Mending the Moon (11 page)

Hen requested no recording equipment, but Veronique suspects that some of the strangers are reporters, or regular people sneaking in cameras to sell pictures to the news. Cell phones all have cameras, anyway. Veronique loathes all of this. She's suffocating, and not just because the sanctuary's unbearably hot. She's sick of platitudes, of good behavior, of pious lies.

None are the priest's fault. Even Veronique recognizes her short sermon as a model of rhetorical tact, gracefully balancing mourning and hope, rage and redemption: honoring anger and grief while stressing the need for compassion. Before offering the mike to anyone who wishes to speak, she asks everyone to take a moment of silence to pray for Melinda's murderer. “This is what Melinda would have done, and difficult as it may be, it is what our faith requires of us.”

Maybe it's what Melinda would have done, but Veronique couldn't do it even if she were the praying type. She wonders how many people here can. She's glad she can't see anyone else's face. She keeps remembering Tom's account of identifying the body. He came to Rosemary's house straight from the airport; Veronique was there organizing the photographs to be displayed at the service. Tom walked in without ringing the bell and asked for scotch, straight up, which he drank straight down. The fury on his face didn't abate much after he emptied his glass.

“Horrible. I'll never forget it, and I won't go into details, because neither of you needs those pictures in your head. Thank God Jeremy wasn't there. Thank God he was okay with cremating her. No one should have had to look at that body. I shouldn't have: they'd already identified her from dental records.” He raised the empty glass, looked at it, and put it down again with a sharp sigh, waving off Rosemary's offer. “No. No more. I probably shouldn't have had that much. All I can say is that the
animal
who killed her—”

He stopped, pale. “No. I'll stop now. That's enough.”

Melinda was cremated after he identified her, and he brought home the ashes. Veronique can't imagine that trip. She doesn't want to, and yet she finds herself compulsively trying. How can Tom tolerate his memories of the journey? How could he stand to carry that burden? Veronique knows from her parents' deaths what a shockingly small space a cremated body occupies, and how unexpectedly heavy it is.

Melinda's urn sits on a pedestal in front of the altar. “So the service will have a focal point,” Rosemary said. It's gray marble, understated and tasteful. Jeremy chose it. He asked that some of his mother's ashes be put in the columbarium, with the rest to be divided between her garden and the Nevada desert, the vast expanses she'd loved. To Veronique, this seems the decision of someone older and wiser than the Jeremy she's known. She's heard that some events can make you grow up overnight. If that's true, surely this is one of them.

And now the priest's asking them to pray for the animal who killed Melinda. Veronique wonders how many prayers run along the lines of, “Lord, please deliver this bastard to the police so they can fry him in boiling oil. Let him die in agony and burn in hell.”

After that little exercise, the open mike is a relief. All kinds of people get up to talk. Some tell funny or moving stories about Melinda, but few are good storytellers, and Veronique finds her attention wandering. She tries to count clichés, but loses count after ten variations on: “It seems impossible that this little urn in front of us could hold anyone as beloved and huge-spirited as Melinda.”

The woman currently at the mike is meandering on about how Melinda taught her how to garden. She's in the middle of a complicated and heartfelt story about zucchini, but her voice is soft, and she isn't speaking into the mike properly. Veronique wonders how many people can actually hear her.

The priest stands to the left of the altar, ready to comfort anyone who breaks down or tactfully cut off anyone who rambles. People have been coming up to talk for half an hour now. There's still a line, but Veronique hopes the priest won't let many more speak. According to the bulletin, they still have to do the bread and wine bit, and depending on how many in the crowd participate, rather than staying in their seats to watch the quaint tribal rituals of practicing Christians, that could take a while. Veronique and Sarabeth once attended a wedding where the communion part of the service dragged on for forty-five minutes.

Veronique opens her purse, extracts a notepad and pen, and scribbles a note to Rosemary, which she passes across Jeremy.

How long will communion take? Are we here all day?

