Envious Moon (18 page)

W
e must have fallen asleep. I don't remember drifting off, but when I woke I was disoriented. And then I felt the swell of the ocean and as my eyes adapted I saw that the September sun had climbed above the horizon. Dull and orange and not yet warm. Hannah was heavy on my arm. I turned to look at her and she stirred. I saw her blink and her eyes opened. She shivered against the morning.

“Hey,” I said.

She rubbed her eyes. “What time is it?”

“I don't know,” I said, though from the position of the sun it could not have been more than six in the morning. I lifted my tired arm away from her head and she leaned back against the boat and her arms fell to her side and she looked like a marionette that had been released. I stood up in the boat and looked around.

We had drifted to the west, that much I could tell. We could no longer see Galilee or Point Judith. In front of us, maybe two miles away, were the rocky shoals. Looking behind me I saw the tongue of land that was the easternmost tip of Long Island. I looked to the east, toward Cross Island, and with my
sea-seasoned eyes I couldn't see the island, but I was able to see something else, not more than an abnormality at this point, something on the water. I knew right away what it was. By the way it moved. They couldn't have seen us yet, and maybe we were too small to show up on radar, but I couldn't know that. They were heading for us and their direction suggested purpose. The Coast Guard.

I didn't say anything to Hannah. We were on the open ocean and on the open ocean there was no place to hide. I went to the stern of the boat. I lifted the cushion that covered the battery and I felt down around its cap and to the wires that came off it. I found the one that controlled the bilge and I yanked it as hard as I could. It snapped off from the battery. I looked again at the ship coming toward us and I could make out the V of its bow. There was no mistaking it now, they knew where we were. They were still a mile away. But closing fast.

I glanced over at Hannah. And I will tell you this, but she had never been more remarkable. Maybe it was the early-morning light, but her green eyes sparkled like water trapping the sun, and her golden red hair fell on either side of that lovely face, framing her high cheekbones and her full lips. It took everything I had to turn away from her.

On my skiff the drainplug was on the bottom right of the stern. It always seems like there should be more to it. But I reached down and took it between my fingers and it was no more complex than letting the water out of a tub.

I rejoined Hannah and we sat on the floorboards. I heard the water before I saw it, spilling in and moving beneath us and I felt it too, though it's hard to describe how it felt. It was nothing more than a sudden heaviness in the boat.

I kissed her cheeks. I kissed her nose. Then her forehead. Then each of her eyes.

“I don't want to,” she said.

“I love you,” I said, and I began to cry.

The ocean was at our feet. It was as clear as broth, pale with flecks of green and blue. It lapped around our toes and it lifted up fishing hooks and other detritus on the floor of the boat. It covered our thighs and then washed over our laps. The boat listed to port. Hannah fell into me and I held her as best as I could. I put my arms around her wet clothes and I held her close. I heard the ship's engine and something inaudible coming over a loudspeaker. My skiff groaned with the weight of me and of Hannah and of the water. I put my hand over her mouth as we sank beneath the soft waves.

W
e fell apart underwater, like we did after we made love on a bed, when each of us collapsed to a different side. I had a sense of her drifting away from me, of the strands of her hair suspended, of the boat falling below us. I couldn't see a thing. It was dark and black and cold. It was also eerily peaceful, and I don't really know how to give this part words. The closest I can come is that it was like sleeping when you are awake. My eyes were open and I could not see anything but I was absolutely calm and my head was empty. I had no worries. No fears. My limbs felt loose and weightless.

Something passed in front of me. A whooshing sound. Then it came up and I felt arms around my body. I think I smiled dumbly. I did not resist. There were air bubbles in front of my face, like floating ball bearings. Then we rushed to the surface.

We broke through it and I began to choke. The pleasant feeling was all gone and my lungs ached and my body felt impossibly heavy. The man dragged me through the water. I saw the white hull of the large boat. Next thing I knew I was hooked to something and being lifted in the air. They brought me
on the deck like a swordfish. They were all over me and I was coughing and spitting up ocean water. I couldn't see right. The sunlight looked strange and fuzzy.

“He's okay,” a voice said.

I lay on the hard metal for what seemed like hours. Panting and gasping for air.

Gradually my sight came back. I tried to get up, and a voice said, “Just stay there.”

I didn't move. Though I turned my head to the right and when I did, I saw Hannah, maybe five feet away, prone on her back like I was. Her face was as pale as flour and her lips looked shriveled. Her eyes were closed. A man straddled her chest and he was pressing on it. Over and over. Then he stood and he slammed something to the ground. I heard it hit.

“Fuck,” he said. “Fuck.”

After that, I fell asleep.

T
here were those days in the hospital, people coming in and out, Berta and Danny Pedroia and Detective Martini from the Rhode Island State Police who was the one who told me that Hannah had died. He said it so matter-of-factly and I suppose I knew it already, but it didn't go down any easier. It felt so unjust, my survival, and what bothered me the most was the finality of the separation. We either both should have lived, or we both should have died, and if only one of us wasn't going to make it, it should have been me. I was born to the sea and in a perfect world, I should have died in the sea for what I loved. As my father had.

There was my incarceration in the wing for the criminally insane. The anguished wails of my fellow inmates who I seemed to have nothing in common with besides this building we shared. I saw their faces, contorted and half-human, and in them I never saw myself. Their pain was so palpable, so real, that they needed to be kept from themselves. They were their own worst enemies, and whatever they might say about me, I was not one of them.

