Envious Moon (7 page)

S
tanding for a moment in the foyer in front of the staircase, different feelings washed over me. The stairs were to my right and I saw the railing, the one that had come into play that night. And in front of me was a long narrow hallway and its polished hardwood floor gleamed as if it had been recently waxed. This was where her father had hit. Where he had died. I must have been staring at it because she pointed at it.

She said, “The kitchen is that way. Down and to the right. I'm going to change.”

She left me then, heading up the staircase, and I walked gingerly across that stretch of floor. To my right I passed the large empty ballroom, one of the biggest rooms I have ever seen. It had floor-to-ceiling windows and its floors were parquet. The ceiling was high and in its center was a massive chandelier. Halfway down the hallway there was a wooden side table against the right wall. Above it were black-and-white photos. I stopped. In the pictures there was a man who must have been her father. He was tall and wide-shouldered, and a full head of hair swept back from his forehead. A big handsome face. A large man, the same man who tackled me on the stairs. In
one picture he was standing on a sailboat, maybe a forty-eight footer. The collar on his shirt was up and he wore white pants. In another he held a girl that must have been a young Hannah. Her curly hair the color of the sun. Her legs dangling from out of a small skirt, little buckle shoes on. Her father staring down at her with a look I can only describe as complete adoration. It broke my heart to see that look, that kind of love. Everyone should know that kind of love for as long as they can. I had known it with my own father. And now I had taken it from Hannah.

I found the kitchen where she said I would. It looked more like the kitchens Berta cooked in than one that belonged in somebody's home. It was long and narrow and ran down the eastern side of the house. Everything was stainless steel: the eight-burner stove, the countertops, the refrigerator. The floor was concrete. Glass cabinets held stemware and plates. There were no windows.

I put the newspaper-wrapped fish on the counter and peeled the paper away. It really was a beautiful fish. If I had brought it home to Berta, she would have stretched it into three or four meals. Fried hunks of fillet the first night. Fish stew the next night. And then she'd use the skeleton and the head for a stock for one of her spicy soups we'd eat with bread.

I took the knife from the back of my belt and I removed the head and was about to do the same to the fillets, when I heard her behind me. I turned and she stood there, having changed into a new pair of shorts and a T-shirt. Her legs were deeply tan and shapely where they came out of her shorts, complected differently from her face, which was pale except for the numerous freckles.

“Hello,” I said.

“So you really know how to cook?” she asked.

I flipped the fish over. “Yes.”

“Where'd you learn?”

“My mother taught me.”

“A lot of boys wouldn't admit that.”

“I'm not a lot of boys.”

“Don't take this the wrong way,” she said.

“What?”

“Are you Puerto Rican?”

I laughed. “No, Portuguese.”

“I didn't mean it to sound like that.”

“We all look alike,” I said.

“I didn't mean—”

“I'm messing with you.”

“Show me what you're doing,” Hannah said.

“Move closer,” I said, and she came to the counter and stood next to me. I could smell her soap and it was bright and clean.

“Look,” I said. I held my knife down along the body, under the gills. “The fillet is here. You have to make a slice by the tail and then peel it away from the spine. You got to have a sharp knife and work quickly. It can break on you. You want the fillet whole.”

“It looks hard.”

“Just takes practice.”

I held the fish in front of me and made a small incision above the tail of the striper. I worked the flat of the blade in until I reached the spine. I began to scrape and slide, working from feel. I separated it from the length of bone and I pulled the fillet free and showed her.

“See?” I said.

“Cool.”

“Wait till you taste it. Fish this fresh is its own thing.”

In a pantry off the kitchen I found all that I needed to make Berta's Portuguese sauce. I had never made it myself but I had seen her make it hundreds of times. It was easy. I simmered canned tomatoes with garlic, onions, cloves, and bay leaves. I added some cayenne pepper and the two fish fillets and I let them braise in the liquid. The air filled with the smell of the spice and while it cooked, we leaned against the counter and we talked.

Hannah told me she was seventeen, too, and that she went to boarding school in Connecticut. It was called Miss Watson's and she did not like it much but it was her last year. Next year she would go to college and she thought maybe Smith and she said this like I should know what Smith was but I didn't. I didn't care if she thought I was stupid. There were lots of things I did not know but then again there were lots of things I did. Smith was not one of them. I asked her.

“It's a college,” Hannah said. “In Massachusetts. My mother went there. So did my grandmother. I probably will. Go, I mean. Though sometimes I think about going far away. To California or something. Just to piss my mother off.”

