Envious Moon (11 page)

D
r. Mitchell likes to say that therapy is not a fix in itself. He says it's about giving me the tools to know how to handle situations, and how to make good choices. I've been through so much of it, I can say that the only thing I've been able to absolutely determine about it is that if you tell them what they want to hear, they will leave you alone. It doesn't mean you're cured, or that there was anything wrong with you in the first place. It just means they got the answers they wanted all along and if you pay attention you can usually figure what those are. You don't have to believe in what you're saying. You just need to say it.

Though, in that first week I was under house arrest, I had not yet learned this. I told them the truth about me and Hannah. I did not hide anything and I did not hold anything back. I just let it fly and hoped for the best.

There were two psychologists, a man and a woman. They were both youngish and seemed to always dress in brown. His name was Mike and hers was Diane and this was what they wanted me to call them. They came every morning and stayed for three hours each time. I told them about Victor and me riding my skiff to the island that night. How we thought the
house was empty. I told them about finding the money. Seeing Hannah on the stairs. The tussle with her father. I told them how I kept seeing her in my dreams and then sometimes when I was awake. I told them I saw her reflected in the eye of a fish. I told them all I wanted to know was the color of her eyes and when I told them this they both nodded like it was the most natural thing in the world. I said that when I saw her high above me on the ferry I knew that I had no choice but to go to the island and find her. I spoke of watching Hannah through the window. They wanted to know if she knew I had done this and I told them I couldn't be sure, which was the truth, but I also told them it didn't matter.

“Why's that, Anthony?” Diane asked, leaning forward as if this was important.

“It's just not the point,” I told her. “What counts is not what led to us being together, but the fact that we were together. And how perfect it was.”

Sometimes when I talked they took notes, but mostly they just listened. One morning they gave me a series of tests. They had me rearrange blocks and they had me look at blotches of ink and tell them what I saw. I had a hard time taking this seriously, like this had anything at all to do with me and Hannah, so I thought of the craziest things I could and said them. “It looks like two bears fucking,” I said when I looked at one that really looked like nothing at all.

In the afternoons I watched television until Berta came home. Then we had dinner. Other than that, we moved around each other like ghosts, both of us pretending that nothing had changed, and both of us knowing better. My mother didn't understand me and I knew enough to know that I could not expect her to. In the evenings I sat on the windowsill in my room and
looked at the small neighborhood and smoked. This was the hardest time for me. In the air I could feel summer disappearing. Below a few leaves were already on the ground. I felt completely alone.

At night the neighborhood was dead still. Small houses full of hardworking people who slept when it grew dark. You could hear the occasional car out on the main road and sometimes the foghorn from the lighthouse but otherwise it was quiet.

The fourth night I was back I heard something that sounded like the scuff of a shoe on the pavement and when I looked toward the road, I saw a figure in the pooling lamplight. It didn't matter that I couldn't make out anything but the shape. I knew who it was. He moved toward the yard and from below me he whispered my name.

“Tony,” he said.

I know I was supposed to be angry with him. He had told the sheriff everything. But it was Victor and he was a brother and regardless of how mad I should be, I was really happy to see him.

“Can you come down?” he asked.

“Hang on,” I said.

Victor had a brown bag and inside it were two forty-ounce bottles of beer and we sat down against the outside wall of my house and drank the beer and talked. Victor told me how they trapped him. Apparently, when going through the lists of all the people who had visited the house on the island, from gardeners to electricians, they saw his name on the list from the funeral home. From there it was simply a matter of telling Victor that I had already confessed. He told them the whole thing.

“I'm really sorry, man,” he said.

“It's all right,” I said.

“They never arrested me,” he said. “They said they only would if I didn't testify against you. They were much more interested in you. They wanted to know where you had gone. I had no idea and that's what I told them. I can't believe you were crazy enough to go out there. When I heard that was where they found you, I almost shit my pants. I thought, fucking, Tony. He's lost it.”

