Mending the Moon

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Mending the Moon Page 27

by Susan Palwick


  On the other hand, if the Hyatt’s a disaster area, Cosmos will be sure to be there directing relief efforts. He’ll be wandering around without the shielding of a podium. Archipelago may be able to get in there, use Erasmus to sting him directly, and take advantage of the craziness to get out again, scorpion still safely in her possession. Her new plan doesn’t fix the ten-remaining-dollars-and-nowhere-to-live-with-winter-coming-on issue, but she’ll deal with that later. She’s done it before.

  She’ll have to slip under a lot of police radar to do this, but the cops are going to be distracted, and they won’t be expecting anyone to be trying to get into the scene of a disaster. The site will be cordoned off, but she’s on foot and used to slinking. She’s been evading cops for months now. She’ll get in somehow.

  Alrighty, then. Heart lighter, Archipelago takes one of her zigzagging, surreptitious routes back to the hotel, which is surrounded by flashing emergency vehicles. The fire’s out, doused with water from the water tower next door. People on stretchers are being wheeled out of the hotel. Archipelago hopes to all that’s unholy that Cosmos isn’t one of them: not because she wouldn’t like to see him hurt, but because she wants to do it herself, and if he’s in an ambulance, she won’t have access to him.

  She watches the cops, waits for a convenient distraction while one takes what sounds like a personal phone call and the other four go into a huddle about something—thank you, Entropy—and ducks under a barricade. Assorted dodging maneuvers get her into the lobby. She overhears snatches of information.

  “Sprinkler system jammed.”

  “Fire.”

  “Right during a really critical match.” Archipelago snorts.

  She’s inside, wading through inches of water from the fire hoses. Hiding behind a bedraggled potted plant to avoid a clump of paramedics, she scans the lobby. Yes! There’s Cosmos! Thank you, Entropy!

  She wiggles out of her backpack and uses her treasured pair of extra-long tweezers, tips padded with felt, to pull Erasmus out of his jar before donning the backpack again. She’ll move in, sting Cosmos, get away somewhere safe, put Erasmus back in the jar, and make her getaway as quickly as she can. This is hardly a foolproof plan, especially since it will probably be more difficult to get out of the building than to get in—the first responders are alert to exiting survivors—but it’s all she’s got.

  She waits for the latest clump of uniforms to leave and then sneaks up behind Cosmos, who’s bending over a stretcher, blocking Archipelago’s view of its occupant. “I’m so sorry this happened,” he’s saying. He sounds forlorn. “I promise we’ll get you help.”

  “But I don’t have insurance!”

  The voice, a woman’s, sounds familiar, but Archipelago doesn’t have time to worry about this. She thrusts the squirming Erasmus at Cosmos’s back, praying that the emperor’s stinger will be able to penetrate the fabric of Cosmos’s T-shirt.

  It works. “Ow!” says Cosmos, and whirls to see what happened. In the process, he reveals the face of the woman on the stretcher.

  Oh, fuck. It’s Lucy, wearing a competitor’s badge, her face bloody. Lucy plays Rock, Paper, Scissors?

  “Ethel Rose?” says Lucy in astonishment.

  “Archipelago Osprey?” says Comrade Cosmos. He sounds equally astonished.

  “Oh, shit,” says Archipelago, and gets ready to run while Cosmos is still gaping, too much in shock to do anything. But then she hears a roaring noise, and from somewhere—where? how?—a wave of water thunders down on them, and all three cry out as Erasmus is swept out of Archipelago’s grasp.

  19

  Jeremy doesn’t consider himself religious anymore, if he ever really was. Sunday school was something he did because Mom said he had to. When he was fifteen, she gave him the choice of opting out, and out he opted.

  Still, he grew up in St. Phil’s, with its stained glass and organ and rich wooden pews. As Episcopal churches go, it’s not a very fancy one, but he doesn’t realize until he walks into the Unitarian church in Seattle how much it shaped his idea of what churches should look like. This place doesn’t look or feel or smell like a church. It’s too colorless, too sterile, all clean lines and clear glass. Danish modern. It feels like a fancy hotel conference center.

  The Reno contingent—all except VB, who opted out—enters in a tight clump. Greg’s already arrived; he and Hen hug as if they didn’t have breakfast together two hours ago, and chat in subdued voices. There are a few other people here: a group of dark-clad folks in the front few rows who must be family, a few kids Jeremy’s age who must have been Percy’s friends, scattered adults. Not many. It’s nothing like Mom’s funeral. Jeremy knows it’s mean for him to be happy about that. He doesn’t care.

