Clean lines, beautiful forms: everything here is both lovely and useful. Peace settles over Veronique like a blanket. Her knee doesn’t even hurt. What pill could possibly work this well? She gazes at plates and bowls, mugs and vases, sets of plain dishes and one-of-a-kind pieces, shaped like fantastical sea creatures here where water falls so rarely. In the track lighting, the pieces gleam as if wet with surf.
The Great Basin was an ocean once. Melinda talked about that all the time, about ichthyosaurs and the delicate whorls of marine shells etched in desert rock. Veronique picks up a small round pot, ridged like a sea urchin. Cool and heavy in her hands, it could be the fossil of a creature that actually lived here, millennia ago. She turns it, admiring how old it looks, how organic, reveling in the feel of the ridges against her skin.
The pot doesn’t want to go back on the display table. It wants to come home with her. She looks at the price tag and feels a slight pang. It’s pricy, yes, but not quite the extravagance she’d planned driving out here. And she’s not ready to leave.
She wants to stay, wants to let the oceanic expanse of the desert dissolve her heart to sand. She wants to stay here and breathe. She even has an excuse for dallying: outside, a few white flakes swirl past the dark trees. The cats would be furious at her if she missed their evening feeding time, but they have a clean litter box and enough water and dry food for several days. They’d be fine, if indignant.
Cradling the sea-urchin pot against her chest, she turns and finds herself facing a display of business cards. Planet X Guest House. Veronique smiles, and takes one, and goes to find the potter.
* * *
Melinda guzzles her Nixon-bought orange soda and lets out a huge belch. Veronique, hands on the wheel, snorts. “That stuff’ll dissolve your stomach, you know.”
“I doubt it. You’re thinking of Coke. Anyway, it’s my birthday. This is the one day a year I consciously court carcinogens, remember?”
Veronique laughs. “What did the carcinogens cost? I should pay for them, since it’s your birthday.”
“Don’t be silly. You’re going to buy me a piece of expensive pottery; I’ll buy my own Ring-Dings.” Melinda pauses, watching her friend’s profile, and then says, “It’s lovely of you to do this, Veronique.”
“You always say that. I enjoy it, you know.”
Melinda pushes a wisp of hair behind one ear. “This time, you should buy yourself something. You never do.”
“I did, actually. Years ago. Sarabeth and I drove out here, and we agonized for what seemed like hours, and we picked out a gorgeous pot. And when we got it home, well, it was still gorgeous, but the magic was gone. For me, the Planet X stuff is more beautiful at Planet X. Those pieces need to be with their kind. For me, it’s more of a museum than a store.” She glances at Melinda. “They look great at your house. They wouldn’t at mine.”
Melinda doesn’t believe this. Veronique’s decorating scheme is spare and Southwestern; the pots would fit beautifully. Melinda’s interior design is, to put it kindly, eclectic. The pots Veronique’s bought her are hardly visible in all the clutter, but Melinda loves them anyway. She knows they’re there, even if no one else would without an archeological excavation.
“What happened to it?” she asks Veronique. “The pot? I’ve never seen it, have I?”
Veronique waves a hand, as if to shoo away a mosquito. “Sarabeth took it. She always liked it better than I did, anyway.”
“Well, you should get yourself something. To replace that vase Nepotuk broke. You have a place ready-made for it.”
Veronique smiles vaguely, but waves her hand again, and Melinda decides that sometime this year, she’ll drive Veronique out here and treat her to a pot. She can tell that Veronique won’t buy one for herself. For that matter, Melinda—lover of large jewelry and chunky handknits and art glass and artists’ cooperatives—has never seen Veronique buy anything impractical for herself, never seen her invest in beauty for its own sake. As far as Melinda knows, Veronique hasn’t even dated anyone since Sarabeth left.
At least she has only two cats, and not several dozen, although Melinda can’t imagine Veronique hoarding anything. The woman’s an emotional anorexic; she might be healthier if she did have several dozen cats. Sometimes Melinda wonders if Veronique was different when Sarabeth was around—Melinda met Vera after the breakup—but she suspects it’s just how Veronique’s wired. And maybe it’s why Sarabeth left, for that matter.
