Envious Moon(32)

Dr. 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 f*cking,” 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, f*cking, 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.”