Envious Moon (16 page)

I
fried the steaks in a cast-iron pan and pretty much smoked out the whole kitchen. I ran around opening windows until it cleared out some. We ate the steaks with salt and pepper in front of the fire. Hannah wore only a tank top and her underwear. Her skin was flushed pink from the hot bath and her hair was still damp and stuck to her head. She was ravenous. I watched her eat her steak and when she was done she looked up at me with her big green eyes and in that look, I saw the little girl she once was. The mask of the years fell away and she was eight or nine, wanting to leave the dinner table. My heart went out to her. She seemed so vulnerable.

We slept that night in the master bedroom. We had a giant sleigh bed and with the windows open the cool mountain air came in. The comforter was down and soft and underneath it we locked our warm legs together. At one point I woke full of need and we made love silently and slowly, and afterward I kept my arms wrapped so tightly around Hannah that with my open mouth against her bare back I could taste the salt from her sweat.

In the morning we drove through bright sunshine out of
the new complex and down to the village to a general store and bought cigarettes and coffee, bread, eggs, and some loose potatoes. We didn't leave the house for three days. We laid around with the curtains drawn and played games. We played marathon games of Monopoly, and Hannah always won. She seemed to get the big properties right away and she always killed me. We drank the beer and the rest of the champagne. We ate scrambled eggs and toast for breakfast and every day I thawed something different from the freezer. Steaks, chicken, lamb chops. We took long baths together in the big tub, my arms wrapped under her arms, her hair in my face. We made love on the couch, on the living room floor, in the bathroom.

It was a lovely time, and I didn't want it to end.

We drank a lot of beer one night and when Hannah drank she often became sullen. This time she became almost euphoric, and at one point she stood and jumped onto the leather couch, and facing toward the fireplace, she began to dance. There was no music but it did not seem to matter. Her arms moved from her sides up to her hair. She would mess up her hair so that it streamed in front of her face, and she shook her slender hips, and she dipped her arms down to her toes and then up to the ceiling. She jumped up and down and she spun around. I sat cross-legged on the floor and I watched her. She moved with abandon. She moved without fear. I had wanted nothing more than to watch her let go, really let go, and now that she was, it was almost too much for me to handle. She danced to the beat in her head. She danced until she could not anymore. Then she ripped off her shirt and stood in front of me bare-breasted, her hair falling down and obscuring her eyes, her arms defiantly at her sides.

And in the middle of the night, we fought.

Hannah had been asleep for an hour or so but it wouldn't come for me. I lay next to her and I watched the pale moonlight stream through those high windows and I listened to her breath. I thought about home, about Galilee, and the cool air reminded me of the season, and that there were not many trips left for the swordfish fleet. If my life had not been turned upside down, I might have been on the North Atlantic that very moment, maybe on watch under the stars. Or maybe I would be sleeping on my bunk below, exhausted enough from a hard day's work to ignore the peaks and valleys of the ocean that we moved through. And I guess I knew then that I had given up a lot to chase this girl. And it's not that I had regrets, because I didn't. I made the decisions I made because they were the only decisions to make, and when I looked over at her sleeping face, I understood how right it was. Still, lying there in the dark mountains of Vermont, I longed for the life I had always had. For the simple clarity of the sea.

Next to me Hannah started to thrash around a little, dreaming. She was having a nightmare. I slid next to her and I reached for her hair and ran my hand through it.

“Hey,” I said. “It's okay. Wake up. It's okay.”

I meant to bring her to slowly, but I startled her. Her eyes full of fear and then she slapped me. Hard, right across the face.

“What the fuck?” I said.

“You scared me.”

I wiped at my face. “You didn't have to hit me.”

She rubbed her eyes and she looked away from me. She didn't say anything. I said, “Jesus, you could say you're sorry.”

Hannah rolled over on her side. She said, “I want to go home.”

And perhaps it was because while she slept I had been think
ing my own thoughts of home, and of the sacrifices I had made for the two of us, that this angered me. I grabbed her roughly and tried to turn her back over, to face me. She resisted and I said, “Come here, look at me.”

“I'm tired of looking at you,” she said.

I got on top of her then, flipped her onto her back. She squirmed underneath me, and I used my knees to pin her arms down. “Look at me,” I said, but she wouldn't. Her eyes roamed to the left and right but never up, never up at my face.

“You're hurting me,” she said.

