Swimming in the Moon by Pamela Schoenewaldt

Author:Pamela Schoenewaldt
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780062202246
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-02T12:00:00+00:00

“She’s in your old room. It happened to be empty,” said Roseanne when I came home. The stairway rose like the Himalayas before me. She rested her hand on my shoulder. “Would you like to rest before you see her?”

I shook my head. “How did she get here?”

“A man brought her from Georgia in handcuffs.” I leaned against the stairwell. “He had orders not to remove them until she was out of his care. He wanted five dollars.”

“I’ll pay you back. When she came, how was she?”

“She didn’t know me. I sent for Donato and we managed to get her up to the room.”

“She was violent?”

“At first, yes. Stomping, throwing things, pounding walls. Then nothing for hours. She hasn’t eaten. We put a lock on the door from the outside.”

“Like a prison?”

“Lucia, she was wild! Screaming. Anybody else would have—”

“I know.” Anybody else would have called the police and had such a lunatic taken away. I had walked out of my old world and into a new one in which my mother was caged like an animal. The ground rocked beneath me. “Give me the key, please.”

To mount the looming stairs, I summoned the acrobats’ command: “Alley-oop.” It beat in my head: Alley-oop. Alley-oop. Alley-oop. But acrobats know where to put their feet, where to bend, and where to find a hand to steady them. I knew nothing about lunacy. Whatever I expected when I unlocked the door, it wasn’t this: someone once my mother sitting in the burgundy coat buttoned high despite the late-summer heat. The once-glorious hair hung tangled along her ashen face. All the bedclothes, every object that belonged on shelves, walls, in the closet or drawers lay crumpled and stomped on the floor. She didn’t lift her eyes or in any way note that I had entered.

Here was the Naples Nightingale, stripped of feathers, an angel fallen and crushed. No, she wasn’t here. Here was a shell of the slender beauty who’d floated with me on warm waves in moonlight. The wild disorder surrounding her inhuman stillness churned up nausea so intense that I turned, ran, and retched into the toilet.

I couldn’t go back to my room; that was impossible.

No, think of the warriors of Troy, the heroes and great lovers. Of what possible use was my college reading if not to shore up the courage to join the battle that called me? I made myself return, close the door, and lay a cautious hand on her shoulder. “Mamma, it’s Lucia, your daughter. Let me bring you something to eat.” No response. I touched her horribly tangled hair. “Or brush—”

Her balled fist, whipping full and hard into my stomach, slammed me into the wall. When I struggled to my feet she was a statue again, as if I’d conjured the blow. Panting, I realized my folly. I needed a doctor, a guide and interpreter of the mind’s underworld, the inferno my mother had entered. I left the room, locking the door behind me. Now I was her jailer.

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