Stalking the Moon

by Angel Leigh McCoy

"Fine." Richard raised his hands in surrender. "I’ll come back to check on you before I leave for the day." When he had walked down the hall, out of sight, I headed for the dining room. It opened off the recreation room and was locked except during mealtimes. The kitchen was directly below it. Food came up in a staff-only elevator, and kitchen workers distributed it to patients. The dining room always smelled of day-old meatloaf and overcooked beans. I found my mom seated at a long table with Corona, Polly, Mrs. Dufour, Calla, Dahlia, Eun Hee, and Iraida—each with an empty table-setting in front of them. When the ladies saw me, they scooted down, and I took a seat on the bench.

  Corona and Polly both looked at me with sad eyes. Eun Hee merely bowed in my direction, her black cap of hair bobbing. Iraida dipped her chin to her chest in greeting, a gesture that made her look remarkably nun-like in her burka. Mrs. Dufour, pretty in that fragile way only elderly women can be, smiled at me, and it lit up her eyes. She leaned over toward my mother and said, "Gisèle, your daughter is as pretty as Glenda the Good Witch."

  My mother didn't respond, but I warmed even more to Mrs. Dufour.

  Calla waved at me without enthusiasm, revealing the cross-hatched scars on her wrist; and Dahlia looked down her prominent nose at me. "You’re one of us now, hm? Like mother like daughter?" She handed me her plate and bundle of silverware.

  "It's only temporary," I replied.

  Several of them mumbled, "Famous last words."

  One of the kitchen workers—a swollen, middle-aged woman—arrived with a cart. She set out two family-style bowls of salad and a plate of individually-wrapped hoagies.

  Mrs. Dufour reached for a sandwich with a tremulous hand. "The Wizard of Oz is a classic, you know. It has the answers to all life’s questions."

  I watched as Corona, my mother's self-proclaimed lady's maid, opened a half-sandwich for my mother and grabbed a handful of salad that she transferred onto a plate for her.

  Calla said, "That was my father’s favorite movie. We watched it every year on his birthday. He’d make special finger-food—fish sticks, tater tots, and crackers with corn relish, and we’d sit in front of the television and sing all the songs. He’s dead now."

  The table became a chaotic dance of arms and hands reaching for salad, sandwiches, condiments, and spices.

  "That movie," Corona commented, "scared the crap out of me when I was little. I had nightmares about the witch on the bicycle in the tornado." She dun-dud-dut-dun-dun-dunned the tune.

  With a disgusted expression, Eun Hee asked, "Did you know that Auntie Em killed herself? She took an overdose of pills and put a plastic bag over her head."

  As Polly reached for a helping of salad, she said, "Auntie Em wasn’t the one on the bicycle."

  "I didn’t say she was."

  Dahlia chimed in. "Judy Garland tried to gack herself several times but failed. They say she died of an accidental drug overdose. Whatever."

  "And why does it matter?" Calla asked. "She’s dead. Dead is dead. Don’t matter how you got there."

  "Sssst!" Polly made a face, indicating me with a roll of her eyes. "Maybe talk about something else?"

  "Why?" Corona pointed her fork at me. "The Oracle died of diabetes. What’s that about?"

  "The Oracle?" Mrs. Dufour sounded confused. "You mean the Wizard, dear?"

  Polly sighed in frustration. "She means the Oracle from The Matrix." She turned over the catsup bottle and squeezed a fat dollop onto her plate.

  "Yeah." Pixie-faced Corona grabbed a handful of salad for herself. "Can you imagine knowing you’re going to die before it happens? I don’t think I’d want that."

  "C’mon!" Eun Hee snorted. "The Oracle could see the future. The actress couldn’t."

  "How do you know she couldn’t?" Corona challenged the other woman.

  "Point taken."

  My mother ate with mechanical movements, and I was certain she wasn't enjoying her food. Her gaze remained distant.

  Calla said, "I suppose you could say The Matrix is The Wizard of Oz for our generation."

  "I think they’re both stupid." Dahlia looked around the table, waiting for anyone to disagree with her.

  I couldn’t keep up with them. They had a rhythm they’d developed over years of meals together. I ate in silence.