  In the front of the church, on a pedestal surrounded by flowers, sits a simple wooden box, smooth and polished. Behind it, on easels, are three photographs of Percy. One is the one they’ve all already seen: Percy blond and grinning in a Stanford lacrosse uniform, stick swung casually over his shoulder as he lopes across a sunny field. In the second, he’s helping some older woman—his mother?—along a wooded path. In the third he’s younger, hugging a very large puppy. “Oh, great,” Jeremy hears himself saying, as if from a distance. “He loved dogs.”

  The minute he says it, he wants to clap his hand over his mouth. He didn’t come here to be snarky: not out loud, anyway. He can be snarky later. But Amy squeezes his hand, and Aunt Rosie touches his shoulder. “If this is too much, you can leave,” she whispers. “Don’t worry about us, Jeremy, and don’t worry about Percy’s family. Take care of yourself.”

  “Thank you so much for coming,” someone says, and they all turn to face the voice. It belongs to a haggard woman—blond hair trimmed in a perfect chin-length bob, elegant black suit, tasteful gold jewelry—who has appeared in front of them. Behind her stands a tall man, gray-haired, handsome once, you can tell, but eyes sunken and face lined now. “You must be—Melinda’s friends. I’m Anna Clark.” She holds out her hand. “Thank you so much for coming,” she says again, more forcefully, and Jeremy flashes back again to Mom’s funeral, to the misery of the receiving line at the end. Thank you for coming thank you for coming thank you for coming. He repeated the syllables so often they became nonsense, meaningless noise. But Anna Clark sounds like she means them.

  Amy squeezes his hand again. Jeremy wonders if she’ll ever hold his hand when they aren’t at a funeral. “You’re welcome,” Hen says.

  “I’m so glad you’re here.” Anna’s a broken record; her husband’s a mute mannequin who stares past them, his eyes somewhere else. “I invited everyone I could, but so few people—because—I just wanted to share good memories. There were. Good memories.”

  “Oh,” says Rosemary, and moves in a rush to hug the woman. “I’m so sorry. We’re so sorry.”

  Anna lets herself be hugged, but her face over Aunt Rosie’s shoulder stays tense, distracted, the eyes roaming until they fix on Jeremy. “You’re Melinda’s son, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.” Suddenly his good suit feels like a straitjacket.

  “I—I can’t imagine. I—” Rosie finishes hugging her and steps backward, murmuring. Anna takes a visible breath and forces out clearer sentences. “I meant to try to meet you before. I meant to invite all of you to dinner last night. Things have been getting away from me.”

  “It’s okay,” Jeremy says. He’s afraid the woman will shatter in front of him. Her husband still hasn’t made a sound. Amy’s grip on his hand is cutting off his circulation. “I mean, that would have been nice, it was nice of you even to think of it, but—”

  “We’re all doing the best we can,” Aunt Rosie says, “and it’s extraordinarily generous of you to allow us to be here.”

  Anna blinks, makes a groping motion in the air in front of her. “Allow? I’m honored. I—you’re the ones who are generous, and I should—”

  “No shoulds,” Rosemary says gently. “There are no rule books for this. Anna, we’re very sorry for your loss
.”

  Anna breaks, then, and turns to muffle her sobs against her husband’s chest. Eyes distant and unseeing, he clumsily pats her shoulder. Rosemary whispers to Jeremy, “Let’s step away for a moment, shall we?”

  “Yeah. I need a drink of water, anyway.” Sandwiched between Aunt Rosie and Amy, he makes his way to the water fountain in the foyer.

  “We don’t have to stay,” Rosemary tells him when he’s finished slurping. “If it’s too much—”

  “I wish people would stop saying that. I’m staying.” He turns, shaking off the two women, and returns to the sanctuary.

  He sees the table now, along the right-hand wall, the display of more photos, trophies and awards, memorabilia. He remembers the table at Mom’s funeral, the snapshots and favorite books and favorite rocks. Jeremy wills himself to walk over to this one, to look at the pictures. Percy as a chubby baby in his mother’s arms; toddler Percy riding a tricycle; tan and buff Percy, laughing, in a Stanford sweatshirt. Here’s an album with more: birthday parties, Christmas, family vacations. Percy grinning, arm-in-arm with his father, Mount Rushmore in the background. Percy on a beach somewhere. Mexico? Jeremy’s stomach spasms, and he swallows bile. It can’t be Mexico. They wouldn’t have put that out here, would they?

