Mending the Moon Read online

  Literary naysayers, and there are many, claim that the storylines are simplistic and the characters cardboard, although even they admit that this has become less true in recent years. Staunch American nationalists maintain that CC is clearly communist: his title is Comrade, and he encourages and empowers collective action. A variety of liberal Christian clergy—the type who read graphic novels as carefully as they do the Bible—maintain instead that “CC” stands for Corpus Christi, the Body of Christ, and that the superhero empowers his followers to do God’s work in the world. They see in the Oblivion storyline, and many others, strong parallels to the Book of Acts.

  Other clergy, often less liberal, contest this by pointing out that the wind and fire EE brings with him are the external, physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit who descends on the disciples at Pentecost, and that EE’s omnipresence echoes that of God Himself. The CCverse is a howl of rage at a God who permits horror, and portrays a fractured universe in which the Son himself—for even these readers agree that CC is Christ—must work to heal the excesses of his father. According to this interpretation, CC rewrites Paradise Lost as a war, not between God and His fallen angels, but between the persons of the Trinity itself, and thus reinscribes chaos and destruction even as it claims to work against them.

  Secular observers point out, more mildly, that “EE” stands not only for the Emperor of Entropy but for Electrical Engineering, while “CC” could be Closed Circuit or Cheat Code or CyberCrime. The computerist school of CC criticism reads the series as an entirely tongue-in-cheek comment on debates within the computing community, one that pokes fun at how the field attempts to organize ones and zeros, the very stuff of entropy, into meaningful language.

  Santamaria, Phillips, Morganthau, and McKenzie don’t comment on any of this. They simply rake in the proceeds from their creation and its spin-offs, from the graphic novels, MMO games, feature films, T-shirts, and action figures the CCverse has generated in such profusion. “The meaning resides with the reader,” Morganthau responds briskly whenever anyone asks for a definitive interpretation. “We all have our own ways of creating order. What do you think it means?”

  Certainly the multiplicity of meanings holds the keys to CC’s success. Were the central conflict not such a blank slate, it would simply be a good-versus-evil superhero story, however skillfully rendered by the artists, writers, actors, directors, game designers, and other creative professionals who now preside over the CCverse. The huge, and hugely improbable, success of the franchise depends precisely upon the indeterminacy of interpretation. For seven years now, we have found in CC what we want to find, or fear to find, or need to find. We find support for our cynical despair and for our idealistic dreams, for our horror and our hope, for existential dismissal of human effort and fervent faith in its efficacy. CC means all things to all people.

  And thus CC fandom, even more than usual for such franchises, is split between people who cheer for the putative hero and those who side with the avowed villain. Readers who ally themselves with Comrade Cosmos staunchly defend order, idealism, and community, and condemn their entropy-besotted counterparts as adolescent poseurs. The Minions of the Emperor, as EE followers label themselves, deride Comrades as naive children who are afraid of reality and have never faced up to the second law of thermodynamics. Comrades respond that they’re fully aware of the second law of thermodynamics, thank you, which is exactly why they put their energy into trying to keep the world working. They further point out that Minions themselves consume vast amounts of energy in the form of the donuts they devour at their club meetings—donuts being the Emperor’s favorite food, as they symbolize the void at the center of creation—and that if any given Minion expended the resulting calories in oh, say, community service, rather than ranting about nihilism, that Minion would realize that entropy can indeed be reversed.

  To this, Minions only snicker. They pride themselves on taking the long view. As they munch their donuts, they vie to see who can make the longest list of ways for that year’s Comrade Corps project to fail.

  Comrades, true to their communal nature, choose a new service project each year. In October, Comrades around the world propose projects. In November, a round of early Internet voting whittles the list down to ten or twenty, and in December, a final vote decides the mandate for the coming year. Projects have included planting trees, knitting hats and scarves for the homeless, visiting nursing homes, making weekly verbal amends for wrongs, and fostering stray animals.

