Instead, Amy took a deep breath, smiled. “Oh, honey, it just goes so fast, doesn’t it? You were born, it seems like, a week ago.”
I dated Nick just yesterday.
She maneuvered the car around a slow red minivan in front of them and glanced at her daughter.
“That’s not what I mean at all, Mom. I mean really, where does it go? Like that last minute—where did it go? Is there a place it goes, like a recycle bin, or is it just gone?”
Molly’s question carried with it a great somber note and as with all her daughter’s questions, Amy wanted to answer well, and yet she had to admit that she hadn’t, in any way, ever thought about where time went. Maybe that’s what children were for—to make us think about the hard questions . . . and answers.
Molly laid her cheek on the tennis racquet.
Amy turned from her daughter, from the unanswerable question, to the familiar landscape of the city. Oak and spruce trees planted by the original founders of Darby still lined the streets, forced their roots up through sidewalks and streets. Even her hometown was a testament to rooted familiarity and consistency. She knew the name, origin and turn of every street she drove. Mr. Steele still ran the five-and-dime, Mr. Henderson still pushed down a little too hard on the scales when he cut meat at the butcher counter, and the movie theater still had its original marquee with the green lightbulbs.
The road she drove to the tennis complex took her down her childhood street. As she drove past her old home, she slowed at the front lawn. The house still resided in a neighborhood where young families lived with rectangular lawns, metal swing sets and red tricycles. She stared at the top window on the right (her pink childhood bedroom with the Eagles posters) and remembered the countless hours she had spent staring out at the front lawn, at this very street—wondering what had happened to Nick Lowry.
She shook her head and turned to her daughter. “Time . . . maybe it goes behind us, just like this road.”
“No, Mom, I can see the road behind me. And we’ll drive on it tomorrow. It’s still there.”
“We can look back at time. It’s in . . . memory.” Ah, she’d found the answer.
“But we can’t do the time—or whatever we were doing in that time—again. Exactly again.” Molly waved her hands in the air, rolled her eyes. “Oh, forget it, Mom. You don’t understand what I’m asking. You don’t understand—”
“Don’t say it, Moll. Don’t say I don’t understand you.”
“Well, you don’t.”
Amy took a deep breath. Here they went again—why couldn’t little girls stay five years old and still love and believe their mommies? “Well, I do understand the question. It’s actually a very profound question, and it will come as no surprise to you, but your mother knows nothing. I don’t know where time goes. I don’t have any idea whatsoever. What made you think about it?”
Molly chewed on the side of her thumbnail. “I don’t think that you don’t know anything. I was only wondering. There are so many things I don’t want to forget, but I bet I will.”
Amy smiled at her daughter, hoping the love she was about to express would come through as love instead of “smothering.” It was a toss of the dice every day. She knew mothers who, for now, refrained from their deepest expressions of love for their teenage daughters in fear of the retaliation and accusations, the slammed doors and scrunched faces. She would never stop telling Molly she loved her.
“I love you, Molly, and that is a very, very good question. The only answer I can think of is in our memories, in what we leave behind: life, I guess.”
“Oh.”
The discussion ended and Molly pushed the button on the radio and closed her eyes, thumped her head back and forth against the headrest to the beat of the music.
A tall girl in a matching Nike ensemble slammed the ball across the net toward another player. Amy sat alone in the crowded stands waiting for Molly’s turn on the court. She watched the girl’s muscles, taut and trained to win, and she realized that she did know where time went, but she wouldn’t tell her daughter. Time was stored in her body in such a way that the first mention or shiver of the past called it forth; memories were not just hidden in her brain for her to gaze at in sweet reverie as a moving picture of life. Past time was attached to her body’s response—muscle-gripping and emotional washes—hiding in her cells. Memory came how and when it pleased. Time grew and expanded and saved its face for dreams and moments when she least wanted or needed to see it.
Carol Anne appeared and waved her hand in front of Amy’s face. Lost in thought, Amy started.
“Are you there? Hello?” Carol Anne asked.
“Hey . . .” Amy rubbed at her eyes as if Carol Anne had just turned on the lights.
“Where are you?”
“Here . . . what do you mean?”
“You look lost.”
Amy leaned back against the bleacher. “I’m tired . . . just tired.”
“You haven’t returned my phone calls in a week, my dearest friend. Is there something you’re mad at me about? Maybe that I’m funnier, cuter and smarter than you—has the envy finally overcome you?”
Amy laughed. It felt good. “I’m sorry. Really. I’ve been crazy busy with—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know.”
“You doing okay?” Amy turned her full attention to her friend.
“I’m fine, luckily, since I could’ve been dying of a terminal illness and you wouldn’t have known. I’m just so sick of Farley I could puke.”
A woman with too-red lipstick turned and put her finger to her lips, made a hushing sound. Amy scrunched her nose at the woman, leaned in to whisper to Carol Anne, “Let’s go outside. Molly won’t play for another half hour. This match is in overtime.”
