There. The rearranging’s done. Melinda’s possessions have been integrated with Veronique’s.
The bedroom door shakes, and Veronique opens it. The cats erupt inside, crying and winding themselves around her ankles, distraught and bereft. You never love us. You have never loved us. Not once in the last thousand years have you loved us.
She bends to pat them, her knee screaming almost as loudly as they are, and then speaks aloud. “Cats, we’re going downstairs now. I’m going to sit on the couch. You can join me, but you have to let me get downstairs without tripping me.”
She accomplishes this by gripping the bannister with both hands, a maneuver she knows would look ridiculous were anyone else here to see her. For the first time in a long time, she permits herself a stab of self-pity that no one is.
Chocolate. Just one square, medicinal. That’s what she needs. She keeps a bar of Trader Joe’s 72% cacao in the kitchen for just such emergencies.
Settled on the couch with one cat in her lap and the other curled next to her, the chocolate on a napkin on the side table, Veronique looks around her living room: clean uncluttered lines, clean uncluttered surfaces, Danish modern and Georgia O’Keefe. It occurs to her, as she takes the first nibble of chocolate and one of the cats begins to purr, that Melinda’s possessions are indeed a collection of stories: belongings as books, as a library accessible only to a select clique of readers. She, Rosie, and Jeremy know the story of the brown bottle. To the rest of the world, it’s just a piece of glass.
Veronique looks around her living room again. There’s a large set of bookcases along one wall, holding volumes readable by anyone who speaks English. What other stories are here? When she dies, who will come to divvy up her belongings, and what tales will they tell?
She bought the furniture at various stores, the O’Keefe prints online. Aside from the literal books, the place is as devoid of narrative as the showrooms where she bought the furniture. She might as well be sitting in a doctor’s waiting room or an airline departure gate.
Despite the warmth of the small mammal stretched across her lap, despite her satisfying sugar buzz, Veronique feels a sudden chill. She finds herself longing for the heft and comfort of the hairy grape.
9
From the beginning, the toll of time has been an important consideration in the CCverse. In other superhero franchises, the characters have long histories, but once they have reached adulthood, they tend not to age. The CC Four decided early on that this would not be the case for Cosmos and his loved ones. He and the people around him get older at the rate of “one second per second,” as MacKenzie likes to say. They age in real time. In time, they will die.
In the first issue, Cosmos was twenty-three. Now he’s thirty. His thirtieth birthday was the occasion for a special double issue, a huge party in which all the people he’d helped arrived by the hundreds—nay, by the thousands—to cheer him on and wish him well. The party filled the Keyhole football stadium, overflowed onto the streets, and lasted for days, a combination of Mardi Gras, the Fourth of July, and Bilbo Baggins’s eleventy-first birthday party.
Naturally, the Emperor was there, too, a constellation-studded darkness looming over the crowd. “Carpe diem, indeed,” he intoned. “Party while ye may, for in the end, I will win, whatever you do. I always win. Mine is the last face you will see.”
“Tell me something I don’t know,” said Cosmos, wearing a garish Hawaiian shirt. He was a little tipsy on his third beer. “And what of you, esteemed opponent? How old are you?”
“I am as old as the universe, puny mortal. I will live as long as time itself. When all you have done and all you have loved are dust, when their descendants to the fiftieth generation are dust, I will still move throughout the galaxies. I dwell in eternity, and my garb is creation, and—”
“And you’re damnably long-winded,” Cosmos said with a hiccup, taking another swig of beer. “Let me rephrase the question. When’s your birthday, O Emperor?”
“I was born when the first molecules—”
“Oh, pshaw,” Cosmos said, and belched. “Nobody knows when that is, do they?” He grabbed a microphone connected to the stadium’s PA system. “Hey, everybody! The Emperor doesn’t know when his birthday is!”
A huge “awwwww” of feigned sympathy filled the stadium.
“He’s never had a birthday cake!”
“Awwwwww!”
“And if he did, he wouldn’t invite anybody to share it!”
“Booooo!”
“He outlives everybody, like a vampire, so he’s afraid to get close to them! The Emperor doesn’t have any friends, only Minions!”
“Awwwwww!”
