“If I go,” she says, clutching the pot so tightly that later she’ll find the pattern of the ceramic pressed into her palms, “I will curse that monster aloud and spit in his coffin. Is that what you want?”
“Hen’s spoken to his mother. He’s been cremated, so no coffin, only an urn. And Hen has a free place for all of us to stay. Some priest friend of hers up there has a huge house.”
Rosie’s deliberately misunderstanding her. “I’ll curse his parents,” Veronique continues, desperate and implacable. “I’ll tell them that they must be monsters, to have raised such a child. I’ll stand up and scream in the church.”
“Hen says that Anna says no one will talk to them. They’ve been shunned. She might even welcome screaming.”
Veronique shakes her head. “I don’t care. Percy’s parents are not my problem, and I don’t want to go.” She wouldn’t want to go even if Amy were staying here.
Rosie turns back to face her now. Veronique sees that her face is wet with tears, that her hands are clenched as tightly around each other on her lap as Veronique’s are clenched on the Planet X pot. When she speaks, though, her voice is still steady. “I’m not treating you like an infant. I’m the infant. Vera, I’ve lost my husband and one of my best friends, and I can’t lose you, too. I know we wouldn’t even know each other if it weren’t for Melinda, and I know we’ll never be as close to each other as either of us was to her, but you’re the only other person I know who remembers her the way I do. I know you hate me right now, but will you please, please come to Seattle? For me?”
Veronique blinks. The universe spins, revolves, resettles itself with an almost audible thump. Rosie hasn’t been stalking her because she thinks Veronique’s needy. It’s Rosie who’s the needy one. She’s just admitted as much.
Vera opens her mouth and then closes it again, riding a sudden rush of feeling. She’s so used to people pulling away from her—her students, her colleagues, Sarabeth—that she feels as if she’s been given a gift.
Hell of a gift, she thinks. There have to be less annoying ways to be needed. Ways that don’t involve student witnesses.
Still.
She eyes Rosemary, noting almost clinically that Rosie’s hands are still clenched, while Vera’s own have relaxed somewhat. “I’ll think about it. I’ll let you know in a few days. But only if you promise, from now on, that you’ll give me some warning before you show up at the house.”
* * *
Rosemary is mortified. She’s always secretly considered herself saner and stronger than Veronique. Until the scene in Vera’s kitchen today, she didn’t even know that her own motives were so—childish? Selfish? She doesn’t even know what word to use.
Until today, she honestly believed that she was hounding Vera for Vera’s own good. She believed that the situation had been created by Vera’s weakness, not her own.
No, not weakness. She catches herself; this is a bias she corrects often enough in her ER patients, too many of whom believe that needing anyone else is a personal failing. We all need other people. We’re designed to need other people. We’re healthiest and happiest around other people.
This isn’t just theology. It’s science, neurotransmitters and psychology labs. Orphaned monkey babies, given a choice between two kinds of surrogate-mother doll, will pick the one covered in soft terrycloth every time, even when their food’s dispensed by the cold wire mother-mannequin.
Mammals need connection. We don’t live by monkey chow alone. Rosemary knows that. Shame wraps around her like a shawl anyway.
And she thinks, once again, of Walter. She’s been visiting him every week in the nursing home; she’s managed to distance the beloved body who lives there from the beloved person who no longer seems to be inside, or who, at any rate, no longer knows her. Sometimes Walter remembers that she’s visited before. Once, gently, he patted her hand and said, “My dear, it’s kind of you to come see me, but I don’t know if my wife would like it.”
Her breath had snagged in her throat. “Does it bother you, that your wife isn’t here?”
He’d frowned, and then his features had smoothed again, as if he’d found peace. “No. It’s better for her not to come. It would hurt her too much to see me like this. She’s too tenderhearted. I never told her, but I think she’d have been happier if she’d been able to hold back more of her heart.”
Rosemary had blinked at him, vision swimming. What else hadn’t he told her? She briefly entertained the notion of asking him this, but quickly recognized it as both unethical and dangerous. What would she do if she learned something devastating, that he’d had an affair or considered divorce or even simply loathed some piece of her?
No. Let him keep his secrets.
She wonders now, though, if he’s ashamed of needing help, of needing the care of the people—women, almost always women—who tend to him every day, and who are strangers almost every time they enter the room.
She’ll say good-bye to him before they leave for Seattle. She’ll tell him that she won’t be there that week, but that she’ll be coming back. And she’ll hope that, even for a little while, he’ll remember that promise.
16
For a year now, Archipelago Osprey has been stalking Comrade Cosmos, and for a year, he has eluded her. Her initial journey to Keyhole was delayed by weather, illness—a bout of dysentery from Dumpster diving—and transportation problems. When she realized that Keyhole was her destination, she ducked into a public library and used Google Maps to get walking directions from Wyoming to Kansas. According to Google Maps, the journey should have taken eight days and eleven hours, although it wasn’t clear to her if this figure included time to sleep, to eat, and to trap crickets. In any case, it seemed reasonable to expect that she could cover the distance in a month.
She had no intention of hitchhiking. She wanted to stay alive, and she wasn’t sure that even the intimidating sight of an empire scorpion would dissuade the kind of creeps who drive around in trucks looking for female hitchhikers.
From Bumfuck, she walked in what she believed was a southeasterly direction until she reached the nearest largish town, where she not only found an army/navy store but managed to shoplift a compass, a Swiss Army knife, a USA road atlas, several rolls of duct tape, and a sturdy pair of boots in her size. Although this remarkable theft was greatly aided by the fact that the store’s proprietor was asleep at the time, snoozing behind his counter, Archipelago was still pleased with herself. Her pride lasted about fifteen minutes, until she realized, after scrutinizing the maps and the compass, that she’d been walking northwest, not southeast. She’d actually increased the distance between herself and Cosmos. She’d thought she was navigating by the sun. How had she gotten so turned around?
Setting out in the proper direction from Boottown, she skirted around Bumfuck and was making decent progress until the dysentery felled her. In some other horrid little town, she wound up in a small women’s homeless shelter, sleeping on a cot and attending mandatory prayer meetings, which seemed a small enough price to pay for clean laundry, showers, and food. She healed and left the shelter, lifting some bottled water, canned meat, and baby wipes on her way out of town.
After that she walked for three days, cheerfully, until horrible blisters developed from the new boots. At that point, Archipelago liberated a girl’s bicycle from the front yard of a moderately large home—at night, when everyone was asleep—telling herself that anybody who left a bike lying in the grass deserved to have it stolen.
The bike was only a little small for her. The larger problem was that it had a purple seat, sparkly fringe on the handlebars, and a pink aluminum frame. Either it had been ridden by a teenager who wanted to return to her carefree youth, or a five-year-old with a growth disorder. In any case, the bike would have been too identifiable even had it been Archipelago’s style.
She hid out in a small clump of woods and spent a day covering the bike frame and seat with black duct tape. By now, she was adept at cadging food from
stores and fast-food places, and almost equally adept at trapping crickets.
Pedaling was easier than walking, except when she had to go uphill, since the bike had no gears. But she was making better time than she had on foot, and developing buns and calves of steel in the meantime, and honing her hatred of Cosmos, who’d ruined her life.
Weirdly, given her odd conveyance and constant petty theft, she managed to steer clear of police. She began to consider herself a gypsy, a vagabond, the last of the hobos, even if she was on a bike and not stealing free rides on boxcars. She almost started to enjoy herself.
The night she crossed the Kansas border, she celebrated with a chocolate bar she’d stolen miles back and saved for just this occasion. Erasmus got the last of the mineral powder on a free-range cricket she’d snagged for him at dusk. “Soon,” she told him. “Soon we’ll find our enemy, and you’ll get to sting him, and we’ll see if he’s allergic. Erasmus, I think my hatred of the Mayor is really what ramped up that sting, which means that if you sting Cosmos, he should drop dead instantly. Or not. But anyway, that’s the plan, and, uh, after that happens, I’ll paint houses again, and get another apartment, and you can have more mineral powder.”
