Mending the Moon Read online

  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.

  Carl gives William the number of a colleague, a good criminal attorney. “Just in case,” he says. “I hope to God you won’t need this.”

  Friday afternoon, the FBI calls. The Cabo police contacted the attaché in Mexico City, who has formally requested FBI assistance.

  Friday evening, the FBI visits. They ask for a DNA sample: strictly routine, they’re collecting DNA samples from everyone who was at the resort then, and of course there’s nothing to worry about if he had nothing to do with the crime.

  Percy begins to cry. They ask why he left the resort when everyone was asked to stay, and he says he panicked. He was scared. He wanted to come home. That’s all.

  This time, Anna doesn’t believe him. This time, the words sound too rehearsed, although the tears clearly aren’t.

  “Percy,” William says, “give them a sample.”

  Anna will remember how Percy looked at his father and then at her, pleading, and she will think later that this is when she knew, knew for sure even though she wouldn’t let herself know, because why would he balk if he were innocent?

  He gives them the sample, a cheek swab. How could he not give it?

  “How long,” William asks, clearing his throat, “will the test take?”

  Five to ten days, the agents say. Strictly routine. If you think of anything we need to know, call us. They give Percy their card. They leave.

  Anna and William go to bed. When they wake up the next morning, Saturday, Percy and the dog are out. It’s still raining. Percy comes back more quickly this time, without Starbucks.

  Life becomes an echo of normal again, except that Percy wakes up unusually early every day. When he’s not home, Anna pores over news stories about Melinda Soto. She learns that Melinda was a librarian who led book groups and loved to garden and had a son, just a little younger than Percy, adopted from Guatemala. She learns that Melinda was active in her church, was an avid amateur geologist and astronomer, volunteered at the local food bank. She stares at photographs of Melinda, an angular woman with long blond hair, graying at the roots, and many laugh lines. In the photos she’s wearing jeans, fleece, hand-knit sweaters. She looks like a Seattleite, a liberal tree-hugger, someone who could be one of their neighbors.

  William doesn’t want to know anything about Melinda. He buries himself in work. When Percy’s home, he doesn’t want to know anything about Melinda, either, and the expression of panic and anguish that contorts his face whenever Anna ev
en mentions Melinda’s name only deepens Anna’s dread and certainty.

  Later, Anna will wonder why Percy didn’t flee. She will go back over those days as carefully as a detective combing a crime scene, looking for shreds of evidence. She will remember small kindnesses on Percy’s part, an uncharacteristic “I love you” as she got into the car one day. She will remember that he didn’t work on his B-school essay, which had obsessed him before he left for Mexico. She will remember that he spent hours lying on the living room floor, his head pillowed on Bart’s stomach, and that several times she caught him standing in the center of a room or hallway, staring into space.

  She will ask herself what she could, or should, have known, and what she could, or should, have done.

  The Saturday morning of Melinda Soto’s funeral, a week and a day after Percy’s return home, Anna wakes up at dawn. For once, it isn’t raining. She rises, careful not to wake William, and goes into the kitchen to make coffee. She wonders if she will catch Percy still at home, for once.

  Percy isn’t in the house. Bart isn’t in the house. The leash is off its hook.

  Anna, with a sigh, pours her coffee and sits down in the kitchen to wait for him. This will be a longer walk, since the weather’s better.

  When William wakes up an hour later, Percy isn’t back.

  An hour after that, he still isn’t back.

  At lunchtime, he isn’t back.

  At one o’clock, a young woman who introduces herself as Karen rings their doorbell. Karen has a long braid and a flowered backpack, and Bart is with her. The dog was tied to a tree at Clarke Beach, Karen says. The dog was howling. I saw him there and then a few hours later he was still there, and I thought something was wrong. This is the right address on the tags, right? This is your dog?

  At five o’clock, the police will find Percy’s body in the water, pockets weighted with stones.

  There is no note. There are no explanations. But the DNA is a match, and Melinda Soto’s murder is officially solved.

  * * *

  An American. Another American. Dear Lord, how is Jeremy going to deal with this? For his sake, Rosemary wishes the murderer had been any other nationality: Mexican, Swedish, Canadian. But she can’t make it so by wishing.

  Crouched in her pew, she weeps: for Melinda, for the monster who killed Melinda and has now, according to Officer Zebrowski, killed himself, for the monster’s family and friends—she can’t imagine what they must be going through—and for Walter, who is mixed in with all her tears. Whatever else she cries for now, she also cries for him.

  She knows that if she let herself, she could cry for days. But she has a job to do, one that has always steadied her. And so when the time comes for communion, she dries her tears, puts aside her grief, and carefully carries the chalice to her station at the rear of the sanctuary. Glen Arbuthnot, a priest from another parish, is serving the bread.

  For all the bickering and petty politics and other nonsense that happens in every parish, Rosemary has always seen the church as a refuge, as a ship sheltering its passengers from the storms outside, taking on any castaway willing to grab the life buoys tossed from the deck. She can’t count how often she’s heard the cliché comparing the Episcopal Church to a stool with three legs: Scripture, Tradition, and Reason. It’s a boring metaphor. Stools aren’t very dynamic. They don’t go anywhere.

  Ships go on voyages. They navigate storms and reefs, witness dawns and sunsets and schools of leaping dolphins. They seek safe harbors, but always set out into the wide, wild world again, for what use is a ship that only stays at dock? They hail other vessels, exchange news, help crews who need supplies or directions. They rove and rescue.

  Tradition is the body of the boat. Scripture is its sails, a patchwork of translations and commentaries. Reason is the captain at the wheel, guiding the tiller; Christ is the compass. Of course the boat is a sailboat, not a motorboat, for it has to travel where the Spirit blows. But without reason at the helm, it will founder.