There were the hours and hours with the doctors, going
over the same material over and over. I held nothing back and I told them all I could. I told them everything they wanted to know, but mostly I told them about the love. The love I had for Hannah and the love she had for me. How most people live their whole lives and never know that kind of love. There is no adequate way to describe it and if you have not experienced it yourself you will never know what I am talking about. It's like having a bad case of the flu that doesn't go away, only it's pleasant. You know you have it, that it has infected every part of you, but you don't want it to go away. You want to succumb to it totally, let it course through your body and your mind like a virus. And the best part about it is that everything in this dark world makes sense for a time. The moon and the stars and the sun. The endless unforgiving ocean. The sand and the earth underneath your boots. It becomes real because of the touch, the feel, and the gaze of another person. You fall into each other and when you do there is no fear, no pain, no sorrow. There is just each other and somehow that is always enough.

T
he trial began on a Tuesday in October. The courtroom was stuffy and I remember that it was hard to breathe. The air was stale and still and I felt it in my throat. I stood to give my plea and I knew that all eyes were on me. They wanted to hear my voice, as if its very sound might answer all the questions they had about me. Danny Pedroia made me practice those words over and over. I tried to sound strong and confident, though I was neither of those things. I was indifferent at this point, to tell you the truth. I just wanted this over, the scrutiny. If I couldn't live with Hannah, I at least wanted to be able to live with her in mind, where no one could bother me.

I stood, and I said, “Innocent by reason of insanity.”

I said it because I had to, not because I believed it. I knew what had happened and why it had happened. And other than the very end, when I was pulled out of the water against my will, I don't know that I would have done a thing differently. But there was no forum for me to say that, and I did not. I said those five words, enunciating them as clearly as I could, and then I sat down.

The first person the prosecution called was Victor. He
glanced at me quickly when he took the stand but the whole time he talked, he didn't once look in my direction. He wore his suit from the funeral home and he played with his mustache. The prosecutor, a sturdy-looking woman with shoulder-length brown hair, kept having to ask him to speak up. But Victor did pretty well. He didn't leave a whole lot out. He talked about the wake he did at the house, how he told me about the money. How I wanted it to use for college. He didn't mention anything about his wanting the money, too, but that was okay. I wasn't going to call him on it. Besides, the prosecutor went over this a dozen times, trying to show how clear-thinking I was. That I was making plans. Victor told them how we rode my skiff out and I insisted on going into the house alone. He told them how afterwards the only thing I would talk about was Hannah and when the woman prosecutor asked him if he thought that was odd, me talking only about the girl, Victor shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “Tony always liked girls.” Quite a few people in the courtroom chuckled at that and I even allowed myself a smile.

Sheriff Riker went next. He gave all the details of the scene at the house, of seeing Hannah's father on the floor next to the staircase. I tuned him out when he talked, to be honest. There was nothing new to what he said. Instead I scribbled on the paper in front of me, like I was taking notes. I also watched a long-haired woman in a flowing dress to my left, in the first row behind where the prosecutors sat. She had a big sketch pad and was drawing pictures of everyone in the courtroom. I liked to watch her work. She was fast and used colored pencils. She did a great one of the judge, and also a nice one of Danny Pedroia. She drew me a lot, and didn't seem to mind that I could see her doing it. But the one I liked the best was the one she did
of Berta. I thought she captured her perfectly, her stoic face and the sweetness and depth of her sad eyes. If I could have, I would have asked her if I could have it.

They brought up Captain Alavares and he talked about how I didn't show up for his boat that time and left him a note. The prosecutor asked him if I had ever caused any trouble before, and he said, “Anthony was an able fisherman.” It warmed my heart to hear him say it because I knew for Captain Alavares that this was the highest form of praise he could give.

Next they called old Terrence from the campground in Connecticut. I was surprised to see him and they cleaned him up for his big day in court. He limped up to the stand but otherwise he looked no worse for wear. He had a suit on. His face didn't show any sign of our fight, but then again it had been a couple of months. He said how I attacked him, and then took his car. He conveniently left out any part about his interest in Hannah and how that might of affected things. But I whispered all that to Danny Pedroia and when it was his turn he grilled him on it hard. Terrence didn't give in, though, and I realized he didn't have to. It was his word against mine and I was the one sitting over here.

The final witness the prosecution called was Hannah's mother, Irene Forbes. Everyone leaned forward in their seats as she made her way up the aisle and past me and to the stand. She wore a long black dress and heels, and the only hint of color came from a scarf around her neck that had a touch of red in it. When she sat down, the prosecution brought out a giant picture of Hannah and they propped it up so the jury could see it. It was slightly off center from where I sat, but I could see it nonetheless. It was only a shot of her face, and she was smiling, but there were her green eyes, and those freckles, and those full
lips. I only looked at it for a moment. For in front of me was Irene Forbes, and in her face I saw more of Hannah than I saw in the photograph. She was a beautiful woman. The wrinkles coming off her eyes and her forehead seemed to accentuate her beauty, not detract from it. And in seeing her, I suppose I got a glimpse of what Hannah would have looked like had she lived, and the thought of this was almost too much for me to handle. I felt the tears coming and I fought them off as best I could. I looked away from her, toward the tall windows, and when I looked back she was staring right at me as she talked about her daughter. In her eyes I saw hatred. Pure naked hatred. And I couldn't blame her. She hadn't been with us. She couldn't have known the truth about Hannah and me. All she knew was what was in front of her. That Hannah was in the ground. And that I was here.

W
hen the trial ended, the jury had found in our favor. Which only meant that I traded prison for a hospital. They drove me in a van to this place, and I got my first glimpse of its brick buildings and its manicured lawns, looking more like a college than anything else, except for the heavy fences with the swirls of barbwire at the top. There were the first few years in the buildings everyone calls the farm, and finally my move to this room on the third floor, this room that has become my home. This room that gives me the ocean in the distance when the leaves are off the trees.