Mending the Moon (28 page)

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 learn 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.

Dear Comrades and Minions:

My son, Percy, was a CC fan and collector. As some of you are probably aware from the news, he also committed a terrible murder and then killed himself. I truly cannot find any hints or reasons in his history that would have made him kill an innocent stranger, and I am struggling to make any sense of this that I can. I know that I cannot blame his actions on a comic book—and I've now begun reading
CC
myself, working my way through Percy's collection, and to my surprise am enjoying it—but so much of the series is about facing pain and chaos, and so many of you have also faced pain and chaos, that I thought it might be helpful to talk to some of you. The Emperor claimed Percy. I am trying to remain on the side of meaning. I know there's nothing any of you, or anyone really, can say to comfort me, but if you are willing to respond to this, I would welcome your thoughts. Sincerely, Anna Clark. P.S. Does it bother anyone else that Archipelago's getting away with murder?

Jeremy blinks. Holy shit. Percy's
mother
is looking for CC pen pals?

And is she
nuts
? Posting in a public forum like this could pull the media down on her like fruit flies on a rotting banana.

Well, sure, she's nuts. Her son certainly was, and these things run in families, don't they?

Shaking his head, Jeremy hits A on his cell phone—he has Amy on speed-dial now, a small triumph that would have meant a lot more before Mom died—but it goes to voice mail. Amy's probably studying for finals or working on a paper or otherwise being productive. She's much better at being productive than Jeremy is, and he's still a little in awe that she even speaks to him. “Hey, A, so here's some crazy gossip. Check out the WISS boards on CCnet. Percy Clark's mother just posted there. I swear I'm not making this up. Catch you later.”

He's pretty sure she'll call back the second she gets that. It really is juicy. Percy's mom has given Amy a reason to call him: there's a sweet irony.

Feeling much more energetic than he did a few minutes ago, he sits up straighter on the couch and eyes Anna's post. It has three replies; there was only one the first time he read it. He scrolls through them.

So sorry. Wish there were some way to make sense of this, but not even Cosmos could do that. You have our sympathies. And I'm betting Archipelago gets hers.

Ms. Clark, if you've read
CC
, you know that it isn't about murder. The Emperor doesn't kill people, at least not directly. He isn't a murderer. He's a force for chaos and disorganization, but murder requires planning and intent—just really negative planning and intent. So I think you're looking in the wrong place. Good luck finding peace. By the way, I agree with you about Archipelago.

Comics don't kill people, people kill people, and you and your son must both be morons not to know that, and he deserves to be dead. So does Archipelago. I'm betting her own bug kills her. Anyway, nobody feels sorry for you, lady. We feel sorry for your garbage son's victim and her family. Suck it up.

Oh, man, Jeremy thinks. That's hella mean. But it's also exactly what she should have expected from posting here; Jeremy's amazed that the first two responses were as kind as they were. This woman's really clueless.

Mom's last postcard is upstairs in Jeremy's room, stuck into a corner of his mirror. He looks at the turtles every day. He doesn't have to look at the back anymore, because he has it memorized.
Just met guy your age, Percy, who likes CC too.

Everyone has told him that if Percy hadn't struck up a conversation about that, it would have been about something else. Everyone has told him that Percy must have already targeted her, or that maybe he didn't, but the content of the conversation didn't matter. Jeremy's devotion to CC, he has been repeatedly assured, is not responsible for his mother's murder.

Percy Clark was responsible for his mother's murder.

Mom told him that Percy said his own mother wouldn't go near CC. More irony.

Should he respond to the post? But what would he say, if he did? Does Anna Clark know that Mom and Percy talked about CC? How could she know? Should he tell her? No, that would only make things worse. Wouldn't it? But there's no way to make things better.

He remembers VB asking him what CC would do.

He remembers Amy telling him about VB's nervous breakdown. Nobody talks about how you get through the rest of your life after the murder's solved. Yeah, no kidding. Percy's mom has to be going through that, too, right?

Jeremy's never thanked her for the fucking Christmas tree. Sending it was clueless, but at least she tried. He ponders, composes sentences in his head, and decides that all of them sound completely lame. Amy's a good writer. When she calls back, he'll ask her to help him compose a reply.