They walked out into sunlight that looked faded and tired, as though someone had run it through the washing machine too many times. Amy turned to her friend, then leaned against the concrete wall of the tennis complex.
She was as frustrated with Carol Anne’s boss as if he were her own. Mr. Farley was the epitome of the small-town businessman who used his family name in such a manner that his ancestors probably crawled deeper into their Darby graves. He was a vast and flamboyant man and he also owned the largest interior design firm in the city—and the only one, because of undue influence from his uncle, the mayor, who would not allow commercial space to be rented to a competitor.
“Carol Anne, just leave.”
“I already told you I can’t. We can’t afford it until Joe’s law firm gets more established, whatever that vague concept means. You just wouldn’t believe what Farley had me do this time.” Carol Anne groaned and looked up to the sky. “He had me decorate an entire house from the paint chip of the customer’s antique Rolls-Royce. I had to match the paint, wallpaper, fabric to a damn car paint chip. Lord Almighty. Now, get this—Southern Decorating is doing a piece on the house and I don’t even get a bit of credit. Nothing.”
“If you’re that miserable, leave.”
“It’s not that simple. There are a lot of things to put on the scale.”
“I know, I know: Joe, the money, no clients, no work—yeah, you told me. Have you talked to Joe about it?”
“No.”
“Talk to him. I bet he’ll be on your side with this one. At least your husband listens to you.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, nothing.” Amy waved her hand toward the parking lot.
“Well, enough Farley melodrama. Tell me everything.”
“About what?”
“The lake.”
“Oh, that.”
“Yeah, that.”
“It was fine. . . .” Amy dug the tips of her boots into the pavement, looked away from Carol Anne. “Hey, where do you think time goes?”
“What in the living tennis ball are you talking about?”
; “Nothing. Nothing.”
“Okay . . . Amy, you’re worrying me now. And you haven’t told me anything about your weekend at the lake. I know you need to tell me. And I know I need to hear it.”
“It was fun. Molly fell off the Jet Ski and scared me to death, but we had fun.”
“Fun. Okay . . . that’s all I’m gonna get from you? You spent a weekend with the same stud who broke your heart and all you can tell me is ‘fun.’ ”
“Not a big deal. There’s no reason to worry about a man who ditched me almost thirty years ago—never came back, never called, never contacted me, and now has a daughter who’s dating my son.”
“Life is weird.”
“Yes, it is. But we’re all married now with kids, family.”
“I wish I could’ve been there.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
“Yeah, look at you, darlin’. Always wishing you knew what happened to Nick Lowry. Here you go.”
It felt as though someone were sitting on her chest; she wanted to tell Carol Anne about the mysterious telegram she never received, about her dreams and distraction, yet she couldn’t figure out how to string together an explanation.
“By the way, what are you doing here?” Amy asked.
“I called the house this morning looking for you. Phil told me where you’d be. I knew you needed me.”
Amy looked at the woman she had known for almost her entire life. “Thanks for having Joe check on the buyer for Oystertip. It’s truly great. Maybe the committee will actually think I’m worth something if I get the name of the buyer.”
“Obviously they think you’re worth something if they have you on the committee.”
“Yeah, but only for the house, not for the big stuff. They really want to find out who the developer is so we can confront him—get the media all over the issue, maybe convince him not to develop the land. But he’s hiding behind numbered accounts and the Eldrin clan, who own the island.”
“Well, no guarantees, but Joe will definitely try.”
“I think Phil was mad. I told him Joe was helping, and he got a little pissy. Said I shouldn’t involve everyone I know.”
“Did you tell him we offered?”
“Yes. I’m so irritated about the whole thing I don’t even think I can talk about it. He just doesn’t seem to care about this stuff like I do.”
Carol Anne grabbed Amy’s hand and laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Has it ever been any different? He’s never really been into all this historic stuff like you. Remember how you had to beg to live in that old house while he wanted to live in the new subdivision they were building in Mr. Harbor’s cotton field?”
“I know, I know.”
“Well, why is it bothering you so much now?”
“I don’t know. But it definitely is. He could at least be glad I have some help from Joe and Nick.”
“Oh, God, what are you talking about? What kind of help from Nick? No wonder Phil’s pissy.”
“He said he knew someone who could get us out to the island. You know, it’s Nick’s specialty and all that—land preservation.”
“Yeah, I know what his specialty is.”
“This is different. He knows a ton about the barrier islands—has contacts.”
“Yeah, I’m sure he has contacts.”
“There’s something else. . . .”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t do anything, Carol Anne. He told me something . . . something about how he didn’t leave me . . . then.”
“What did he say?”
“Asked me about some telegram I never received. I ran . . . away. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m exhausted from it.”
“You have to talk about it, or—”
Amy pointed at the tennis complex. “Not here. Not now.”
“Okay, but don’t do anything until we can talk. Promise?”
Amy nodded.
Carol Anne hugged her. “I knew he was trouble from the day he asked you out when he was supposed to be going out with the more fabulous, more fun me.” She hugged Amy again. “Damn him. Damn that Nick Lowry for showing up now.”
