Everyone’s staring at her now, even Marjorie and William. Well, at least she has their attention. She supposes she’s being unkind—Marjorie and Toby have both remembered that Percy, or tried to—but she doesn’t care. The minister comes up behind her, clears her throat again, says gently, “Anna,” but Anna shoos her away.
She’s not done talking. It’s her party. She paid for the damn salmon canapés. She’ll talk as long as she needs to.
She feels dizzy. Breathe, Anna. “Twenty-three years ago today, my only child surfaced from the waters of my womb.” That sounds pretentious as hell, but so what. This is her only son’s funeral. “Eight months, two weeks and four days ago, he walked into the waters of Lake Washington.” Pause. Breathe. “Many of you know that Percy was a Comrade Cosmos fan. Some of you are, too.” She sees Jeremy Soto wince, watches his shoulders hunch. She keeps going even though he’s glaring at her. She deserves that glare, maybe—Percy deserved it—but she needs to say her piece. “After Percy died, I started reading CC from the first issue. Not because I thought it would give me answers, but because Percy loved it, and I’d never bothered to try and share that with him when he was still alive. I didn’t expect to get pulled into it, but I did.”
Jeremy’s wiping his face now, a series of fierce swipes. The girl sitting next to him grips his shoulder. “If you follow CC, you know that this month’s issue opens with a flood. Cosmos and Archipelago are caught in that flood, and Archipelago’s pet scorpion has been swept away, and she’s grieving terribly, even though most people wouldn’t mourn a scorpion. She’s grieving because Erasmus the scorpion was hers, and she loved him.”
She takes another breath, feeling stronger now. “I don’t want to push this too far. Percy wasn’t a scorpion. Not literally, anyway.” William scowls, but there’s a ripple of laughter from the others. Good. “But when I saw that flood, I thought about my own womb, and I thought about Lake Washington, and I thought, We all come from the water, and we’re all swept away in floods sometimes, and sometimes the people we have to work with to find safety are the last ones we expected. Sometimes the only way to survive is to work with people we thought we hated. Sometimes those are the people who wind up saving us, just like Cosmos, I’m pretty sure, will save Archipelago.”
The minister’s hovering again. Anna turns to her and snaps, “I’m almost done,” and the woman retreats. “I’m not asking any of you to save me. I’m not claiming I can save you. But we’re in a flood, and when the waters recede, everything will look different. Our task now is to save what we can.” She swallows. “I ask that you try to save at least one memory of the Percy who died in Mexico, the one I loved. Thank you.”
She steps away from the podium. Her legs are rubbery. William stands and helps her back to her seat; Marjorie takes her hand—she permits that, now—and David reaches around Marjorie to squeeze her shoulder, hard. For a moment, this moment, they’re almost a family. It won’t last.
The minister’s talking again. Anna doesn’t even try to listen. She closes her eyes and breathes.
* * *
The day before Melinda leaves for Mexico, she listens to Science Friday on NPR. They’re talking about the moon. There’s water on the moon, it turns out, quite a bit of water. Several dozen buckets of water, trapped in the moon’s icy poles.
She reads more about the story when she gets home. Scientists are excited: this could open the door for a lunar space station, since there’s now a water source, although it doesn’t seem to Melinda that several dozen bucketfuls would go very far. Other commenters are more interested in how the water got there. One of the leading theories is that it was carried on asteroids that smashed into the moon. Some people believe that studying the moon’s ice will provide invaluable information about the history of the entire solar system.
As she packs her suitcase—the aqua swimsuit, or the red one that’s less slimming but more comfortable? okay, both—Melinda muses over the story. She thinks the moon is a little like Nevada: even a trickle of water transforms a wasteland into a potential windfall that sets speculators panting. She likes the asteroid theory, though. The moon is still scarred, but the objects that wounded it also brought potential life. What hurt the moon also has the capacity to mend it.
She laughs to herself. The church reading group just finished Henri Nouwen’s The Wounded Healer, and this would fit right in. She’ll have to tell her own Hen about it when she gets home.
