Mending the Moon

by Susan Palwick

  Whatever small gestures the outside world has made, they are encased in silence. Right now, that’s what Anna wants. Carl, she knows, has gone to some effort to minimize media coverage, although some shots of Percy from Stanford have wound up in the papers and on the Internet. She can’t bear to read the reader comments on the news stories.

  She wonders if the people who loved Melinda Soto feel encased in silence.

  Anna has never had a great many friends—she has many acquaintances, but otherwise centered herself on William and Percy—and those she has, some old friends from college and a couple who used to live in the neighborhood but moved away, are scattered across the country. She probably has e-mail from them, or maybe some of the messages from the unanswered calls are from them, and she will appreciate their thoughts when she has the time and energy to deal with them. Right now, she doesn’t and can’t.

  Her moat has been breached, terribly. She’s trying to raise the drawbridges again.

  She’s glad she isn’t working now. Before Percy was born, and sporadically thereafter, she did freelance writing and consulting work for nonprofits. But between the gallery and the money she inherited from her parents, she didn’t really need to work. She stayed busy caring for her husband and son, keeping her house, knitting and reading and traveling. She has never felt bored or lonely. She has led a simple, quiet life, and has loved it, and if the quiet now seems more suffocating than soothing, well, she suspects she would feel that way whatever she’d spent her time doing. At least she knows how to enjoy her own company, how to treasure silence.

  The morning after the note arrives from Reno, Anna walks the dog, as usual. When she gets back to the house, there’s a strange car in the driveway.

  Anna, still half a block away, stops, nerves taut. The car’s a blue Prius. She doesn’t know anyone who drives a blue Prius. If the car were a police car, she’d keep walking, hoping that maybe the police have brought Percy’s ashes home. But she doesn’t know who this is, can’t imagine who it might be.

  Bart, next to her, looks up inquiringly. “I don’t know,” she says. “Sit, Bart.”

  Bart sits. It’s impossible to own any dog as large as an Irish Wolfhound without investing in a great many obedience classes, and Bart is exquisitely trained.

  Anna stands squinting at the blue Prius. Is anyone inside? If she moved a few feet closer to the house, she’d be able to tell if someone’s at the door, but she feels paralyzed. And then she sees someone emerging from behind the car, someone waving and calling out to her. “Anna! There you are!”

  An elderly woman wearing a garish orange and green plaid coat, her slight frame topped with a frizzy mass of snow-white hair. William’s mother.

  * * *

  Two weeks after the funeral, Jeremy moves back into the house. He doesn’t feel right staying at Hen’s anymore, although she and Ed say he can stay as long as he likes. He doesn’t want to go back to the dorm, either; he might not want that even if he had any interest in returning to school.

  VB helped him get in touch with the proper people on campus, who expedited his withdrawal with a full refund. It usually wouldn’t be a full refund; there usually wouldn’t be any refund, this late in the semester. But the proper people mouth platitudes about Extraordinary Circumstances, and pull strings, and give him his money back. Or Mom’s money. It was hers; now it’s his. Like the house, and everything inside it.

  Technically, it’s not quite his yet. Technically, it’s in trust until he’s twenty-one. Tom’s the trustee. Tom’s also taking care of the bills until Jeremy can, as Tom puts it, “get your feet back under you.” Jeremy supposes moving back into the house is part of getting back on his feet, but he doesn’t feel very steady.

  Tom and Hen and Ed and Rosie and VB all offer to come with him, the first time he goes back to the house. He doesn’t want anyone else there, though. So Tom picks him up at the dorm, packs all his stuff into a station wagon, and helps him unload it onto the front porch. “You sure you don’t want me to stay?”

  “I’m sure.”

  “I can sit in the car, just stay to make sure—”

  “Tom, I’m okay, okay? I just— I need to do this by myself. I’d be more comfortable if you left.” He knows it may take him a while to get through the front door. He doesn’t want Tom watching. He doesn’t want to feel eyes at his back. He’s glad the front door is hidden from the sidewalk by a huge juniper bush, but he still doesn’t want Tom in the driveway.

  “You have my cell number?”

  “Of course.” Just go already. “I’ll call you if I need to, I promise.”

  “All right.” Tom turns and gets back into the car. He sits in the front seat, watching Jeremy through the windshield, until Jeremy makes waving motions. Go. Shoo. Get out of here. Then, finally, he starts the car, and pulls out of the driveway, and drives away.

  Jeremy feels his knees go weak. There’s a garden bench on the front porch, mostly covered by boxes now, but he moves a few of them and sits down. He takes a deep breath, smelling juniper, watching the quail in the yard. Then he gets up again.

  In the end, it takes him only the normal amount of time to get through the front door, because he suddenly has to pee. He tries not to look at anything as he hurries to the bathroom, tries not to smell anything—Mom’s lavender sachets, the dusty smell of all the books in the house—tries not to hear the silence. Usually she’d call out as soon as she heard the front door open. “Hey, Jer! Welcome home!”

  That used to drive him nuts. She’d welcome him home if he’d just walked down the hill for potato chips, if he’d just come in from raking or mowing the lawn, if he’d gone out to get the mail. Anytime he crossed that threshold, however briefly he’d been gone, she yelled her cheerful greeting. He used to wonder what drugs she was on.

  Now he’d give anything to hear her voice.

  He’s determined to empty his bladder without crying. He manages that, blessedly—a small three-minute victory—but as he turns to wash his hands, he’s ambushed by the soap dish, an ugly clay slab with a long-necked head and four round blobby legs: a dinosaur. He made it for Mom for Mother’s Day when he was, like, five or something. When he was into dinosaurs and fossils. It’s painted a muddy purple, with one streaking green eye, and he’s begged her a thousand times to toss the fucking thing, for God’s sake, but she won’t. Wouldn’t.

  “It’s your house now,” Hen told him when he was still at hers. “Make it your house, Jeremy. Don’t turn it into a Melinda Museum. It’s all right for you to change things. I know you probably won’t want to do that right away, but remember that you can redo the place the way you want to when you’re ready.”

  Shortly after she said that, it occurred to him that he would now, at last, be able to get rid of the hideous dinosaur soap dish. He’d imagined hurling it against a wall and watching it explode into dust and shards; he’d even pictured what a pain in the butt it would be to sweep up all the pieces.

  But now he can’t touch it. He can’t even use the soap it holds, a girly handcrafted artisanal lavender-and-oatmeal bar from someplace in California. Mom was probably the last person who touched this bar of soap. Some of her molecules may still be clinging to it. He can’t wash them away.

  So he goes into the kitchen, where he knows there’s ordinary hand soap in a dispenser at the sink, and washes his hands there. The kitchen’s a Mom-mine: the café curtains she made hanging in the window, rocks she collected lined up on the windowsill, an avocado pit, suspended by toothpicks and sprouting roots, in a glass of water. The glass is almost empty. Jeremy refills it. At some point someone will have to plant the pit—that’s clearly what Mom wanted to do—but he doesn’t know how or where. He’ll give it to Aunt Rosie. She’ll know.

  He should send it to Seattle.

  The baby Christmas tree is still in Hen’s office. Hen says she wrote a thank-you note, but that it would be fine if he wrote one, too. He has no intention of doing this anytime soon, if ever.

  Jer
emy opens the fridge, as empty as it always is when Mom’s on a trip—at least he won’t have to worry about whether to discard or memorialize her leftovers—and checks the shopping list held to the door with a magnet. “Quinoa, sprouts, tofu, yogurt, blueberries, granola, bananas, soy milk, coffee, artichokes.” He snorts. Rabbit-Mom, with her grains and greens. The only tastes he shares with her here are the fruit and coffee. He tears the list from the pad, ready to crumple it, and then stops.

  She wrote this list.

  Stupid, Jeremy. What are you going to do, bronze the thing?

  But he can no more throw it away than he could shatter the hideous soap dish. With a sigh, he folds the note and shoves it into a junk drawer overflowing with miscellaneous debris. Speaking of which, time to bring the boxes in from the porch.

  That keeps him busy for twenty minutes, good physical work, undemanding and satisfying. He stacks the boxes neatly in the front hall and then, feeling a little more cheerful, dons a backpack full of clothing and picks up a similarly stuffed suitcase. He knows his clothing will go in his room. This is an easy task.

