head resting comfortably in a puff of white pillow, face scrubbed clean, teeth brushed and pearly, and death seemed so far removed from his childish innocence. She shivered, feeling an imaginary touch from a cold hand behind her.

“Well . . .” she said again, trying to tackle the subject. She looked deeply into his eyes and saw a dark, nameless childhood fear that unsettled her as it made her consider that even as an adult—a parent, she still had no reassuring answers.

“It’s. . . it’s when you leave your friends and family here on earth and . . . and go to live with God.” She scruffed his hair, then drew her hand down to stroke his cheek.

“Is it sorta’ like goin’ to sleep?” he asked brightly. His mouth widened into a grin, happy with his comparison, but his eyes still held the dark fear like slime deep in a pond.

“No. No. It’s nothing like going to sleep,” she answered quickly. She remembered not so long ago giving that answer to Sammy, when he had first come in contact with death. The family cat had died, and Leah had told him that Muffin was just asleep and couldn’t wake up. He had spent the next three months too frightened to go to sleep because the same thing might happen to him—he might not be able to wake up! He had stayed sitting in his bed at night, arms crossed over his chest, pillow propped against the wall and the light on, until he finally keeled over from exhaustion. Sometimes it would be so late that Leah would have been asleep for hours, so he didn’t get tucked in cozily.

“You just tuck in and go to sleep,” she whispered to Georgie. She leaned down and gave him a kiss on the forehead. Georgie smiled, snuggled into his covers and closed his eyes.

Good
, Leah thought,
sleep is the best release
. As her mind dwelled on Georgie’s questions and the events in town that had ignited them, she wondered how sound her own sleep would be. She started to leave the boys’ room quietly.

“Mom?” Sammy called softly. Leah was standing in the doorway, about to snap off the light.

“Yeah?” she whispered. “What is it, hon’?”

“Can you com’ere a minute?”

She moved over to Sammy’s bed and sat down on the space he made for her by shifting up against the wall. She looked down at Sammy and her heart almost broke. His eyes were bloodshot, and his face was pale and drawn; he looked so
old
to her.

“What is it?” she cooed.

Sammy worked his mouth, forming words that never quite made it out. His eyes welled with tears but he fought them back, determined that he wouldn’t cry in front of his mother.

“Why. . . why,” he began, his lower lip trembling, “why’d that have to happen to Jeffy?” he finally managed to say before his voice broke. A single tear spilled over, carved a track down his cheek, and was absorbed by the pillow.

Leah shook her head sadly. “Honey, you’re getting to be a big boy now, and I have to give you a ‘big boy’ answer. I just don’t know. It didn’t
have
to happen Jeffy, but it
did
. It’s just . . . just one of those things you have to accept and try to deal with. It’s painful, but . . . but sometimes—a lot of times—things happen that just don’t make sense.”

Sammy looked at her, his eyes glazed. “Then it wasn’t like Jeffy had done something wrong and was punished for it, was it? Like you used to tell us that the boogeyman’d get us if we didn’t behave.”

Leah shook her head. “No, hon’, nothing like that, it’s just that—”

She stopped short and jumped when she heard the door downstairs open and slam shut. She stared at the lighted hallway and listened to the sound of heavy footsteps downstairs.

“It must be your father, or else Muggins would have barked,” she said, more to herself than to Sammy.

“I’m home,” she heard Les call from the bottom of the stairwell. His voice slurred, and she knew he had been drinking.

“I’ll be right down,” she answered, “I’m just tucking the boys in.” Georgie stirred in his bed but didn’t wake up. Sammy’s gaze was still fixed on his mother’s face as he groped for some “big boy” understanding.

Leah looked back at her son and forced a smile.

“But how could anyone
do
something like that?” he asked in a pained voice. His face twisted with emotions he could neither express nor understand.

She said nothing, but sat there with her hand resting on her son’s shoulder. Then, with a start, she realized that downstairs Les was dialing the telephone. She glanced at the clock on the boys’ dresser and saw that it was past nine-thirty.

Who could Les be calling at this hour?
she wondered. She cocked her ears, trying to hear what he was saying.

“Mom?”

She held her forefinger to her lips. All she could hear from downstairs was an indistinguishable buzz.

“Just a sec,” she said, getting up and going to the head of the stairs. She almost called down to Les, but something made her stop and listen breathlessly. Les was speaking softly, and at first she couldn’t make out what he said. Then, with sudden intensity, the voice downstairs said, “If you do, old man, I’ll cut your fuckin’ balls off!”