  Minions find all of this funny beyond belief, and say that it sounds like a cross between the Cub Scouts and an AA meeting. Every February, on Valentine’s Day, the Minions publish (again on the Internet, naturally) a compilation of lists about how that year’s project will fail. The list for the tree-planting year included fire, drought, flood, gypsy moths, longhorn beetles, elm bark beetles, tent caterpillars, and loggers, among many other threats. The list for the knitting year included moths; dropped stitches; fiber allergies; Comrades unable to master knitting at all; and wool shortages resulting from wolves, coyotes, feral sheepdogs, and bloat, foot rot, and scrapie, along with a host of other ovine illnesses.

  Indeed, a certain number of Comrades were unable to learn to knit, and had to be offered alternatives. Some managed to learn to crochet, sew, or embroider. Others made themselves useful untangling snarled yarn or holding skeins as knitters wound them into balls. Still others opted out of needlecraft entirely, retreating to the honorable fallback position of tending and watering the trees planted the previous year.

  Direct sabotage of Comrade projects, however, is considered profoundly bad form, running counter to the entire Minion ethos. In one famous case, a Minion was accused of sneaking into an animal shelter in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and releasing a group of kittens due to be fostered by Comrades. The local Minion cohort released a statement vehemently denying responsibility. “We would never do this. The whole point of our philosophy is to do nothing, to wait for Entropy to undo all things. Helping Entropy along would be a denial of the truth that Entropy doesn’t need us: Entropy will conquer quite nicely without any effort on our part. Furthermore, a number of us are very fond of cats, who are fine models of Doing Nothing themselves.”

  The Ann Arbor Minions were so offended by the charges that they became Comrades for a day and helped the shelter staff search for the missing kittens, all of whom were recovered safely. The next day, a PETA splinter group claimed responsibility in a somewhat incoherent manifesto maintaining that domesticating any animal was an act of coercion.

  There is no law in CC fandom against switching sides, often more than once, although this usually takes place at the individual level, rather than collectively. An ability to empathize with the opponent’s perspective is considered a strength among Comrades, and Minions understand that everyone goes soft once in a while and needs a dose of wishful thinking. Indeed, Comrade-Minion marriages are quite common, and at least as long-lasting as any other kind, and Minion parents insist as firmly on picked-up rooms and acceptable grades as Comrades do.

  The WISS (“Why I Switched Sides”) essay has been a commonplace in fan writing since a famous piece published by Desi Santamaria on Salon.com in 2005. Santamaria, a staunch Comrade, wrote movingly about a breast-cancer scare that temporarily sent her spinning into the clutches of the Emperor, only to have the love and support of family, friends, and fans—including no small number of Minions—pull her back.

  Medical crises and conditions are WISS commonplaces. More than a few Minions, for instance, have described how going on antidepressants transformed them into Comrades, and some now believe that an emphasis on Entropy is itself a symptom of disordered neurotransmitters. Other predictable staples of the WISS essay are divorce, natural disaster, and war, on the Comrade-to-Minion side, and childbirth, natural beauty, and humanitarian outpourings, on the other. “Why the Chinese Earthquake Made Me a Minion” essays are matched by “Why Seeing Yosemite for the First Time Made Me a Comrade.”

>   A fluctuating number of fans identify as Equilibrists and maintain one foot in each camp. They plant trees, but pore over the numerous threats to woodland ecosystems as they gloomily devour their donuts. They apologize to people they have offended, but mock those same people when safely in Minion territory. They foster strays, but write editorials decrying no-kill shelters as economically impractical. This group prides itself on being balanced. The balancing act is very hard work, however, and sooner or later, almost all Equilibrists topple to one side or the other, either temporarily or for the long haul.

  What the CCverse provides all its followers, regardless of ideological lens, is an affirmation of reality. Comrade Cosmos may be a comic book, but it is anything but escapist. Within its pages, as in the world, shit happens, everywhere, all the time. Tragedy is unavoidable. To name, invoke, or even think of entropy is to summon it. Our worlds can be ripped apart, drop-kicked, and shattered, in an instant. We know these things will happen to us. CC suggests that when they do, we can survive them.

  3

  Where were you when you heard the news?

