MICHAEL SUMMERLEIGH - MIRANDA MOON

Michael Summerleigh lives in rural Ontario with a cat named Mina.  When he was someone else he published some stuff back in the 80s, but recently there have been stories online with cc&d Magazine, Literary Yard, and a novel excerpt with Lamplit Underground.

MIRANDA MOON 
​

​"...I guess it's just the two of us now, baby brother," she said softly. 
 
She kept her eyes on the road but looked away just long enough to see tears glistening on his cheeks he was crying...soundlessly...
 
"Manda, how come people die?"
 
She swallowed hard and clenched her teeth together, slowed down a little bit as the
tires on the right side of the Toyota plowed through some snow that had drifted off the shoulder on Route 9.  Then the pines and spruce closed in on them again and the road was clear, dry white salt patterns cold-etched over the blacktop.  The sky was all overcast and grey around them, the sun just a faint promise behind the clouds.
 
"We just do, honey," she whispered.  "We get old or we get sick or we have accidents and that's what happens."
 
He asked every time, even for animals, and she was never ready with anything more than what she knew was, at best, no explanation at all, because he wasn't asking about the mechanics of Death, the physical end-product-everybody's-doing-it destination of Life.  He wanted to know the all-encompassing cosmic fucking why.... and she might just as well have been honest and told him that she didn't have a clue, because that part of it was as much a mystery to her as it had ever been to him. 
 
"I miss Mom and Dad a lot.  Paul...and Smoky so much...I miss everybody."
 
"Me too, Oliver," she said.  "Me too."
 
It felt like yesterday...had started with their older brother...a drunk driver in Tucson running a red light and their older brother thrown a hundred feet from the wreckage of his Harley.  Then it was the stroke that killed their mother...and two years after that, grief that got fatal for their father when it made him careless with a chainsaw, taking trees down behind their cottage on the lake. She thought after that maybe they could be safe for just a little while...but three days ago their older sister...Lisa...five weeks after the doctor had found the cancer in her pancreas and it was over. Suddenly...it felt that way... suddenly all the Woodroffes were gone and it was just her and Oliver.
 
"Don't die, Manda."
 
"I'm gonna try like hell not to, sweetheart," she said.  
 
"And you're still gonna be my sister?"
"Of course I am, honey," she said, and was grateful the stretch of Route 9 west of Hillsboro in front of them had no curves because she closed her eyes and had to suck the snot back up her nose and pretend her heart wasn't maybe finally breaking beyond repair.  
 
"And you're always gonna be my brother...always...and Uncle Oliver for Lisa's kids..."
 
Oliver's sweet little brain had stopped growing somewhere around eight or nine years old He still wept for the baby raccoon had died in front of their cottage years ago...and Smoky, their yappy happy Keeshond.
 
"Manda...?"
 
"Yeah, honey."
 
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you cry I'll be quiet okay?"
 
She nodded.  Rubbed her nose with the sleeve of her parka. He got hungry so they stopped in Keene for hamburgers at McDonalds and fifteen miles later picked up I-91 in Brattleboro and headed south.  An hour after that they arced round a dogleg in the Connecticut River, took exit 19 onto Bridge Street in Northampton, crawled past the park and playground, and came to rest in the driveway of their small house on Walnut Street.
 
Miranda said, "Home again home again."
 
Oliver had already pretty much forgotten the cemetery in Concord, or why they had gone there in the first place.       
 
                                                                        2.
 
The next day they went back to the small school she had opened just for him...fighting for accreditation so she could, at the very least, map the potentials of children like her brother...find ways for them to survive once they were grown beyond the safety nets of their childhood.  
 
Oliver was the best thing about her school. Never having surrendered his innocence to cynicism, adulthood, or the harsh realities of Western capitalism, he was the one who most often made the connect with the kids who came to them. He served as the gentle reassuring soul between them and the small staff, managed communication miracles where PhDs and all the clinical studies in the world could find no way to breach the walls of fear, chemical imbalance or physical short-circuiting that came with each new face.  
 
Oliver had been her raison d'etre, the driving force behind her BA at UMass Amherst, the Masters from Clark and the doctorate at NYU, all in search of answers and solutions to the whats and whys of lost children...the cruel twists of Fate and physiology that often brought them into the world already damaged, in places where nothing and no one could ever reach them. Oliver was the soul of her crusade, had become the love of her life, because he needed everything she had to give, and she remembered the awful moment she realised he would never stop being the sweet little boy who had filled up most of her life through high school; that more than anything else in her life, it had become important to her for him to be able to stay that way.
 
