Losing the Moon

by Patti Callahan Henry

  She went back to the kitchen and slumped in a pine ladder-back chair and listened to the whistle of the guest bathroom shower, to the opening and shutting of closets and doors. She knew the sound of each pipe, each creak of floor.

  Molly bounced into the kitchen, grabbed a biscuit and kissed her on the head. “Bye, Mom. I’m going home with Cindy after school, spending the night. I’ll call from her house. Love ya.”

  Amy smiled, nodded—nothing left to say. She pushed an omelet around the plate with her fork.

  Phil shuffled into the kitchen and looked around, never at his wife. “Oh, Amy.”

  “Go on. I know you’re late.”

  She didn’t look up—her humiliation greater now than her need to see his face as he left the house. The door clicked shut and she stared out the kitchen window and noticed, again, the empty bird feeder. She rose from the chair, opened the storage closet, then yanked out a bag of bird seed, walked into the backyard, her heels spiking into the ground. She pulled down the bird feeder and filled it to the top, not caring about her suede pumps now coated with soil.

  A cardinal perched on the top branch of the birch tree above looked down at her.

  “I know, I know. I’m sorry. But here you go. I’m here now. I won’t forget again.”

  She walked back into the kitchen, dumped the entire breakfast in the garbage disposal and cleaned the remnants of the uneaten feast. She stood back, surveyed her clean kitchen. “Okay,” she said out loud. “We’ll start with the linen closet.”

  Although she kept the house in almost pristine condition, she loved artifacts and mementos, so her closets and drawers overflowed with paraphernalia she thought she just might need one day, things she couldn’t bear to throw away: old clothes, antique linens, papers, knickknacks and crafts.

  The clothes and towels, the closet essentials of their lives, poured out from the hidden places and landed on the floor and on tables; she sorted them as if their family’s collective life depended on how she organized them. If she was so messed up—surely she could fix this—at least this.

  She was so intent on her work that the OWP group told her they rang the bell four times before she entered the foyer. She smiled at them when she opened the front door—poised and ready with the self she woke up with, the new self who would force redemption.

  Norah, Revvy and Reese stared at her. They all opened their mouths as if to speak, but only stared.

  “What?” She looked at them, tilted her head.

  “Your clothes,” Norah said and laughed.

  She looked down; she was covered with dust, streaks of dirt smeared across her black sweater, and she had on only one shoe. “Oh, I’ve been cleaning out closets.” She laughed, a coarse sound. “Come in, come in. What are y’all doing here?”

  Norah held up a box. “We brought you dinner. We thought you were still—you know—confined to bed.”

  “You cooked me dinner?” Guilt rose.

  Reese stepped up and touched the box. “Well, not exactly cooked. You wouldn’t want that. But we did pitch in for it—all vegetarian, of course. Hope ya don’t mind.”

  “No. No. You are so . . . sweet. Come on in. I have to warn you that it is a huge mess. Just step over the piles. I can’t believe you drove all this way to bring me dinner.”

  “Mrs. Reynolds, are you sure you’re supposed to be up like this?” asked Norah.

  “Oh, yes.”

  They all looked at one another.

  “Really,” she said.

  They followed her to the kitchen. “Sit, sit,” she said and gestured toward the bar stools. “Hey, where’s Brenton?”

  “He couldn’t bear to come with us.”

  “Why—can’t stand to burn all that fossil fuel?”

  “No—he didn’t want to see your face when we told you about the island.”

  Instead of them sitting on a bar stool, she did—already defeated before the end of the conversation. Of course there would be bad news. Did she believe anything good could come of her actions?

  “Go ahead, tell me.”

  “Well, it seems that we don’t have enough evidence to get a Heritage Trust and they were a bit miffed by the fact that Nick broke into the house and illegally collected evidence.”

  “He didn’t break into the house. He had a key. And”—she sighed—“it was both of us, not just Nick.”

  “Well, he told them you had no idea he was doing anything illegal—that it was all him.”

  “He protected me. Everybody’s protecting me.” She wanted to lie down on the kitchen floor and curl in on herself; she deserved nothing of the sort.

  “Even if he had the key, I guess he got it—illegally. Not that we blame him—he was only trying to help,” Revvy said.

  “Have you talked to him?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, wanting and not wanting to know.

  Norah took her hand. “No—he showed up for his hearing, so we didn’t lose our bail money, and then he disappeared again. All the judge gave him was some community service, which he already does—land preservation on the barrier islands. He didn’t want to talk to us—he waved, then left. Even his wife doesn’t know where he is.”

  “I’m so, so sorry about all this. I really am,” she said.

  “Oh, Mrs. Reynolds, there’s no reason to be sorry—you did all you could, and having Nick help us could have saved it,” Revvy said.

  “But it didn’t.”

  “Well, I’m partly to blame. I lent him the boat and I knew what he was doing,” Reese said.

  “Did you get in any trouble?” She looked up at him.

  “Nah, he protected me, too. Said he borrowed the boat from a friend without permission.”

  “I wish I could do something to fix this.” She wished she could do something to fix everything. “Has the sale gone through?”

  Norah sighed and leaned up against the kitchen counter. “Tomorrow they’re going to close the deal. At least we’ll find out who the buyer is.”

  “I wasn’t much help, was I? Couldn’t even find out who the buyer was.”

  “Oh, yes, yes, you were a huge help.” Norah hugged her for the first time. “The gilded wallpaper and the Purbeck stone almost swayed them—I guess they’re really valuable. But they said we used illegal means and there just wasn’t enough evidence to warrant the amount of money it’d cost to buy the island.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Revvy thumped her on the back—she considered this a hug. “Stop saying that. You did as much or more than we did. It just didn’t work and that sucks.”

  “Yes, it does,” she agreed.

  The OWP walked out as a somber group and promised to contact her if they needed anything else in their efforts to protect the ACE basin. She opened the boxed dinner and smiled at the vegetarian lasagna, the whole-wheat bread and the largest chocolate chip cookies she’d ever seen. She picked up a cookie and took a huge bite, sat down on the bar stool and ate alone—feeling there was so much lost in all this mess, so much.

  The kitchen side door shuddered open, caught on a pile of towels and stopped. Jack poked his head in the crack. “Hey, Mom?” He kicked the door open, spreading the neat pile of towels across the floor.

  “Hey, bucko. Don’t mess up my piles.”

  “What is all this?”

  “I’m cleaning the house—the entire house.”

  “In a suit and high heels?”

  “Don’t mix those piles up. They’re divided into ‘give away,’ ‘sell,’ and ‘keep.’ ”

  “Are you sure you’re supposed to be up doing all this?”

  “I feel great . . . fine. I’m going to fix everything.”

  “Okay . . .” Jack tilted his head.

  “I have a month’s leave of absence from work. I’m going to—”

  “Where’s Dad? Is he home from work yet?”

  “Did you know he got a promot
ion?”

  “Yeah, he told me last week.”

  She picked up the towels Jack had scattered and began to fold them. “Oh.”

  “Is he home or not?”

  “No . . . not yet. I haven’t heard from him all day.” She turned away from Jack, from his eyes. The sound of the garage door opening and closing on its rusted track vibrated through the kitchen.

  “Well, there he is now.” She stood, smiled and smoothed the front of her black sweater. “Oh, my, I’m all wrinkled.”

  Jack laughed. “Gee, I wonder why.” He swept his hand over the piles scattered across the kitchen floor, the kitchen table shoved against the wall.

  “Tell your dad I’ll be right out.” She scurried toward the bedroom to change into something clean and ironed. The deep voices of her husband and son echoed across the house. She stared at her closet, at the pile of laundry. She pulled out a red sweater; it was wrinkled. She yanked a blue silk shirt from a hanger, but there was a crease right down the front. Finally she found a smooth brown cashmere sweater, tugged it over her head, and emerged from the closet.

  She entered the hall; her smile fell before it fully crossed her face. The empty sound of the house told her; they were gone, had left without saying goodbye. She walked unsteadily into the kitchen, loneliness now settling deeper than she’d ever known.

  She opened the door to the garage and stared at the empty space where Phil’s car had been parked ten minutes before. He must have already been packed, ready to go. A slimy patch of oil shone under the fluorescent garage light.

  “Well, then.” She went into the kitchen, fished around under the sink and pulled out a bottle of Lysol, paper towels and a scouring pad. She walked back into the garage, squatted in the empty parking spot and scrubbed at the oil spot until clean gray concrete came through. She stood, smiled.

  “Okay, fixed.”

  She dumped the cleaning supplies under the sink, stood in the pile-strewn kitchen. “Well, then. I guess I just need to iron all those wrinkled clothes now.”

  She walked through the house on her heels, into her closet to pluck down every single shirt she owned—then piled them according to color, material and texture. She grabbed the ironing board from behind the belt rack, then plugged in the iron—a wedding present that hadn’t been used as often as the fine china. Her motto had been “If it needs ironing, it goes to the dry cleaners.” But not now; now she would do everything correctly.

  She began to iron one shirt at a time, beginning with white and moving to colors—bright to dark.

  Chapter Thirty

  “I told her.”

  “What?” Nick started at the sound of his wife’s voice. He’d watched the house, assumed he’d correctly timed his visit to retrieve more clothes. Eliza was supposed to be at Alex’s and Max’s wrestling match. He turned from his dust-coated backpack lying on the Oriental carpet. He just needed clean underwear, clean shirts.

  “I went to the hospital and told her.”

  “Told who what?”

  “Amy—that you were drunk the night you ran over that woman. You left that part out, didn’t you? You wanted her to believe you were the victim of some horrible twist of fate that took her away from you.”

  Nick stood, grabbed some clean shirts from a drawer. “No, I don’t believe that, Eliza. I believe you took her away from me with your manipulative lies.”

  “If you want to hate me, if you want to believe that, you can convince yourself of it—but you know it’s not completely true.”

  “Not completely true?” Nick spit in his anger, kicked a wicker hamper across the floor. “Not all the way true? You lied to me for twenty-five years, let me believe she—”

  “Say her name, say her name,” Eliza whispered.

