Mending the Moon (10 page)

During the day, the facility seems clean, almost antiseptic. At night, it smells faintly of urine and feces, interlaced with the astringent scent of bleach and the mostly unappetizing aromas from dinner trays.

Rosemary hates the nursing home at night.

Even at 1
P.M.
on a brilliantly sunny day, she's shaking as she walks into the facility. She realizes, with shame, that she worries what the staff will say about her, the wife who no longer visits, who's abandoned her husband.

Maybe they won't judge her. Maybe they'll understand. The day Walter was admitted, an aide told Rosemary, “It's so hard, with Alzheimer's. They stop knowing you, and it gets too painful to visit.” Even at the time, she recognized this as a kindness: a stranger giving her permission to let go, to leave Walter's husk behind.

Guilt grips her anyway. She remembers a presentation on grief during her chaplaincy training. Guilt's a universal response to loss, the teacher said. Everyone feels it. What you need to tell mourners is that if they didn't feel guilty about whatever's tearing them apart right now, they'd feel guilty about something else.

Rosemary walks to Walter's room without looking right or left, without meeting the eyes of staff or other visitors or the helpless creatures in their wheelchairs. Later, she'll go to the nursing station and alert someone there about the Melinda situation, but right now she needs to see Walter, before she loses her nerve. She wonders if he'll look different: thinner, grayer. But there's been no dramatic change in his condition. They'd have called her if there had been.

When she enters his room, an attendant's helping him out of his wheelchair and back into bed. She can see only his scrawny neck and large ears, the random tufts of gray hair he's kept despite swathes of baldness, his stooped shoulders under the blue-and-white cotton pajamas she bought on sale at Macy's last summer. Walter has always insisted on 100% cotton pajamas. From the bunching of the bottoms around his waist, she can tell he's wearing Depends under them.

No one has seen her yet. She stands and watches his tottering rise from the wheelchair, his slow-motion crash-landing in bed, the fussing of the aide who tucks him in. “There you go, Walter. Do you want me to raise or lower the bed? Do you need another pillow? What's that, sweetheart?” Rosemary didn't hear him say anything. “Do you want the TV on?”

Oh, God. Not the TV. Please, not the TV. Not unless it's cartoons or old movies, with the news locked out.

Aching, Rosemary tries to look at Walter as if he's a stranger. If he were a patient in the ER, someone she'd never met, what would she see? An old man, frail, being helped by someone kind. An old man who's safe despite disability and disintegration. She isn't watching a tragedy. She's watching an act of compassion.

But she can't get that distance. He's Walter. They've spent over half their lives together.

Perhaps she's made a noise, because now one bony finger points at the door. The aide turns to follow it. “Why, look, Walter! You have a visitor!”

Rosemary has never met this aide before. How long has the woman been working here? What will she think of the wife who's only appeared now for the first time?

“I'm Rosemary. Walter's wife.”

“Walter! Your wife's here!” The aide beams, introduces herself with some Filipina name that speeds by in a blur and that Rosemary's too embarrassed to ask for again, and then says, “Walter just had a nice lunch. Didn't you, Walter? You had ham and mashed potatoes. You had a good appetite today.”

“That's wonderful,” Rosemary says weakly. Ham. He's always loved ham. She used to love making it for him. She blinks back tears and says, “Thank you for taking care of him.”

She expects the aide to retort,
Someone has to.
But instead the woman only says cheerfully, “It's my pleasure. I'll leave you two alone now, so you can have your visit. Let me know if you need anything.” Short and bustling, she looks Rosemary in the eyes as she passes, and smiles, and squeezes Rosemary's arm. It's okay, the touch seems to say. It's okay that you haven't been here. He didn't miss you, and the rest of us understand. And you're here now.

Rosemary walks to the bed now, sits on the chair placed there should Walter feel like sitting up, or should anyone come to see him. “Walter? It's Rosie. Do you remember me?”

“Hello,” he says, and holds his hand out for her to shake. Throat aching, she does. “It's nice to meet you.” His voice is soft, tentative, as if he hasn't used it in a while. “Do you live here?”