"Miranda...?"

She shook her head, focused on the face leaning past the door of her office--a Saudi refugee she'd met during her post-grad work in New York City. Small and fierce in the freedoms she'd won by leaving Arabia, Rajiya Barakat was a different kind of crusader with degrees in sociology, Middle Eastern studies and business administration, most grateful for American citizenship because it allowed her fiery activism to flourish unchallenged by the societal constraints of her homeland.  She wore her short-cropped head of dark hair and her blue jeans proudly, regarded trendy trappings with a sneering disdain, and was utterly fearless when it came to standing up to red tape, racism or intolerance of any kind.  She managed the clinic's day-to-day, kept it running smoothly for Miranda and the children.
 
"I knocked a couple of times are you okay?"
 
She had a heart-shaped face and almost-black eyes lit with a watchful, protective wariness that never seemed to waver where her friends and responsibilities were concerned. Miranda shuffled some papers in self-defense, mustered a smile. 
 
"Yeah mostly," she said.  “Come on in, Jiya.”
 
“You guys could've taken the rest of the week off, y'know...we can run the place a few days without you.” 
 
She flung herself down into one of the comfy chairs in front of Miranda's desk, and her eyes went a bit softer than their usual ready-for-action brightness.  “How's Ollie doing?"  
 
Miranda shrugged, laughed uncomfortably. "Oliver's doing Oliver," she said quietly.  "Sometimes it seems like his brain just goes into this savant-like overdrive and he remembers everything. Then he starts to grieve all over again, like the memories are too grown-up for the rest of him. This morning he was fine again." 
 
"So how're you doing, Miranda?”
 
She mulled that question over a couple of times, taking too long to come up with an answer, to where Rajiya leaned forward and started to look worried.
 
"I don't know how I'm doing, Jiya," she said. "No idea, really. Numbed out maybe?  It doesn't matter.  I'm dealing with it, and I can't let losing Lisa get in the way of me being all here for Oliver and everybody else."  
 
Rajiya leaned closer.  "You can and you should if you need to. Everyone here knows the drill, and we're all more than capable of making sure it gets done."
 
"I know that, Jiya, it's not even an issue."
 
"So...?"
 
"It's just that this is my life.  I loved my parents and my brother and my sister, but I got to take care of Ollie because I was the youngest, and then I made the decision to keep on taking care of him.  And after that...I didn't stop loving them when they were alive or after they were gone, but the nature of what I chose to do, by necessity put some kind of distance between us.  I'm gonna cry for Lisa and my mom and dad and my brother some other time.  Right now is right now, and right now I guess I'm all right."      
 
"You're gonna tell me if that changes though..."
 
They got up from their chairs together and met beside the desk, arms encircling each other. 
 
"I promise, Jiya. I swear it.  Thank you."
 
Rajiya spoke in Arabic. "Ealaa alrahab walsaeat daymana ya 'ukhti.  You are welcome always, my sister..."
 
                                                                        3.
 
There was always paperwork, the clinical kind that Rajiya would have done happily if she had decided to get qualified for it with another couple of post-graduate degrees.  Miranda always bitched about having to do it, would have preferred to have had more time working with the kids, but as her office manager had said, the staff she had hand-picked knew the drill, could do the work, and never failed to come to her to discuss every aspect of what they were trying to do.
 
Mark came through her door with his classroom/session reports for the previous week, forever eleventh-hour on the mid-week deadline they all had agreed upon, but every bit as ferocious about their children as Rajiya was about all of them. Six months before, after she'd told him that sleeping together wasn't the best idea if they were going to work together too, he'd moved on, but his charming smile and genuine warmth had never left their relationship so there had been some extra time spent with her...some Lisa stories...a red-and-white bandanna offered when she finally did let some tears out. When he was gone she was thinking about someone else she'd known who was so much just like him, bandanna and all. After Mark came her Oliver...serious...a frown on his face...
 
"Hi Manda I can't remember. What's for lunch today?" 
 
"It's Wednesday, right?"
"I think so."  He leaned over her desk to look at the big desk-blotter calendar with all of her scrawls and notes on it.  "Yeah it's Wednesday...I think..."
 
"Then it's tuna sandwiches with soup."   
 
"Do we have the potato chips and pickles to go with, like always?"
 
Miranda started to smile and then she started to laugh. 
 
"C'mere and gimme a hug, Ollie," she said, standing to get wrapped up in one of his
enthusiastic embraces.
 
"As far as I know we got everything, honey.  What's with all the questions?"
 