Truth to tell, she hadn’t given much thought to what would happen after she found Cosmos. The epic journey to find him was her end-all and be-all. Cosmos was her white whale.
It was cloudy and windy, threatening rain. She hid the bike in some bushes and scouted for a dry space nearby, rolling herself up in a tarp she’d acquired along the way. She woke, some hours later, to the sound of a freight train.
Train? She hadn’t seen tracks near here. She staggered to her feet, noting sluggishly that it was dawn, or would have been without so many clouds. The air was thick and green, diseased. She peered in the direction of the train sound, and saw swirling against the darkness a darker funnel.
Oh, fuck. “Erasmus, we’re in fucking Kansas,” she snarled aloud. “Shit.” What was she going to do? Weren’t you supposed to find a bomb shelter or hide under a bed or something in a tornado? But she was outside. Could she dig a hole to hide in?
Not in the time she had, no. Panicking, she threw herself into a ditch, hugging the backpack with Erasmus in it to her chest. She squeezed her eyes shut and curled into a fetal position. If she died, who’d feed Erasmus? If Erasmus died, how would she get her revenge on Cosmos?
Neither of them died, but the tornado passed within yards of them, and when Archipelago emerged wild-eyed and shaking from the ditch, she saw only dirt where she’d hidden the bike. There’d been bushes there. Now there was nothing. The spot had been scoured. Her bike had either been transported to Oz or was scattered in shiny duct-taped bits all over the county.
Archipelago took a deep breath. All right. She’d walked before; she could walk again. Her feet were a lot tougher now. And, she realized, Cosmos would surely be at the scene of the storm destruction. Her heart lifted. As terrifying as the tornado had been, it might make her job simpler. She smiled, and began to follow the path of wreckage the storm had left.
For the next nine issues, though, wherever she showed up, Cosmos had just left. He’d already arrived at the town she found wrecked by the tornado, and he’d also already departed to go back home. When she found her way to Keyhole and knocked on his door, the aide hired to care for Charlie and Vanessa told her that Mr. Cosmos had just left to fly to California, where there’d been some mighty bad wildfires. Would she care to leave a message?
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t get to California, either. She hunkered down in the countryside outside Keyhole, waiting for Cosmos to come home, but every time she thought she was ready to pounce, something happened. Her pack, with Erasmus in it, was stolen by a biker gang, and she had to stage a hair-raising rescue operation, and when she had her friend back, Cosmos was gone again. She sprained her ankle running after a cricket, and had to spend a week in her increasingly cozy woodland camp with her foot elevated. She had Cosmos in her crosshairs in the parking lot of a supermarket and was ready to stroll up behind him with her venom-tipped dart when a woman with a cart full of potato chips and children got between them for just long enough for Cosmos, clueless, to attain the safety of his car.
Archipelago didn’t allow herself to become discouraged, but she did begin entertaining conspiracy theories. “Fucking Entropy’s helping him,” she told Erasmus. “Gotta be. Every time I get close, some little piece of chaos interferes. The bad guy has his back. How twisted is that?”
Maybe she should have been nicer to EE back in the alley in Bumfuck. She’d flipped him the bird, metaphorically speaking, and he was showing her who was boss.
And of course, the moment she thought this, he appeared: darkness visible, galaxies streaming into space, depth, and vastness. The tornado had been a lot scarier. Once, she would have said as much, but if her conspiracy theory was right, she couldn’t afford to piss the thing off.
“Oh, all right,” she said, glowering up at him. “You win. You da man. I’m in your camp, yessirree bob. You can have my soul or my heart or my firstborn child or any other damn thing, except Erasmus, okay? What’ll it be?”
His voice was a distant booming, thunder and theatrics and the threat of bombs. “All I require, daughter, is your acceptance of my sovereignty.”
“Yeah, fine. Is that all? You got it. So listen, can I get a little help here?”
In answer, a wind swept through Archipelago’s camp, a breeze stiff enough to blow dirt into her face and force her to close her eyes to protect them from debris. She felt something blow against her skin, flattening itself against her neck. When the wind died down enough for her to open her eyes, she peeled the thing away and discovered that it was a photocopied flyer.
