Envious Moon (2 page)

E
veryone knew that house. Where it sat, on the easternmost tip of Cross Island, you couldn't miss it. Our path to the Grand Banks took us right underneath its turret and all the men used it as a landmark. It meant we were only an hour from home.

I don't believe it ever occurred to me that someone actually lived there. It didn't look like the kind of place where people lived. I had no frame of reference for people living in houses that size. It looked like part of the landscape itself, sitting as it did above the granite cliffs, near where the corner of the island hit the broad Atlantic, leaning out over the water like it was one good storm away from tumbling in.

Then one night on the jetty, Victor brought the house into my life.

This was the summer I turned seventeen and Victor and I spent practically every ounce of free time we had out on the jetty. It was our place. We'd drink beer out of cans and sit under the stars listening to the water and watching the boats slide past us in the dark. We'd smoke cigarettes and talk about girls. Neither of us had any prospects, to tell you the truth. All of the girls we
knew were still in high school, which we weren't. Our work took us strictly into the world of men. And we could not go into bars yet. Bars seemed like some kind of nirvana. Even walking past the few dives in town, the door would sometimes be propped open against the summer heat and inside we'd see men we knew leaning against the bar with beers in their hands, arms draped around women who would never have given us the time of day. It appeared to us that you just needed to be old enough, and once you were, you could drink the night away and then know what it was to be between the legs of a beautiful woman.

The night Victor told me about the house was a perfect summer night, clear as can be, and without moon. Above us was the great diffused spray of the Milky Way. Below us the waves lapped against the barnacled rocks of the jetty. The only sound was from the thrum of the diesel engines from passing lobster boats. We had a six-pack of beer. Victor started by saying he had done a wake at the house two nights before. An old woman had lived there alone, he said, had died in the kitchen, and then there was a wake in the house a week later. There was no funeral home on the island so they hired O'Brien's. I thought this was shaping up to be another one of Victor's funny stories about working at the funeral home. Like the one he told about a removal they did from a colonial on the waterfront near Connecticut. Some old fellow had died on the third floor and in this old house the staircases were so narrow there was no way they were going to get the gurney up to get him. So O'Brien had Victor keep the family busy in the kitchen and their eyes away from the window. From upstairs O'Brien just tossed the old man out the window and in the kitchen Victor saw the old man go by and he said he expected to hear a thud when he hit but that he was as quiet as falling leaves. The family never knew.
O'Brien and Victor scooped the body off the lawn and into the hearse.

But this story was different. At the wake, Victor's only job was to stand in this library room in the mansion and look official in his suit. O'Brien always gave him exact orders. How to stand with your arms at your side, look straight ahead and don't smile. If someone asks you a question, then bend forward to listen. It was all about appearances and Victor was pretty good at it, I guess. At any rate, at the wake all the people were in another room on the second floor of the house. This was where the food was and in the library where Victor was stationed nothing was going on. Occasionally someone or other would drift into the room and look at the leather-bound books on the wall, or sit in the big chairs and talk in hushed whispers, hiding their words from Victor who would pretend not to listen. And then, for a while, Victor was all alone. He could hear voices from the other room and once O'Brien poked his head in but that was it. So he did one of those impulsive things that people will do when left alone in someone else's house. He lifted the corner of the Persian rug that covered most of the parquet floor. He told me he didn't know exactly why he did it; he thought that perhaps he wanted to see if the wood was a different color as a result of being protected by the rug. Regardless, what he saw when he lifted the rug was dust mostly, but then some five or six feet in, was an envelope that appeared to be overflowing with green bills.

Victor dropped the rug. He looked around and waited for someone to come back into the room. A full ten minutes passed and then the door opened and an elderly couple came in and sat down in the big chairs in front of the fireplace. They made themselves comfortable and Victor gave up hope of being able to lift the rug again.

When Victor told me this, I stopped him. “Tell me about it again,” I said.

“Tell you what,” Victor said.

“The whole thing,” I said, and Victor sighed for I was always making him say things twice. But he was a good sport and started from the beginning and when he reached the part about the money, I said, “You sure it was money.”

“Of course, I'm sure. It was money. Tons of it.”

“Why didn't you grab it?”

“Because I thought someone was going to come in.”

“And did someone?”

“Well, that couple. Then O'Brien. He was just talking about how fucking rich these people were. Over and over.”

I said, “I think I would've grabbed it.” Though the truth was I didn't know if this was true or not. Chances are I would have done exactly what Victor did.

“I should've,” Victor said, and then he told me that the house was empty now, but that all the things were still inside, which meant that the money was there, under the rug. I asked him how he knew this and he said he heard some of the caterers talking and they said it would be six months before the place was cleaned out. We talked about how the woman had lived alone and had no family. How there was no one for that money to go to. And once we reached this point in the conversation, I think we both knew what we were going to do. We had always been good kids and had opportunities to not be and had not taken them. But it was the summer and we were best friends and sometimes when you're young like that you'll do things together that you won't do by yourself. Victor said the house would be open.

“How do you know that?” I asked.

He shrugged. “It's on the island. It's only rich people. Why would they lock it?”

“That makes sense,” I said, and we were walking down the road now, down the road toward doing this thing, in our minds anyway. We began to joke about what we would do with all that money, and talking about how much there actually was. The more we talked about it, the more money there was. Enough money to pay for four years of college. Plus, anything else we wanted to do. We joked about how I would go to college and Victor could come live with me. Then after I would be a lawyer or something and we could share a big house together. Have lots of girls. It seemed so easy. We would ride my skiff out to the island at night and sneak into the house. Find the money. And I wasn't only thinking of myself. I thought too of my mother, of Berta, who cooked in a hot kitchen all day and who, at night, moaned in bed because her back hurt so bad. And I think it probably hurt even more than she let on, for the last thing she wanted was for me to worry about her. Which meant that her moaning was involuntary and that she could not do a damn thing about it. I didn't know how I would tell her I got all this money. But I figured I'd worry about that later. The important thing was what it could do for us. If it could change our lives. If it could take us away from the narrow pathways we had always walked on to something different. We were young and when you are young you think there are shortcuts out there that you only need to find. Shortcuts that older people have kept from us. Both Victor and I believed that this might be one of those. And that it could alter our lives. As it turned out, it could. Just not in the way we had imagined.

V
ictor and I left the following night under clear skies. The moon had appeared as only a sliver above the harbor and the breeze was light. We were in my fourteen-foot skiff, the one that had been my father's, and the most important thing was the breeze. We were going through open water and anything more than a light chop could be trouble.

I steered the skiff through the rows of fishing boats docked in the inner harbor. Under the lamplights on the wharf we saw men on the decks of boats readying themselves to go out the next morning. Some of them looked up at us as we went by and when they did they waved or nodded at us in the dark.

We left the moorings behind us and the water opened up and I pulled down on the throttle and picked up speed. I followed the buoys toward the mouth. There were other skiffs and men pulling pots in the moonlight. A large trawler returning from Georges Bank came within thirty feet of us and we saw the shadows of men leaning against the railing. I didn't recognize the boat or the men on it but I had been to sea enough times to know what they were thinking. In their minds they were already on land. The catch had been unloaded and the holds scrubbed.
They were sitting in the bar, the open ocean growing more distant with each draft.

We passed the lighthouse at Point Judith and then the breakwater. Behind us the lights of the village shrank to pinpricks. We were in the sound now. This was water I had known my whole life. I knew where all the shoals and shallows were and I kept us away from them. To our right the dark humpback of land stretched toward Connecticut. To our left was Narragansett Bay and we could see the lights of freighters at the edge of the sky. There was the gentle breeze that blew my hair back and if it was not for what we were about to do, I would have relaxed into the ride. I would have enjoyed myself.