* * *
The rain’s started again. Yes, of course it has: this is Seattle, after all, even if they’re here in July, during the dry season. Standing at a window in the church fellowship hall, clutching a glass of punch and a plate dotted with salmon canapés, Rosemary stares out at the falling water and wonders what Walter’s doing.
Everything aches. She’s stiff from the long car ride, from the strange bed, from the tension of sitting through this dreadful funeral. Yesterday she went to Pike Place Market and did a little shopping, but that seems like a century ago.
The funeral was hideous: soothing platitudes from the minister—who clearly hadn’t known Percy—the tone-deaf offering from the grandmother, that jagged and heartbreaking speech from Anna Clark. Percy’s school friend was the most credible speaker, and certainly the briefest.
As awful as Melinda’s funeral was, it was better than this.
Under these circumstances, what would a good funeral look like? Rosemary has no idea. But once again, she’s grateful to be Episcopalian. The Episcopal Church gives good funeral. There’s a well-defined liturgy. There’s a shape to the thing, a shape created both to express and to contain grief, a shape that points to hope.
The Unitarians have no Eucharist. She expected that, but there wasn’t even any Scripture. The minister quoted Plato’s maxim about always being kind, because everyone you see is fighting a terrible battle. True enough, but completely inadequate.
And what would have been adequate?
How would Hen have handled this service? Rosemary will have to ask her, later.
In the meantime, she aches for Anna Clark. The Reno contingent was at least a quarter of the audience. Don’t the Clarks have friends? But it would be too easy to blame social isolation for what Percy turned into, and clearly he hadn’t always been socially isolated. Clearly the Clarks are upper crust.
“Excuse me,” says a voice behind her, and she turns to find Anna standing there, twisting a napkin into shreds. “I just wanted to see if you needed anything. You look lonely over here.”
Rosemary blinks. She’s not the person who’s lonely. Or rather, she supposes that she is lonely, but her loneliness is nothing compared to Anna’s.
And suffering isn’t a competition. How often has she said that to hospital patients who insist that they’re “fine,” because the person in the next bed is so much worse off?
“Just processing,” Rosemary says. She’s a chaplain. She ought to be able to talk to this woman.
“It was nice of you to hug me before,” Anna says, her voice fraying, and Rosemary finds her bearings. Anna’s being a hostess, doing what she knows. It’s not a bad strategy.
“You’re exhausted,” she says, taking Anna’s elbow and guiding her to a table. “Please, sit down. Let me get you something. Some punch? Some cake? Have you been able to eat?”
“Eat?” Anna makes a face.
“When’s the last time you ate?”
Anna laughs, incongruously. “I had breakfast. Cereal. But that was hours ago, wasn’t it? Would you mind bringing me some cheese? And crackers? Maybe some of the canapés? That would be very kind of you.”
“Yes, of course.” Rosemary hurries to fix the plate, hoping Anna won’t have wandered away when she gets back. Primary mourners at a funeral are usually as difficult to speak to alone as the bride or groom at a wedding. But when she returns to the table, Anna’s still there, frowning down at her hands clasped on the table in front of her.
Rosemary stays still a minute to make sure she isn’t interrupting a
prayer, but Anna looks up at her. “Are you—will you sit down? Will you sit with me?”
“Of course.” Rosemary sits. “I thought maybe you were praying. I didn’t want to disturb you if you were.”
“No.” Anna looks down at her hands again, and then unfolds them and reaches out for the plate Rosemary’s put in front of her. “I don’t—I’m not religious. We just had the funeral here because, well. Funerals. Churches. You know?”
Rosemary nods, and feels herself softening toward the Unitarians. The poor minister. What a service to get stuck with.
“I don’t know how to pray,” Anna says. “Maybe if we were religious—”
“No,” Rosemary says. It would be much, much too easy—and false—to blame Percy’s pathology on godlessness. People who do believe in God are perfectly capable of committing horrors, anyway. “Anna, this isn’t your fault. Not yours, not your husband’s.”
Anna gives her a long, level look now, and says very gently, “That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
“Oh.” Rosemary feels herself reddening.