Cosmos waved his beer bottle over his head, burped again, and said into the microphone, “I’m feeling generous, Emperor, so I’ll give you a present. From now on, my birthday’s yours, too. We can eat cake together. You’re always welcome to my party.”
“I am always present, mortal, welcome or not. I am always with you. I—”
“Yeah,” said Cosmos, “but now you’re invited.” The thought balloon above his head read, Like a vampire.
“That makes no difference, mortal.”
“Sure it does. It means that I’m not clinging to time I can’t keep, that I’m not fetishizing my lost youth, that I accept the inevitability of aging and death. The difference between us, Emperor, is that my Comrades love me. Your Minions only fear you, or acquiesce to you, or think it’s amusing to adopt nihilistic stances. That’s why you’ve never had a birthday cake. Nihilists don’t bake.”
“My Minions accept the inevitability—”
“Your Minions are boring,” Cosmos said, “and they need to get lives while they still can. Sure, we’ll all be dust before long, except lonely old you, watching everybody crumble. Why hurry the process? Hey, everybody, let’s sing ‘Happy Birthday’ to the Emperor!”
So the crowd sang, and cheered, and the Emperor tried to harummph and cackle but instead only loomed, looking nonplussed and decidedly annoyed. For form’s sake, he created a blast of chaos that blew bottles and balloons and bunting, frosting and ribbons and ice-cream bowls, all over Keyhole, but Cosmos led the assembled masses in an impromptu reggae version of “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad,” and they got the mess cleaned up in no time.
Many commentaries on this issue point out that Cosmos’s offer to share a birthday with EE is, in fact, simply another illustration of his promise to respect his own mortality. We all share birthdays with EE: he has not one birthday, but an infinite number. His birthday is every moment, for in every moment something is born, and at that moment begins to die.
And so it has become the custom of the CCverse to invite EE to all birthday and anniversary celebrations, to explicitly acknowledge his presence. He is there every year, wearing a party hat, when CC cuts his cake and when Roger has his annual bowling birthday bash. He sits in the corner when Cosmos feeds his sister Vanessa the lemon ice she loves on her own birthday, and when he and his father watch Star Trek reruns on Charlie’s birthday. He is the acknowledged guest of honor every year on Anelda’s birthday, which the family observes by putting flowers on her grave in the Keyhole Memorial Cemetery and by lighting a candle at home.
Issue number 76 narrated the poignant story of a woman who, although she called herself a Comrade, refused to invite EE to her son’s birthday party. The spindly boy was three but looked much younger, a pincushion of IVs, as thickly festooned with lines as a ship’s rigging. He had just been diagnosed with leukemia. “He can’t die,” she said, bringing presents and candy to little Johnny’s hospital room even though, wretchedly ill from chemotherapy, he couldn’t enjoy any of it. “I won’t let him. I won’t acknowledge death. My child will, must, outlive me.”
When Johnny grew worse, she kidnapped him from the hospital, removing the needles from his arms and carrying him the ten blocks to Cosmos’s doorway. The doorbell interrupted Vanessa and Charlie’s dinner, and Cosmos, spoon of baby food in hand, disc
overed the sobbing mother and her limp child on his front porch. “Please,” she said. “Please, you have to save him.”
“I can’t. If the doctors can’t, I can’t either. That isn’t how it works.”
“Save him!”
“I wish I could. I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll do anything, anything, just name your price—”
“I’d do anything, too,” Cosmos said sadly, “if there were anything to do.”
“He hates the hospital. He hates the needles.”
“Let him die at home, then.” And Cosmos brought them inside and sat them down and called Zeldine, with whom he’s still on good terms, to arrange home hospice care, which he knew would include grief support for the mother.
“It’s his birthday! How can I plan his death on his birthday?”
“You aren’t planning his death,” Cosmos said, placing his hand gently on Johnny’s bald head. “You’re planning the rest of his life. Spend it with him. Let him decide what it should look like. The hospice people will help you.”
The mother, wild-eyed, said, “This is unbearable.”
“Yes.”
“How will I survive it?”
“By breathing. By eating. Let your body tell you what it needs to survive.” And Cosmos and the mother wept together, while the child slept and while the Emperor, the darkness at one end of the room, stretched out his arms to embrace them all.
