by Greg Johnson
“And now,” Thorn’s mother announced, gesturing to her husband behind the tarp, “it’s time to play Go Fishing!”
So it went, one game after another just as Thorn’s mother had planned, every child getting party favors and strawberry punch and cookies just as Thorn’s mother had planned, and before he was even quite ready, she’d brought the huge five-layer cake out onto the picnic table, its six big blue candles lighted, “Happy Birthday, Thom,” written across the chocolate icing in pale-blue script. Then Mrs. Sadler and Abby brought the brightly wrapped packages out from the kitchen. