Losing the Moon

by Patti Callahan Henry

  Nick looked down the table at her. “We moved to Maine.”

  “Oh.” She shifted her eyes away from his copper stare.

  He stood, began to walk away. She was embarrassed to ask again—where in Maine? Why?

  “Men, I swear they give only as much information as the CIA,” Eliza said. “We moved to Maine because Nick got a job with one of the most prestigious timber firms in the U.S. and he was in charge of all their—”

  “Eliza.” Nick turned around. “They do not want to hear about this.”

  “Sure we do,” Phil said with the strained voice he used after he’d been sick and was trying to pretend he was already well.

  “So,” Eliza said, “anyone want coffee?” She leaned across the table. Her eyes looked uneven, like a child had stuck Mrs. Potato Head with two different eyes. But maybe it was just an effect of the wine.

  “I’d love some,” Amy said.

  And once again the evening took on the cadence and rhythm it had before the reminder that Nick defined, for Amy, everything to do with college and jumping and young love, before the still-unanswered question was raised: what happened in Costa Rica?

  Chapter Eight

  The Scrabble board and jumbled letters covered the oak coffee table with deer-antler legs. The wineglasses scattered across the table looked like red and white jewels that had tumbled off a bracelet; wineglass identifiers with various charms circled the stems. There were a bear, a moose (when was the last time anyone had seen a moose at Lake Hardin?) and other emblems of the woodsy lake house. A pine tree dangled from Amy’s glass and she thought how she would have preferred the canoe, to take her far, far away from here.

  The conversation about family and school swirled around her in disjointed sentences. She smiled when appropriate and attempted to concentrate on the wavering letters in front of her. She found words in her head, but couldn’t spell them from the small tiled letters—she’d drunk too much and needed to go to bed, or home for that matter. But she dared not be any ruder than she already felt she’d been.

  The conversation—as she’d prayed it would not—turned to her. Eliza had just finished listing the nineteen hundred causes she worked for, including her volunteer work with the Junior League and the Botanical Society.

  What was Amy to do? Tell them all she worked part-time at the college and took care of the family and home? It was what she did, but to sum it up that way suddenly seemed feeble. She began to tell Eliza about the island with the Colonial-era house that she was desperate to save.

  She just wanted to talk about what she did, about what was important to her. This small thing—this justification of her existence beyond her home and job—began a series of events that she would never have been able to predict; a sense of inevitability took over. Phil had heard her story often enough and never really listened; she always felt her words fell hard and unheard. Here she felt the others were ready and willing to hear all about it.

  “Tell me about it,” Eliza said, blinked in an almost flirtatious way.

  “It’s a small island called Oystertip Island and a very wealthy, and anonymous, man wants to buy it—develop it into a personal playground,” Amy said.

  “A neighborhood—a development?” Nick put down his letter tiles and leaned across the coffee table, his eyes wide.

  She stumbled over her hurried words as she attempted to tell him about it-—as if she’d been waiting for someone besides the committee to care.

  “It’s only about one hundred twenty-five acres. This man wants to build his own private retreat—you know: a house, pool, guesthouse, dock. We haven’t seen the full plans and we don’t know who he is. There’s a crumbling Colonial-Palladian house at the center of the island that the original owners built before the Civil War—it’s one of the very last of its type. Anyway, the developer wants to tear it down, build a replica on another part of the island.”

  “And the land—what about the land?” Nick said.

  “I got roped into this committee—the Oystertip Wilderness Protectors, OWP—by default. The others are botanists and naturalists and they’re the experts on the land. They’re doing everything they can to save it. They only came to me for my expertise with period-style houses. And I just can’t stand to see them tear it down. It makes me nauseous to think about it.”

  “Who started this group—who’s in it?” Nick leaned closer and so did Amy.

  He had to speak above everyone else as the kids, Phil, and Eliza began their own discussion—something about whether “skitter” was a real word and was there a dictionary in the house.

  She glanced around the room and realized it was only Nick who was listening, who cared; she wanted to tell him all about it.

  “The OWP is a group of students who believe there are enough endangered species on this island to get a protective grant from a Heritage Trust. They worked on this project for at least a year before I came on board. They’ve discovered that one of the things the Trust program protects is architectural gems—so that’s how I got involved.”

  “They’re looking for a wildlife-refuge grant from Georgia?”

  “No, and actually the island is in South Carolina—right over the Georgia border into the ACE Basin, where the Ashapoo, Combahee and Edisto rivers meet. The Heritage Preserve inventories, evaluates and then protects the most outstanding representatives of the state through the Trust. The OWP feels they have a good chance of the island becoming a Heritage Preserve. But we have to prove the island is both worthy and that the need is urgent because money is tight—there are about fifty million dollars’ worth of projects that deserve to be protected and only about two million dollars in the Trust right now.”

  “Wood stork, osprey, peregrine, brown pelican, loggerhead are a few of the endangered ACE Basin species,” Nick said.

  Eliza tuned back in, shivered and laughed. “Yeah, those and water moccasins.”

  “Eliza, water moccasins are not endangered,” Nick said.

