By the Light of a Quarter Moon
Category C: Highly Commended (2024) Monash Short Story Writing Competition
Author: Penni Giuliani
I don’t consider myself to be good or evil, though others will vehemently disagree. Foolish, perhaps. Desperate, yes. Selfish, maybe. But evil? I, like all people am made up of shades and judging a person as either this or that, well, it’s just not possible. We are imperfect people in a life that is a series of complex decisions, and none are more complex and simple as the decision to take another person’s life.
When she finally fell limp and heavy in my arms I did not cry. I simply collapsed on top of her, my own body hopelessly folding in on itself. I breathed in a lifetime of her familiar scent – delicate, floral, like she’d walked through a field of wildflowers, a warm breeze carrying light perfumes across her skin and clothes to rest there, almost imperceptibly. I breathed deep and long while time hung stagnant in the air around us. When I awoke, the sun was long gone.
My family cried and prayed, their attempts to swat away the accusations and labels and hate and shame all but futile. They begged for an explanation, wanting to understand, needing to understand, but I couldn’t give that to them; it didn’t exist in the form of language, of words. There was no ‘this therefore that’. Some things just aren’t causal, or comprehensible.
They called it ‘premeditated’, which came with a longer sentence, though by the time any sentence is but half way served, I’ll be long gone. So, they can call it what they like. I don’t think premeditated sounds right. But yes, I had made a plan, so perhaps premeditated is the best fit. Funny, I’d never really planned much before then –that was something I leaned on my dear Evelyn for.
Jarrod is our youngest son, and my only visitor now. He presents his ID and empties his pockets twice a week for a 20 minute supervised visit, bringing in items of little interest or value to me – things like chocolate biscuits and motoring magazines, sometimes ginger beer. He also brings news of the outside.
‘How’s Jen?’ I ask him, finding it easiest, safest to stick to the rough script we’ve developed for these occasions of sitting in the shadow of overhead flickering bulbs.
How are the kids?
How’s work? He is a pharmacist in a lab, developing new drugs, conducting trials, trying to save lives and lessen the pain of those suffering. But in the end, trials and research papers proved no more use to her than a lifejacket in the outback. The poor boy could not save his own mother.
He goes along with it, answering my automated questions with brief, predictable responses, barely needing to pause to consider. His voice lacks the modulation it used to carry into our conversations – the animation, the quickening as he’d share his latest results and the potential they had for a vulnerable part of the population; or the car show he’d been to on the weekend up in the hills, surrounded by pristine engines and superb paint jobs. I suppose concrete boxes and charges of murder aren’t conducive to speech that rises and falls as though on a carnival ride.
‘Jen’s fine, busy with the kids and her study,’ he says. ‘The kids are good too.’ He pauses, drops his gaze into his lap where his fingers are tangled and writhing. I brace myself for what’s next. ‘They miss you, Dad. They miss their Grandpa.’
I miss them too. And you, dear boy.
Parents aren’t meant to have favourites, yet we all do and Jarrod was Evelyn’s favourite. Not the most obedient - that was his older sister, Claire; nor the cleverest – that was his older brother, James. No, she was most fond of him for the way he took time to really think, to weigh things up, consider how the cards might fall. And for the way he found something in every person and every situation to appreciate and learn from. In that way, he had maturity well beyond his years and a heart perhaps two sizes too big. And so, it was no surprise that it was Jarrod who remained steadfastly present in our lives as life, itself, drained out of us.
‘And you, Dad?’ He clears his throat and takes a sip from the chewed plastic straw of his borrowed water bottle with its spaceship and planets wrapped around it. ‘How are you?’
It had been fascinating to observe the change in frequency and tone of this most common question asked of me over the past six years. In the early days there was authenticity in it and the question was often followed up by ‘and is there anything I can do to help?’ As time passed and the ugliness of it all began to emerge, ‘how are you?’ was dripping in reluctance, maybe even fear that I might actually request help and then what would they do? They’d really only said it to be polite.
‘Dad?’
‘Good, fine.’ I say, rubbing a hand across my brow, trying to smooth out the lines that had deepened into crevices in recent months.
‘You look thin,’ he says. ‘You eating the food in here? Do they feed you alright? Can I bring anything in for you?’ It’s another element of our script, one that he’s forgotten to delete on this occasion, it no longer having any relevance.
But I recite a variation of my usual line. ‘The food’s fine, Jarrod. Potatoes, carrots, peas, porridge, tinned fruit... all the delicacies.’ It could well have been caviar and French Champagne, such was my appetite. For what purpose do appetite and hunger serve when survival is not on the agenda?
Jarrod glances at the white plastic clock hanging lopsided on the far wall. He leans in closer, placing a hand on mine, and whispers about rumballs, ensuring that I eat them all and goodbye and I love you and the room heaves, wetness gathering under my chin. The nearest guard clears his throat in warning and Jarrod withdraws his hand and I am looking into his eyes and seeing her in the hazel of his outer iris and in his small, quivering chin. I am seeing her in my arms, her eyes no longer sparkling, jaw no longer clenched with unarticulated, unbearable pain.
I pull him in to me. ‘Thank you.’
That night, as I sit with my back against the cold, rough concrete wall with only a quarter moon for light, I eat that entire container of rumballs, washing down the powdery bitterness with some flat ginger beer. It isn’t long before my eyelids and limbs grow heavy as lead, as he’d told me they would. No thoughts remain now. No decisions to make, nor questions to answer or judgement to bear. There is no doubt or fear or shame. No pain or struggle. Just quiet.
I lay my head back against the thin pillow and there she is, my Evelyn, arms open wide to me, the light of a new day upon her.