Envious Moon (14 page)

D
r. Mitchell has taken a keen interest in my writing. He always asks me what I am working on, as if there is any question. He wants me to share it with him but I put him off, telling him I'm not ready.

“Your only allegiance is to the truth, Anthony,” he says.

I feel like saying, tell me something I don't know. But I don't. What would be the point? We've had these arguments before, arguments about truth. Dr. Mitchell thinks that all truth is absolute, that something is either true or it isn't. I tell him that it would be nice if the world were that easy, but I know that it isn't. Truth is often a matter of perspective. I may see things differently from where I stand, than he does from where he stands. It doesn't make my views and understanding of things any less valid. It just makes them different.

Berta came to visit with news of Victor. Victor has not been to see me since I first came here, and I don't blame him. He has a hard time with it and has chosen to stay away. Victor has done well for himself. He married Maria, sweet-eyed Maria, who worked as a maid in that Cross Island mansion. When I first heard that, I thought it was really funny. Ironic even. It
was almost as if we all had to pass through that house, like some kind of sacrament, before we could get on with the rest of our lives. The two of them have three children, Berta tells me, two girls and a boy. Victor has his own business doing plumbing and it keeps growing. There are these black box trucks all over town that say
PEREZ PLUMBING AND HEATING
on the side. He has something like ten people who work for him.

Berta says he and Maria bought a ranch house on the water on Great Island. From his windows he can see the Galilee harbor and the boats going in and out. He has a big grassy lawn that on nice days the kids run around on. There's a swing set. He has a spare tire around the middle and still has that mustache that he likes to comb. If I were there, I'd give him shit about it, you can bet on that. But I'll also admit that when Berta tells me all this, it makes me wistful. I mean that sometimes I still imagine that kind of life. A pretty wife and well-behaved kids and a nice house. Ball games on the weekend, backyard cookouts. Church on Sundays. Putting up a Christmas tree.

But I also know it's hard to have that life and also have the truth. There's a kind of willful ignorance that goes with living that way. You have to turn your back on the things that really drive you. The passion. And the desire. That electric feeling you get from going after what you really want. You have to live a lie. No one would admit that. Not even Victor. But I bet sometimes he feels it. Maybe when his whole house is sleeping, his wife and kids, and the neighborhood is quiet. Maybe he sits in a lawn chair in the garage with the door up and sneaks the cigarette he's no longer allowed to have. He looks out across the water to the lights of the boats leaving the harbor. And he taps that part of himself that is still alive, somewhere deep within, and he wonders what could have been.

I
n the dark I knocked on the door to Terrence's trailer. There were no lights on but his truck was parked near the trees. I heard him in there, knocking around and then the door opened and he stood in front of me wearing only his boxer shorts. He was lit from behind and I saw his massive stomach, his chest covered with gray hairs, and a scar that ran down his side like a seam. He peered behind me.

“Is that her?” he said.

“Yes,” I said.

He stepped away from the trailer. “Let me get a better look at her,” he said.

“Don't bother,” I said but Hannah stepped forward until she was only five feet behind me. Terrence whistled through his front teeth.

“Damn,” he said.

“Leave it alone,” I said but he was looking over my head at her.

“Why else you get me at this time?” Terrence asked.

“I need your truck.”

He laughed. “What do you mean, my truck?”

We both looked over at it. An old Ford, once red, now more rusty than anything. “They know the car.”

“So? That's not my problem. I need my truck. How you think I haul this thing around?” He reached behind him to tap on the metal of the trailer.

“I'm taking the truck,” I said.

“I tell you what,” said Terrence. “Maybe you give me a piece…” He nodded to Hannah. “And we can talk about it, okay?”

I pushed him so hard and so fast he had no time to react. It took him right off his feet and he fell backward and smacked his head against the side of the trailer. “Aw, fuck,” he said, “my head.”

I hated to do it but I had no choice. I rushed past him and into the trailer and there was only the one light but I scanned all the surfaces and there, on the small stove, I saw the keys. I went to them and I grabbed them and when I turned around, Terrence was blocking my way. His hair was all wild around his neck. He said, “You little shit.”

His pudgy hands reached for me but I dodged them and then ran right into him. When we collided, I swung wildly at his face. My fist hit bone and I felt his hand crashing into the back of my head. I kept punching at him, as hard as I could. I had my eyes closed so the only way I knew I had hit him was the pain in my hand. I must have hit him ten times. He slumped to the floor. I heard him breathing heavy but he did not say anything. I didn't look down at him. I wanted no part of his face. I climbed over him and out into the campsite.

I didn't see Hannah right away. Then I heard her, on the other side of Victor's car, entering the woods. I found her at the edge of the brook and took her hand and led her back. Her eyes
were wide and her hands were sweaty. She shook a little. I knew this was a lot for her at once and so I stopped and I hugged her. She hugged me back and in her arms I felt her return my love. “It's okay,” I said. “This is going to get easier.”

I picked up my oilskin bag and we went for Terrence's truck. Before we got in, I took Victor's keys and flung them as far as I could into the woods. The last thing we needed was Terrence trying to follow us.

We climbed into the truck and the upholstery was torn and the cab reeked of stale cigarettes. A milk crate on the passenger side floor overflowed with mushrooms. But it started right up and Hannah moved close to me on the bench seat and I steered us through the pine trees and out of the campground.