Busyness became what kept the memories and wondering at low tide, not controlled by the moon that Amy had lost that evening on the dock, but by the ebb of her own memories. After watching Molly win her tennis match, Amy wandered the aisles of the grocery store, knowing that only the sharpest focus would hold back the recollections of Nick.
The tomatoes were too soft, the lettuce wilted. Focus on the details. She lifted the asparagus; the thick tops looked like the trunks of the palmetto trees on the beach. Which beach was that? A nature preserve? A public beach?
Nick.
She and Nick had walked, lazy, smooth. Oyster shells had cracked under their sandals. Sand granules clung between her toes. The sun was high, too bright, beating, the air viscous, blood-thick. A seagull hung in the sky, neither flying nor sinking, as if the dense air held it in midflight. A sailboat tipped; sun glinted off its hull, winking in shattered-glass fragments. The whipped-cream waves stood out from the molten navy sea. Her skin prickled with the sunburn she knew would show up that evening in red slashes.
The muscles in Nick’s back rose and crested with the waves that seeped across the sand toward her toes: one force. He picked up half of a gray clamshell run through with slashes of milk and slate. He ran his finger across the top, his thumb curved along the bottom, rubbing it, and reached for her hand. A shrimp boat sounded its echoing horn across the sea. His thumb was larger than the inside of the shell, caressing its center.
“Here, feel this. Look.” His voice was deep.
“It’s beautiful. Really beautiful.” She wanted to touch his hand, not the shell.
“The other half is lost.” He placed her index finger on the edge of the shell where the lost half had broken off.
She ran the toes of her right foot through a pile of shells, many halves and shattered pieces. “All of these have lost the other half.”
“But this one is so . . . perfect.”
She looked up at him, away from the sand line she’d exposed between the sea’s broken dishes. She touched his face, the rough growth of beard that appeared two hours after he shaved. Her legs were liquid and moving as the ocean itself.
“This shell is still whole, with no match,” he said.
A blurred fin flashed in her peripheral vision, and she turned to the sea. “Look, a dolphin.” A smaller fin broke through the waves and dipped back down as if pulled by an unseen force. “And a baby, too. Look.”
Her lover of nature did not glance toward the sea. He was the one who had taught her about noticing each nuance, each gift of nature. He stared at the shell.
“It has a match somewhere. It could be anywhere—another ocean, another sound, crushed to sand, or even worse . . . at the bottom of the deepest part of the sea, in the dark, while this one made it to the surface.”
She felt the arrow of aloneness that she’d often felt before he’d entered her life, before his copper eyes had looked down at her.
“See.” He looked at her now and the isolation she’d felt before him faded, but was still palpable below her exposed skin. He touched her. “See how lucky we are. One of us could still be searching, looking, lost . . . crushed. But we’re not, we’re connected here—” He took her hand and placed it on the cuticle-hard joint of the clam.
“Yes.”
He ran the shell across the top of her bikini, ran his finger inside, rolled his thumb inside her bathing suit. The shell fell to the ground and she moaned, glanced out to the sea, to the mother and baby dolphin dancing to a universal rhythm she now understood. She didn’t, yet, look in his eyes. Sometimes when she looked, she would absolutely know that there was no way she could ever fill those eyes; other times she looked and knew that she,
only she, could actually fill him, and she would.
Her legs gave way underneath her, now made of sea and sinew, no bone or muscle to obey the commands to stand; she understood the release of the mother and baby dolphins’ water dance of joy as she worshiped the puffed blue sky, Nick’s eyes, the conch shell that dug below her spine.
Then he rose above her and flipped her with one movement of his arm; she saw the crushed shells void of their other half, the lonely ones left to the sea’s discretion. She rolled to her side and looked away from the shells and into his eyes.
She curled into the sand next to him and he pulled her to him until the connection at the shell’s edge fused them. Her face burned from the searing sand, rough chin. Only if he moved could she. He rose up on his elbow, rested his head in his hand, looked down at her. “The connection breaks so easily: one storm, one wave, one rock. . . .”
“Not ours. Not ours,” she said.
Chapter Twelve
Amy utilized her jobs as teacher and OWP member as she never had before—as more than things she did because she loved them. She used them now, like the other chores of her life, to preoccupy her mind in an attempt to fill the crevices Nick crept into without permission. The island became more than a project; it was now a place that desperately needed her full attention. She scribbled across her lesson plan, sharpening her pencil every few minutes in the electric pencil sharpener on her mahogany desk.
This week, she would take her class on a field trip to the oldest house in Savannah, the Cherry Mansion, teach them about the vernacular intricacies that were best learned by touch and sight. As field trips were first thing in the morning after the previous day’s class, they required that she spend the night in the art dorm, which was really a historic house turned residence hall. She loved the deep smell of plaster a hundred years old, the mumble of college students above and below her, the whispered rumors of the marble-playing ghost boy and the wandering ghost woman, who died as she fell down the steps looking for her husband, who was in the bathroom (perpetually, apparently) with another woman.
Losing the Moon Page 10