Cosmos’s hair is a little thinner than it was when we first met him, a little grayer. Although he is still young, his face is more lined and his eyes more troubled. In his bedroom he keeps a copy of The Velveteen Rabbit, which Anelda read to him when he was a little boy. Sometimes he reads it to himself. Sometimes he reads it to Vanessa and Charlie. What the story means to him is that wearing out—feeling threadbare, exhausted, done in—is proof of having been greatly cherished.
The book itself is falling apart, but he won’t replace it. His mother’s hands held it once.
10
Jeremy wakes up on New Year’s Day feeling about two tons lighter than he did yesterday. January, finally. The holidays are over. Thank God. Mom’s birthday is in March, and that’s going to be horrible, but he has a few months before then. A reprieve.
He rolls and stretches. As his Christmas gift to himself, he bought a good queen-sized mattress, although it’s just sitting on the floor because he couldn’t be bothered buying a box spring and frame for it. He doesn’t understand why those things are so expensive.
He’s in Mom’s room now; he’s using her bureau, because it’s bigger than his, and he couldn’t bring himself to touch the paint job because he remembers how she agonized over the colors and then went through all the hassle of putting down dropsheets and using brushes and getting paint in her hair. She was so proud of the results. He made fun of the green and purple then, and he’s still not crazy about them, but doesn’t hate them, either. They’re pale. Subdued, but a bit too dark to be pastel, so they don’t look too girly, whatever VB said. After a while, you don’t even notice them. He can live with this color scheme, even if it clashes with his posters.
He’s moved in his old desk—a door on top of two small filing cabinets—and his bookshelves, with all his CC issues and books and action figures neatly arranged, for once. Jeremy knows it won’t stay neat for long, but still, Mom would be proud, even if she never managed to tame her own clutter. For that matter, CC would be proud. Maybe Jeremy’s not entirely a Minion yet.
He could have put his desk and shelves in Mom’s study instead, and maybe someday he will, but he hasn’t been able to tackle the study yet. That was Mom’s haven—her sanctum sanctorum, Aunt Rosie called it—and right now, moving the furniture around would feel like killing Mom all over again. He doesn’t even know for sure what’s in there. One of his New Year’s resolutions is to find out, to start going through her files, anyway.
He’s glad Mom always gave Tom copies of her really important papers, the will and whatnot. That’s spared him having to tackle the files before now.
His other New Year’s resolution is to get a job. Maybe at the local comic store, Symbolia, if they’re hiring. Maybe even at the library. Or maybe he can work in the UNR bookstore, if they have openings. He doesn’t know if anybody has openings, the way the economy’s crumped, and it’s not like he has any particular skills. But he knows his CC, which could make him useful at Symbolia—although a lot of people know their CC, which is what makes it CC—and he figures he has an in at the library because of Mom, although he doesn’t know if he could stand working there and having to deal with people talking about her, or not talking about her, or wanting to talk about her but not doing it for fear of hurting his feelings, and tiptoeing around him instead, or talking in whispers behind his back. Too much like seventh grade. Too much like the funeral. Too much like the interminable, horrible fucking holidays.
Thanksgiving was tolerable, barely. He went to Aunt Rosie’s house, the way he and Mom always had, and even though the two empty chairs—Mom’s and Uncle Walter’s—gaped at everybody through the whole meal, he got through it by focusing on his plate and eating. He likes to eat, and Aunt Rosie’s a good cook, and he would have had to eat that day anyway. And Thanksgiving’s just about food: no gifts or trees or carols.
Of course, it’s also about gratitude, or it’s supposed to be. The toughest moment at Thanksgiving was when Aunt Rosie very quietly asked people to name what they were grateful for, “even though it’s been a really hard year.” There followed a bunch of high-minded, noble statements about being grateful for community and healing and yada yada yada, and Jeremy knew that when the obnoxious exercise got to him, he should say he was grateful for everybody who’s helped him. But he couldn’t. He still can’t. If the world were working right, he wouldn’t need their help. He doesn’t want to need their help. Their help hurts.
