Mending the Moon (37 page)

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.

All right. Live dangerously. She wrestles open a tiny plastic squeeze bag of mustard, squirts it onto the hot dog—getting some on her shirt and some on her seat in the process—and eats. The hot dog tastes fine. Actually, it tastes good.

She finishes the hot dog, lets out a small and dignified belch, and returns to staring out the window. They're nearing Bainbridge Island, a dark dimness in the rain, and the other passengers are stirring, getting ready to disembark. Veronique will just sit here and ride back to Seattle.

All right. Where were you, Veronique?

This trip is new, whereas she's been to Gerlach a lot. But that still doesn't feel right. Why not?

She ponders, absently wiping a drop of mustard off her arm as the ferry docks with a small thump. Gerlach was new in a lot of ways: because she was making the trip without Melinda, because she was disobeying expectations. Of course, she's doing that here, too, by not going to Percy's funeral, but everyone knew she wouldn't. She announced it beforehand, instead of just striking out on her own on a daring adventure. It's not like Rosie's going to become frantic wondering where she is, not unless she rides the ferry back and forth all night.

Rosie.

Oh, hell. That's it.

When Veronique took off for Gerlach, she
knew
Rosie would worry. She wanted Rosie to worry. Half the fun was yanking Rosie's chain.

She wanted Rosemary to come after her, as much as she protested at the time. She wanted to prove that someone would care if she disappeared.

Veronique makes a face at the backs of the departing passengers. The Gerlach trip wouldn't have been nearly as fun without that adolescent, I'm-running-away-from-home rebellion. Without that, it might just have felt lonely, the way she feels now.