I gazed into her eyes then, those green eyes, and I saw the pain in them, the fear, and I had never wanted to frighten her and now I was and I hated myself for it. I lifted my knees off her arms. “I'm sorry,” I said.

“Get off me,” she said.

I moved off her and onto my back. We were side by side looking up at the wooden ceiling. “I didn't mean anything,” I said.

“I just want to sleep,” she said.

“You shouldn't have hit me,” I said.

“You shouldn't have woken me like that. What was I supposed to do?”

“I don't want to fight,” I said.

“Then let me sleep,” she said. “Please? I just want to sleep.”

“Okay,” I said softly.

Hannah rolled back away from me. Outside I heard the wind moving across the mountains. There was a lot more I wanted to say. We had never had a fight before, not a real one, not like this. I didn't want anything to change between us. There was so much out in the world, beyond that bedroom, that was conspiring around the clock to keep us apart.

T
he thing that frustrates me the most, Anthony,” Dr. Mitchell said to me last week, “is that we have never been close to a breakthrough. Do you know what I mean by a breakthrough?”

We were sitting in his office. Outside the big windows a cool autumn rain fell. I had been watching it fall, wondering if anyone's brain was fast enough that they could actually count each thread of rain. I hadn't been listening to Dr. Mitchell, though I heard this last part.

I nodded. “You mean that we've never come through something to stand on the other side.”

He smiled. His teeth aren't very good for someone who smiles all the time. “Metaphorically, yes, Anthony, that's what I mean. More specifically, related to you, we've never reached a point where I can say, ‘now he gets it.' Sometimes I think we should bring in someone else for you to see.”

“But I like you, Dr. Mitchell.”

“I like you, too, Anthony, but that's hardly the point. Look, you're very bright, we both know this. You are capable of sophisticated thought. You read all the time and now you are writing. Which I think you should share with me, by the way. But let me ask you something.”

I looked past him again to the window. There is a giant oak right outside and its limbs spread out in all directions. For a moment it looked to me like an umbrella, with the rain spilling off it. “Go ahead,” I said.

“Do you ever think of getting out of here, Anthony? Do you think about living on the outside again? With other people? Getting a job, being around friends and family?”

I crossed my legs. I stared at Dr. Mitchell, his wild hair. “I don't know,” I said.

He leaned forward. “I don't believe you,” he said.

“No?” I said.

“I don't,” he said, shaking his head. “Here's what I think. I think you think about it constantly. I think that every time your mother comes here it breaks your heart. You want to be able to take care of her, Anthony. You see her getting older and wonder what will happen if she gets sick. Because somewhere inside you is someone who cares, who really cares. And you can't help her from in here.”

I couldn't look at Dr. Mitchell anymore because I thought I was going to cry. This time I studied the books that line his walls. “You can read my story,” I said.

“It's a story?”

“Yes. A true story,” I said.

“I would appreciate that, Anthony,” he said.

“I'm not finished yet, though.”

He nodded. “I can wait. Here's the thing, Anthony. What I truly want you to understand. I want nothing more than to stand in front of that board and recommend to the state that you be released. I want that so badly for you. But I can't get there if we continue this long stalemate. Does that make sense?”

I gave him what he asked for. I was anxious to get back to my
room, to my notebook and my seat with the view of the grounds and the hint of blue ocean in the distance. I wanted to get back to my thoughts.

I nodded. “It makes sense.”

Dr. Mitchell smiled again. “Good,” he said. “Good.”

W
e lay in bed in that A-frame and I tried to count Hannah's freckles. We had been up for hours, waking to make love and then rolling around together, pretending to sleep, letting our hands move languidly over each other. She didn't know what I was doing at first, but then she saw me using my finger to count and she got mad.

“I want to know how many there are,” I said.

“I hate them,” she said. “Quit it.”

I kept counting. “They're beautiful,” I said.

She pushed my hand away from her face. “Quit it,” she said.

“But they're beautiful.”

“They're ugly, I hate them.”

I grabbed her ribs then, above her waist, with both my hands and I tickled her. She squirmed and tried to escape but I had her good. “Say they're beautiful,” I said.

She shrieked. “No,” she said, “I won't.”

I tickled her more, running my fingers across her sides. “Say they're beautiful,” I said.

“Okay, okay, stop it and I will,” she said.

“Say it,” I said, not letting go.