He stood away from her, looked out the window.  Got real interested in a pair of chickadees wrangling over seeds in the feeder she'd perched on the outdoor sill.
 
"I just wanted t'make sure," he said, still looking at the birds on the windowsill, but showing signs of relief that making sure had turned out the way it did.
 
"So are you gonna be the one to pick some music for us today, or should I get Mark or Abby t'do that?"
 
He gave her one last squeeze and headed for the door.
 
"Abby picks good stuff," he said.  "See ya later..."
 
                                    *                                  *                                  *
 
Most of the rest of the morning went by quietly.  Phone calls....referrals...parents checking in...after one last call Miranda put the desk phone receiver back in its cradle and eased back from her desk...thinking again...bandannas...a day long gone...
 
She reached down past her feet for her purse on the floor, suddenly frantic that what she suddenly was looking for wouldn't be there even though the last time it had been there when she hadn't been looking for it at all...
 
Two sheets of lined paper carefully torn from a pocket notebook, carefully folded and hidden between her Social Security card and a photograph of Mom and Dad and Paul and Lisa all crowded round her and Oliver at their cottage on Newfound Lake.  Pencilled poetry from a visitor when she was still an undergraduate at Amherst...
 
            Childhood eyes transparent with innocence
            Step lightly sweet child the garden crawls
            Each moment in Life another for Death
            A sunset for my Life with every breath
            Kiss me gently sweet child before sinking
            Your teeth in passion it's all guaranteed
            I dream to be all the wings you need
            Together to fly...together to get high...
            No better way in any world to die
 
The words brought back images...a tall beautiful boy with long black hair and grey eyes flecked with gold...an afternoon spent together...listening to music on the stereo...she had been knitting gloves or a scarf or something for Oliver...he had sat on the floor almost at her feet...told her how pretty she was...seemed sad...the way she had started to feel as they sat in their constrained silences...waiting... 
 
            There are no more heroes in this desperate land
            When they come to lay waste to our garden
            There will be no one between us & them      
            The flowers will sigh one last time
            And then there will be only exile
            And sinful night-roaming under the moon
 
            Elysium is there...waiting for us somewhere.
            Streams swell into rivers to fuck with the sea
            Sunlight is honey...the taste of you in me
 
She remembered how it had all seemed so familiar, how easy it had been to sit there and confide...say things she'd not had time or courage to say to anyone else...and how the look in his eyes had made her feel that she was something precious to him even though they'd only just  met... 
           
            What knowledge have I of saints & patriots?
            What need for a standard to bear
            When Elysium awaits us so wondrously  fair...
            Sweet child with transparent eyes
            Shall we go now across the Bridge of Sighs
            To be running free on golden sand 
            To love and make love hand in hand
 
            Elysium is there...
            Waiting...
 
She folded the papers back into its place in her wallet, and put her wallet back in her purse...
                                                                        4.
 
Just before lunchtime Abigail came roaring into her office, all sorts of hippie-chic with bells sewn into the hems of her vintage-store bells and the distinct aura of Aquarius in her waist-length hair. 
''You gotta come see this, Miranda," she said...grinning...dodging round the desk to grab her hand.
 
"Oliver just did it again," she said...laughing...shaking her head like it was something that happened every day where her brother was concerned. She dragged them out into the hall and down towards the common room where they served meals, had all the group sessions and the big screen television on one wall for after supper...
 
''I was sitting down with the new kid...Jimmy Rossiter...the one come in last Saturday...
right before you...you know... Lisa...?"
 
She stopped in mid-stride halfway down the hall...turned...Miranda said:
 
"It's okay Abby what the hell...?"
 
Abby just said: ''Tiffany Brewer."
 
Who had been with them since the end of the summer...speechless...cowering in the corner of her room never leaving it without hours of reassurance no one was ever sure she had heard.  Abby brought them up short of the common room and pointed... at Oliver... sitting with a thirteen-year old girl...round-faced with big haunted eyes and ragged blonde hair...wrapped up in one of her brother's bear-hugs....
 
"I was talking with Jimmy...talking to Jimmy... you know, our usual trying to find out where the boundaries are...an idea of where to go...
 
"And suddenly I'm hearing this voice I've never heard before and I look over and holy shit it's Tiffany...she's crying, 'Randa...she's sobbing and talking to Ollie...!"
 
"No way!"
 
"Yes fucking yes, Miranda!  She's leaning up against him with his arms around her and she's weeping...crying...wailing...I heard her she said Why do they all go away I hate it when they go away they don't care they just go...
 
