The Moon Around Sarah (11 page)

She hurried back for her luggage cases, slipping into a black jacket that matched her skirt en route. Don picked up one of the suitcases. Beyond the open kitchen door, he could see the taxi driver, arms folded, standing beside the open trunk of his cab.

Trish gestured, ‘That’s the only door to the house that’s been left open. I have to lock it up. I’d better get Sarah now.’

But Sarah had already returned. She stood silently in the shadows, watching. Trish saw her and started on her way out of the door. Don followed her, handing the suitcase he held to the driver who waited impatiently.

Trish gave him further instructions, ‘Pull the door shut on your way out. It’ll latch.’

The cabbie put the suitcases into the trunk compartment and closed the lid.

‘Put the dog outside. You – you leave here right now before someone else comes by and finds you alone with Sarah. Do you understand me? Take her back to town. I gave you Dennison’s address, didn’t I?’

‘Yes. I’ll take care of her,’ Don answered and Trish studied his face for a moment, her own expression
softening
.

‘Yes. I believe you will…’

The taxi driver had gotten back in behind the wheel and he started the engine.

‘You know, Mr March,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I almost….’ The cabbie gunned the engine. ‘I’ve got to go.’

Trish lowered herself heavily into the rear seat of the taxi and Don closed the door for her. Through the open window, Trish said in parting, ‘Stay away from Raymond Tucker whatever you do. You don’t know him, what he’s capable of. I do.’

And then the taxi was rolling away through the dense shadows the overhanging oak trees cast against the earth of
the driveway. Don heard Trish say something loudly about the bus station to the driver. Then the red tail-lights of the cab were swallowed by the distance and there was only dust sifting slowly through the air. Aunt Trish was gone.

Don turned to walk slowly back toward the house where Sarah, her hands loosely clasped before her, watched and waited and wondered. Don approached her in a mental daze. What in hell was he supposed to do? The girl now was completely alone in the world.

Sarah’s smile was different now in a way he couldn’t define. More ingenuous, perhaps, more distant after her visit to the basement. But her face, lit by the fading sunset, was radiant. She was so unconsciously beautiful that Don’s heart ached. He stepped onto the sagging porch.

‘You’d better go and get one of your own coats, or a heavy sweater. Hurry. We have to leave right away.’ In response to the question in her eyes, he said, ‘Well, we still haven’t found your mother after all of this, have we? We have to keep looking.’

Sarah went into the house. He saw her ascending a dark and narrow staircase. Poppsy had come out to sniff at Don again, re-examining this new human.

She was a little while in returning. Don had a nearly irresistible impulse to go down into the basement while she was gone, but it would be a violation of Sarah’s sanctum, of her private world, or so he saw it. Instead, he waited patiently for her return, watching the last distant glow of the sunset on the sea as it returned to night darkness, his ears alert for the sound of an approaching car.

‘Ready?’

Sarah had returned, wearing a hooded green cotton-coat with frog buttons which matched her dress not at all. Her manner had changed again; her smile was broad and free. She was off on another great adventure. She crouched to stroke Poppsy and kiss the dog’s broad, shaggy head.

‘Poppsy will be all right,’ Don assured her. ‘She’s had her food and there’s water for her.’ He closed the kitchen door, checked it to make sure it had latched, and returned to the old yellow and white station wagon with Sarah.

‘I’ll stop at a telephone booth and try calling the lawyer’s office. It’s late, but he might still be in. I don’t know where else to start looking now.’

If the rather confusing day troubled Sarah now, she showed no signs of it. She slipped trustingly into the front seat beside Don, waved goodbye to Poppsy and leaned back as Don started the station wagon and began driving slowly back toward town in the purple evening.

‘I give up. That’s enough of this shit!’ he told the woman with him. Raymond Tucker rounded the corner and they seated themselves on a wooden bench in front of a
drugstore
. His feet were killing him, Sarah was nowhere to be found and there was no sign of the boys. They still hadn’t finished executing the contracts for the sale of the
property
– Raymond’s only reason for returning to this miserable town in the first place – and it was growing dark. Just beyond the opposite curb, the beach began. People with umbrellas and coolers, towels and blankets
were straggling home against the dull violet of the twilight sky. Raymond stared toward the sea, his jaw clenched tightly.