Yes, Melinda thinks, I definitely need to treat her to something. Something more lasting than a meal out. She knows that Veronique will protest, will try to dodge any gift. Melinda will just have to find some way around her formidable defenses.
* * *
Anna sits outside, on the deck, in sunshine. It’s May, and at last the sun’s out. The weather hasn’t turned very warm yet, but no matter. All over the city, people are sitting outside, faces like flowers turned up to the sky. This is an annual ritual, the day when the residents of Seattle emerge from hibernation.
Bart sits next to her. They went for a nice long walk earlier, and he’s tuckered out. He lies on the sunny teak of the deck, basking, his tail giving an occasional thump.
Anna doesn’t know where William is. At one of his support-group meetings, maybe.
She’s come out here with her laptop, her knitting, the latest issue of CC, and a stack of notecards. The job she needs to do today—much easier in sunshine and fresh air—is to write a set of invitations to Percy’s service in two months. It’s a small list, and she’s almost afraid to send the invites, because it will hurt more if no one comes after getting a handwritten note. But she’s Percy’s mother, and she owes him the effort of trying to gather people who liked him once, who found good in him. She’s also sending invitations to her own circle, people she once considered friends. It’s almost a test, to see if they’ll come and offer any kind of support.
Marjorie and David are of course already coming. They don’t need an invite. Marjorie offered to pay for engraved invitations, but Anna said, “This isn’t a wedding. I’ll write the notes myself. It will be good for me.” She’s not exactly sure how it will be good for her, but she supposes that it represents a kind of reaching out, which is what William and his parents keep telling her she needs to do.
And so she sends a note to her knitting group (“I just wanted to let you know”), to the Stanford CC Club (“In case any of you knew Percy”), to Percy’s college roommates and high school friends (“Please pass this along to anyone else who might want to attend”), and, in a kind of desperation, to his pediatrician (“Because you took care of Percy for so many years, I thought you might want to know…”). It all feels like shamefaced begging. None of these people want to know anything about Percy, or about her and William. None of them have bothered to express sympathy, and Anna finds that she no longer views this as a tactful protection of privacy. Writing the notes, she finds herself growing increasingly angry. She knows it’s an impossible situation. She can all too easily imagine that if the positions were reversed, if someone she knew had lost a child to suicide after that child had committed an unspeakable crime, she’d sidestep the issue. She wouldn’t know what to say. She’d tell herself the family needed space. She’d tell herself she didn’t know them well enough to intrude, that surely they were surrounded by loving family and friends. She would, yes, probably blame them, wonder what they’d done to create a child who would do such a thing.
But even if she avoided face-to-face contact, she’d do something, even if it was only to send a plant.
Anna is trying very hard not to feel as if something’s wrong with her because she isn’t surrounded by loving family and friends. She wonders if people are afraid of her now, if they think that she, too, will commit some atrocity.
And so it is a relief, after so many empty words, to write the last two notes, the ones to people who’ve offered kindness. The first is to Karen, who brought Bart back home. The second is to someone Anna has never met.
/> Dear Rev. Alphonse-Smith:
In November, you were kind enough to send a few words of sympathy about my son, Percy. I find it ironic that you, who knew and loved the woman my child so terribly and inexplicably murdered, are one of the very few people who reached out to us after his death. My husband and I thank you for that, and we would like to let you know that Percy’s long-delayed memorial service will be held on July 24, on what would have been his twenty-third birthday, at the East Shore Unitarian Universalist Church in Bellevue. Please don’t think I’m informing you of this so you’ll send us a tree! Rather, I ask for your prayers on that day, which will be very difficult for us. William and I are not religious; I myself do not know how to pray, and I do not even know if I believe in prayer. But I know that it will be a comfort to me to know that you are thinking good thoughts on our behalf.
