Mending the Moon (33 page)

Stuck, Jeremy thinks, and for the first time in weeks feels an overpowering urge to cry. Crazy, he thinks, blinking back a tsunami. After everything else, why should this trigger tears?

And then he remembers. When he was still very small, five or six maybe, his mother took him to a small zoo north of Reno, a place that nursed injured wildlife back to health and kept the animals if they weren't fit or strong enough to be released back into the wild. There were coyotes there, and once a month in warm weather, the zoo welcomed guests after dark for a coyote howl. When the coyotes howled, the humans howled along with them. Melinda brought Jeremy, bundled in a fleece jacket against the chill of the desert evening, cool even in summer. For once, he was alone with Mom: neither of the auntie-grannies came. He'd been anticipating the event for what felt like forever, although she'd probably only told him about it the day before. Being alone with his mom made him feel like a big boy.

Howling was fun for a little while, but then he fell asleep. When he woke up, his mother was carrying him back to the car, and his face was stuck to her shirt in a puddle of drool. He can still feel the ripping sensation against his skin as he lifted his head.

“Want to howl more,” he said.

“I'm sorry, sweetie. It's over. No more howling tonight.”

“But they're still howling!” Behind him, the wavering song of the coyotes was already fading, mournful and haunting.

“Yes, they are, but they're howling by themselves now. The people, like us, have to go home and go to bed.”

“They sound lonely, Mommy.”

“They aren't lonely, Jer. They have each other. They're singing together.”

“They sound sad. They sound like they're crying. Maybe they miss their mommies.” The naturalist who led the howl had explained that these coyotes had been taken in as pups after someone killed their mother.

“They have a safe home,” Melinda said firmly, giving Jeremy a squeeze, “and I'm right here.” Had her voice truly caught, or is he just inventing that now, knowing what he knows now that he's older? His birthmother, the one in Guatemala who's dead, whom he'll never be able to remember. Had Mom been thinking about her? How could she not have been?

“I want to help them howl.”

“We'll come back sometime, I promise. I didn't know you were so tired!”

They never went back. The promised expedition was put off in favor of other outings—movies, trips to Lake Tahoe, swimming lessons—and finally forgotten altogether. Jeremy hasn't thought about the incident in years, hadn't even known he remembered it. His cheeks are slick. He lifts his free arm to dry his face, and Amy stirs.

“Are we there yet?”

“Nope. Hours to go. I was just shifting. Go back to sleep.”

“Unh.” She lifts her head—does he hear a faint ripping sound?—and says, “Oh, God, Jeremy, I drooled all over you! Crap!”

“It's okay.”

He hears a sigh and sees VB bend in front of them, hears her rummaging through the overstuffed Lands' End canvas tote she brought as her luxury item. After a minute, she passes back a pale, moist rectangle. Amy takes it.

“Baby wipe,” VB says briskly. “I figured they might come in handy. There you go, kids. Don't say I never gave you anything.”

Jeremy hoots. “Like Archipelago with her baby wipes!” Come to think of it, Archipelago and VB have somewhat similar personalities, although VB has cats, not a scorpion.

VB gives him a blank look, but he knows Amy will understand the reference. She doesn't say anything, though. She's scrubbing at his shirt. The wipe smells like baby powder, a scent Jeremy has always found nauseating; he feels his nose wrinkling. “Aim, it's okay. You can leave it, really.”

“Jeremy?” VB says. “What's wrong?”

He closes his eyes, willing them to stop leaking. The walk to the car, coyotes mourning behind them, the faintly shining slug-trail of Jeremy's spit on his mother's shirt. Small as he was, he tried to wipe it with his hand, and Mom laughed. “It's okay, Jer. I'll put it in the laundry when we get home. But that's nice of you, to try to clean it for me.”

He was so upset. He started crying again. Melinda thought he was tired, but Jeremy, remembering the story after so many years, thinks that was only part of it. He was grieving for and with the motherless coyotes, and he was grieving because he'd wasted in sleep some of this precious time alone with his mother, away from the other women with their constant chatter.