  Don’t look at that picture. Look at the other things on the table. A lacrosse stick. A yearbook. A pair of bronzed baby shoes. And—Jeremy sees now, and how did he miss it before?—a stack of slipcased print issues of CC.

  Just met guy your age, Percy, who likes CC too. The postcard’s still at home. He thought about bringing it, but it’s stuck in his mirror frame and doesn’t want to budge. He was afraid he’d tear it if he tugged. He feels his fists clenching. If he walked up to Anna Clark and said, “One of my mother’s last conversations was with your son, about Comrade Cosmos,” would she remove the issues, out of common decency?

  He watches a hand reach to touch the plastic covers. “Oh, man,” Amy says, her voice thick, her fingers resting lightly on the plastic. “He was really a collector, wasn’t he? Mint condition. These must be worth money.”

  Jeremy’s chest tightens. It hurts to breathe. “I’m going to look at the urn now,” he says. “Don’t follow me, please.” Amy turns to him with a frown, but he moves away from the table, up the side aisle, around the first pews—people there watching him, but he can’t read their expressions—toward the pedestal. Golden wood, with the golden boy inside.

  Jeremy expected to feel rage, thought he’d have to fight the urge to knock the urn to the floor, to scatter the sick fuck’s ashes through the sanctuary. But he feels nothing. The fury he felt even a moment ago, looking at the CC issues, has evaporated. This isn’t Percy, any more than Mom’s ashes are Mom.

  He feels something on the back of his thigh. A sharp voice says, “Bart!” and Jeremy turns to find an improbably huge dog gazing at him with somber, sorrowful eyes, while Mr. Clark frowns and tugs at the leash. “I’m sorry, Jeremy. Anna insisted that he be here. He usually behaves around strangers.”

  So you can talk, Jeremy thinks, and then, I’m not exactly a stranger. He holds out a hand, tentatively. The great beast nuzzles it. The tail beats, once. Then the dog returns to Mr. Clark and sits obediently on command.

  “He’s the puppy in the photo,” Anna says, and Jeremy turns to find her standing next to the urn. She gives a wan smile. “Older now, of course. He—well, he was the last of us to see Percy alive. I thought he deserved to be here. I guess that sounds crazy, but Percy really loved this animal. He—I keep thinking he must still be alive somewhere. My Percy. The person who died wasn’t my Percy. The person who did that to. To your mother. Wasn’t my Percy.”

  “The woman who died,” Jeremy hears himself saying, “was my mother.”

  Anna Clark sags, lets out a breath, reaches out to lean on the pedestal for support. “Thank you, Jeremy. That’s the first honest thing anyone’s said to me.”

  * * *

  It’s inexpressibly horrible, a charade. Anna sits in her pew, William an unbending poker next to her, Marjorie and David letting out sighs and sniffles on her other side. Several times, Marjorie reaches for her hand. Anna shakes it away. This was a mistake. She shouldn’t have done this. What was she thinking?

  There’s some music, a pleasant piano piece, an arrangement of “Here Comes the Sun.” Anna chose it because Percy liked that song and often hummed or whistled it in the house, but now it sounds entirely wrong. Awash in humiliation, she listens to the Unitarian minister’s bland, sincere homily. The minister’s a short-haired, owlish young woman who goes on a few minutes too long about the Tragedy of Suicide and What We Don’t Understand and the Agony of Percy’s Inexplicable Behavior, and then—as Anna instructed her—invites people up to the podium to share good memories of Percy, Because We Are Here to Support the Family in Their Grief, and We Also Wish to Acknowledge and Honor the Family and Friends of Melinda Soto, Who Have Graciously Joined Us Today. Heads throughout the sanctuary whip around. Where, where? Jeremy nods, half raises a hand, gives a small bow in his seat. Anna bites back a laugh, which she knows would sound too shrill and hysterical.

  No one else moves. Then Marjorie clears her throat, stands, and marches the short distance to the microphone. “I’m Marjorie Clark, Percy’s grandmother. I couldn’t believe it when I heard what had happened—none of us could—and I suppose I never will”—oh, get on with it, thinks Anna, the minister already said all this—“and I’m sure I’ll never understand it, but I can tell you that the Percy I knew was a sweet boy.” She goes on to tell a story about taking Percy grocery shopping when he was three, how he stopped stock-still in front of a display of lettuce and said, “That’s the biggest salad in the world!” A few people laugh, politely. Anna doesn’t. It’s completely irrelevant.