Not all day. Relax. 4 communion teams, 2 f 2 b. I'm serving chalice.

Things should go quickly, then. Good. Somewhat relieved, Veronique leans back and tries to pay attention to zucchini lady, but she's stepping down from the mike. The priest steps forward. “Thank you all for these wonderful remembrances. I can see that many other people wish to speak, but I'd ask—”

“Lemme talk!” A figure pushes its way from the back of the church, through the crowd standing behind the pews. A man, sloppily dressed and clearly drunk. “I gotta talk.”

“Sir,” the priest says, “I'm sure Melinda's family and friends would like to hear your thoughts—”

“Oh, really?” mutters Veronique. Next to her, Jeremy groans.

“—but we need to move on, so if you can wait until—”

“Can't wait,” the man says, and grabs the mike.

Here we go, Veronique thinks. The nutcases are coming out of the woodwork. Tom stands up and signals to the priest. Nine fingers, one, one: Call the police? The priest shakes her head: wait.

The man at the mike is oblivious to all this. “This is so sad,” he slurs. “Sad and horrible. I knew her: nice lady. She helped me look stuff up. Sure can't pray for the shithead who killed her, though.” Veronique hears coughing, a few muffled gasps, some strangled laughter. Well, at least he isn't being pious or polite. Good for him.

But then he says, “Now, I'm no racist,” and Veronique's heart sinks, and sure enough he's off on a meandering rant against Mexicans, “all those illegals and dope dealers who just love to kill Americans. We should just close the borders. And Melinda's family, you should sue Mexico. The whole damn government. Start a class-action suit. All the other people who've had family killed down there can join in.”

The priest steps up to interrupt him, but he waves her away with a glare and clutches the microphone. Tom's on his cell phone. Veronique wonders why she didn't see police cars in front of the church, but surely it won't take them long to arrive.

The drunk's voice has risen. “Close the borders! All those illegals making too many babies, living off our welfare—”

Not if they're undocumented, they aren't. Veronique sighs. Another failure of critical thinking.

“—raping our women. No more killing Americans! We gotta—”

Rosemary stands up, turns to face the congregation, and, in a surprisingly strong voice, starts singing. “In Christ there is no East or West.”

Now the priest chimes in, cuing the organist. “In him no South or North.”

Self-righteous idiots. The churchgoers are no better informed than the heckler, even if they're more politically correct. Haven't these people heard of the Crusades? But now others who know the hymn join the swell. “But one great fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”

Right. One great fellowship of love. Melinda died of love? Do believers even
think
about what they sing?

Throughout the sanctuary, though, there's a great scrambling for hymnals and flipping of pages; by the end of the next verse, almost everyone in the church is singing. “Join hands disciples of the faith, whate'er your race may be! Who serves my Father as his child is surely kin to me.”

As if no other faiths even exist. Typical arrogant Christian colonialist crap.

Veronique, seething, wants to spit, to scream. How could Melinda stand this place? Melinda had a brain.

At least the voices have drowned out Drunk Guy. If they hadn't, the organ would have. The organist—Veronique remembers Melinda telling her that he's a gay botanist—pulls out all the stops, playing the hymn with crashing bass notes and long vibratos, like an especially dramatic version of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

By the time the cops get there, Drunk Guy's already leaving under his own power, covering his ears. When the narthex doors have closed behind him, a cheer goes up from the pews. Veronique sits mute, stony and furious. She can't join either party here. Nobody's offering viable options. All she can do is sit, shaken and shaking.

The priest's been in a huddle with one of the police officers. Now she comes up to the lectern and taps on the mike, waiting patiently for everyone to settle down. “I'd like to acknowledge Rosemary Watkins for instigating that fine piece of nonviolent resistance.”

Laughter and applause fill the sanctuary. Veronique doesn't applaud. Will Rosemary notice or care? Does Veronique care if Rosemary notices or cares?