“I know what that's like,” I said.

“To piss your mother off?”

“No,” I said. “To do the same thing. My father fished. And his father did. Now I do.”

She nodded earnestly. “Oh,” she said, “I get it.”

We ate outside on the stone front porch and I put the fish on white plates and I covered it with the sauce and when she had taken a bite I looked over at her and I asked if she liked it.

“It's good. Spicy.”

“The cayenne. Gives the heat.”

“I like it.”

“All we need is some wine.”

“There's wine here,” she said. “Tons of it.”

“Yeah?”

“Help yourself. My mother won't notice. It's in the basement. The brown door in the kitchen.”

I returned to the house and in the kitchen I found the door and made my way down a rickety staircase into a cavernous cellar. In front of me was more wine than I had ever seen in any store. Rows and rows of it in wooden bins to the ceiling. I reached into the one in front of me and pulled out a bottle. The label was in French but the wine was red and this was what I wanted. In the kitchen I found a corkscrew and brought the bottle outside. Hannah said, “We have glasses, you know.”

“Tell me where.”

“I'll get them,” she said, and she disappeared inside and when she returned with the wineglasses I poured wine into each one.

“Good wine,” I said, after sipping from it.

She shrugged. “It all tastes the same to me.”

“Crazy how much is down there.”

“I only drink it when my friends come from school and want to get drunk.”

“I'd drink it all the time,” I said. “Wine's good for you.”

“My father drank it. My mother just wants vodka.”

“Where is your father?”

“He died.”

“I'm sorry,” I said. “I lost mine, too. When I was little.”

“It's hard,” she said. “And now my mother wants nothing to do with this place.”

“She doesn't mind you being here alone?”

Hannah shrugged. “She'd rather have me in Boston but knows I'd fight it. She wanted someone to come stay with me. She was actually going to hire someone, like a babysitter. I told her I was seventeen. I mean, come on.”

I smiled and then I was silent for a moment. I thought of her father. I looked out to the ocean and I searched for something to say. I finally said, “You have a boyfriend at school?”

She laughed. “No.”

“What's so funny?”

“My school is all girls.”

“I'd be okay with that,” I said. “All girls.”

“What boy wouldn't?”

“It must be boring for you. All girls.”

“There are boys from other schools. They come down on weekends. Or we go up there.”

“Do you have a boyfriend from another school?”

“Nosy, nosy,” Hannah said.

“Just curious, that's all.”

“No,” she said. “No boyfriend at another school. Satisfied?”

“Yes,” I said.

And we sat in silence after that and presently she rose and took our plates and brought them inside. I looked to where the sun was beginning its descent. The sunset to come was going to be magnificent. The sky was already turning a deep red. To my left was the moon, scarcely more than a tracing at the edge of everything.

I
told Hannah what I could about fishing on the North Atlantic and she seemed to want to know it all. I told her about the long steams out to the swordfish grounds and all the busy work that went along with it. I told her about Captain Alavares, and about Big Al and Carlos and Ronny. I told her what it was like when we got weather, and how afraid I was sometimes. How sometimes the fear doubled back on itself and you almost forgot what you were afraid of, that the fear became the thing.

And with each word I uttered, every story I told, I felt her understanding of me grow and grow, and to that point I had never been more honest with anyone in my life. I know that sounds strange given all that I did not tell her that night. All that I left out. But I spoke from my heart and from nowhere else.

Then when I said all I had to say, Hannah said softly, “You can kiss me if you want.”

I turned toward her. I slid closer on the stone steps. She laughed at me, and said, “Are you going to?”

“Yes,” I said, and I leaned in and she did too and our lips brushed together and then apart.

“Give me a real kiss,” she said.

I leaned in again and this time I felt her tongue on my teeth and I opened my mouth and her breath was hot on my face. I had no idea what I was doing but I closed my eyes and we kissed like this for a while. The truth was that all I wanted to do was hold her, to feel her in my arms, and when we came apart, I wrapped my arms around her and I brought her to my chest. Her face pressed into my sternum. She smelled like soap and she was so warm. I lightly played with her hair. And after a few minutes I sensed her tears before I heard them, the sudden heaviness of her breathing against me.

“Hey,” I said. “You okay?”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.”

“I just get sad sometimes.”

“I know,” I said, and I did, for I got sad sometimes too.

I let her cry then and she cried good and hard against my chest. I stroked her hair but I did not say anything else. In her small fist she balled up part of my T-shirt. I looked over her to the stars and we stayed like this until she fell asleep in my arms.