  Iraida was the first to rise from the table. She stood, and conversation paused so everyone could look expectantly at her.

  She said, "As-salaamu 'alaykum."

  Several people at the table, replied, "Wa 'alaykum as-salaam," on a sliding scale of correctness, going from faking it with mumbles all the way up to nailing it. They all spoke respectfully. Iraida turned and left the cafeteria, a floating, sable-draped figure, a ghost in negative.

  Polly leaned over the table toward me and whispered, "She said, ‘Peace on you.’ And we said, ‘On you too.’" She grinned. "We say it after every meal, when she goes back to her room to pray."

  I pulled the edge of Polly’s sleeve away from the ketchup on her plate, just in the nick of time. "You’ll have to teach me."

  ♦

  After lunch, I took Mom back to her room. The drawn drapes cast the room in darkness. I went to one pair and pushed them aside so I could look out upon the circular drive and the orchard in the distance. The trees had budded, the leaves filling in between branches. The last time I’d noticed, they were bare. I’d time-traveled several weeks into the future, as unconscious as Sleeping Beauty upon my dais, waiting for Prince Charming to come and kiss me awake. But my prince wasn’t coming. Ever.

  A large black sedan, almost a limousine, pulled up and parked in front of the Center. It had tinted windows that made it impossible to see inside. Colin’s brother Nathan emerged from inside it. He was again—or still—dressed all in black, blending with the sleek lines of the car, his coat long and lean on his body. He tipped his head up and met my eyes.

  His gaze entrapped me, and a sense of danger put goosebumps on my arms. I quickly closed the drapes. Afterward, I chided myself for my overactive imagination.

  Mom said, "Kypris knew her father would be angry when he found out, but fear of his rage wasn’t enough to keep her away from her lover." Although she spoke in a monotone, occasionally I heard or imagined emotion leaking into and out of her tale. I curled up in the armchair to listen.

  Kypris had fallen as irretrievably in love with Chance as a cherry that’s fallen from the tree. She would have followed him anywhere, but his descriptions of his home, of Apfallon, made her want to go there for reasons other than just to follow him.

  Nevertheless, it came as a surprise when Chance suggested that she could travel between worlds in the blink of an eye. It seemed a ridiculous idea, and she mocked him gently, until he showed her just how insubstantial reality is.

  He took her to Apfallon. The transition to the other place was immediate and startling. Kypris suddenly found herself on an emerald hillside, all blinking forgotten. It was Chance’s turn to laugh, and so he did.

  He made Kypris his wife, and they took up residence in an enormous castle overlooking an apple orchard. From her window, Kypris could watch fairies chase one another around the tree trunks. The tiny creatures slept draped upon their branches and left apples on her windowsill. Kypris, barely out of childhood, was delighted with her new playground.

  Chance pampered her, even going so far as to acquire a miniature golden dragon for her. She named her dragon "Simon."

  Simon. I’d often wondered about the significance of the name. I'd looked it up once. In the second century A.D., Simon the Sorcerer had died at the Roman Coliseum while levitating in front of Nero to prove his magical powers were real. Many people thought he was a demon— others thought he was an incarnation of Merlin.

  Saint Simeon the Holy Fool (same name, archaic spelling) lived in the sixth century A.D. His method of ministering to the people was to act completely bonkers while performing miracles in secret. He tripped people for no reason, dragged himself around on his butt like a dog, danced wildly with no music, and
talked to invisible friends. He'd have fit right in at the Center. It wasn't until after his death that historical records implied that he'd been faking it the whole time.

  Maybe Saint Simeon had been stalking the moon. Maybe his mission on Earth had been to make people feel and think, to teach that life is visceral—it’s the smell of shit and the taste of mold. It’s the feel of a loving kiss and the sound of the words, "You will always be mine."

  I rocked myself—stalking the moon.

  Simon asked, "Viv, are you all right?"

  I sniffled. "I’m fine." I found the straight pin I kept threaded into the inner seam of my pajama top and pricked it into my forearm. The pain spread outward from the spot, crackling along nerve highways and byways. I poked another next to the first, then another, forming the letter C—C for Colin.

  "You don’t seem fine," Simon said. "You’ve got snot running over your lips, and you look rabid. Stop hurting yourself."