So instead, looking at his plate, he said, “I’m grateful for good food,” and dug in before Aunt Rosie even said grace. Rude, he knew. Very opinionated. But nobody scolded him. They were cutting him slack because of Mom. Jeremy figures that if people are going to cut you slack, you might as well use it.
The next morning, opening his fridge to see all the leftovers Aunt Rosie had sent home with him, he felt mildly ashamed. Not enough to call and apologize, though.
Christmas was much worse than Thanksgiving. For one thing, there was all the crap that went along with it, commercials and lights and reminders everywhere you turned, so you couldn’t ignore it even if you wanted to. And it had been Mom’s favorite holiday, and she’d thrown a Christmas party every year, and he sure as hell wasn’t going to do that, but should he decorate? Get a tree? What would he put under it? Should he go to church on Christmas Eve, the way he and Mom always had? That was the one service all year he liked. Pretty candles. Nice music, and everybody got to sing, plus it was at night so you didn’t have to drag your ass out of bed at the crack of dawn and get yourself ready to be polite to a bunch of church ladies before your brain had even kicked in for the day.
He’d almost decided that he’d go to the service when Hen called to ask him about the Percy-plant. That fucking little tree. The Sunday school kids wanted to decorate it and use it in the Christmas pageant. Was that okay with Jeremy? Did he want it at the house instead?
No, he didn’t want it at the house, and sure, the kids could use it. But he promptly decided that if the Percy-plant was gussied up for Christmas, no way was he going to church. He found himself hoping that the sapling would droop and die under the weight of Sunday school ornaments, like the pathetic tree in A Charlie Brown Christmas.
That was another thing. He and Mom had watched the Peanuts special every year, and why was he kidding himself even thinking about going to church? The minute the choir started singing “Hark, the Herald Angels Sing,” he’d lose it. He and Mom had always sung along to that with the Peanuts gang at the end of the show.
In the end, he survived the month between Christmas and New Year’s simply
by putting his head down and barreling through. He did a lot of cooking for himself, splurging on good meat and expensive olive oil, losing himself in recipes and aromas. This is the best thing about being back home; he couldn’t cook in the dorms. He watched movies, even had some friends over to watch with him—although they all scattered the second the movies were over, because they had no idea what to say to him about Mom—but he barely turned on the TV or radio, because he knew he’d be buried under Christmas commercials and jingle-bell kitsch, endless exhortations to shop. Instead of shopping, he got the last stuff out of his old room and cleaned like a demon.
On Christmas Day itself, he went to Rosie’s house for brunch. Tom was there, too, and Hen and Ed, and VB. He didn’t want to go, but he couldn’t say no, and staying home would have been worse. Aunt Rosie had told him very firmly that he didn’t have to give anyone gifts, but he would have felt crappy if he hadn’t, since he had a strong feeling he’d be getting stuff. And it was a chance to give away more of Mom’s things that he didn’t want, anyway. They were nice things, or at any rate things she’d loved, and someone should have them.
So he gave Aunt Rosie a bunch of Mom’s old flowery teacups, and she cried. She gave him a nice Lands’ End down vest, one of Uncle Walter’s, “because he can’t use it in the nursing home, and he’d want you to have it.”
He gave VB the Little House on the Prairie books Mom had read when she was a kid and had lugged around with her ever since, and VB cried. She gave him an Amazon.com gift card.
He gave Tom a bunch of Mom’s books about geology, because Tom likes rocks, too, and Tom didn’t cry but cleared his throat and coughed and stammered a bit and finally managed to say thank you, he’d enjoy these very much. Tom gave Jeremy a gift card to Emerald City, the café two miles from the house.
Jeremy gave Hen Mom’s Book of Common Prayer, even though he supposed that Hen already had ten million of the things, and Hen cried, and then he gave Ed some of Mom’s seed packets, because Ed’s a gardener, too, and Ed didn’t cry—thank God—and then Hen and Ed gave Jeremy a nice woolen hat and scarf, with a card saying that they hoped the gift would feel like a warm hug and remind him he was loved, and to his absolute humiliation, he cried, and everybody else cried too this time, even Ed, and it was by far the soggiest Christmas Jeremy had ever experienced, and he hated it.
Mending the Moon Page 13