  Throughout his life, Jeremy has listened to high school teachers, college professors, and his friends’ parents discuss this question. Where were you when you heard that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, that JFK had been shot, that the Twin Towers had fallen? Most people’s lives contain at least one such historic moment, a freeze frame they recall in vivid detail and can relive at will, and sometimes all unwilling.

  Two days ago, most of the people sitting in Rosemary’s living room right now would have said that their moment was 9/11. Jeremy remembers 9/11, but only as a blur of drawn adult faces and incomprehensible images on the television, which his mother quickly turned off and lugged into the garage. He remembers the event, but it was mediated through other people’s reactions. It was theirs, not his.

  His moment has now arrived: a personal cataclysm, not a national one, but every bit as shattering. He knows that for the rest of his life, he will remember exactly what it felt like to rush through the rain to his English 101 class while a Spanish-accented voice on his cell phone informed him, both urgently and haltingly, that his mother was dead.

  Because they’ve now all talked about it, he knows what the others will remember, too. VB will remember learning of Melinda’s death from that same voice when Jeremy pressed his cell phone on her in class. Mother Hen—Henrietta Alphonse-Smith, the priest at Mom and Aunt Rosie’s church—will remember being called away from a late supper of salad, grilled cheese, and cream of broccoli soup to answer a call from Veronique, voice stuttering and breaking. Rosemary will remember Hen’s strained, quiet words on the other end of the line in the ER. “Rosie, I have terrible news.” Tom Duquesne, Melinda’s attorney and a fellow parishioner at St. Phil’s, will remember answering his phone to hear Rosemary sobbing on the other end.

  “Can’t be,” Jeremy says now. He’s sitting on Rosemary’s couch clutching a glass of water he hasn’t been able to drink. The water shakes and shivers in his hands. He watches the dancing ripple, as broken and refracted as he feels. He can’t think, can’t form coherent sentences. Language has broken.

  Someone, maybe Mother Hen, has put a sweater around his shoulders. He hates being in this house because it reminds him of Uncle Walter, who no longer knows that Jeremy is his godson or that Aunt Rosie is his wife. Being in his own house—Mom’s house, filled with Mom’s stuff—would be worse. “Can’t be. It’s someone else.”

  This has to be a mistake.

  Tom clears his throat. He’s a tall, skinny man, slightly stooped, his remaining hair gray. He wears glasses and cardigans. He’s always reminded Jeremy a little of Mr. Rogers. Right now, he’s paler than Jeremy has ever seen him. “No. Jeremy, I’m sorry. It’s not a mistake. I called the local police, and then I talked to people at the American consulate. Your mother’s dead.”

  No no no. “Someone else,” Jeremy says doggedly. Has to be.

  Tom’s voice is distorted, too slow. “They have positive ID from her passport, and she was in her own room.” Tom’s voice breaks completely now.

  VB stands up and starts pacing, but then she starts limping, so she sits down again. Once, Jeremy would have found this funny, although he’d have known better than to say so to anyone. VB shakes her head. “Someone broke into Melinda’s room and didn’t take her passport? What kind of robber is that?”

  Tom clears his throat again and takes a breath Jeremy can hear even from across the room. “It wasn’t a robbery. The police don’t think any of her belongings are missing.” He looks away from all of them, out Rosemary’s living room window. “This is—it’s horrible, but you’re going to hear it on the news and people are going to be talking about it, so you need to hear it from me first.” He looks at Jeremy. “Do you want me to tell you privately? We can go in another room.”

  Five minutes ago, Jeremy was so numb that he didn’t think he’d ever feel anything again, but now dread constricts his chest. “No. Not alone.” Hen comes to sit on the couch next to him. She reaches out her hand, but he ignores it. He’s using all of his energy to stay still, to stay sitting. “What?”

  “All right.” Another breath. “She was raped and stabbed. The police think there was only one assailant.”

  Where were you when you heard the news?

  When Jeremy can think clearly again—when his thoughts have stopped scattering like small, terrified animals—he will realize that there are levels to this question, that cataclysm arrives in waves. Where were you when you heard that she was dead? Where were you when you heard that she’d been raped and stabbed?

  All sound is muffled now, although no one else has spoken. Rosemary’s hand has gone to her mouth. VB isn’t sitting where she was just a minute ago. Jeremy hears a rasping noise, grinding gears on a car. VB’s retching into a wastebasket.

  There’s a weight on his shoulder. Hen’s hand. “Jeremy?” He blinks, shakes his head. He can’t speak.

  “I’m so very sorry.” That’s Tom. Jeremy sees his cheeks shining in the light. The light from the closest end table, and something else is shining there. A paperweight. There’s a flower in it.

  He picked out the paperweight for Aunt Rosie’s birthday, a long time ago. He was little. Too short to see the tabletop where the paperweights were. Mom picked each one up and knelt down to show it to him. “How about this, Jer? Do you like this one?” Two flowers, pink and yellow. “Which one do you like better?”

  Something moves jerkily across his vision. VB, going back to her seat.

  “Do they know who did it?” That’s Hen. Her hand isn’t on Jeremy’s shoulder anymore. Her hands are clenched in her lap. They look more like fists. She sees him looking at her hands and they relax, unfold, press flat against the blue of her skirt.

  “No. Not yet. But the police said there’s a lot of DNA evidence.”

  “Oh, God,” Rosemary says. VB gags again, just once. Jeremy doesn’t yet realize consciously what this means, but Hen reaches for something on the floor. His glass. He dropped his glass. There’s water all over Aunt Rosie’s nice carpet.

  A Christmas party here when he was seven or eight, with the special punch Jeremy loved, cranberry juice with ginger ale and cloves. He felt so grown up drinking it. Mommy said the punch would stain. He was very careful, but he still spilled some. Mom, frowning and disappointed. Aunt Rosie, reassuring him.

  “I’ll wipe it up,” Hen says. “Jeremy, I’ll get it.”

  * * *

  Raped? Rosemary feels herself recoiling, shrinking into the couch, her mind slamming shut. And Jeremy hearing this, oh God, and he’s dropped his glass.

  Hen gets paper towels, wipes up the water, and goes into the kitchen to throw the wet towels away. I should have done that, Rosemary thinks. It’s my house. But she can’t move. No one speaks until Hen gets back and sits down again.

  A pause. Utter silence, into which Hen says, “Let us pray.”

  Too late, Rosemary thinks. Too late. But she bows her
head and tries to listen to the prayer.

  Usually she loves Hen’s prayers, but she can only make out snatches of this one. We don’t know why. Pain and anger. Sin of vengeance. Thank you for Melinda’s life. Help her friends and family. Jeremy. Heal. Comfort. Bless. Amen.

  Amen, echo Tom and Jeremy: even Jeremy, sitting dazed and blank on the couch. Veronique doesn’t respond to the prayer, but she wouldn’t. Rosemary doesn’t because she still can’t. How many times has she prayed like this with patients and families? She would have prayed this way with the family of the aneurysm patient, if she hadn’t gotten the phone call first. Would her prayer have sounded as empty to them as this one sounds to her? She feels herself checking for her usual sense of God’s presence, her soul a tongue searching for a missing tooth. She finds only a hole the size of a galaxy.

  Voices, discussing. Jeremy doesn’t want to go back to the dorm tonight, doesn’t want to go back to the house. He’ll stay in Hen’s guest room; Hen calls her husband Ed to instruct him to make up the bed. When she gets home, she’ll activate the parish phone tree used in emergencies, which before now have never been more serious than a service canceled because of snow.

  Tom, Hen, and Veronique talk logistics. Melinda would want to be cremated, but should that happen in Mexico, or the States? Less expensive to have her cremated there if no one objects, but does Jeremy—or anyone else—need to see the body for closure? Will the body be fit to be seen? Won’t someone have to go down to Mexico to make arrangements? And if the police catch Melinda’s murderer and there’s a trial, what then? Would she have wanted them to be there? Would there be any reason for them to be there?

  “She didn’t believe in the death penalty,” Jeremy says. It’s the first thing he’s said since hearing how Melinda died. Rosemary’s heart twists. Does Jeremy agree with his mother’s position now, if he ever did?