I told Victor all about Hannah then, every part of it, well, almost every part. A few things I kept to myself, which was how it should be. I told him all that I could about Hannah, and when I was done, Victor said, “Shit, man, you got it bad.”

I said, “I need your car.”

“What? What for?”

“I need to find her.”

Victor shook his head in the dark next to me. “You really are loco, man. No way. I can't do that.”

“Come on, Vic,” I said. “I'm not going to take Berta's.”

Victor tipped his head back as he drank from his beer. He lighted a cigarette and I lighted one off of his. “Tony, I can't. They'll get me for that. You got to forget about this crazy talk. Danny Pedroia told my mother that this can be settled. You're going to screw that all up.”

I looked over at him. “You going to help me or not?”

“Aren't they keeping track of you or something? They'll find you in two minutes.”

I showed Victor my ankle then. “I'll just cut it off. By the time they get here, I'll be gone.”

“You've lost it.”

“I have to do this.”

“What am I supposed to tell them? That I give you my car?”

“Nah,” I said. “When they find out, tell them I just took it. That I knew where you kept your keys. You had no idea.”

Victor didn't respond to this right away. We both drank again from our beer and we looked to the street and where the streetlights cast their yellow light. The air already smelled a little of fall. I finished my cigarette and I knew I didn't have to say anything else, that Victor was going to give me the car, because he was my brother and I had told him what I needed to do. I was going to find her and he was not going to get in the way.

V
ictor did two things for me the following night. First, he left his old Chevy sedan in front of my house. And second, on the front bench seat, was a map of New England and on it he had drawn in red a line from Galilee, Rhode Island to Lincoln, Connecticut. He had done exactly what I asked him to do. Gone to the library and found out where her school, Miss Watson's, was. And brought me the directions to find it.

I waited until midnight, smoking in my bedroom window. My oilskin bag was already packed, as it had been when I left for the island. I had no idea how long it would take the police to respond when I cut the bracelet. There would not be many cars on the road this time of night and that was a risk. Though I thought it would be easier to go in the dark. I thought they would take longer to get here. Besides, they didn't have any reason to think I'd be in a car. They'd probably check my skiff first, and by that time, I might have already crossed state lines.

Before I left, I stopped for a moment in front of Berta's room. The door was slightly ajar and I could see her on the bed. She often slept like she was in a coffin, on her back, her short arms crossed on her chest. She was like this tonight and I
stood in silence and watched the slow rise and fall of her breath. This was going to hurt her, my doing this, and I knew that in no time at all a pounding on the door would awaken her. Then the house would be full of state police. It broke my heart to do this to her, but I no longer felt like I had a choice.

 

I made my way down the stairs and then to the front door. I walked out and into the night. In the front yard, I stopped and looked up through the trees to the sky. It was overcast and there was no starlight or moonlight, just a low black ceiling. I put my bag on the ground and unzipped it and took out my fishing knife. I got down on one knee and I put the blade under the bracelet. The knife was sharp and it took one quick tug and it was off. I stood and tossed it over my shoulder and ran for the car.

I put my bag on the seat and turned the ignition and it started right up and I drove off through the still neighborhood. There was a shortcut that would take me on back roads out toward Route 1 and I took this, wanting to stay away from the harbor and the obvious routes.

I drove past the small darkened houses, many of them with skiffs in the driveways, fishing equipment on the lawns. I drove quickly but not too quickly and soon I reached the state highway and I turned onto it and I was the only car. I drove north, away from the coast. I kept looking in my rearview mirror but there was nothing. Then, from in front of me, I saw them coming at me, two state troopers, lights flashing. They passed by me, heading toward Galilee, and I breathed in deep when we passed, looking back to see if they were turning around, but they did not.

Soon I reached Route 1 and there were other cars out here and I relaxed a little bit. I stayed around the speed limit. Vic
tor's car was a hunk of junk, but it had a valid inspection sticker and everything essential worked. There was a good deal of rust around the wheels and the upholstery on the backseat was all torn up. But it drove okay as long as you didn't try to go too fast. Then the wheel shook underneath your fingers and it felt like it was tough to control.