  Of all the planks forming the hull and decks, the sacraments are the most enduring and important, whatever sandings and new coats of paint or varnish they receive over the years. Rosemary has watched Prayer Books come and go, has listened to debates over the merits of Rite I versus Rite II, has endured contemporary services featuring kazoos and bongo drums. But Communion is constant: the Body and Blood, the gift of inclusion, the food for the journey.

  She smells the bread now, and smiles. Other parishes serve wafers, which Hen calls “fish food,” but St. Phil’s prides itself on real bread, homemade by parishioners. The wine is homemade, too, and packs more than the usual punch. Rosemary hopes no one expected grape juice.

  A surprising number of people come to her station; many are strangers. Maybe Hen’s speech about universal welcome found some takers. “Here is the Blood of Christ, the cup of salvation.” Rosemary loves saying the phrase, loves looking people in the eyes while they either drink from the chalice or dip their bread into it. She tries to see each of them as Christ. Usually it works.

  There are, of course, the standard technical difficulties. Some people won’t take the chalice themselves, which means that Rosemary has to raise it to their mouths and tip it. Other people intinct but then lose half their bread in the wine, which becomes a sea of bobbing purple crumbs. Hen keeps a spoon at the altar to fish breadcrumbs out of the chalice, but that’s yards away. And because this is a funeral, most of the women wear lipstick, which leaves smudges on the rim of the chalice. Chalice bearers carry linen napkins—the technical name is a purificator, but to Rosemary that sounds too much like a futuristic food processor—and are trained to serve, wipe the rim, rotate the chalice a few degrees, and serve again. But today the napkin isn’t cutting it. She needs steel wool.

  The experience doesn’t feel very sacred.

  Nor do most of the faces in front of her reflect the gentle vulnerability she usually sees. Sunday communion is an unhurried affair, and Rosemary can usually exchange eye contact and smiles with the people she serves, who often squeeze her hand or whisper “thank you” after their Amen. She loves serving people she loves.

  This is more like serving at McDonald’s. Her fingers are sore from scrubbing away lipstick, and she desperately needs more wine on top of the breadcrumbs. She sees a deacon circulating to the stations with a pitcher, refilling chalices, but Rosemary’s station is last. The line of people in front of her seems distracted and impatient. They don’t look at her when they take the wine. Some take it like medicine, or punishment. Too few say Amen.

  Two women in line are talking, a hissed conversation. Rosemary can only make out a few words. “Glad he’s dead, the bastard … kill him myself.” She glances at Glen, whose face is stony. A moment later, his expression softens again as he serves the next person in line.

  “This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.”

  The whisperers creep forward, their conversation more audible now. “That drunk was on the right track,” one of them says. “Jeremy should sue the parents. Civil damages. Get something, anyway.”

  Al Antonuccio, who’s on the vestry, is in front of them in line. He and Rosemary exchange a glance, and then he turns to the woman behind him. “Excuse me, ladies, but Eucharist is a sacred occasion even when it’s not happening at a funeral. Would you mind saving your conversation for later?”

  They glower at him, but stop talking. Al steps forward, receives the bread from Glen, and then intincts in Rosemary’s chalice. The first woman is receiving the bread. As Al moves away from the communion station, her friend mutters to his back, “Fuck you.”

  The first woman, standing in front of Rosemary now, stifles a laugh. She’s probably one of the people who laughed at the intruder, too. Rosemary gapes, frozen, almost too shocked to be angry. The woman looks at her, shrugs, dips her bread in the chalice before Rosemary has gathered her wits enough to say anything, and strolls away.

  Ms. Fuck You is standing in front of Glen, who frowns down at her. Rosemar
y watches, fascinated. Will he refuse to serve her?

  She’s heard clergy discuss the matter. Is there ever a situation when it’s appropriate for a priest to withhold the sacrament? Most of the priests she knows—a liberal lot, to be sure—take Hen’s approach to the subject. Jesus fed Judas; therefore we feed everyone.

  Rosemary heard a story once about a priest in the south, during the 1960s, who one Sunday refused to serve any parishioners who belonged to the local all-white country club. He did it only once, to make a point, and returned to serving everyone the following Sunday. Rosemary has always wondered if any of his parishioners left the country club as a result, or if they only said nasty things about him when they gathered for golf or tennis. He was lucky his vestry didn’t fire him.

  She watches Glen and Ms. Fuck You. You have to serve her, Glen. Hen said so: this isn’t your parish. And anyway, if you don’t, MFU won’t understand. She’ll think it’s because she cursed, and not because she was nasty or litigious or vengeful or immature or whatever your reasons are, and they might be something else entirely, except I’m pretty sure that the f-word isn’t one of them. If you don’t serve her, she’s not going to get it. It will be wasted protest. And she’s presumably a mourner, although I’ve never seen her before and have no idea how she knew Melinda. Library, probably.

  Glen has evidently been chugging along on the same train of thought, or one on parallel tracks, because he emits a barely audible sigh and holds out a piece of bread. “This is the Body of Christ, the Bread of Heaven.”

  Ms. Fuck You takes it, and intincts, and goes to rejoin her friend. Rosemary can’t tell from watching her if she feels any remorse or not.

  * * *

  Jeremy can’t wait to get out of the sanctuary. Half an hour ago, he would have said it was actually kind of fun to listen to people talk about Mom during the service, especially when he knew her side of the story. She was incredibly annoyed by the woman with the zucchini, and he’d heard her making off-color jokes with VB on the phone. “I think she keeps them in her underwear drawer. She’s obsessed with size.”