  “Well, I wish they were extinct.” Eliza faked a shudder.

  Amy looked at Nick and he smiled at her.

  She placed her elbows on the coffee table. “I’m trying to stay out of that part—I’m just trying to prove that this house should be saved.”

  “Have you seen it? Been in it?”

  “I’ve been to the island, but not in the house. The Eldrin clan that owns it are the great-great-grandchildren of the original owners, who were slave merchants and indigo farmers. Now this family has some bankrupt business and they need to sell the land—and they don’t care to whom. They fiercely protect the island and house from nosy naturalists like the OWP. It’s amazing how they don’t care, how they just want the money.”

  “Which island is this, Amy?”

  “It’s off the coast from Savannah, next to Osprey-head Island.”

  “I know exactly where that is.”

  “You do?”

  Phil poked at Amy’s ribs. “It’s your turn, darlin’.”

  Amy returned to the couch, her head swimming and tiles jumbled. She looked at Phil. “I was in the middle of telling Nick about the island.”

  “It’s your turn,” he repeated.

  She looked down at her letters—all consonants. “I can’t spell anything.”

  Nick leaned farther across the coffee table, tiles scattered. “Phil, it’s pretty cool that she’s involved in this. She could save another island from the damnation of bulldozers and paved roads.”

  “Island? She’s always trying to save one house or another. She does a good job of it. Which house are you talking about, honey?”

  “The one on the island, the one I’ve been telling you about.”

  Phil tilted his head as if she’d just spoken Gaelic to him, as if she hadn’t been blabbering for months on end about this project, as if she’d just grown another damn head.

  “Which island?” Phil asked.r />
  “Phil, there’s only one island. You know, the Oystertip Island project. The small island with the historic house.”

  “Yeah, yeah. That one.”

  And she saw, as she was sure everyone else did, that he had no idea what she was talking about. Irritation nestled below, far below, but embarrassment became her primary concern.

  “Yeah, that one. The one with the committee I’m on and the meetings and the endangered species.”

  Eliza put down four letters and looked up. “Nick’s always trying to save things, too—trees, animals. You know, nature takes care of itself.” She shrugged. “Sometimes I just don’t get it.”

  Amy’s mouth opened, then closed. Just don’t get it. Nick was married to a woman who just didn’t get the one thing he was most passionate about. Amy had so many things to say about that, but she couldn’t find a thing to say.

  “Neither do I.”

  Amy looked up to see who said that. Who else didn’t get it?

  Phil.

  She fought hard against the intruding thought that she was married to a man who just didn’t get one of the things she cared about the most—but the idea came as unbidden as the movements she’d felt in the boat with Nick.

  No, that was not true. Phil did get it. How could he possibly be married to her, love her, take care of her the way he did if he didn’t get it? Because he never listens to you—that’s why. Dizziness enveloped her.

  Jack stood up and stretched. “I’m out of here. I’m wiped. Mom—you do a great job saving all those old houses.” He leaned down and kissed Amy on the cheek. “Good night, everyone.”

  A chorus of “Good night, Jack” rang across thoughts that had never before risen to Amy’s consciousness. The other three kids found their excuses to leave and wandered off.

  Amy stood. “I’m right behind the kids. Good night, y’all. And thank you for dinner, Eliza.”

  “Amy?” Nick said.

  “Yes?” She looked down at him. He stood.

  “I’d love to help you with this project. This is my specialty, you know. I know the barrier islands pretty well. My buddy Reese runs the Eco-Tours on the islands and—”

  “That’s how we got out there the one time we went,” she said. “But we can’t seem to get permission to go back. The owners are freaking out that we’re going to mess up their big-time sale.”

  Nick’s smile moved in shifting sand patterns of other islands, other smiles. “I’ll take care of it,” he said.

  Phil stood up and coiled his arm around Amy’s shoulder. “Her committee—what did you say it was called, honey?”

  Nick answered, “The Oystertip Wilderness Protectors.”

  “Yeah, that, they’re doing a great job. I’m sure they have all the help they need.”

  Eliza chimed in. “Yes, I’m sure Amy knows exactly what she’s doing.”

  From far away came a voice that said exactly what Amy wanted to say: “We’d love your help.” A subterranean shift moved below these spoken words, and she avoided all eye contact as she worked her way down the hall to the bedroom.

  Chapter Nine

  Nick Lowry sensed the rest of the house sleeping. He always could; the sleep felt like a dark, crouching figure, and even without checking he could tell if anyone in the house was up. If they were awake, the dark figure representing sleep would be alert and waiting for him to execute another mistake.

  The smooth leather of the couch, the only piece of furniture in the lake house that he had picked out, wrapped around him as he dropped into the cushions. There was no way sleep would visit him tonight. His mind consisted of nothing but twisting thoughts of Amy that seemed to circle around a metal-grated drain, but never go down the hole, never disappear. For the past twenty-five years he’d avoided the barbed pain of finding out why Amy never came for him, why she’d turned away.

  “Shit.” He stood from the couch, restless.

