Waking the Moon

could see a few places where his veins had burst, sea green and crimson and the pale lavender of a new bruise, and the vines fed there and swelled to the thickness of a finger, a wrist, a thigh; then burst into scarlet blossom.

“Oliver!”

Now they began to trace the outlines of his torso, his shoulders and neck and face crumbling like old stones beneath a mantle of ivy and honeysuckle, his bald scalp covered with a frail yellow filigree that quivered and darkened to emerald. From within all that greenery only his eyes still glowed, twin flashes of blue as though some bright clever jay nested there, and his voice rang out like a blade slashing through the curling vines—

“‘I regret now what I have done, too late I repent of it!
Oh dear gods, let me go free!—’
But Cybele only looks down with her red mouth parted.
Her hands close around the barrel of the whip as she cries:
‘No! Be merciless, drive him mad!
He has had the impertinence to refuse me—
Drive him insane, let the woods shake with his shrieks and lamentations!’”

I screamed. But the sound choked within my throat, as all around me there was green, a horrible livid glory of green and living things, vines coiling about my breasts and ivy everywhere, bitter leaves thrusting themselves into my mouth and their stems pulling taut around my wrists and neck and ankles; but even as I struggled to free myself suddenly all fell away, leaves and vines turning into whirling ropes and arabesques that flared blindingly and then died into grey ash and disappeared. There were no vines, no leaves, no ivy. Only Oliver standing in front of me with his twisted smile, holding a simple wooden rood.

“He that has no cross deserves no crown,” he said lightly, and tossed it to me. I shrieked and jumped back. But the cross only struck the floor and lay there, a dull brown thing as lifeless as a pencil.

“What is going on?”

Behind us the door swung open to reveal the nurse, Joe. He frowned and strode inside, glancing around quickly.

“You’re not supposed to have the door shut,” he said. He stooped to pick up the cross. “Maybe we better cut this short, okay, Oliver? You seem a little overstimulated.”

Oliver said nothing.

“I’ve kind of got to go anyway,” I said stiffly. “But could we, like, say good-bye first?”

Joe went to the wall, moved aside the chair, and placed the cross back upon its hook. “All right. But they’re starting to bring dinner around, and your friend’s had a long day—”

He turned to me so I could read the message in his eyes: so give him a break, okay?

“—so maybe you and he could catch up some more tomorrow.”

We waited until he left, the door hanging open behind him like an unanswered question. When Oliver took my hand and led me to the bed I was shaking uncontrollably. I wanted to scream, to ask him a million things; but I said nothing, only clung to him as though he really were a tree and I was in danger of plunging to my death.

We sat together in silence for a long time. From outside the barred window I could hear faint sounds of traffic and machinery; the steady hum of the hospital’s air-conditioning system; and the rustle of voices, distant and muted as though heard from underwater.

“You won’t forget me, will you?”

At the sound of Oliver’s tremulous voice I looked up, shaking my head fiercely. “Never! I love you, you know I’ll be back tomorrow—”

“I know,” he said. He put his arm around me and hugged me close. “But in the meantime you have to be careful. Don’t sleep in the subway, button up your overcoat, hang on to your head. Don’t forget your friends, Sweeney.”

I looked down so he wouldn’t see that I was crying. “My—my friends?”

“Oh, Sweeney.” His voice was low and solemn as he tilted my head back up. He touched my cheek, drew away a finger with a tiny droplet on it, and brought it to his mouth. He touched his finger to his tongue and smiled, the same sweet crazy knowing smile I’d seen so many times before when he was out there skimming across some private sea. “You remember…”

His eyes gleamed, blue and strange as scallops’ eyes, and I knew he was looking at me from some great distance.

“You remember… you were little and you woke up on Sunday morning before your parents did and your brothers were still asleep, and outside there was that kind of golden rain that comes sometimes in the spring and the air smelled like roses and bacon, and when you looked over the side of your bed you saw him there, a little green lizard with hands like a baby, and he looked up at you and you fed him limes.”

He cupped his hands as though to receive an offering, and smiled.

“Oh, Oliver,” I whispered, and, weeping, buried my face in the folds of his robe.

A few minutes later the nurse arrived with Oliver’s dinner tray. Under his watchful gaze Oliver escorted me to the door. There he smiled and kissed me, then stood in the hall waving cheerfully as I walked to the elevator.

“My brother Leo’s coming to take me back to Newport,” he called after me. “Come stay with me over Thanksgiving, we’ll go hear Cooper play the Limelight—” He flexed his fingers and mimed playing a piano.

“Okay,” I said. My heart leapt at the thought of visiting him at home, of meeting his family for a holiday. “But I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He grinned and crooked a finger. “Next time, Sweeney. Bye.”

I got a bus back to North Capitol Street, got out and wandered around the campus. For some reason I was no longer afraid. I knew I could stay with Baby Joe but that would mean more talking, more discussion of what had happened the night before, and I was too tired to think about that right now. I didn’t want to think about bulls or blood or ivy or trees, about any of the things miraculous or terrible that I had seen. I wanted only to think about Oliver; about how his eyes had glowed and the way he had smiled at me; about taking the train up to Newport and staying with him and hearing his brother play stride piano in a barrelhouse; about what he had meant when he said You’re great, Sweeney and I’ll love you next time. I promise.

So I waited a few hours, walking across the Strand and thinking of all the things we’d do together, thinking of all the things we’d done, Oliver and I: lying there beneath that tree, sitting there talking in the Shrine’s shadow, drinking coffee and rum there while we waited for Angelica to get out of class. When I finally went to Baby Joe’s room it was late, after midnight. I threw pebbles at the window until he came down yawning to let me in the fire door. He refused to let me sleep on the floor.

“Forget it, hija. My grandmother would kill me.”

So Baby Joe curled up in the room’s single worn armchair and I curled up in his bed, still thinking about Oliver, willing myself to dream of him, his crooked smile, his mad blue eyes.

That night I dreamed I was swimming in the ocean, a hundred yards or more from shore. Oliver stood on the sand in the blazing sun, and with him Angelica and Annie and Hasel and Baby Joe. They were all holding beer bottles and laughing and talking, and every now and then one of them would look up, shading his eyes until he or she saw me. Then they’d wave, absently but still happy to see me, and maybe raise a bottle in greeting. They didn’t know that I was being pulled away from them, that I could feel something black and cold clawing at my feet and dragging me; they didn’t know I was going under when, a minute later, they glanced up again and vainly searched the horizon, looking for me. They just kept on looking at the ocean, certain that I was swimming there somewhere, safe among the green and dancing waves. They never knew about the riptide or how dangerous the currents were. They never knew at all.

When I woke up someone was pounding on the door to Baby Joe’s room. My watch read twenty-five after five. Baby Joe was snoring loudly in his armchair. The window was pearled with first light. I stood groggily and