I
just drove. I had no plan and no destination. I took a right turn in Litchfield and just followed the country highway in the dark. The old truck took us up and over hills and through black woods and past darkened houses. The night was cool but I kept my window rolled down so I could smoke. Hannah fell asleep shortly after we left, her face pushed into my right shoulder, one hand draped lazily across my thigh. Now and again I looked at her. At her beautiful sleeping face, the soft eyelids. It made me so happy to have her back that sometimes my hands left the wheel like some kind of spasm, the feeling threatening to spill out of me. I didn't know what direction we were going. It didn't matter. The only sense I had was of the curvature of the earth, us crawling along its spine.

I knew we were heading north when we crossed into Massachusetts. I had figured we would go west, to California maybe, but suddenly north felt right. Maybe we'd go to Canada, cross into another country. Truly begin anew.

Meanwhile Hannah slept on. She slept so well. The cool night came into the cab and she moved closer to me against it and I smoked with one arm out the window. We had the road
to ourselves. There were the headlights moving across the trees and over the crest of hills. Hannah's easy breath of sleep. The nutty taste of tobacco in my mouth. I was not the least bit tired. I thought that as long as there was night, I could drive.

Sometime before dawn, the first blue light visible to the east, we crossed into Vermont. The woods were dense here and right to the edge of the road. The night began to lift and we followed a rocky stream. We went through small New England villages and then back into a forest. I passed a sign that said
COZY CORNER CABINS
and underneath it,
VACANCY
. I pulled into a turnoff and Hannah woke when I did and she said, “Where are we?”

“I think I found a place,” I said, turning the truck around.

T
he office was a log cabin, someone's home. I knocked on the door and it took a while but a tall bearded man finally answered. He was still tugging on a pair of jeans and his flannel shirt was unbuttoned, his hairless chest at eye level and as white as paper.

“I saw vacancy on the sign,” I said.

He looked me up and down. It had to be five in the morning but if he thought anything of this, he either didn't care or chose not to say anything. “Thirty-five bucks a night,” he said, starting to button his shirt. “No maid service.”

“Cash okay?” I said.

“Cash is king,” he said.

I took bills out of my pocket and peeled off three twenties and a ten. “That's for two nights,” I said.

He got me the key and stepped out onto the porch and pointed back into the woods to where I was to go. I saw him take in the old truck and Hannah in it, awake now, staring up at us.

The cabin was not much to speak of. There were six of them, identical, and in a row, with great pines looming over
them like sentinels. In the early-morning light they looked like they had been dropped there, on top of the pine needles, almost as if they were for sale. They were shingled and had tiny front porches, not really serviceable, with just an overhang to keep you from the elements. There were no other cars in front of them.

Hannah and I walked like dead people. I was so tired. I looped my bag over my shoulder and we climbed out of the truck and up the one step and I keyed the door and stepped into the room. I flicked on the light and it was grim, a sad bed in the artificial overhead light, the musty odor of mothballs, a carpet with a deep pattern that you couldn't tell where the stains stopped and the checks started. Hannah went for the bathroom and I flopped right onto the bed.

With the shades drawn there was no telling if it was night or day. I don't remember Hannah killing the light. I slept like I had never slept before, without dreams, and the only thing I remember is her lying next to me, the rough feel of the comforter against my skin, and the smell of Hannah, that beautiful smell, her soap and her sweat, this girl that I had already given my life up for.

I woke in a near panic. I looked around. Hannah was on the edge of the bed. She looked back at me and in her look I saw the guilt and then I saw the phone in her hand.

“What did you do?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said.

“Did you call somebody?”

“No,” she said softly.

“Did you?”

“No,” she said again.

“They won't understand,” I said.

“I know.”

“Then why?”

“I'm scared, that's all,” she said, and the look on her face was so vulnerable, I wanted to take her lovely face in my hands and hold it, feel her pulse beneath my fingers.

I said, “I would never hurt you.”

“I know.”

“Come here,” I said, and she did, she fell down next to me and I rolled toward her. I slung my arm across her belly and afternoon light slanted through the break in the heavy curtains. Narrow bars of gold on the thick carpet.

“I love you,” I said.

She turned her face to me. “Do you?”

Her green eyes were wet. “Yes,” I said.

“Okay,” she said.

“Do you love me?”

Hannah's eyes flickered from the top of my head down to my waist. She was so shy sometimes it killed me. “I do love you,” she said.

I undressed her slowly, as if each part of her was a mystery to be revealed. When she was naked on the bed, I spent the longest time just running my hands over all of her, from her toes to her feet, up her shapely legs and across the flat table of her belly, the rise of her breasts, to the soft whiteness of her bare throat.

There was a fury to our lovemaking that afternoon. We crashed together like we could not get enough of each other. Like we were trying to make up for the hours and the days we were apart.

When we finally collapsed, we lay side by side in the sweet quiet and we did not say anything. There was the rise and fall of
our collected breath on the bed, the smell of the musty room, the smell of our sex. The alarm clock on the table next to us flipped a new number over, a flapping sound. Time was beating on. Not that it mattered. Inside that space, there was only Hannah and there was only me. No light, no moon, no night. The world didn't make it past those heavy drapes.