Envious Moon(52)

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.





We 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.





There 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.