Even though the chop was light the hull of the small skiff still smacked against the water and we did not try to talk. We stood side by side, and in front of us the island began to take shape in the dark.

Soon we were close enough that we could make out the high dark bluffs. I turned the skiff to starboard, and we began to trace the western side of the island. The harbor and the main village were on the eastern side and there were no lights here. When we got closer, the ocean was shallow and I throttled down as we rode in the lee of the bluffs and we could hear each other clearly now.

“This is fucking crazy,” Victor said.

“I know.”

“We don't have to do this, Tony,” he said. Victor was the only one who called me Tony. I preferred Anthony but it was okay with me if Victor called me Tony.

“Let's just find the cove,” I said. “Then we can bail if we want.”

I agreed though I had already made up my mind that I was
going to go through with it. I kept thinking about all the money for college, and about my father. I pictured myself walking with those college girls in Providence. What my father would think if he saw me.

I studied the island to my left. I had only been on it a few times, and not since I was little. We always thought of it as a place for tourists. A lot of the girls we grew up with worked there in the summers. They were chambermaids at the inns. I knew a few guys who rode over to work construction. There were some farms and I had heard about work picking fruit but I didn't know anyone who had done that.

I peered through the darkness and now I saw the first lights from the houses high above the cliffs. The shoreline flattened a little bit here and I could see what looked like a beach. In the distance I heard voices and the steady bark of a dog.

We made our way around the western coast of the small island. There were no other boats and in front of us the starlight shimmered a road through the ocean.

“Over there,” Victor said, pointing ahead. I saw where the island started to bend inward. “That's the cove.”

“You sure?”

“Positive,” he said.

I brought the boat in slowly. It was a small cove but the beach looked sandy. I steered toward it and when we started to bottom out I cut the engine. I climbed over the bow and stood in the surf in my boots and the water lapped against the hull of the skiff. I took the rope and pulled the boat closer and when it stopped moving, Victor clambered over the stern. We were on the island.

I looked around. My eyes adjusted to the greater darkness that was the land at night. The cove in front of us was narrow
and defined by rock outcroppings. Above there were small scrub trees that grew out of the cliff face and leaned over us.

I said, “Where's the house?”

Victor pointed to the right. “Up there. Through the trees.”

“How do we get there?”

“Ahead,” he said. “See? There's a path. It runs up that cliff and kicks out behind the house.”

I saw where he pointed. A break between trees. I took a deep breath. “All right,” I said.

“Tony?”

“I know, Vic,” I said.

“There's not going to be anyone up there.”

“We should go,” I said.

“Okay,” said Victor, and we left the boat and moved toward the trees.

W
e found the path and it was a well-worn trail of packed dirt. On either side of us were small trees and dense undergrowth. The trail itself was narrow. We walked slowly. We didn't want to trip over something we couldn't see. My eyes grew more accustomed to the dark and we went a little quicker. Now and again we stopped and stood next to each other breathing heavily and we listened but there was only the sound of our breathing and the light surf against the beach below.

“Not much farther,” Victor said.

Soon the trees on our right thinned and then they fell away completely. I could see the end of the cove and the ocean, though I couldn't see the boat since it was right underneath us. We followed several switchbacks and I got a sense of altitude. I looked to my right and saw the light at Montauk. It was a familiar sight and it comforted me to see it. The land started to level and in front of us the path widened. The trees on either side of us were larger now that we were away from the cliff but in the dark we could not tell what kind they were. The path was wide enough for several people to walk side by side now. In front of us I saw the stars in the sky and when we walked through a small
stand of trees we found ourselves on a large lawn and then there was the house, several hundred yards away.

We stopped. The house was massive, huge and black against the expanse of sky. We were looking at the back of it. I sank to one knee, and Victor followed. I felt the grass wet on my jeans.

“The front door is on the other side,” Victor whispered.

“No lights on,” I whispered back.

Three chimneys rose off the roof and high into the sky. The large turret, the one I had seen from sea, was on the ocean side. We kneeled there for what seemed like a long time. Finally I said, “Stay here.”