He's the only person in the car who remembers the coyotes. He understands for the first time that the auntie-grannies are a memory bank: so much of his life has happened with one or more of them there. He's always resented that, but now it means that some of Melinda is preserved outside of him, that other people can bear the burden of memory for him. The coyotes, though, are his alone.

What would it be like not to be able to remember? What would it be like to be Walter?

He squints, blinks. “Memory,” he said, and nudges Amy with his elbow. “Hey, Amy, that's the third element! In the game. Order. Entropy. Memory.”

She frowns, chewing her lower lip in a way he's come to see as charming. “Yeah? I'm not sure I follow.”

“I'm not sure I do, either, exactly. Okay: Order trumps Entropy and Entropy destroys Order—”

“That's your seesaw.”

“Yeah. That's the seesaw. But Memory: that's what lets us rebuild.” He blinks, his lashes still wet, sticky now, like his face against his mother's clothing or Amy's against his own. “It feels right. I can't explain it yet, but I think it's right.”

Amy squirms and brings her knees up onto the seat so she can hug them. It's her thinking position. VB and Rosie both half-turn, now. Rosie says, “What's this, kids?”

“Um,” Jeremy says, balking. It seems too complicated to explain to the auntie-grannies. But when Amy gives them a quick summary, both Rosie and VB seem to understand what they're talking about. Well, sure. VB's a professor, isn't she? And Rosie's probably thought about memory a lot, because of what's happened to Uncle Walter.

Trees whoosh past outside. The two women are quiet for a moment, thinking. VB has the furrow between her eyes she gets during class when she's trying to teach something difficult, which means at least she's taking this seriously. “Memory tips the seesaw,” she says after a second, and Rosie gives a soft grunt of approval.

“Right. That's it, Vera.”

Amy's nodding now, although Jeremy hasn't gotten it yet. “What?”

Amy laughs. “Order trumps Entropy and Entropy destroys Order. That's the seesaw, evenly balanced. But memory's what people use to restore order, because they remember how things are supposed to be. So memory's CC's secret weapon.”

“Memory and hope,” Rosie says, “because sometimes people build things that haven't existed before. Memory, hope, imagination. Your CC has a lot of secret weapons.”

“Entropy's outgunned,” Amy says, sounding almost giddy. “EE's
toast,
J.”

He looks out the window, at the passing trees. What he remembers most clearly now, what he'll never be able to forget, is that his mother is dead, murdered. “Memory fuels revenge, too,” he says.

“Anything can be misused,” Aunt Rosie tells him. She reaches across the top of the seat between them to squeeze his hand. Her fingers are cool and very soft. “And entropy—time—it softens memory and makes it easier to bear. Maybe only a little bit, but still. We find out we can still breathe. That's something.”

*   *   *

On the Alaska cruise, Melinda is restless, distracted. She's just started the process of trying to adopt, and every time she sees a child on board, she stares: smitten or alarmed, the others can't quite tell, but anyway fascinated.

“Mel,” Rosemary says over dinner one evening, when Melinda keeps craning her head to peer at two twin toddler girls—who brings kids that small on cruises, anyway?—“you have to stop ogling kids. You're going to scare their parents.”

“Sorry.” Melinda reddens and turns to face the others again. “I'm being goofy, I know.”

“You're being creepy,” Veronique says, and Melinda rolls her eyes.

“None of us has kids. Doesn't that seem weird to you?”

“No,” says Veronique. “Lots of people don't have kids. It's something we have in common, that's all.”

Melinda bites into her roll. “But why? Did all of you want to be childless? I mean, okay, I know it's none of my business, and I guess I'm turning into one of those horrible people who act like anyone who doesn't have kids is a mutant who deserves to be interrogated about it in public, but—”

“Mel,” Walter says mildly. “We're friends. It's okay.” He glances at Rosemary, who shrugs.

“I don't mind talking about it. We tried. It didn't work. We didn't feel strongly enough about it to adopt. A kid would have made our lives too complicated.” She shakes her head. “Our parents were upset. They wanted grandchildren. My mother gave me a lecture about how selfish I was being, only living for myself. On the other hand, my mother's most of the reason I spent twenty years in therapy, so I took anything she said with a grain of salt.”