“They're beautiful,” she finally said. “Okay?”

I let her go. “Can I count them again?”

“No,” she said, and she pretended to pout and it was about the most adorable thing I had ever seen.

O
ur fourth day in Stratton we got back in the truck and drove down the big hill to the general store where I had bought the supplies. Hannah sat close to me on the bench seat and there was no lingering residue from our fight. We had showered together and our hair was still wet. The day was warm and sun-splashed and you could not help but be happy because of it. I held her hand. Other drivers waved to us as we passed, which seemed to be a Vermont thing. We waved back. It was now September but it still felt like summer.

At the general store, Hannah stayed in the truck while I went inside. There were a few people inside, a couple talking down one aisle, an old man perusing the beer. I went to the back and got Hannah the chocolate milk she wanted, and myself a coffee, and I also picked up a couple of ready-made sandwiches they had in a case. Then I went to the counter and the man behind it, the same guy who had been there the other day, asked me if there was anything else I needed. He was very tall, with several days of growth on his chin, longish hair tucked under a baseball cap. I asked for cigarettes, and when he turned around to get them I looked down at the
Boston Globe
in front of
him and what I saw on its front page made my stomach seize with fear. For there, on the left of the page, above the fold, were two photos side by side. The one on the left was of me, a picture I had taken for the fishing co-op, a head shot. My hair was a little longer then but it was a good likeness. Next to my photo was one of Hannah, a studio-type shot, taken for her yearbook, I guessed. It was a wonderful picture of her, even though it was in black-and-white. The lighting emphasized the cut and height of her cheekbones. Her full lips.

I must have been in such shock seeing those pictures that I almost forgot to peel my eyes away from the paper on the counter. The man was back and he put my cigarettes down and then he looked down at the paper to see what I was looking at. He looked back up at my face and then he peeked down again. I swear he recognized me. I almost wanted to run out of there but I knew enough to hold my ground.

“That's fifteen seventy-six,” he said.

I took a twenty out of my pocket and handed it to him. My hands shook a little bit. “You want a bag?” he said, handing me my change.

“That'd be great,” I said.

He reached below the counter and came up with a brown bag and snapped it open and quickly filled it.

“You have a good day now,” he said.

It was all I could do not to run out of there. I climbed into the truck and placed the bag between Hannah and me and started the engine. As we drove out, I looked up toward the door of the general store, and I saw the clerk in the doorway staring at us going by. For all I knew he was writing down the license number. Maybe there would be a cop around the next corner.

I drove us back to the new development and I didn't say anything to Hannah about what I had seen. I don't know what I expected but I guess it never occurred to me that we would be big enough news to make the front page of the
Globe
. I pulled the truck all the way behind back so that it could not be seen at all from the road.

Inside I made sure all the drapes were drawn and the windows were closed. I turned off any of the lights we had left lit. Hannah sensed my tension, and she said, “What's going on?”

“We're going to have to leave,” I said.

“When?”

“When it gets dark,” I said.

I spent that entire day crouched in the front of the upstairs window while Hannah lay on the bed and played with her hair. Any minute I expected to see them come up the dirt road and by the new houses. In my mind I imagined a phalanx of cars and vans, state troopers and SWAT teams. The type of teams that descended on Tony Montana's house in
Scarface
.

In the end, though, it was one state trooper. I saw the black-and-green boxy car coming up the road, driving slowly past each house, looking at each one. It was crawling, maybe five or ten miles an hour. I closed the drapes until there was only a slit for me to see through. I turned to Hannah, and said, “Be really quiet.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.”

The trooper came to a halt in front of the nearest house to us, the only other one that I guessed had already been occupied. The door to the car opened and out stepped a tall dark-haired man with that square state trooper hat, the uniform with the jackboots, gun prominently on his hip. He walked slowly
up to the door of the house and as I watched he knocked on it and he waited for a moment. He lowered his head and peered through the glass on the sides of the door. He shielded his eyes with his hands. Then he stood back up and started to walk back toward his car. Only he did not get in. He kept coming across the dirt road toward the house we were in.

I let go of the drapes and quickly joined Hannah on the bed.

“We have to be dead quiet,” I whispered.

She went to speak but I put one hand over her mouth. “Shush,” I said softly.

