Envious Moon(26)

The sex was the newest part for me. I had been a virgin before I met Hannah, which I think she knew but I don’t mind saying anyway. The passion of it surprised me. I was unprepared for how quickly it stripped away whatever remaining walls may have stood between us. I confess that a few times I found the whole thing stressful, since Hannah seemed to want more than I could give her. There was a line, I think, between what was loving and what was not. I was so new at all of it, so that when she would want me to pull on her hair until it hurt, I couldn’t understand why she wanted me to hurt her.

“Just do it, Anthony,” she demanded.

And so I did, though I did it reluctantly, and afterward, when we lay together in the quiet with our skin warm against each other, I sometimes felt bad about it all, like I had let her down, even though I was doing exactly what she had asked me to do.





The morning Hannah told me her mother was coming, a fog rolled in from the east and it brought the first rain we had seen since we had been together. At first it wasn’t much more than drizzle but by midday it was pouring. It was a day Hannah didn’t have to work and we spent the whole morning, as had become our habit, in bed. It seemed like we could have divided our life together into two parts: when we were having sex and when we had just finished. I remember that we were lying there watching the rain fall in a gray sky out the windows. I went to say something about it when she interrupted me.

She said, “My mother’s coming.”

“When?”

“Today.”

She rolled away from me so I could not see her face and I looked again to the window and the rain that fell now like bars of silver. “Okay,” I said.

“I should’ve told you sooner.”

“Don’t sweat it,” I said.

“It’d be better if…”

“What?”

“I don’t know how to say this,” Hannah said.

“Tell me.”

“If she didn’t know about us.”

“How long is she here?”

She turned back toward me. I brushed the hair away from her forehead. “The weekend,” she said. “She hates it here, but she feels like she has to check on me.”

“I’ll be okay,” I said.

“It’s not what you think,” Hannah said. “It’s just that if she thought I was involved with a boy, any boy, she wouldn’t leave. Then we couldn’t be together.”

“I get it,” I said.

“Do you?”

“Yeah.”

I watched the rain fall and wondered what I would do with myself if I had to stay away from the house. It was a soaking rain but maybe it would let up. She leaned in and kissed me then and we kissed for a while. Then she said, “It’s only two nights.”

I nodded. “Two nights will feel like a long time.”

Her green eyes narrowed and then she smiled. “I’ll miss you,” she said.

“You sure?”

She nodded and her hair fell in front of her eyes and now she swept it away. But I was greedy for her, drunk for her, and every moment away from her felt empty. The truth was that sometimes it took another person to teach you how to be alive.





Later that afternoon the rain picked up and fell in sheets on the beach. It was so heavy that I could not see the water. I sat wedged under the rock face and I was miserable. My luck had run out. The promontory provided some shelter but it was not enough. When the wind blew the rain came right in and soaked my clothes. Hannah was with her mother by now. What were the two of them doing? They would have the great house to themselves. I would be stuck on the beach, the rain-soaked beach.

At least I was smart enough to snag two bottles of wine from the cellar before I left. I might be wet but I had the wine and that was a comfort.

I wished there was someplace I could go. I had money. I thought about getting a hotel room. Lying on a warm bed and watching television. But I didn’t have a credit card and I knew you needed one for places like that. Besides, I didn’t look like someone who belonged in a fancy inn. My presence might raise questions. A phone call to the sheriff.

So I sat and watched the rain. I was wet and cold. And I felt the sadness coming on. I felt it coming on like a cold.





When the wind shifted at dusk and the rain began to come sideways under the rock, I broke camp. I piled my things into the oilskin and made for the cove. Passing the overturned rowboats, for a moment I thought about using them somehow to build a shelter. But someone might notice them missing.

At the cove I started to walk up the trail that led to the house. I knew I could not go to the house. But halfway up the hill, where the trees started, it leveled off and the pitch pines grew closely together. I made my way into the grove, holding my right arm in front of me to keep stray branches from catching me in the face. In between two tall trees I stopped. The rain fell steadily here but it was not as bad as the exposed beach. I put my oilskin bag down. I removed my heavy raincoat. From my bag, I took out the good test fishing line. It took me a while in the new dark but I strung the coat between the trees. Tied it firm with the fishing line. I sat down under it. The rain pinged on top of the heavy rubber. But even though the pine needles below me were wet, the rain no longer fell on me. I stood and laid a towel on the pine needles. Then I took out my bedroll and laid it folded in half on top of the towel. I sat back down. This was much more like it. The rain couldn’t reach me anymore.