  “Amy. Amy. You let me believe Amy didn’t answer my telegrams, that you were the only one there for me. That you were the one who . . .” He turned to his backpack and shoved clothing into it.

  “I was the one who was there for you. You lied to me, too.”

  “How?” He slammed his backpack onto the floor.

  “I believed you were over her, that you loved me. That you . . . were here with us, with our family. But you weren’t. The whole time you were waiting, wondering about her.”

  Nick leaned down and grabbed his bag, threw it over his shoulder.

  “Where are you going?” Eliza asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “What if I . . . what if the kids have to get ahold of you?”

  “I have my cell phone.”

  “I’ve tried that.”

  “Leave a message. I’ll get it.”

  “Nick . . . please. Can’t we talk?”

  “Not now. No.” He walked past his wife, down the hall, then stood in the foyer. His two sons’ wrestling duffel bags sat beside the front door. He reached down, touched the bags. He’d missed four wrestling meets since all this started; he’d never missed anything for his sons. He blamed this on Eliza—her lies. He kicked the front door open, walked to his pickup truck.

  He was frantic with the need to know if Amy was okay, to find out why she’d left him in the middle of the night. He alternated between believing she’d told her family she loved him and believing she hated him, hated what he’d become to her.

  He shoved a hand in his pocket, fingered the necklace he’d found on the beach while looking for her. He wanted to hand it back to her, see her, hear her.

  In the week and a half since the night with Amy, he’d been camping out on Oystertip. He was taking a chance, but getting caught trespassing paled in comparison to his need to be alone in the last place he’d been with Amy. He’d been paddling a kayak back and forth and he’d planted his tent in the thick brush, where passersby wouldn’t find him unless they knew to look for him.

  Amy had come home from the hospital; he’d called the nurses’ desk so many times that they knew his name and always told him how she was, when she left. He’d driven past her house five, maybe six times now in the past week, but couldn’t tell if anyone had been home. He would go today—give it one more try before heading back to Oystertip—an island he’d believed would bring her back to him.

  When he’d first seen the island, he had become convinced their mutual work would save it, and that all his wishes, hell, his prayers, had been answered. Fate had finally intervened; she also had to see it. And for the briefest time she had seen it. He just had to make her see and know their destiny again.

  Lost in his thoughts, he found he was already in Darby, driving past the house he had memorized: the gingerbread trim on the front porch, the frozen ferns in the front planters, the curtain pulled further open on the right window than the left, the front-porch light that remained on all the time.

  The garage was open, empty save for Amy’s SUV. Nick looked at the truck’s clock: ten fifteen in the morning. It was time.

  He pulled the truck up to the curb and parked, opened the driver’s-side door, then shut it with a soft push. He didn’t want to make a single noise to startle her, to make her scurry to the far corners of the house where he couldn’t reach her. He walked to the front porch and stood for a minute, breathing in, out. He lifted his hand and knocked.

  No sound came from the house: no footsteps, no muffled music wafting through the front door’s glass side panels. He took a deep breath, knocked again, more forcefully this time.

  “I’m coming . . . coming.” Amy opened the door, pushing something aside with her foot. She glanced up. Only silence dropped from her open mouth.

  “Say something. Anything,” Nick said.

  “What . . . what are you doing here?” She glanced outside, motioned for him to come in, then shut the door behind him. “You can’t . . . come here. I thought you were my neighbor bringing dinner. They’ve all organized dinners. How humiliating is that?”

  He reached out to touch her; she backed away fro
m him.

  She held up her hand to stop him. “Yes, sir. The entire town believes that I got lost in the woods trying to save our precious earth. They believe this because it’s what Phil told them. So they come by with dinners and flowers and books and . . . sympathy. I want to scream at them, tell them I don’t deserve their dinners . . . that I can’t eat their food, because I have a rock where my stomach used to be. . . .”

  “Amy.” He took a step forward, reached for her.

  “Why are you here?”

  “I have to know exactly what happened to you. I’ve been sick with worry. I have to know.”

  “All that knowing—all that wondering . . . wanting to know why you left, why you never came back, why you still loved me. Knowing. Damn knowing.” She bowed her head.

  Nick moved toward her again. If he could just touch her. . . . He whispered, scared that she might disappear. “It’s more than just knowing.”

  “Well, now I know, don’t I? Yep, found out what I really am.” She looked up at him. “You know, I really, truly thought I was a great person. Good wife, good mother—all of it—the whole package.”

  “You are.”

  She held up her hand again. “Let me finish. You are so . . . overwhelming, and I have so much trouble separating your feelings from my own. So you have to listen to mine. To me. And I’m still confused about this part—about how something that used to be so good and right could dredge up the most terrible part of me, expose all the rotten pieces of me. Look at me—I never even thanked you for saving my life.”

  “That’s it. All the good and right things about us—”

  “Nick, stop.”

  “Okay, okay.” He loved her; he would grant her whatever she asked of him.

  She held her palms upward, as if showing him something she’d hidden in her hands. “You’ve always been . . . too much. Too much of everything. And I remembered that, and the feeling and the knowing, and I got lost. So lost. And I’m trying to find my way back, find out who I really am, because I am definitely not as good as I thought.”