We lay there and we didn't move. The minutes ticked by, and then I heard a knock on the sliding glass doors below us, and Hannah stirred beneath my hand, and I knew it was because she had no idea what was going on, but I also knew she needed to trust me here. Another knock came and then silence. I figured he was looking in the window. Don't go around back, I prayed. If he went around back he would see the truck and he would see the broken window and the glass on the hard dirt and it would all be over.

Time opens up in situations like that. The air was pregnant with each silent beat of it. Any second I was prepared to hear footsteps coming up the basement stairs, perhaps the crack of a radio, or a deep man's voice telling us to come downstairs, keep our hands where he could see them.

But once again we dodged a bullet. I heard the engine of the police car start up and I left Hannah and crept across the carpet to the window. I parted the narrowest slit between the drapes and I gazed out. I saw him say something into the box he held in his hand and then he did a quick U-turn. He did not
look back at the house, back at us. He drove quickly down the still-new road and disappeared below the hill.

 

We holed up in the house until dark. Then we climbed into the truck with all of our things and the last of the beer from the fridge. We drove slowly through the development and when we reached the main road, I took us past the ski village and out to the state highway. My nerves were frayed from the close call. I opened a beer and kept it between our legs. Hannah and I did not talk. I headed south, toward Massachusetts. The only plan I had was ill formed at best. The truth was, I wanted what Hannah wanted, to go home. I wanted to be back on familiar ground. There might be a hornet's nest there, but that was my coastline, my village, and I knew it as well as I knew the back of my hand. I thought that we could avoid whatever might be waiting for us. I thought that standing again on that spit of land might clear my head, allow me to figure out how we could be together. For the one thing that rose above all others was that. Hannah and me. Not letting them keep us apart.

The night was clear and bright with a full moon. It rose above the trees in front of us, massive and chalky white, its lakes silvery in the dark. At the Massachusetts border we stopped at a rest stop and ate our sandwiches. Then I peed in the woods and smoked leaning against the truck. I got back in and we stuck to back roads, moving through small towns and back out again, past marshy land and more woods. I didn't use the map. I drove the truck like it was a boat, pointing it south and just going.

After midnight we crossed into Connecticut. I found another state park and pulled into it. There was a reservoir here and the parking lot was deserted. I put the truck under the trees
and we got out. I wanted a motel room but now that I knew we were in the
Globe
, I figured we were everywhere. Half of New England was probably looking for us. Motel clerks with my image memorized, just waiting for me to walk through their door so they could be a hero. Get their own names in the paper and on television.

We rolled my bedroll out on the wet grass next to the reservoir and in the moonlight its water was glassy and streaked with white. We bundled up against the first cold of autumn as best we could. We made furtive love, not bothering to take our clothes off, and afterwards Hannah cried and I told her it would all work out.

“There's nowhere for us to go,” she said.

“I won't let them take you from me,” I said.

“Promise me you won't do anything crazy.”

“I'll take care of us,” I said.

We fell asleep with our arms around each other, our faces inches apart, her bangs on my forehead.

A few hours later I woke and it was still dark, though the moon had set. The sky was a pale violet. I heard a loon out on the water. It was time to go.

I woke Hannah and she grumbled, and said, “Let me sleep.”

“You can sleep in the truck.”

And she did, she leaned against the far window and used a sweater as a blanket. I wanted to drive during the night. I didn't want to be out on those roads in broad daylight, where any cop could see us going by. No doubt they knew the truck. If not from finding Terrence, then from the clerk in Stratton.

I kept the window open and my elbow leaning out it. I opened another beer, just to get rid of the socks on my teeth. I
liked the driving, the feeling of movement. That we were doing something.

The day arrived slowly. By dawn we had reached the coast, somewhere in Connecticut. The first of the sun spread across the water. I drove along an ocean road with big houses on one side and it warmed my heart to see the blue-green Atlantic, the birds diving over the rocks and the jetties.

In time we found a public beach and I pulled into its large parking lot. The sun was up now but it was still early. There were a handful of cars and I parked near them. Hannah was awake now, and she said, “Where are we?”

“The beach,” I said.

We got out and walked across the parking lot to the sand. It was a long beach with a quiet stretch of ocean, the waves only small curled whitecaps coming into shore. A few people walked dogs and some others jogged on the harder sand near the water. I took Hannah's hand in my own and I imagined we looked like one of those older couples you see, still holding hands after forty years of marriage, going for long walks in the morning just to spend time together.