“I was going to say—” Anna offers a small, crooked smile. “—that if we were religious, maybe I’d have answers.”
“No.” Rosemary shakes her head. “It’s not that easy, believe me. I’m religious, and I don’t have answers. Only questions.”
“Do you believe there are answers?”
“Well sure, of course, I mean there have to be, but I don’t know if I’ll ever learn them, or if they’ll make sense if I do.” She shakes her head again; this is too abstract. Chaplain mode, Rosie. “When you spoke, you talked about wanting to hang on to your good memories of Percy. Tell me your best memory. Tell me what you loved most about him.”
Anna Clark smiles, a fleeting expression that vanishes almost as soon as it appears. “Well, there was that day in the woods. When we were hiking, and he helped me. That’s one of the photographs in the chapel. It’s a very precious memory. But this morning, I remembered—I don’t know why it came to me now.” She frowns and pushes a strand of hair out of her face. “No, I do know, because we’ve gotten all these flowers. I invited a lot of people and they didn’t come, but some of them sent flowers. Anyway, when Percy was a little boy, he used to pick dandelions for me. We had a garden, you know, lots of flowers, and I worked hard to keep dandelions off our property”—she laughs now—“but he liked dandelions. They were soft and furry, he said. Even when they were still yellow, even before they went to seed. Anyway, so he’d go off to school, and he’d come home with mashed dandelions in his pockets. It was so sweet. I couldn’t bear to tell him they were weeds. He asked me if we could have some in our yard, and I told him that dandelions were happier living in wild places.” She looks down; her hands are clasped again. “He was seven or eight then. He only brought them to me for a little while, but he was so proud of himself. Pockets full of mashed dandelions.”
“Extra detergent in the laundry,” Rosemary says, and Anna grimaces.
“Yes. Did you—did you know Melinda?”
“Very well.” Rosemary speaks as gently as she can. “She was one of my best friends. My husband helped her bring Jeremy back from Guatemala.”
“Oh!” Anna’s eyes overflow. She looks away—Rosemary can tell from watching the side of her face that she’s working to compose herself—and then says, “Is your husband here, too? I don’t remember seeing him.”
“No, he’s not here. He has Alzheimer’s. He’s in a nursing home.”
Anna looks back at her now, face blanched. “I’m so sorry. That’s terrible. Watching someone disappear like that—”
“Yes.” Because she wants to be generous, because Anna’s been so open with her and was so brave during the service, Rosemary goes on. “All those shared memories you count on with a spouse, being able to say, ‘Remember when we went on that trip’ or ‘Remember when we got our first house,’ that stuff. That’s no longer there, even though the person’s body is.”
“My husband and I—” Anna breaks off, bringing her hand to her mouth. “We don’t. We don’t share memories. He’s not sick, but it seems we remember everything differently. Sometimes I wonder if we lived the same lives.”
Rosemary tries not to wince. The situation’s completely predictable—any death of a child, let alone this one, is hell on a marriage—but that doesn’t make it any less hideous. “That’s hard.”
“Yes.”
“It must be even harder now.”
“Well, I only noticed it—after Percy. I suppose it must have been true before that, but there hadn’t been anything important to handle. We just lived in our routines.” She shoves away the stray strand again. “And I suggested couples counseling, but he—won’t.” She draws in a deep, ragged breath. “I don’t think we’ll still be married this time next year.”
Rosemary’s chest tightens. “That’s very, very hard.” She remembers how Anna kept repeating herself, before the service. Now Rosemary’s the one doing it.
“Oh, God.” Anna gives a strangled half laugh. “You’re not a reporter, are you? You promise you won’t tell anyone that? I shouldn’t even have said it. I didn’t mean to say it.”
“I’m a chaplain,” Rosemary says. “A lay chaplain, in a hospital. So I’m used to hearing stories. No, I won’t tell anyone. When you said it, did you believe it?”
“Yes.” Anna looks up. From across the room, the tall husband moves toward them. He sees his wife and nods, gesturing. “He needs me. I have to go. Thank you. For the cheese, too.”