Rock, Paper, Scissors Tourney, the paper read. It was in the next county over, not far at all. Next month, which would give her time to get there. And the toastmaster was none other than Comrade Cosmos.
17
The last time Rosemary was in Seattle, it was to board the cruise ship headed for Alaska. As far as she knows, that’s the last time Veronique was in Seattle, too.
They were there with Melinda. And Walter. The four of them flew up, back in the days when flying was still fun, when you didn’t have to get to the airport two hours early and take your shoes off in front of strangers, back when planes had leg room and airlines served real food. Rosemary seems to remember that there was free wine, even, but perhaps her nostalgia’s casting an overly rosy glow over the memories. And flying didn’t cost a fortune back then, either; there were inexpensive commuter tickets even at the last minute, and no charges for luggage.
Rosemary and Walter often reminisced about that trip, when he could still remember anything. She wonders what Melinda told Jeremy about it.
She’s pretty sure that Jeremy’s never been to Seattle. He and Amy are poring over a guidebook in the backseat of the van. It’s a shiny rental van reeking of New Car, a scent Rosemary has never liked, but one she hears the rental agencies dispense from spray cans into the innards of every vehicle, old or new. Hen’s driving, with Tom riding shotgun.
“I’m so psyched about the science-fiction museum!” Amy says happily. The child speaks exclusively in exclamation marks; just listening to her makes Rosemary feel old and tired. “Can we go twice? Once for the CC exhibit and once to see everything else?”
“I dunno, Amy.” Jeremy sounds as sick of this drive as Rosemary feels. Flying to Seattle is so much easier. “We’re going there for a funeral. We have to see what happens.”
“Yeah, sure, I’m sorry.” Although Amy’s sitting behind Rosemary, Rosemary can hear the blush in her voice. “I didn’t mean to be insensitive. It was awfully nice of Mrs. Clark to say we could come.”
Rosemary’s curious to meet this woman, so trusting of strangers who have every reason to hate her dead son. “No reporters,” Hen said. “That was her only stipulation. She doesn’t want this to turn into a media circus.” If Vera had her way, Rosemary knows, they
’d show up with a full press corps and a mob of strangers hurling eggs, tomatoes, and curses at Percy’s urn, if not at Percy’s parents.
The funeral’s on Saturday, but they won’t drive back until Monday. Jeremy’s taken a week’s vacation from the café, and Hen’s arranged for an associate priest to preach and celebrate the Eucharist on Sunday. When Veronique fretted about paying a professional pet-sitter to feed her cats, Rosemary got one of the youth group kids to do it. She’s paying him, although she hasn’t told Vera that.
Airfare for all of them would have been prohibitive even with plenty of notice, so Hen, Tom, and Rosemary chipped in to rent the minivan. Veronique refused. “I only agreed to this damn fool trip because you insisted, Rosemary. If you can’t afford to pay my way, I’m not going.” Rosemary’s chosen not to tell anyone else about that.
Veronique did pay for their first gas stop, though; maybe it’s her way of apologizing.
Hen limited everyone to one suitcase and a small personal item. “Like airline carry-on,” she told them. Well, Rosemary thought, at least we don’t have to go through an X-ray machine and take our shoes off to get into the van.
Amy responded to the limitation with typical exuberance. “Cool! It’s like Survivor! We only get one luxury item!” Her luxury item is her laptop, although Hen could have allowed her two: improbably, given her age and gender, her other piece of luggage is a small rucksack.
Driving’s less expensive than flying, but only marginally more comfortable, and it takes a lot longer. They’ve been on the road for four and a half hours, passing up and down darkly furred slopes bordered with wildflowers. The van’s flickered through sunlight and shade, an alternation that should be pleasant, but instead has given Rosemary a headache. They’ve just stopped in Klamath Falls for lunch, piling with groans out of the van. Rosemary’s amazed she managed to hold her bladder for that long, although everyone else in the van makes a beeline for the restrooms, too.
Mending the Moon Page 24