  Going up the stairs, he hears the familiar creak on the sixth and tenth steps, remembers countless weekend mornings when, as he lay in bed, that squeaking warned him that Mom was coming upstairs to rouse him for breakfast. Time’s a wasting.

  His eyes are wet again. His bedroom, at least, should be safe. His bedroom’s full of him, not Mom. But when he shoulders his way through the door, he sees, neatly folded on his narrow single bed, a small pile of laundry.

  Of course. He came over two weeks before Mom’s trip to do laundry, but he got pulled into a discussion on the CC boards and never got around to it, so he left it here. He figured he’d do it when Mom got back from Mexico, and he had enough other clothing in the dorm, so it wasn’t crucial.

  Mom did it for him.

  Aching, he looks around the room and suddenly hates it. It’s too small, too cramped with bookshelves and boxes of CC issues, too childish. There are still plastic dinosaurs sitting on a shelf, and there isn’t even room for a real desk in here. That’s one reason he wanted to live in the dorm, because he felt like he’d outgrown this room. Mom offered him the guest room or the attic, but moving everything was too complicated when he was getting ready to start college at the same time. He told her he’d move over the summer, but privately he believed that he’d never live in this house again, that he’d move into an apartment at the end of the academic year, maybe a frat house or something, and after college he’d get the hell out of Reno and go someplace where he wouldn’t feel so self-conscious, someplace more diverse. San Francisco. Seattle. He knew he’d have to share living space for a long time, but at least he wouldn’t be sharing it with her.

  Now he’d give anything to be sharing it with her.

  He wishes he could leave Reno now, but how would he pay for it? The thing’s impossible, and anyway he has a hazy sense that it’s important to stick around for a while, to let his insides settle as much as they ever will.

  He can move within the house itself, though, switch things up at least that much.

  Mom herself naturally had the nicest bedroom in the house—she’d lived here for years before he showed up, after all—and Jeremy realizes that if he wants to, he can move in there. That room has windows on two sides, a big walk-in closet, even a little verandah. From the windows, you can see trees and mountains, and Mom hung a finch feeder from the eaves, so the birds congregate there, bright spots of yellow and orange and red. “Flying flowers even in winter,” she called them once.

  It’s a great room. It has space for everything Jeremy will want. He stands in his old bedroom, dreaming. He’ll leave the finch feeders there. He’ll get a cat—he and Mom had a cat once and both adored it, but it died when he was a junior in high school, and Mom decided not to get another one because she wanted to travel and he’d be going to college soon—and he and the cat can sit in Mom’s rocking chair, the one her grandfather made for her grandmother, and watch the flying flowers, and sunlight will dapple the floor and the breeze coming in through the windows will smell like sagebrush and juniper.

  This is a summer fantasy, he realizes. He’s thinking about the future. He’s thinking about a life without Mom. Grief and guilt swamp him again. Too soon, too soon.

  * * *

  Rosemary, aching, pulls into Melinda’s driveway. No: not Melinda’s driveway anymore. It’s Jeremy’s driveway now.

  Veronique, next to her, unbuckles her seat belt. “Before I forget, what do you want me to bring to Thanksgiving?” The holiday’s next week. None of them feel remotely festive, but gathering for the holiday is better than being alone. Veronique has been included for years, because Melinda wanted her to be; Rosemary has inherited her now.

  I want you to take away the two empty chairs, Rosemary thinks grimly. She and Walter have always hosted, fed Melinda and Jeremy and Veronique and sometimes a few stragglers from church. Walter’s empty place would have been hard enough, this year. Now she’ll have to deal with Melinda’s, too.

  “Salad,” she says. “Salad or a side, whatever you prefer. Just let me know.”

  “I’ll do my usual, then, that salad with cranberries and walnuts.”

  “That’s great. Thanks.”

  Veronique, hand on the car door, looks over at her. “You know, if you’re going to get out, you’ll have to take off your seat belt.”

  “Right,” Rosemary says, pulling the buckle. “I knew that. I just—I’m not sure I’m ready for this.”

  “Of course not. How could we be? But Jeremy thinks he is, and we promised to help him. Come on: you can’t expect a nineteen-year-old kid to know what to do with his mother’s shoes and clothing.”

  “I guess not.”