Ellen, the woman beside him, rested with her head hanging limply like a heavy rose past its prime. She was beyond weariness in some hell where all the demons
strangled
and scratched and pounded on her skull. Her head throbbed like some heavy, soundless church bell. The pills the doctor had given her were doing no good; she needed a handful of aspirins washed down with a pint of bourbon. That would cure the shakes, ease the pain and erase her weariness at once.

She looked at Raymond’s eerily lit sundown face. His profile was still strong, and he was still a handsome man, she reflected. His hand rested beside hers on the bench and her index finger curled and lifted like an inchworm, but she dared not reach out and touch him.

‘Let’s go,’ Raymond said abruptly. ‘We’ve go to get those god damned papers signed.’

‘But Sarah.…’

‘
Now
you’re worried about Sarah?’ Raymond demanded sarcastically, and Ellen shrank away from him.

They heard a shout, and a passing cab swung to the curb with a shriek of brakes. Edward leaped from the back seat of the taxi, his hair tousled, his suit crumpled and
unbuttoned
.

‘Here you are!’ he said breathlessly. ‘I’ve been looking everywhere!’

‘Where’s Eric?’

‘I don’t know. Still looking for Sarah, I suppose. I have Eric’s signatures, but now Sarah is gone again.’ He ran a harried hand through his hair. How had this simple plan become so undone?

‘What do you mean
again
?’ Raymond demanded, rising to face his son.

‘What?’ Edward was taken briefly aback.

‘You said Sarah was missing again. What did you mean?’

‘Oh. Well, she was at some photographer’s place, but she was gone before Eric and I got there.’

‘What photographer?’ Raymond roared. People on the pavement turned their heads to look at him.

‘I don’t know…’ Edward said. ‘Some guy named March. He told us that he’d found Sarah sitting in the rain and took her home.’

‘Where is
he
now?’ Raymond demanded.

Edward shrugged feebly, ‘I don’t know. I just swung by his place a few minutes ago, checking. He’s gone now, too.’

‘Jesus Christ!’ Raymond swore softly. ‘I thought at least one of my kids was born with some brains.’

‘What did you want me to do?’ Edward asked with some heat. ‘Sarah wasn’t there! I’ve spent most of the day looking for her and trying to track
you
two down.’

‘We have to find her,’ Ellen said. A touch of hysteria wavered through her voice. ‘Maybe we should split up.…’

‘You’re not splitting up from anyone,’ Raymond said. ‘I don’t have time to go out searching through any more bars or any more hospitals. Send your cab off, Edward. I’ll go
back and get the Buick. Call the cops while I’m gone, report Sarah missing. Have them meet us at Dennison’s.’

‘All right, sure.’ It seemed the best way. Call the police – no, call Dennison first and tell him that the three of them were on their way and the contracts would definitely be signed by all parties today.

Raymond Tucker strode back up the street, tall and angular. People gave way at his approach. Edward returned to the cab, leaned to shove a few bills through the window to the driver, and entered the drugstore, looking for a
telephone
. Ellen, who had been wistfully studying a corner bar’s enticing neon summons, followed her son.

Ellen looked aimlessly through the racks of greeting cards in the drugstore. She could see Edward in the
old-fashioned
wooden telephone booth, speaking to someone. Soundlessly behind the glass, his lips moved, his expression tightened and then appeared relieved again. He fished in his pockets for change and dialed another number, looking up briefly toward his mother.

‘May I help you?’ a man in a blue shirt asked Ellen. He wore a name tag: ‘Karl.’

‘I need some aspirin. Or something more powerful,’ she said. The man glanced at her forehead and nodded with understanding. He led her to the headache remedies. Ellen grabbed a bottle of extra-strength pills, paid for them and went to the front door. Beyond the glass, a last strand of vermilion far out near the horizon was all that remained of a long day.

Edward hurried up to her, trying vainly to smooth down
the wrinkles in his suit jacket. He took her arm at the elbow and they went outside. The Roadmaster was parked at the curb, its parking lamps on. Raymond sat behind the steering wheel, his agitated fingers tapping on it. They climbed in, Edward in front, Ellen in the rear. She was struggling to open the pill bottle, willing to swallow the tablets dry if they would give her any relief. Her head ached savagely.