“You sure?” Victor said, and he sounded relieved. The truth was that I wasn't sure. I only thought it might be easier if I did this alone.

“Yeah,” I said. “Look for cars or lights. If anything happens, meet me at the boat.”

I didn't say anything else after that. I remembered that when we were younger we used to jump off the bridge into the tidal river that ran near our neighborhood. We were both scared to jump but we would never admit it. I could only jump if I didn't spend time thinking about how far down it was. I needed to hurl myself off as soon as I got up on the trestle. I needed to feel my body in the air and then the water when I hit. That was the way I felt looking at the house. That I couldn't think about it too much. Just get up and run. Do this thing.

I stood and ran across the lawn in a half crouch and I didn't stop until I reached the back of the house. I was in its shadow and I looked back to where Victor was but I could not see him. I leaned against the wall and its shingles felt as cold as water against my bare arms. My breath was coming hard and fast and
I told myself to calm down. I looked up. The roofline looked like it was miles away.

Leaning against the wall, I noticed that there were doors on this side of the house. Places where the wall recessed into itself. Three of them that I could see. I wished Victor was here now, because it might be a good idea to try one of them. But Victor had only described reaching the library from the front door. The last thing I needed was to get lost in a dark house. I started to work my way toward the front.

At the corner of the building I stopped. In front of me was a circular driveway and a road that led to it. The road curved away through the trees. To my right I saw the ocean again and it was a remarkable view even in the thin light. Only the rich had views like this. The land opened up along a cliff walk and then curled back away toward the other side of the island. The sliver of a moon sitting above it all. There were no cars in the driveway. Victor must have been right. No one was here.

I rounded the corner and in front of me was a stone porch. I stayed as close to the building as I could until I reached it. I stepped onto the porch and now I stood in front of the door and I had never seen a door quite like it. Made of heavy dark wood, someone had carved two trees on either side of a leaded-glass window. The trees came together as one above the window, their branches meshing together at their skinniest points. The window was high enough that despite being six-foot-two I had to get on my tiptoes to see through it.

I saw the bottom of a staircase and not much else. I took the large brass doorknob into my hand and I just held it, then I thought again of jumping off the bridge into the tidal river. Don't think too much, Anthony, I told myself. I turned it and it gave way and the heavy door moved inward. The hinges creaked
slightly. When it was open just enough for me to slip through, I did, and I found myself in a large hallway. Suddenly, everything felt like a dream. Somewhere came the beating tick tick tick of a clock and I felt things slowing down. I was aware of my every movement, the twitch of a muscle, the blink of an eye.

I left the door behind me partially open. In front of me and directly to the right was a staircase, wide and with a thick wooden railing on the left side of it. Halfway up, it came to a landing and then the stairs curved away to the right. I stepped forward and on my left was a large room that appeared to be completely empty. It had floor-to-ceiling windows and moonlight passed through them and made rectangles on the floor.

I went to the stairs and began to climb. I tested each step for creaks. There was a carpet that split the dark wood of each step and I made sure I stayed on it. I had my left hand on the railing and I propelled myself forward.

I reached the landing and then up the final stairs and I stood in a large foyer. It was darker up here and for a moment I didn't move. In front of me were wide openings—bigger than doorways—that led to other rooms. Victor had said the library was on the right but as it turned out there were two openings on the right. I figured he must have meant the far right and this was the one I took.

It was a large room and despite the darkness I could see the books on the wall stacked neatly in ceiling-high shelves. I had guessed right. I went to my knees and began to crawl forward. I felt around with my arms for the carpet and I did not see the small table until it was too late. I bumped it with my shoulder and I heard something tottering. I reached out with my hands, hoping to catch whatever it was but I missed it and a large table lamp crashed to the ground.

I froze where I was. I did not move. I waited for a minute and then another and I heard nothing except my own labored breath. I went forward again, like a blind man, my hands in front of me. I felt the rough wool of the carpet and with my hands I traced the edge of it to the far right corner. I was as careful as I could be and my only hope was that there was not another table or another lamp to knock over.