Leah shivered. She was suddenly glad that she hadn’t called down to Les and that he didn’t know she heard him on the phone. She considered, for a moment, picking up the phone in their bedroom and listening but, afraid the click on the line would give her away, she started cautiously down the stairs. The stairs creaked under her weight. Les was still talking, but he had lowered his voice again and Leah could not make out the words. His tone was still threatening.

“Mom?” Sammy called from his room.

Leah jumped and turned around, afraid of discovery. “Sshhh,” she hissed sharply through her teeth, “I’ll be right there.”

“What’re you doing?”

“I’ll be right there!” she repeated angrily. “Stay in bed.”

Halfway down the stairs, she began to make out some of what Les was saying. She heard the word, “police,” and then Les snapped, “You’ve got that, you old fucker?”

She heard him replace the phone just as footsteps sounded behind her. She spun around and saw Sammy, looking down at her from halfway down the stairs. She waved him back silently, feeling panic rise in her stomach as she heard Les walk from the kitchen into the living room.

“Mom?” Sammy said.

“Ssshhh!”

“Christ!” Les shouted. “Who turned out all the fucking lights?” He sounded drunker than usual. Leah listened to him stumbling around in the dark downstairs, bumping into furniture. She felt relieved when she heard him sit down heavily on the couch. He switched on the light on the end table, and the light shone out into the hallway.

Leah turned to go back up with Sammy, who still waited for her patiently at the top of the stairs.

“What’s with Dad?” Sammy asked, an edge of nervousness in his voice.

“Just get up there into bed, young man,” Leah whispered, hoping Les wouldn’t hear them on the stairway.

“Hey! What the hell’s goin’ on up there?” Les bellowed. Leah felt a prickle of tension and glanced nervously downstairs.

“Leah! What the fuck’s goin’ on?” His voice slurred the words.
He’s as drunk as a skunk
, Leah thought.
That was trouble enough, but who would he be calling at nine-thirty at night and talking like that?

“I’ll be right down,” she called, hurrying up the stairs. She heard the squeaking of the couch springs as Les heaved himself up and walked into the hallway. Leah spun Sammy around and pointed him in the right direction.

Maybe he had a fight with one of his drinking buddies
, she thought. That was very possible. Les had been known to break up many a poker game because of his violent temper. But if that was the case, why would he sound so threatening, even mentioning the police?

She walked quickly into the boys’ bedroom, hoping that if Les was at the foot of the stairs, he hadn’t seen her.
If he had seen her
, she thought,
he might realize that she had heard him on the phone; and if he knew or even suspected that she had heard him on the phone
—Leah stopped thinking along those lines, not liking where they led.

“I asked you, what the fuck is going on up there?” Les shouted from downstairs. He punctuated his question with a loud, rumbling belch.

“Don’t yell, Les, you’ll wake up Georgie. I told you, I’m tucking the boys in and I’ll be right down.” She noticed that her voice was wound tight.

Sammy was crawling back into bed, and Leah pulled the blankets up to his chin. It hurt her deeply to see pain and confusion still in his eyes. She needed a determined effort to appear calm so he wouldn’t pick up on her apprehension and add it to his.

“Everything’ll be all right, hon’,” she said soothingly. “You just try and get some sleep and . . . and don’t think about Jeffy. Everything will be all right.”

“No it won’t!” Sammy said, almost shouting to relieve his pent-up tension. Tears ran freely down his face. “Nothin’ll ever be all right! Never! Jeffy’s . . . Jeffy’s. . . .” His voice broke off, and he turned his face into his pillow to muffle his braying sobs.

Leah patted him on the back, then turned and walked to the door. She stood there for a moment leaning on the door jamb, listening to her son’s crying. She felt pity for him and anger at herself because she felt that there really was nothing she could say or do to ease his mind.

Maybe this means he’s really growing up, she thought, because my answers won’t help him. He has to come up with his own.

From downstairs she heard a loud clatter followed by a terrific crash. She heard Les grunt and then utter a mumbled curse as he picked up whatever it was he had knocked over.

She let her gaze wander from Sammy’s huddled form to the stairwell. She knew there were questions she had to ask Les, but the more she tossed those questions around in her mind, the more they seemed to grow until they were, like Sammy’s childish inability to understand death, too big for her to form into words.