  He wanted to be angry with her for screwing him over the way she did. But today he had only seen her gentle face, the hair soft around her eyes. She had always tried to tame that hair, pull it into place, but he most loved her when she let it go, when she let herself go.

  In college she’d been the type of person who drew others, not only because of her inherent beauty, of which she was completely unaware, but also because of something in her, around her, that turned her into what others wanted or needed from her. Strangers and friends were constantly coming up and telling her: “You look like my sister,” “You look like Farrah Fawcett,” “You look just like a girl I dated in high school.”

  She would smile and, just for a second, be that person for them. She had always told him that with him she was only and rightly Amy, Nick’s Amy. His beloved. She could morph and change for the others, but for him she let her real self surface. Who was she now for this man, these children? He was sure she was exactly what they needed, loved, wanted her to be. Because she could be.

  Nick walked over to the French doors that led to the back deck. He leaned his head against the dark doorframe and stared out at the rock-black lake melding with the pine-lined gray horizon.

  Something moved, flickered against the dock: a flash of silver? It was the first thing he had noticed the second time he met Amy—her silver cross and how it rested at the base of her throat.

  He had stood at the front desk of Dorm B, waiting for the girl, Carol Anne, who had asked him to a sorority formal. Kappa Alpha pledges were instructed to go to any formal they were invited to—it was part of the pledge process. He began, then, to see that maybe he wasn’t so sure he wanted to be part of the whole pledge thing, belonging to a fraternity just because his dad had. It had seemed so necessary when he arrived at college, but now it seemed juvenile and insulting. Either way, he had a date.

  He picked up the black rotary phone to call Carol Anne’s room—no boys allowed past the gray metal door to the back halls. Her roommate said she would be right down. But when he spun on his heel at the sound of his name, the world spun with him; he blinked at the quick flash of a silver cross around her neck.

  It was the girl from under the light, the girl who fell out the back door of the KA house, then ran to her car without telling him her name—the girl who made him talk like some stupid wimp from Gone with the Wind. He knew he’d made a fool of himself and now he had a second chance.

  “Well, now, tomorrow is another day, isn’t it?” he said. Well, there went his second chance.

  A blush spread across the freckles on her cheeks. He felt the heat of it in the curve of his own neck. She reached for the cross that hung on a thin silver chain and looked like it would break under the strain of her finger.

  “Carol Anne, my roommate . . . she sent me down to tell you that she’s running a little late. A curling-iron catastrophe.”

  “Hmm, what exactly is a curling-iron catastrophe?”

  “You know, when you’re curling your hair and you touch your neck by accident and it looks like you have a hickey and you really don’t. She’s trying to borrow a turtleneck to wear.” She blushed deeper, pulled harder on her chain.

  “Well, thank you for the information. But I don’t believe I can properly thank you until I know your name.”

  “Amy . . . Amy Malone.”

  “Beloved.”

  “Excuse me?” She backed a few steps from him; he reached across the space between them.

  “Amy. It means ‘beloved.’ I learned that in French class.”

  “Oh.”

  “It should mean ‘beautiful.’ ”

  Amy turned around, moved toward the door he couldn’t go through. “I’ll go check on Carol Anne for you.”

  “I’d prefer if you just waited with me.” He moved toward her and touched her hair, just the back of it.

  She turned and smiled, but her smile shook—so beautiful, the way it shook. “I believe it would be better if
I checked on your date.”

  He saw his time was running out. “I’ve been looking for you. You know, around the school. I even looked in the sorority composites, but I couldn’t find you.”

  “Looking for me?”

  “Yes. Well, now I found you.”

  “Yes, on your way to a date with my roommate. My best friend, coincidentally.”

  “She asked me.”

  “Yes, she did. You said yes.”

  “It’s a Kappa Alpha rule.”

  “Nice rule. Very . . . gentlemanly and all that.” He knew, right then, that he would quit Kappa Alpha.

  The metal door banged, but neither of them turned. Every detail appeared magnified: her eyelashes were lighter on the top than the bottom, tendrils of hair had pulled from the ponytail high on her head. He’d never had trouble with girls. Teachers maybe, parents always . . . girls never. But this one seemed immune to his charm, staunch against his now witless comments.

  The more he spoke, the stupider he sounded. She was disarming him, one weapon at a time. He reached within himself for one last piece of ammunition: direct eye contact, assurance.

  “Tomorrow night I work at Hank’s Pool Hall. I get off at ten.”

  “And?”

  “You’ll go out with me tomorrow night. Please.”

  She opened her mouth to speak, but another voice said the words: “Nice beginning to my formal. Perfect. Just perfect.”

  Amy turned. “Carol Anne.”

  “Nice turtleneck,” Nick told Carol Anne, who wore a black sweater with ostrich feathers around the neck and a long silver skirt; it was all he noticed about her.

  Carol Anne glared at him, but he felt no heat from it. None. “What in the living sorority formal are you doing asking my roommate out?”

  “Please forgive me. I met—”

  “He was joking with me. Nothing big, Carol Anne. I met him at that party when I couldn’t find you. We were joking about movies, stuff like that.”