She swallows. “No. I live in the house where you used to live. I'm your wife. Do you remember living with me?” She speaks gently, as she'd speak to an ER patient, a stranger.

His gaze clouds now, and his hand goes to his mouth in a gesture she knows, a signal of social embarrassment. It's what he's always done after a faux pas: mangling a client's name, forgetting an appointment, neglecting to ask after a neighbor's sick child.

His body still remembers, even if his mind doesn't.

And she's made him feel bad: stupid, stupid. Of course he doesn't know her. It's obvious that he doesn't. Why did she even ask? “It's all right,” she says. “Shall I tell you a story?” When Walter was a little boy, he loved hearing his mother tell him stories. Later, he loved the radio. He's always enjoyed listening more than reading.

He smiles uncertainly, but nods. “Why, sure. That would be fine.”

“All right. I'm going to tell you a story you knew once, to see if you still know it. But if you don't, it's all right. It's not a test.” He looks anxious again; he picks up a corner of his sheet and frets it between thumb and forefinger. She shouldn't have said that.

Squeezing his hand, to calm herself as much as him, she takes a breath. “Once upon a time, there was a little boy who loved listening to stories. When he grew into a young man, he went to the theater one night, and he met a young woman who loved stories, too. They fell in love, and they got married.”

“What did he look like?” Walter asks.

“He looked like you,” Rosemary says steadily, “and the young woman looked like me, a long time ago. Have you heard this story before?”

“Noooo.” He draws the word out thoughtfully, frowning.

“Well, that's all right. I'll tell you some more. The young man and the young woman got married, and they were very happy, except that they couldn't have children. But they had each other. They loved each other very much, and they loved their friends. One of their friends was named Melinda. She'd never found anyone to marry, but she decided she wanted a child anyway. She learned that there was a little boy in a faraway country called Guatemala. His parents were dead, and she decided she'd be his new mommy. So she got on an airplane to go get him.”

Walter's gaze has wandered away; he's looking out the window. Rosemary can't tell if he's heard her or not.

“Melinda didn't go to Guatemala by herself,” she says, taking a deep breath. “The young man—well, he wasn't so young anymore—the husband of the couple, he went with her. To help her, and to keep her company. His wife stayed home. Walter? Do you remember this story?”

At his name, he turns to look at her again, eyes cloudy. His hand goes to his mouth.

Rosemary swallows. “You were the young man, Walter. You got on the airplane with our friend Melinda. You went to Guatemala to help her get her son. Do you remember any of this?”

His hand travels up from his mouth to scratch his ear. “Jeremy?” he says.

“Yes!” Rosemary feels a surge of hope. “Yes, Jeremy! Melinda's son. Our godson. The two of you went to Guatemala to get him! Do you remember?”

“He cried.” Walter shivers and hugs himself. “He kept crying, poor little boy. He didn't know where he was. Too many strangers.” Walter's weeping now himself, slow tears dripping down his furrowed cheeks, and Rosemary, stricken, knows that Walter is on a plane full of strangers, headed from a life he cannot recall to a destination he cannot imagine.

She won't tell him about Melinda. She can't. It would be too cruel, after everything else he's lost. If he ever remembers Melinda, let him remember her alive.

 

6

And what of Cosmos's love life? He's had various relationships over the run of the franchise. The most serious was with a nurse named Zeldine, whose work with pediatric AIDS patients he admired as much as she admired his own humanitarian efforts. They dated for a full year, but ultimately—as is so often true in real-life relationships—the very factors that pulled them together also pushed them apart. The more time they spent together, the more they felt they were neglecting their constituencies. Plans for romantic dinners, movie nights, or weekends away were invariably interrupted by crises. When they did manage to sneak off to get some alone time, they often discovered chaos waiting for them when they returned.

At last Zeldine told Cosmos that they could no longer be together. “Each of us is already in a relationship. Our truest bond, even though it's a negative one, is with the Emperor himself. That relationship began when we were born. It will end only when we die.”

“
Everyone's
in that relationship,” Cosmos said, weeping. He'd been thinking of proposing. He'd been looking at rings.

