Free The Almost Moon by Alice Sebold

lift that first layer lightly away from what lay beneath. Here were brandy balls from my Tennessee grandmother's recipe. Or pecan meringues that smelled of darkbrown sugar. Baking together was something we did until the end, even though, for the sake of my figure and my mother's health, I routinely had to cycle through the freezer and dispose of what we'd made, pretending to my mother that I was giving the contents of the tins to the neighbors whom she still confusedly remembered living in the area.
    I held a meringue and crumbled it in my hand. I watched the The Almost Moon
    light-tan dust and minced nuts fall to the ground. Always the admonition to use a plate, not to gobble like a turkey, to measure the heft and weight and imagine it applied to my waist.
    The first time I had made myself sick as a child—purposely sick—was the year I turned eight. My weapon of choice was fudge.
    I had gone into the kitchen and methodically, like a soldier taking bullets in the gut, eaten a whole baking sheet of butterscotch fudge. I was ill for two days, and she was furious, but it had made my father laugh. He had come home and hung up his jacket on the coatrack inside the door; placed his hat, on which he often changed the small clipped feather that was tucked inside the band, on the front table; and turned toward the dining room.
    "What are you doing there all alone?" he asked.
    I had been forced to sit at the table, though all I wanted to do was lie down and moan.
    "She's being punished," my mother had said, as she walked briskly over to him and took his briefcase from his hand. "I made butterscotch fudge, and she ate it all."
    A particular intimacy of my father's came when he removed his glasses. The metal-and-plastic frames bit into his nose on either side, and he would take them off when he walked in the house. For thirty minutes he was as blind as a bat, but he didn't need accuracy, as this was the half hour before dinner reserved for a drink.
    He had done this that day, as usual, but he had also laughed, as he usually did not, and it had come from someplace deep inside him. During this, he had grabbed my mother and kissed her hard on the cheek and then leaned down and kissed me on the forehead through my wispy bangs.
    Working at the Pickering Water Treatment Plant, he measured water levels and analyzed the content of the local reservoirs. He traveled to surrounding cities and all the way to Erie to do the same.
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    "It's a little like you sat down and decided to eat a baking sheet full of sediment," he said. "Anyone would be ill from that."
    I had asked him to stay at the table with me, to talk about water, about how each droplet under a microscope differed from another. His eyes were unfocused without his glasses, and I wondered how blind he was and what he saw when he looked at me.
    I walked up the basement stairs and into the kitchen, the braid swinging from my fist. I pulled open the drawer near the phone, which held refolded tinfoil and salvaged twist ties, and found a gallon-size Ziploc freezer bag. I tucked the braid inside, sealed it, and scanned the kitchen. My mother's clothes lay balled up in moist clumps along the floor.
    When I was three years old, I had come into the kitchen and found my mother sitting on the floor, with her legs jutting out in front of her. I could see her underwear, which I had never seen before. She was staring at a white spill of flour at her feet.
    "Mom made a boo-boo," I said.
    She stood up and grabbed the five-pound sack of flour from the counter, hugging it to her chest. She scooped her hand into it and let the contents fall from her fingers like snow.
    I shrieked in delight and ran to her. She responded by moving away just as I reached out for her. She threw more flour from the sack, this time in wide arcs across the kitchen. I chased her in spinning circles, around and around, shrieking louder and gulping back my own laughter.
    The chase went on until I stumbled and