“And we'll all help you,” Walter says, smiling. “So, see? We're all having a kid after all.”

Veronique snorts. “Well, fine. But I don't like children. Oh, don't stare at me like that! I'm sure I'll like yours, Mel. I like the idea of them well enough, and I know they're important, but in practice they're loud and annoying. I wouldn't have patience with a child.”

Melinda squints. “Vera, you
teach
.”

“College students. Who technically aren't kids anymore, although sometimes I wonder, but even when they act like children, they're children who can dress and feed and bathe themselves. I'm not responsible for their welfare. I'm just responsible for trying to teach them to think, which Lord knows is difficult enough.”

Someone at the next table yells, pointing out the window. “Whale! Whale! I just saw a breach!” Everyone in the dining room leaps from their seats, abandoning tableware and cutlery in a loud clanking rush to press against the windows, even though—as the ship's naturalist explained to cruisers gawking on the deck that afternoon—breaching means that the whale has dived, and might not resurface for a long time.

While everyone else peers through the window, pointing hopefully at any splash or ripple on the water, Melinda sneaks a furtive glance at the twin girls, sitting piggyback on their parents' shoulders so they can see over the crowd. One child gazes out the window with everyone else, asking in a piercing whine, “Where whale?” The other, oblivious, happily plays with her mother's barrette. She isn't loud or annoying at all.

*   *   *

The in-law quarters are small, but they have their own bathroom and even a tiny kitchenette. The most important factor, though, is a door. Veronique closes it to block out the din from the others. Too much chatter. Since the meltdown, she's lost whatever tolerance for strangers she had. She knows it's lovely of this priest—Greg, that's his name, Hen's friend—to put them all up, but her head's still buzzing from the road. All she wants to do is nap.

They got here an hour ago. It's a large, airy house, and Greg and his wife Linda had dinner waiting for them, a buffet with salad, lasagna in a warming pan, mixed vegetables, garlic bread, cookies. Iced tea, lemonade, soda. Veronique thought that eating real food in a stationary chair would make her feel better, ground her again, but it didn't work. Hen and Rosie promptly got into church gossip with Greg and Linda while Jeremy and Amy chattered about the museum they want to see.

Veronique couldn't follow any of the conversations, but they weren't meant to include her, anyway. She sat and ate her lasagna, feeling like the kid without friends in the junior high cafeteria. Then she got up and started browsing the bookshelves, which contain a pretty respectable selection of literary fiction and chewy theological tomes. The others were still eating, still chattering. Although she knew it was childish, she found herself wishing they'd notice her absence and call her back to the table. They didn't, of course.

So she excused herself, pleading headache. She'd ruthlessly claimed the in-law quarters the moment they got there, although she could tell Rosie wanted them. Tough. Rosie dragged her along on this ridiculous expedition. Veronique's the one who doesn't want to be here, which in her mind entitles her to extra consideration. Rosie can have the guest bedroom, even if it means she'll have to share a bathroom.

Veronique opens her suitcase—Tom carried it in her for her—and extracts a light sweater. She's chilly, even though it's summer. She misses her Planet X pot, its weight and solidity, the fierceness of its uncompromising ridges against her skin. She wishes she'd brought it as her one luxury item. She could have packed it in a box with foam peanuts, or just held it unprotected on her lap. She suspects it's stronger than she is right now, and it's a link to home, to Melinda.

The luxury item she did bring was her own pillow, now on the bed with the suitcase. It has cat hair on it. Everything in Veronique's house has cat hair on it. Greg's in-law quarters will now have cat hair, too. She supposes she should warn him, in case anyone else likely to stay here is allergic, but she'll do that later, or tomorrow, or before she leaves. She's too tired now. And, anyway, the entire house is immaculate, which means that Greg and his wife either clean like crazy or, more likely, pay someone else to do it. The cat hair will be history.

Veronique drags her suitcase off the bed—light as it is, it hits the carpet with an audible thump—and lies down, hugging her pillow. The bed's comfortable, a really good mattress, not one of those saggy sofa cushion things. She feels herself relaxing for the first time since leaving Reno.