I hope this note is neither offensive nor overly forward, and I hope that everyone who loved Melinda is finding some way to heal.
Very truly yours,
Anna Clark
After all the forced notes, the polite phrases squeezed through simmering rage, this one flows easily, and so Anna is not surprised to find herself weeping as she signs her name. She sees that a tear has fallen on the card, has smudged a few words. Never mind: they’re still readable. She’ll send the card as is. She’s not sure if she’d be able to bear rewriting it.
She seals the note, addresses it, stamps it. There: the chore is done. She’d planned to reward herself by knitting a few rows of her long-neglected shawl, and then by reading the new CC issue. She wants to know what will happen to Archipelago. She’s startled, and a little disturbed, that the CC Four are treating her so sympathetically. After all, Archipelago killed someone. Archipelago is hardly Percy, but her isolation—and desperation—speak to Anna’s own, and Anna has found this story arc compulsively compelling.
She’s started to explore the online discussion forums, too, and had thought she might do some of that this afternoon. She initially logged on to see if she could find any posts by Percy, but since she doesn’t know what his username was, she quickly abandoned that project. Right now, she’s trying to suss out how other readers feel about Archipelago.
But suddenly she’s exhausted, too tired to knit or even to read. It’s the kind of fatigue that feels like being pulled under anesthesia: entropy exhaustion. Anna glances at the dog, who’s stopped wagging his tail, and sees that he’s fallen asleep, too. He moans and twitches, jerking his head, and Anna wonders if he’s dreaming about the beach. Poor dumb brute. She bends down to stroke the top of his head, grateful that Percy never wanted a pet scorpion. Bart murmurs and mutters with little huffing breaths, but doesn’t wake.
* * *
“Did she say anything about her plans this afternoon?” Rosemary asks. She’s sitting at Veronique’s kitchen table with one cat in her lap and another winding itself around her feet. Veronique gave her a key a long time ago, “just in case,” but this is the first time Rosie’s used it. After three hours of not being able to reach Vera, she panicked and let herself into the house, afraid of what she’d find. She didn’t find anything. “I’d feel really silly if I called out the cavalry and it turned out she was just stocking up on tofu at Trader Joe’s.”
“I understand that,” Brandy says, “and I’m sure you know that I can’t talk about anything Veronique discussed in session. But if someone I cared about hadn’t been answering her phone for five hours, I’d be concerned. I urge you to call the police.”
I hate this, Rosemary thinks. I hate babysitting Vera. It feels like taking care of Walter all over again. I hate talking to this shrink, because I can’t tell if she’s just playing the CYA game or if “I urge you” is HIPAA code for “Yes, you should be worried and take action.”
It occurs to her that there may be a workaround. “Can you try to reach her? And call the police if you believe there’s cause? I think you’d have more credibility.”
After a pause so long that Rosemary fears the connection’s been broken, Brandy clears her throat. “Under the terms of my therapeutic relationship with Veronique, it wouldn’t be appropriate for me to try to call her without a prior indication from her that I should. Do you understand?”
“You can return her calls, but you don’t just call your clients out of the blue.”
“Exactly. But why don’t we do this: try her again, and call me again if you still can’t reach her, and then I’ll call the police. I’m about to leave the office, but I’ll give you my cell phone number.”
“Thank you,” Rosemary says. “That’s above and beyond the call of duty.”
“You’re welcome. And if you do reach her, please call me anyway, to let me know.”
“Yes, of course. Thank you so much.”
Oh, hell, Rosemary thinks as she hits the end button. The shrink must be really worried. They never give out their personal numbers.
She calls Veronique’s cell again: straight to voice mail. The phone’s off, then. It’s been off since that first call Rosemary made at noon, the one Veronique neither answered nor returned.
But Veronique’s clumsy and forgetful with her phone, and could easily have turned it off by accident. She’s never entirely gotten used to the technology. Rosemary doesn’t know if she even knows how to access her voice mail; the outgoing message is still the computer-generated one that comes with new phones.