I wanted to move but I did not want to wake her. She was so peaceful. Her head was heavy against my biceps and when I shifted slightly, she turned her face inward and now I could gaze down onto it. Her soft eyelids and small nose, her pale, freckled skin. Her hair falling over my bare arms. I had never held anyone like this before and I decided then that it did not matter how tired my arm got, or how badly I wanted a cigarette, I was not going to move until she did. She could have stayed there forever for all I cared.

I
left her at the edge of the stairs and kissed her good-bye and when she had climbed up and out of my sight, I returned to my camp on the beach. I lay on my bedroll and I did not want to sleep. I replayed in my mind the smallest of her gestures—and the larger ones, like the kiss, and I thought I saw in her eyes what had existed in my own for a long time now.

In the morning I returned to the house but she had already left. Another sunny day in a string of sunny days and I lingered around for a while but she didn't return. I spent the afternoon on the beach. I took turns swimming and lying on my bedroll. I hiked to the general store and bought a sandwich for lunch. I lazily threw a line in at one point. It was a beautiful day and I had the sun and the water to swim in. I could fish if I wanted to. There was no work I needed to do. And, I thought, so this is love. For I had the sun and the water and all the time the summer afforded, and I wanted none of them. All I wanted was Hannah.

In the evening I returned to the house and this time she was sitting exactly where we had sat the night before and next to her was a pizza. A large pizza, a pizza for two. Her hands were
across her knees and she smiled at me when I came across the lawn.

“I figured you'd still be here,” she said.

“Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Not yet.”

“Where you been all day?”

“Work.”

I laughed. “You work?”

She looked away, toward the sea. “A condition of my father's while I'm on the island,” she said softly.

“Oh,” I said. “Where do you work?”

“Benny's Ice Cream,” she said. “I'm a scooper.”

“I bet you're good at it,” I said.

“I'm okay.”

“I should've come and visited you. If I'd known.”

“We're not allowed to have visitors.”

“Then I'd be a customer.”

She didn't respond to that. She pulled the cardboard top back on the pizza box. “Onions and mushrooms,” she said. “I was going to get pepperoni because that's what guys seem to like but I don't like it too much. Hope it's okay.”

“It's great,” I said.

We ate the pizza and it was another comfortable evening and the sunset spilled across the sky. I opened another bottle of wine from the basement and we shared it. I could do this every day, I told her. And I could have. Sit on the stone porch and watch the ocean and the day fade from the sky with a beautiful girl. At one point she moved into me and I put my arm around her. I said, “You're not going to fall asleep on me this time?”

“Stay with me,” she said.

“When?”

“Tonight.”

We shared the high-canopied bed in the turreted room. The moonlight coming through the windows painted stripes on the wall. She changed in the darkened room, turning her back to me and slipping on that cotton nightgown. I watched her where she stood in the shadows, lifting the shirt over her head, her hair tumbling down around her bare neck. The whiteness of her naked back and the curve of her hip and then the gown covering all of it. When she turned back around she climbed into the bed, and said, “I won't sleep with you.”

“Okay,” I said.

I wore only my shorts and she laid her head on my bare chest and in minutes she was snoring softly. I have never known anyone who slept so easily. I listened to the rise and fall of her breath. I held one hand against the small of her back. And when she rolled away from me, I let her go and the covers fell down and they only came to her waist. Lying on her side away from me, I could see now where her neck met her shoulder, where her shoulder curved toward her arms, where her torso curved slightly inward before coming back to meet her hip. I saw how she was made, in other words, how perfect she was. And with my eyes I traced the shape of her over and over.

Later, when I could not sleep, I rose and walked across the room to the turret window. I carefully lifted it open and it creaked a little as I did. I leaned my elbows on the sill, as she had done the other night. I looked across the yard. I looked over the cliffs and to the ocean. I stared down at the stand of pitch pines I had stood under to watch her. And when I did, I realized they were not as dark as I had thought. I could make out the individual trunks. They were surrounded by deep shadows, but I saw that if someone were standing out there now, I
would see them plain as day. And the three nights I spent under those trees were no different than tonight. Same light, same moon, same shadows.

And I realized then that perhaps Hannah had seen me watching her. That perhaps she had wanted me to watch her.

I closed the window and turned back to the room. I climbed into the bed and slid my body as close to her as I dared. My knees behind her knees. She stirred slightly when I slung my arm around her. But soon her breathing became easy and regular. In this way sleep came for both of us.