Jenni Fagan - The Sunlight Pilgrims

— I don’t know why you’re keeping ash from some old fire, Dylan. You need to throw it out — it feeds the soil — or get an ash bin!

— What?

— Ash: why are you keeping it in the cupboard? It’s okay, I just threw it over your lawn. God knows, your ratty grass will need it when the snow melts.

Dylan straightens all the way to his full height.

His face is wrong.

— What?

When he stands up like that everything seems to shrink around him and she has a bad, bad feeling; even her mum is reaching up with her hand over her mouth, a mixture of shock on her face and trying not to laugh.

— I’m only helping to tidy. What is your major malfunction? Stella asks.

Stella goes to get the second tub of ashes and he strides over with one step, looks out of the door to where ash is scattered across the snow.

— You could say Thank you for being helpful, Stella, you’re welcome!

— Stella!

— What?

She peers in between the two of them at the front door and there are smudges of grey all across the snow on his lawn. It dusts the outline of a few remaining thistle stumps and the wind has carried it across the path. Ida walks through it with her two children and gives them a wave, and Stella is the only one who waves back because the adults are acting strange, again.

— Which one was it? Constance asks.

— It’s Vivienne, he says.

— What’s Vivienne?

— You just scattered my mother across the garden, he says.

They stand quietly for a full minute.

— What a way to go, she says.

— It’s not funny, Stella!

— I’m sorry — I’m nervous. I didn’t know! I get funny when I’m nervous, and what was she doing in a Tupperware tub? I guess if that’s your mum, then I take it this Carte D’Or tub is your gran?

He takes the tub out of her hands.

— Aye.

— Why didn’t you keep them in an urn?

— The urns wouldn’t fit in my suitcase, he snaps.

— One down, one to go? she tries.

— Get back home right now, Stella, I will deal with you when I get there. It’s not funny!

— You just scattered Vivienne across the lawn, he says again.

Stella is scared now.

Dylan doesn’t look right.

He looks limp.

There are tears in his eyes and this isn’t how he wanted to let his mum go, and she is crying now too and she didn’t mean it, and her mother is resealing the ice-cream tub and placing it carefully on a high shelf.

— I was wondering why you had taken ashes from the bonfire? I thought you must have taken them from the bonfire. I don’t know what I was thinking. Why did you put your mum in a Tupperware box?

— It’s not her — it’s the fucking ashes! he shouts.

— Don’t shout at her! Constance snaps.

— I didn’t mean it, Dylan says.

— I was trying to help! Fuck both of you! Stella hollers and runs out, slamming the door behind her.

DYLAN SITS on his flowery armchair with a nip glass and a bottle of whisky. It is not good whisky. It isn’t smoky or peaty, but it is very, very strong. It is strong enough to burn his throat all the way down, so he doesn’t care that the wood-stove is just bits of metal laid out on his living-room floor and in front of him on the table there is one empty Tupperware box and right now, while nobody can see him, he is hugging an ice-cream tub.

Dylan rolls a cigarette very, very carefully because he is quite drunk and feeling more okay, the drunker he gets. He raises another glass to Vivienne, downs a neat whisky and stoats out onto his back porch to have a smoke. They are up there or they’re nowhere, or all the way up there! He sways. Look at those stars! No answers. Just silence. Vivienne saying nothing even now, just a completely unconcerned canopy of stars above him and all those moon-craters stand out starkly silver, like moon-mountains or white seas, but they are actually seas of lava. He raises his hand and sways. He KNOWS this! They had a moon-season at Babylon a few years ago. He watched every film made about the moon and he only picked the best ones, no matter what their customer-satisfaction feedback forms said, and what’s more he watched them all over the space of one week. ONE WEEK! From here only three of those seas are clear — Mare Humorum, Nubium and Imbrium, where Apollo landed.

His garden is only lit from the moon and the synthetic yellow spilling out of his windows. Most of the caravans are dark or dimly lit windows behind curtains, and Constance has not come back. He scoops up some snow. Don’t eat yellow snow, but even more so — don’t eat GREY snow! There is no point in trying to save those ashes. They are scattered too far and at some point winter will pass and Vivienne will be slush. Dirty snow is the most depressing thing in the world as well, especially when it has stones in it, gravel and maybe a wee stain from a dog. Dylan takes another drink of whisky.

— Well, Mum, I can’t say I did you proud on the send-off!

He slurs.

The stars are totally uninterested.

For the rest of his life dirty slush will make him feel guilty.

He could go back inside or he can just stand here and sway instead. Swaaaayyy. It is such a great word. It seems important to go through all the things he knows about the moon. 1. It is white except for when it’s yellow. 2. It is far away. He snorts at this concise inventory and imagines putting it on a survey for dimlos and desperadoes, but that is not all he knows at all — oh no — he knows loads of moon shit. He is the moon man, but he’s never going to get to marry a woman who polished the moon because his cousin has some toxic hold on her. He reels. The sketchbook is flat out on the deck and that horrible family tree. What it means. What Gunn had to go through. His grandmother! He feels himself crushing the glass in his hand. If he was in a pub quiz on the moon he would fucking nail it, even if he was the only one on his team. Team Moonshine. Constance should be sitting in on it with him. Mr and Mrs Moonshine. If they ever get together and rent a hotel, that’s what he’ll sign them in with. His knowledge of the moon is going to impress her — he can’t believe he’s not shared it before now; so her older guy stuffed some rabbits and put some costume jewellery on them — whoopdee-doo! Her younger guy travels all round the world. So-fucking-what! Dylan MacRae, the greatest projectionist that ever lived, is right here all the way from Babylon. A boy who was made to butcher a calf in a cellar at the age of twelve (and spent three hours puking up afterwards and who has never been able to eat a burger since then). Yup — he is the man! Dylan staggers forward and glares up at the stars. Constance Fairbairn is the most infuriating woman he has met and what she doesn’t know yet is that he can tell her anything she wants to know about old moon-face up there.

He should probably go and tell her right now?

An owl calls out nearby and another calls back and he takes another hit.

The world spins obligingly.

There are several seas of lava on the moon and the others are called Tranquillitatis, Fecunditatis, Crisium, Nectaris and Serenitatis, each preceded by Mare. The moon is also a satellite that was — he sways on the steps — it WAS originally a part of the earth but it broke away — the earth was so enamoured with her own beauty that she created a mirror to light up her crevices in the night — to send moon-glades as adornments to her earthly mother — she was something cooler and clearer, and more than willing to play rival to the earth’s much larger sun.

He’s going to marry a moon-polisher.

He’ll write her a song.

Make her a tiny little paper bird.

They’ll have three goats in a yard outside a barn they built themselves.