  Marjorie’s saying something about the Reno people now, thanking them. Turning to gesture at the urn, she wishes Percy a sentimental good-bye, and then sits down.

  Someone else has gotten up. Toby Tobin. At least his mother isn’t here. Anna would have banned him, too, if she’d been able to, but that’s Poor Form.

  Wait, didn’t the bitch say Toby wouldn’t be able to come? Because they’d be away? Something about Europe? Whatever happened to keep Toby home? Maybe he doesn’t like his mother any better than Anna does? No: more likely it’s something else. And he’s talking; Anna should listen.

  “Percy and I played lacrosse together,” he says, gripping the sides of the podium so hard Anna can see his pale knuckles. “I’ve known him since kindergarten, because we both went to Blake, and—well, we weren’t always friends. We competed a lot. But I couldn’t have told you anything bad about him, and like everybody else, I’ll never understand this. It would be a lot easier if I could point to something and say, ‘Oh, yeah, he was clearly off,’ but I can’t find anything like that. And I think we’re all going to spend the rest of our own lives looking, and it’s really scary because I’ll never be able to take anyone at face value again, but maybe that’s a gift, too.” He stops, swallows. “I’m talking too long. Anyway, I just—I feel awful for everybody. I wish I could do something to change it, any of it.”

  He leaves the podium, giving Anna an abashed half nod as he passes. She nods back. He said the same thing Marjorie said, but he said it much better. His words were honest, heartfelt, and non-cloying, which is worth a lot right now. It’s worth even more that he even came. Anna concedes, only a little grudgingly, that Toby seems to have grown into a fine human being. And Percy didn’t. Of course, if she weren’t terminally irritated with William’s mother, alert for self-congratulation in every syllable of her speech, maybe she’d have liked Marjorie’s comments, too.

  Anna glances around the sanctuary. No one else has stood up. The minister clears her throat and moves forward, but Anna stands abruptly, feeling as brittle as a burned-out lightbulb, and makes her way to the mike. The few feet seem like miles, but this fiasco was her idea. If you want something done right, do it yourself.

&
nbsp; She looks out over the tiny, scattered audience. “I’ve thanked all of you for coming,” she says, “but I’m thanking you again. The fact that so few people are here shows just how brave and caring all of you had to be to show up. That means the world to me, and to Percy’s father.” She’s pretty sure it means precisely nothing to William, but that part’s formula. She takes a deep breath. “Twenty-three years ago today, my only child was born, and I held him in my arms and I imagined a bright, happy future for him. I never imagined that I’d outlive him, and certainly not under these circumstances. I’m sure many people, and maybe even people here, are happy he’s dead, consider it right and fitting. Other people are probably angry he’s dead, because it means they can’t kill him, or because it means he won’t suffer for decades in prison. I understand both of those positions. I do.”

  She pauses. They wait, watching her. “I don’t have any answers. His father and I knew something was wrong as soon as he came home from Mexico, but he wouldn’t talk to us about it. He didn’t leave a note. I believe he felt so horrible about what he’d done that he couldn’t live with it. Maybe that’s not true. Maybe he didn’t feel horrible about what he did to Melinda. Maybe he was only terrified of the consequences. I don’t know. Whatever answers he might have been able to offer, he carried them into the water. So of the stories that might be true, I tell the one that comforts me the most: that he felt remorse. I’m his mother. Please grant me that.”

  Her voice wavers, just a little, and is answered by rustling from the pews. William has looked away, and Marjorie’s frowning. Anna doesn’t care. She takes another breath. “But this I do know. When Percy killed Melinda, he also destroyed himself. He did that the second he began to hurt her.” Her voice breaks on the word “hurt”; she can’t bring herself to say “rape.” “He did that even before he walked into the water. The Percy I knew was a nice kid, a fun and decent kid, not a genius but smart enough. He loved his dog. I believe he loved us, his parents. He was loyal to his friends.” Damn few of whom have shown up today, but she’s already said that. “All of that’s banal, I know, and it makes Percy sound utterly ordinary, and the Percy I knew was, except that he was mine. That Percy died in Mexico. That’s the Percy I’m mourning, the one no one else even seems to want to hear about or to remember, because the other Percy—the one who did such horrible things to Melinda—has taken center stage.”

 

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