My goal that night was to get out of Rhode Island. It sounds funny to say it now, but I had never been out of Rhode Island before. Unless you count on a boat, in which case I had almost been to Greenland.

I reached Providence an hour later and cars were whizzing by me on either side now. Victor's radio didn't work so the only sound was the highway, the engine, the other cars. I felt my mood brightening in a way it had not since I had last seen Hannah. I was moving again and there was something freeing about taking action, being in control of things. I had the car and the road and I could make my own decisions. And I was coming to find Hannah. This was the most important thing of all.

A
t two in the morning, I crossed into Connecticut on Route 6. First there was a sign that said leaving Rhode Island and then another welcoming me to Connecticut. I went through the center of a few small towns, deserted at this time of night, and then into a pine forest. I had the window down as I smoked and the air was silent and still and cool. The sky had cleared as I moved inland and a half-moon showed between drifting clouds above. I was the only car on the road and for a moment I thought about killing my headlights, rolling down the other windows, and becoming as much a part of the night as I could.

I slept in a small state park, driving the car down a narrow tree-lined road to a parking area that looked abandoned. I put the car in the far corner under the cover of large pines. With the dark car and the shadows it would have been hard to see unless you shined a headlight right on it. Now that I was no longer driving, I was bone-tired. I laid my bedroll out on the backseat of the car and used the rest of my bag as a pillow. I kicked off my boots and tried to get comfortable. The space was too small for my limbs but for the first time in a while, I had no trouble sleeping. I don't even remember slipping under. One
moment I was looking through the back window at the trees and the sky and the next thing I knew bright sunlight rained down on me. It was a dreamless night and that was how tired I was. The day came before I knew it.

In a small town I found a McDonald's and pulled through the drive-through and got coffee and a sandwich. I ate on the road, which led me up and over soft rolling wooded hills. It was a nice day, sunny and mild. Now and again I looked at the map, but mostly I just drove. I liked driving, I decided, especially on a nice day. The truth was I didn't really know where I was going. I knew where her school was but I had no idea if she would be there. I had no idea when school started and my worst fear was that because of all that had happened, that Hannah might have changed plans somehow. But Miss Watson's was all I had to hang my hat on, and from the map it looked like I would be crossing practically the whole state of Connecticut to get there.

I drove through small farm towns that looked like they could have been anywhere. And then through towns with greens where all the old houses seemed to be white and the churches were too. Then into the glass towers of Hartford and back out again. Crossing the Connecticut River and back to small towns, more woods and hilly land. And finally, in the late afternoon, I drove down the country highway and into the town of Lincoln, home of Miss Watson's.

I don't know what I expected but there wasn't much to the place. The land was pretty, I'll say that. Mountainous compared to what I was used to. Narrow roads and steep hills. Tons of woods. But beyond that the town seemed to consist of this one road, a few stores, nice older homes right on the road, and then the school itself, a mass of brick buildings on both sides of it, surrounded by open fields and forest. I decided I would
just drive by the school the first time. I slowed down passing it and the place seemed empty. In front of one of the buildings I did see a police car and this got me worried that maybe they figured out this was where I was heading. The car looked empty, though. But I didn't see any students, or any people at all, other than one fat guy cutting grass on a riding mower and an older couple walking a dog.

It was still August. I figured school had not started yet, but I knew it wouldn't be long. I needed a place to hunker down and wait. I needed to be patient.

I drove past the school and several towns away, on the same rural highway, I came upon a campground. It cost five bucks a night and had showers and bathrooms and the guy running the office showed zero interest in me. He barely looked up when I paid in advance for a week. There were a few other people camping there, but mostly it was empty. I picked a spot deep in the back and against the woods and next to a small brook. It could not be seen from any of the campsites in use. I didn't have a tent and the last thing I needed was someone raising questions about me. I was too close for that to happen.