Rosemary looks at her watch: 5:30. Veronique feeds her cats at six on the dot. She’s often joked that she can’t have her own dinner before she gives them theirs, because they’ll give her no peace. They’re already radiating anxiety, fastening themselves to Rosemary as if at least eight of their nine lives depend on how thoroughly they can ingratiate themselves with her.
All right, then. She’ll give it another half hour. If Veronique isn’t home by six and still isn’t answering her cell, Rosemary will call Brandy and let Brandy call the cavalry. In the meantime, she’ll feed the cats. She can allay some of their fears, at least.
* * *
Jeremy’s lying on the couch in the living room, his laptop on his chest. He woke up today feeling crappy—although he’s pretty sure his funk’s more emotional than physical—and decided to call in sick to work. He’s never done that before. He still likes the job, but he just can’t deal with coffee grounds and milk cartons today.
He’s been trying to figure out why he feels so lousy, what about today in particular has made his mood plummet. Probably part of it’s the weather. May is when Jeremy always gets tired of waiting for spring, and wants warmth now. And May’s when school gets out. Everybody he knows has another year finished, and he doesn’t. He still doesn’t want to be back in school, but he doesn’t want to feel left behind, either.
The effort of staying in step just feels like too much work, though. This is Emperor territory, so Jeremy’s been idly scrolling through the WISS thread on the CC message board. He never got around to writing his own essay, but reading other people’s makes him feel a little less alone, even though he’s seen most of the reasons before.
I switched sides when I got fired because of the economy.
I switched sides when the girl I loved dumped me for my best friend.
I switched sides when my brother was killed in Iraq.
That’s the closest to Jeremy’s, although no one’s written, “I switched sides when my mother was raped and murdered by someone who claimed to be a CC fan.” He doesn’t think he wants to write that; it would be too much of a giveaway to anyone who’s been following the news at all, despite his anonymous handle of “Kid Coherence.”
He’s been thinking about Guatemala again, though, mainly because he feels like he should want to go back there and learn more about his birth parents. That’s what Mom would want him to want, but it’s not what he wants. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it will be, someday. Yeah, he wants to be somewhere else, but not there.
Right now, being here is semi-okay. He’s been reading Mom’s old journals, trying to lear
n more about her. She started keeping the journals after college, and seems to have stopped the year she adopted him; he can’t find any more recent than that, anyway. The entries are mainly about various boyfriends. What a bunch of jerks! They make Jeremy glad, for once, that she adopted as a single parent. She dated a guy who nagged her about being neater. She dated a guy who dumped her because he thought librarians were boring. She dated a guy who collected his lovers’ pubic hair. Ewwwwww.
Losers. Aside from how completely bizarre it is to imagine his mother having a love life, reading this stuff makes Jeremy want to track these guys down and scream at them. “My mother was amazing, you moron. My mother was worth ten of you. My mother’s left pinky was more interesting than anything you’ve ever done.”
When she was alive, all he did was criticize her, chafe against her. Regret burns his throat.
Sighing, he scrolls through another few WISS posts. Okay, how about this? “I’m supposed to be a Comrade because my mother adopted me from a war-torn country after my birth parents were killed, which is the kind of thing that should make you believe in noble do-gooderism, but instead my adoptive mom was killed, too, and my godfather, who’s sort of the closest thing I have to a father, developed Swiss-cheese brain from Alzheimer’s, and how can I still be a Comrade after losing all of them?”
No. Just thinking about writing this makes Jeremy feel like his skull’s filled with lead.
He scrolls listlessly through a few more WISS threads—car accidents, broken legs, house fires—until he’s brought up short by a thread title. “Request from Anna Clark.”
Anna Clark? Percy’s mother Anna Clark? Fucking Christmas tree Anna Clark?
The post’s dated today. Like, two hours ago. Holy shit. She just wrote it. Jeremy pulls himself into a sitting position, so he’ll have a better viewing angle, and clicks on the post title.
Mending the Moon Page 21