  "I’m fucking fine, okay? Get out of here. You’re not real!"

  "Oh, not that old song again," he groaned.

  I tucked the pin back into its hiding place and grabbed a tissue off Mom's side-table. I folded it, then lay it flat over the welling droplets of blood. The paper soaked them up, and I had a vague, spreading representation of a C.

  Someone knocked on the door. "Gisèle, it's Nurse Bea. I'm coming in." Nurse Bea, the blond with the tits that all men coveted. I thought, Nurse Busy Bea, and that made me laugh, tripping along a moonbeam.

  Bea entered and said, "Oh, Viviane," as if we were friends. "I didn't realize you were here."

  Simon said, "She reminds me of a yappy yorkie."

  "A spazzy greyhound," I replied.

  Nurse Bea said, "I beg your pardon?"

  "I was just heading back to my own room." I tucked the blood-stained toilet paper in my robe pocket.

  "I know for a fact that you haven’t had your medication this evening."

  "It's under control, Nurse Busy Bea." In my head, I was murdering her a dozen different ways.

  Nurse Bea insisted on walking me back to my room. "It’s so important to have a routine. Every night, before bed, I brush my teeth. It feels good to go to bed with clean teeth. Just you wait and see. You’ll feel better as soon as you’ve brushed."

  I mumbled, "No halitosis monkey here."

  "After brushing, I wash my face. You can scrub off all the terrible things from your day and start fresh. You’ll see. It’s magical, really."

  "Magical."

  "We can do it together."

  "I can do it myself."

  "We wouldn’t want you to feel alone and abandoned, would we?"

  "No. We wouldn’t want that."

  As we entered my room, she said, "Oh, look. Someone sent you flowers and a gift."

  I didn’t look. I didn’t care. I crawled in bed and pulled the covers up over my head.

  "They arrived this afternoon. They’re from your grandfather. Isn’t that lovely?"

  I said, "Yeah," but the word was bitter. "Lovely like I’ll be over here when you’re done being crazy."

  "Oh, surely not. Your grandfather loves you."

  "He loves me when I’m sane."

  On my eighteenth birthday, I'd confronted Abram about my mother.

  His response had been, "Stop acting crazy." I wasn’t crazy. I was pissed. I shouted at him, "Why didn’t you tell me? She’s my mom!" I was so furious, I was crying.

  "Just settle down." He raised his palms toward me. "I didn’t tell you because it was easier that way." He looked afraid, and I savored that.

  "Easier for who? Me? Or you?"

  "For both of us. You can’t imagine how it would've been for you, growing up knowing that your mother was in that place. You were too young. I couldn’t do that to you. I wanted you to have a normal life."

  "You lied to me!"

  "I never actually said she was dead. I said she was gone, and she is gone. I love your mother, but she left us a long time ago."

  "Do you visit her?" The words tasted sour, spoiled milk.

  He just looked at me.

  I said, "Don’t lie no more," and I meant every ounce of the warning in my voice.

  Abram’s voice changed then, coming out through clenched teeth, and I could tell I’d almost pushed him too far. "You saw her. You talked to her. Do you honestly think she has any idea you’re there or that you’re her kid?"

  I was fearless in my fury. "She knows! And she loves me! You never really loved me. You just wanted somebody to cook your meals and do your dishes."

  His face turned red, and he clenched his fists. For the first time ever in my life, I thought he was going to hit me, or worse, cry. And I was sorry—immediately and completely sorry. I had gone too far.

  But he didn’t even shout. He just said, low and intense, "Your mother chose to leave of her own…free…will." He sat down hard in his recliner and reached for the remote. He stabbed it at the television and ignored me.

  I stood there, sobbing and hating him with all my heart. I knew he was wrong. My mom would never have left me by choice.

  From that day forward, I referred to him as Abram, never again as Grandpa.

  Nurse Bea went to the door. "All right, love. I’ll come back later. Ring the bell if you need anything."

  Simon said, "Jesus H. Christ. I thought she’d never leave. I’m guessing she went into nursing for the captive audience."