When the crowd has quieted again, the priest goes on. “We all need to pray for the man who just left, just as we pray for Melinda's murderer.” There are mutters of disagreement—maybe some of these people are coming to their senses—but the priest says calmly, “God welcomes everyone. Our visitor doesn't know that, but we do. If he'd stayed, I'd have invited him to communion, just as I invite every single one of you to communion. Jesus fed Judas at the Last Supper, even though he knew Judas had betrayed him. There's a place for all of us at God's table.”

Veronique, to her mortification, feels her eyes tearing up. Such a pretty promise, but no church in the world has ever kept it. If only it were true! She's ached for that kind of welcome her entire life, and never found it. For a moment, she almost can't blame people who come here, lured by the promise. But the promise is empty, a two-millennium tradition of snake oil and confidence men.

When her vision clears, she sees the police officer standing next to the priest, who says quietly, “There's an announcement. Because the service has already been disrupted, I thought you should all hear this. Then we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming. Officer Zebrowski?”

The cop, holding his hat to his chest, takes the mike and nods out at the crowd. “I'm so sorry for everyone's loss. From everything I've heard, she was a great lady.” He clears his throat; his voice is soft and somber. “So, ah, while all of you have been honoring her in here, there's been news out there. We believe we know who killed Melinda.”

*   *   *

Later, among all the tears and questions, the fury and horror, Anna will find some small shred of comfort in knowing that her son wasn't a criminal mastermind. If he'd been smarter, he'd have stayed at the resort and bluffed his way through the police questioning, although the DNA would have damned him anyway. If he'd been smarter, he wouldn't have told his parents a story that contradicted the news sources. If he'd been smarter, he'd have fled somewhere no one would have thought to look for him, instead of coming home.

None of that would have made the horror any easier, but it would have meant that he was conniving, calculating, coldly maneuvering for his own survival. It would have meant that she'd raised a monster without knowing it. This way, she can keep viewing what happened as a momentary, incomprehensible lapse.

Anna will never understand what happened, or why. Other resort guests interviewed in the newspaper will say Percy was drunk the night he killed Melinda. She knows that alcohol is a disinhibitor, that it enables violent behavior.

But Percy has never been violent. She has never seen him violent, cannot even imagine him hurting anyone. He was never a bully in school. In her long search for answers—a search that will stretch on sporadically for years—she'll meet people who saw him drunk at one time or another, at high school parties or in college, and none will say they were ever afraid of him. She'll talk to women he dated, who were never afraid of him.

There are no explanations. There are only facts. There is only chronology.

Here is the chronology:

The morning after Percy's return home, Friday morning, Anna and William both wake up early. “I'm going to talk to him,” William says, putting on his robe, and Anna puts on her own robe and slippers and pads after him out of the bedroom, because William's so intense and she thinks it will be easier for Percy if she's there, too, to soften the conversation.

Percy, who always sleeps until noon if he doesn't have to be at school or work, isn't in the house. The dog isn't in the house. The dog's leash isn't on its hook. Ergo, Percy is walking the dog.

It's still raining, and although Percy likes walking the dog and has always been good about it, he normally comes back quickly in bad weather. This time, though, he doesn't come back for an hour. When he finally shows up, it's with a big bag of coffee and pastries—croissants, muffins, bagels—from the local Starbucks.

By the time he gets back, the Mexican police have called, and William has put them off with a polite promise that Percy will call them back when he gets home, and William has called the family attorney, Carl Schacht, who has arrived at the house with his own Starbucks coffee, and the three of them are sitting waiting when Percy walks in.

“Do you have anything you need to tell us?” Carl asks gently, and Percy gives the three of them a dumbfounded look and shakes his head.

“Why did you come home early?” Carl asks gently, and Percy says he panicked. He was scared. He wanted to come home. That's all.

It makes sense. Anna, listening, believes it, believes that Carl believes it, even though by then she and William have worried and fretted the thing to bits, even though dread pools in Anna's gut and weighs every step she takes, even though even Bart has begun to act oddly, impossibly anxious.