He moved in to try to embrace Zeldine, but she held him at arms' length, although her own eyes were brimming over. “Yes, my love. Everyone is. But you and I have the misfortune to recognize it. We have, in effect, already forsaken all others.”

Cosmos's breakup with Zeldine forced him to realize that his wistful fantasies of marriage and family were probably impossible. Charlie and Vanessa are a full-time job in themselves; so's the work of being Comrade Number One. Just as some clergy take a vow of celibacy so they'll have more platonic love to bestow on the entire world, so Cosmos must husband his energies to care for a family much larger and more various than any nuclear grouping of parents and children.

Because he is human, sometimes he becomes bitter about this.

Because his fans are human, they don't accept it. Cosmos fanfic—as robust and varied as any devoted to
Buffy, Lord of the Rings,
or
Harry Potter
—features as a prominent subcategory the “how to date Cosmos” story, known as Cosmos Cosmo.

Even within the series proper, Cosmos is an object of erotic fascination, and occasional obsession, for both women and men. He has received countless propositions and proposals, and has had to invoke several restraining orders. He and Roger sometimes pretend to be a gay couple to discourage would-be suitors, both Cosmos's and Roger's, since it turns out that a middle-aged librarian can pack an inappropriately erotic punch for a certain kind of geeky adolescent, especially one who has a Giles fixation from over-immersion in the Buffyverse.

There is also, as any scholar of fanfic would expect, a thriving community of slash writers. Cosmos is most often paired with Roger, for obvious reasons; while readers are given no evidence that the Cosmos/Roger relationship is anything but platonic, fan writers seize on these charades and turn them into the real thing. But fanfic Cosmos has also had dalliances with the Emperor himself—as physically impossible as that would actually be—and, since many slash writers cross fandoms, with Harry, Dumbledore, Giles, Xander, Frodo, Legolas, and Gollum.

Zeldine, meanwhile, has hooked up with Anelda (although this required a time-travel subplot), Hermione, and Galadriel, among others. More than one fanfic scholar has observed wryly that all this madcap dalliance is in itself a species of chaos, and that the Emperor blesses it. Fan writers don't care. They make their own order.

Repeatedly asked whether Cosmos will ever get to settle down and be happy, the CC Four have said only that they don't believe this is possible while he's still caring for Charlie and Vanessa. Afterward, who knows?

The more thoughtful observers of the CCverse, both fannish and academic, tend to agree that he will probably never marry or settle into a fulfilling relationship. Cosmos has had the misfortune, or the grace, to face the void too steadily and too young. Like certain combat veterans, like many survivors of the disasters he has helped mend, he can never return fully to the sunlight, although he delights in it and is its champion.

And there is surely more pain to come. The loss of Vanessa and Charlie, while inevitable, will undo Cosmos. In that darkness, only the Emperor will be visible, waiting at the end of all things, final partner and eternal companion.

 

7

A week and a day after the lunch at Hen's house, Veronique sits in the family pew, at the front of the church, at Melinda's funeral. Because the building gives her hives and she wants to be able to make a quick escape, she sits on the aisle. Jeremy's next to her, with Rosemary sandwiched between him and Tom.

Veronique wears a black suit she bought for this wretched occasion. She already owned black pumps. Walking in them, even the short distance from the car into church, made her remember why she never wears heels anymore. Her knee throbs.

She hates being here. She hates being at Melinda's funeral. She hates being stuffed into the suit. She hates being in a church. Melinda used to invite her to come, citing research claiming that people who are part of faith communities live longer, happier lives than those who aren't.

“It's science!” Melinda said, laughing.

“It's social science,” said Veronique, “which means it's pseudoscience.”

She understands perfectly well that churches can be good support systems. But even were she a parishioner here, the keystone of that support would now be gone.

Behind her, she hears a vast rustling punctuated by sobs. The small sanctuary is standing-room only, packed with parishioners, people from other local churches, library staff and patrons, Melinda's neighbors, members of the adoptive-parent group she attended for several years, and curiosity seekers who've been following the story.