  I ignored him, got out of bed, and went to the flowers. It was a large bouquet, a symphony of pink, yellow, and lavender, punctuated by curling reeds and sparkled with baby’s breath. There was a box tied to the flowers, without wrapping.

  The card said, "I thought you might need a new cell phone. I got them to keep your old number for you. Call any time. Abram."

  I snorted.

  He may as well have said, "I’ll see you when you get home." He wasn’t even pretending. If they never let me out, I’d never see him again.

  "Call anytime, my ass." I ripped the flowers from their vase and tore them stem from stem, spewing petals. The petals floated for a few seconds, then dropped to the floor. The flower heads bounced across the linoleum. They released their perfumes as I ravaged them. I ripped and shredded until there was nothing left but shards.

  Staring down at the mess I’d made, I panted. None of it made any sense. The colors were all mixed up. Tiny petals lay upon large ones, and torn stems lay tumbled like pick-up sticks. Leaves landed on every surface, places they didn’t belong. They lifted on the air, blowing out of the heater vent, and peeked out from under the bed. They were the days and nights of my life.

  Simon asked, "Feel better?"

  I crossed to the bed and crawled back in. When I rubbed my feet together, I felt petals stuck to them. My fingers smelled green. I closed my eyes.

  The sounds of the Center melded into a distant hum, punctuated by the occasional raised voice or squeaky wheel. I drifted in an insubstantial sea of sound, smell, and passing time. Tick, tock. The halls grew still. Everyone was in their rooms or in the rec room.

  It was because of the quiet that I heard it—a distant siren, door alarm, or heart monitor gone flat. I tried to ignore it, but it didn’t stop. I’d heard it before, and I was pretty sure it was all in my mind.

  ♦♦♦

  CHAPTER 14

  A part of me wanted to stay in bed, to pull the covers over my head and hide, but a bigger part of me didn’t trust my bed. The last time I'd heard that noise, the hag had been in there with me.

  I got up and put on my slippers and robe.

  Most of the doors were closed along the deserted hallway. Televisions competed with one another from different rooms, and—despite my better judgment—I headed toward the screech.

  "Where are you going?" Simon asked, sounding upset.

  I ignored him.

  Perhaps a recording had gotten stuck on a single note. But no. That wasn’t it.

  The hag had made that noise when she was suffocating me.

  Simon sai
d, "Don’t stick your nose where it doesn’t belong," and he was deathly serious.

  So many times, I'd ignored Simon’s advice and regretted it. I already had a feeling this was going to be another of those times. But, I couldn’t stop. The sound became a ringing in my ears. Someone was in danger.

  I met no one in the hall. Among all the closed doors, one stood open. The sound came from that room.

  I crept along the wall and touched the doorframe with my fingertips. My hand shook.

  "Viviane," Simon said near my shoulder. "I’m serious. Stop. Please."

  That time, I did. I stopped just outside, pressed against the wall.

  The unearthly keening didn’t waver.

  I expected someone to say, "This is a test of the Emergency Broadcast System," but no one did. It just kept going. Other noises came from the room: grunts and groans, definitely human, and beneath it all, the resonant ticking of a clock. Tick tock tick.

  I stepped into the room.

  The keening stopped. A gurgle emitted from the bed. An elderly woman lay there, mouth and eyes open wide. Her entire body was tense with the effort to breathe. I almost didn’t recognize Mrs. Dufour, the cookie lady.

  I shouted, "Help!" and ran to the bed. "You’re going to be okay."

  Mrs. Dufour lay spread-eagle on top of the sheets, the warm smell of piss and shit rising from her. She looked at me with eyes gone bloodshot with terror, took a deep breath, and screamed.

  I knew exactly how she felt.

  Her scream was different from the keening. It was uneven, broken, and definitely human. It expressed anguish and horror. She flailed her arms and kicked her legs, tossed her blankets off, knocked over the lamp, and sent a small wooden cuckoo clock flying off her nightstand to shatter on the floor.

  I caught her wrists, so thin and fragile in my hands. Her skin, translucent with age, showed the blue veins inside.

  "Mrs. Dufour. You’re safe now."

  She stopped screaming and lay still, but she never made another sound or took another breath.

  I watched the life leave her eyes. "Help!"

  Nurses rushed into the room and shoved me aside.