‘Well?’ Raymond demanded, pulling out into traffic. The headlights came on, their beams flat and bone white against the dark, still damp asphalt.

‘Dennison wasn’t in his office,’ Edward told him, wincing mentally.

Predictably, Raymond erupted.

‘What?’ He responded furiously. He made a dangerously sharp turn to the right. The Roadmaster swayed
precariously
, its tires chirping.

‘Calm down,’ Edward said, bracing himself against the dashboard, ‘I reached Dennison at home. He was hardly pleased with us, but there’s still a large fee contingent upon completing the deal. He promised to meet us back at his office at seven.’

‘Seven?’ Raymond glanced at his gold watch. ‘Another hour.’

‘That’s not long,’ Edward said. ‘Just so we all stick together. Please?’ He glanced at his mother.

Ellen’s throat was clogged with the raw taste of
chewed-up
headache pills. She regretted her decision to try taking them without water. She was afraid to ask Raymond to stop
somewhere so that she could get something to drink. There was no telling what would set him off, as she knew from living with him for all those years. Best to be quiet; a quiet little mouse. She leaned her head back, hoping the medicine would work. The pain still didn’t seem to be subsiding. She reached up absently to straighten her hat before she remembered she had lost it. Where…? Oh, yes. She recalled seeing it floating in a toilet bowl with strings of her vomit festooned around it. The memory was vivid enough to nearly make her sick again. That and the dozen aspirins which were now reaching her stomach….

‘What about the cops?’ Raymond asked, slowing to make a turn onto a road leading up a hill none of them recognized in the darkness. ‘You did remember to call them, didn’t you?’ he glanced at Edward.

‘Yes, Raymond!’ Edward said tiredly. ‘The sheriff’s department. They promised to send someone over to March’s place immediately. The deputy on the telephone said we could either meet a detective there or come into the station to file a missing person’s report.’

‘We don’t have time to go to the station right now,’ Raymond said.

‘You’re right. However, maybe we should go by March’s studio,’ Edward suggested. ‘It’s not far from here; it wouldn’t take long. If Sarah happens to be there, we can pick her up. If she isn’t, we can tell the detective what we know.’

‘We can’t miss an appointment with Dennison again,’ Raymond said. Why was everything so damned
complicated
?
A few small matters to take care of. Simple little tasks, and yet nothing at all was getting done. It was this town; this crappy little town and his crappy little family.

‘Edward said it wouldn’t take us long to swing by the photographer’s studio,’ Ellen said weakly. Raymond ignored her.

‘It’s practically on our way,’ Edward told his father.

‘All right,’ Raymond grumbled, ‘you do remember where it is?’

‘Of course.’

‘I hope Sarah is still there. She probably is, don’t you think, Raymond?’ Ellen said, gripping the back of his seat.

‘We’ll see,’ he said, cranking a U-turn in the middle of the block. ‘I hope she is. I deeply hope she is.’ Then, miracle of all miracles, all of this could finally be settled today. What a wonderful, glorious, shitty, day it had been. He drove on slowly, steadily, deep in thought. His own program had coalesced again. If they did find Sarah, his simple plan for the rest of the night was in place:

Sign the papers. Get rid of Ellen and the boys. Take his check, and sack out in a motel. Maybe in celebration get a little drunk himself. Not drunk like he used to get in the old days. Blackouts, memory loss; wake up with a headache like thousands of tiny men with tiny sledge hammers beating against his skull, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth, every cell in his body dehydrated from alcohol. In those days he put down a fifth of liquor a day, easy. Straight bourbon. A few beers. Then he’d come to with his wallet empty and bruises on his face, joints
aching from bar room brawls … no, he didn’t want to get drunk like that ever again. He just wanted a little
celebration
. Lock himself up in a motel room, watch TV. Then, come morning, blow this decaying-fish-smelling town for good and all….

‘There it is,’ Edward said, pointing at a side street. ‘Wait – Raymond, take the alley. I see a sheriff’s car in back of the place.’

As they pulled into the alley, their headlights
illuminated
a middle-aged, middle-sized cop with a paunch bulging against his brown uniform shirt, falling over his belt buckle. He was talking to a big bearded-guy in a checked flannel-shirt. An open garage stood behind them. Both men looked into the glare of the Buick’s headlights and then turned their eyes away defensively.