She stands up and moves away, leaving Rosemary breathing through a new pain she doesn’t understand, a jagged tearing in the throat. So much loss: of course she feels for this woman. But there’s something else, something more. What?
Walter: yes, of course, something about Walter. But what?
That he isn’t here.
That he no longer remembers Melinda, will probably never remember Melinda.
Yes. But all of that’s old. What’s the new pain?
And then she realizes. Talking to Anna felt at least a little like talking to Melinda: frank conversation with another woman, with someone she likes and whose company she enjoys. Rosemary always loved how honest Melinda was, how free of bullshit. Maybe Anna isn’t always like that, but Rosemary thinks she’d like Anna, if they met in a book group. They could be friends. Rosemary can’t talk like that to Vera—not yet, anyway, although they may be inching toward it—or even Hen.
Suddenly Rosemary feels terribly alone. She wants to be back in the van, even though the drive up here was interminable. She wants to go home, to be in places she knows, even if too many of the other people who used to be there too are gone.
* * *
Almost dozing on the rocking ferry, Veronique sips her licorice tea and stares out the rain-streaked window. She can’t see much, of course: grayness receding into mist, the blurry reflections of the other passengers, most of them in shorts and sports sandals, who read or doze or listen, feet tapping, to their headphones. No two seem to be sitting together. Everyone’s scattered, isolated. Veronique guesses that most of them are residents of Bainbridge Island, heading back home after errands in the city. She’s surprised not to see more tourists like her, but maybe the rain’s driven them inside.
This morning, she was proud of herself for not going to the funeral. She was proud of herself for figuring out bus schedules and planning a fun day, the kind of day Melinda would have loved. The Art Museum, Pike Place Market—Veronique didn’t find another pot she liked, but she did buy some delicious chocolate, and even virtuously saved some for the others—a boat ride.
She enjoyed herself, in a rather forced and determined way. She thinks even Brandy would have approved. But now she’s tired, and the rain’s reminding her of the rain the day Melinda died, not to mention making her knee throb, and she’s teetering on the verge of tears. She tells herself that her blood sugar’s wonky. She ate too much chocolate. The snack bar’s just over there, and even if it’s
as overpriced as these things always are, she should go buy some protein. A hot dog. A hot dog with mustard. That would taste good right now.
She doesn’t move, though. She feels glued to the seat. As desperate as she was to be alone when she was surrounded by the others and their chatter, now she’d give anything to have someone with her. Even annoying Amy. Even nagging Rosemary.
She wants to take a nap. But she knows that if she went back to Greg’s house and no one else was home yet, she’d just feel more bereft.
What happened? Today started out being fun, just like the trip to Planet X did. That stayed fun. This one’s gone downhill. So what’s the difference? Veronique, you analyze narrative for a living. This is narrative. Analyze it.
She stares out at the rain. Bad weather, but it wasn’t great on the trip to Gerlach, either.
She misses Melinda now, but she missed Melinda then, too.
This trip is new. She’s never been here before. She’s been to Gerlach a lot.
Is that it? It sounds like it could be, but it doesn’t feel like it is. She definitely needs protein to work this out. She hauls herself out of her seat and buys an overpriced, alarmingly gray hot dog from the snack bar. She eyes the thing—if she dies of botulism on the ferry, it will take a long time for the others to find out about it, since no one knows where she is—and considers calling Rosemary. “I’m about to eat a hot dog on the Bainbridge Ferry. I just wanted to let you know, so if I keel over from food poisoning, you’ll know where to look for me.”
She lets out a guffaw, and some other passengers give her strange looks. She’d actually love to interrupt Percy’s funeral by calling Rosemary with that message. It would serve Rosie right. But, Veronique reluctantly concedes, it’s probably not worth the ill will it would create. The drive home will be very long: she doesn’t need to be lectured the whole time. And anyway, from the state of the trash bins, it looks like other people on the ferry have been eating hot dogs, and Veronique hasn’t seen any corpses.
Mending the Moon Page 28