When I reached the corner, I half stood and I began to roll the carpet back as far as I dared. Then I returned to my knees and I began to scour the floor with my hands, moving my palms in circles across the wood like I was waxing it. The fingers on my left hand touched it first. I grabbed it and I knew right away that it was what we had come for. I picked it up and it was thick in my hand. I brought the envelope to my face and I thumbed the bills inside it. I stood now and since it was too big for my pocket, I stuffed it into the front of my jeans, against my bare skin.

I left the room the same way I had come in. I wanted to run. But I knew this was a bad idea. I needed to keep my head. I needed to get back down the stairs and out in the night where I belonged.

I crossed the foyer and began down the stairs. One at a time. I reached the landing. The longest part of the stairs were in front of me. It was not far now but it seemed like a long way away. I was looking to see if I could see the front door from here, the door I had left ajar, and if any of the night had spilled into the house. I went to take another step and as I did, the foyer behind me, where I had just left, filled with light.

My heart rose in my chest. I felt it flutter like a bird. I had been afraid many times but not like this. I was no longer alone and I knew I should run. For some reason I could not move. I
leaned into the shadows and I looked back toward the light.

And what I saw was a girl, a girl surrounded by golden light and wearing a white nightgown. Through her gown I could see the outline of her legs. I could not see her eyes and I could not tell the color of her hair. But the part of her face that I could see, draped in shadow, was more beautiful than any face I had ever seen. Her high cheekbones and her full lips and her strong nose. Part of me understood that I should not be considering any of this, that I should just run, but something kept me completely still. I had one job in that moment, and that was to move my feet, to get back to the trail, to Victor, and then to the skiff. Back to Galilee. But I couldn't stop staring at her. I was transfixed. And then she spoke.

She said, “Who are you?”

“I won't hurt you,” I managed to say and then I repeated it. “I won't hurt you.”

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“A mistake,” I said, and I wanted for some reason to explain it all to her but I knew this made no sense. I wanted to tell her how we thought the house was empty and that the money didn't belong to anyone. That maybe it would help me get to college. I wanted to say something about how beautiful she was in the golden light and I wanted to ask her the color of her eyes. But I knew that I couldn't do any of these things.

“I have to go,” I whispered, as if this was the reasonable thing to do now. I turned away and I began to bound down the steps.

I took them two at a time and in the dark I did not see the man until he was right in front of me. He came up the stairs as fast as I went down.

“Get over here,” he said, and I tried to sidestep him. He
was bigger than I was and when he wrapped his arms around me I felt his breath hot against my face. I shook him off and he kept coming. For a moment he was gone and then I felt him again, and he was on top of me, on my shoulders, and he was trying to take me down. He was a very strong man and the weight of him drove me into the railing. I flailed at him with my arms and I think I cried out. I smacked at his hands and I wanted nothing more than to be free of him and then, all of a sudden, I was. He had gone over the railing and landed on the floor below. I heard him hit. It took a minute for it to register and I stood there dumbly looking into the dark.

I heard the girl now and when I looked up she was coming down the stairs toward me, quickly, two steps at a time. “Daddy,” she called, saying it over and over, and something inside me broke and I started to run. I ran as fast as I could. I flew down that staircase, and I raced for the open door and through it and I was out on the porch and then onto the lawn.

I tore around the corner of the house and sprinted across the dewy grass and when I reached Victor I said, “Come on,” and I kept running. His face looked empty, his jaw slack, brown eyes just staring at me. I ran so fast I almost went off the path and into the undergrowth that was the top of the cliff. I heard Victor panting behind me and when we reached the cove I said, “Get in” and Victor said, “Oh, Jesus,” but I barely heard that.

We shoved off from the beach and when the skiff was in water deep enough, I started the engine and it went on the first try. I pulled down on the throttle and turned the boat toward open water.