  “Dibs on that jacket she got in Montana. The boiled-wool one with the southwestern design and the concho buttons. If it fits me. Rosemary, get out of the car.”

  She does, finally. Vera waits next to the car until Rosemary crosses in front of it to stand on the front walk, and then she comes up behind Rosemary, on her right, and nudges her slightly. “Good. You’re out of the car. Now walk.”

  Vera the sheepdog. Rosemary complies. Waiting won’t make this any easier.

  Jeremy calls, “Come in,” when they ring the bell. They find him waiting in the kitchen. He’s made tea and laid out a plate of cookies, Pepperidge Farm Mint Milano, on one of Melinda’s good plates. When he sees them, he offers up a passable imitation of a smile. “Thanks for coming. It’s nice of you.”

  He looks terrible: drawn, too thin, his warm brown skin an ashen gray, as if he hasn’t slept in days. Rosemary moves in to hug him; he smells slightly sour.

  How do you tell a murdered friend’s bereaved son that he needs to take a shower?

  You don’t.

  Rosemary steps back, away from him, and opens her mouth to ask him how he is, but Jeremy says, “Don’t ask me how I am, okay? For one thing, I don’t know. For another, well, what is there to say?”

  “Good,” Veronique says briskly. “Thank you. I wasn’t going to ask, because I assume you’re about how we are, which is lousy, but I didn’t want you to think I was being rude. Or uncaring.”

  “It’s good of you to come,” he says again. They’re all standing around the table. He nods at it. “Please have some tea, because otherwise it will just get cold, and I won’t drink it, and that would have driven Mom nuts. If you don’t want the cookies, though, I’ll eat them. I was going to bake, but I bailed instead. That would have driven Mom nuts, too.”

  Rosemary feels herself relaxing. He still has his sense of humor. Good.

  They sit, nibble cookies, sip tea. Veronique asks if he’s thought about when he’ll come back to school, and he shrugs. A year or two, he says, when he figures out what he wants to do. He bends his head, shoves his cookie around his plate with one finger. “Mom tried to get me to take some time off after high school. She said I was too unfocused. Pretty ironic I’m doing it now, huh?” His voi
ce is thick.

  “It’s a good idea,” Rosemary says weakly.

  Veronique chews her cookie, swallows, takes a long slurp of tea, and puts her mug back on the table with a decisive thunk. “I think we’ve reached the end of the small talk. The tea and cookies were good, Jeremy. Shall we tackle your mother’s room now?”

  Rosemary follows the other two up the stairs; Vera evidently doesn’t feel the need to herd her this time. Melinda’s room is painted in shades of green and lavender; Jeremy’s piled a stack of broken-down storage boxes in the middle of the floor, with packing tape and scissors next to them. Such a pretty room. Rosemary looks around at the framed dried flowers, the cross-stitch sampler Melinda got at a yard sale—she always claimed she was hopeless at any needlework herself, although she admired it—the collection of baskets and ceramic boxes on top of the bureau.

  Veronique’s looking around, too. She wipes a tear from her cheek, as briskly as she always does everything, and says, “You’re going to repaint when you move in here, I assume? More macho colors?”

  “I dunno. I haven’t gotten that far. Whatever I do, we need to deal with her clothing and stuff, right?”

  Rosemary realizes she’s shaking. She feels almost nauseous. She can’t stand the idea of disassembling the room. She hasn’t been able to pack up Walter’s things, either, except for what he needs in the nursing home. If she keeps everything the way it is, she can pretend he’s coming home.

  If only they could leave this room alone. If only Melinda were coming home. But this is what Jeremy wants to do, and Veronique’s right. They promised to help him.

  It will get easier, Rosemary tells herself. Once we’re doing the work, once everything’s packed up and the room’s dismantled, it won’t be so hard. All right. Time to dive in.

  She picks up a box. “Where do you want me to start, Jeremy? Closet, or drawers?”

  Veronique nods approvingly. “You take one. I’ll take the other.”

  “You could flip a coin,” Jeremy says.

  “No.” Veronique shakes her head. “I’ll take the dresser. It’s likely to be more straightforward. And Rosie’s the one with the fashion sense, so she should take the closet. But mind you put that jacket aside for me, if you find it.”