"She's been here for months, Abby. Not a sound. What happened?"
 
Abigail shook her head.  "Oliver. I don't know..."
 
 
                                                                        5.
 
"Shit," said Miranda. "What have we done to ourselves that loss can turn some things into life-shattering catastrophes?"
 
Abigail just shook her head.  "How long have we been doing this, Randa?  D'you think  I've figured it out?  Good luck."
 
They sat in Miranda's office, considered the ramifications of retarded...challenged... Oliver doing something they themselves couldn't do, not with years and years of... education...and just sat in Miranda's office, each of them measuring the length and breadth of their own catastrophes.  Years and years of them. They'd been best friends for a long long time.   
 
"Abby when we were at Amherst. D'you remember?  It was like right about now, the middle of winter. I knocked on your door first thing in the morning and you let me sleep in your dorm room for two days..."
 
Abby said:
 
"Never gonna forget.  That sonofabitch Dorn dosed you. A big fucking dose of acid..."
 
Miranda  nodded.  "It was like somebody was trying to tear me out of my skin and chew me up there was this huge empty place in front of me and I was getting sucked down into it to die in all that horrible emptiness...and there was this guy...his name was Joshua... Dorn had brought him back from some dope sell in upstate New York. He saved me Abby...this beautiful boy who didn't know me from a hole in the wall he saved me...stayed with me out in the snow all night and he held me and talked to me and made me tell him stories about Oliver and in the morning he called me Miranda Moon and made sure that there was nothing to hurt me and nobody to carry me away he handed my life back to me, Abby...in the morning...he did...he gave it back to me so I could go on taking care of my baby brother and do this with you and Mark and Jiya..."
 
"I remember..."
 
"Where would Tiffany have gone...who would she have found...where could she have left the hurt if Ollie hadn't been there t'help her leave it behind...?"
 
 "You know I can't tell you that, Randa. I don't have those kind of answers.  My parents would have said God was working in mysterious ways."
 
"We don't need that kind of mystery in our lives."
 
"Preaching t'the choir, girlfriend."
 
"I know.  It just makes me crazy sometimes...the way it almost always comes down to this hit-or-miss equation..."
 
"It happened, Miranda. When it did. It's gotta be good for Tiffany."
 
"I hope so.  Oliver doesn't even realise..."
"Maybe he does, Miranda.  Maybe it doesn't have t'be something consciously recognised by anybody.  What matters is he found a bridge...a way through all the desolation in that girl's heart..."
 
                                    *                                  *                                  *
 
Abigail went back out into the world a couple of minutes later. Miranda was sitting at her desk staring at the chickadees still being pissy with each other...kicking up fluffs of snow on the windowsill their squeaks stealing through the double-paned glass she looked up and Oliver was standing in the doorway.
 
"I'm sorry Manda I was listening," he said apologetically.
 
"It's okay, honey," she said.  "No secrets...never any secrets for us, right? You 're my magic, honey. You're so good. I don't know what me or anybody here could do without you."
 
Oliver looked embarrassed.
 
"I remember that guy Dorn. He had blonde curly hair.  He made you cry a lot."
 
Miranda nodded back.  "He did, Oliver, he most certainly did..."
 
"I didn't know he did that bad thing to you, though."
 
She smiled at him, as hard as she could because he looked worried...because his sense of  Time was as off-kilter as everything else in his brain and it seemed like maybe he was thinking the bad thing had been yesterday...or so recent that he needed to be doing something to make up for it.
 
"It was a long time ago, sweetheart," she said.  "Not something you have to worry about. I'm okay.  And that guy Joshua took good care of me."
 
"I woulda took care of you too." 
 
"I know that, baby," she said.  "You would have liked Joshua.  He would've liked you."
 
"D'you know where he is now?"
 
"No, Ollie, I don't...he had to go home the next day and I never saw him again."
 
"Could you find him maybe...I wanna say thank you."
 
“Why d'you wanna do that, honey?”
 
“Because he saved you when you were gonna die, when you were afraid the dark was gonna swallow you up and take you away...”
 
He stopped...looked up at her with his beautiful innocent face...the eyes of a child...
struggling with the words for one last thought.
 
“Because if you were ever gone, I don't think I would know enough stuff by myself to be here now.”  He leaned over and kissed her cheek.  “I should go see if Tiffany is okay. I told her today we were having tuna fish with soup and potato chips and pickles and if she would come out of her room for lunch I'd sit with her so she wouldn't be scared.”
 
Miranda watched her fifty-five year old baby brother toddle off to save another soul from the darkness.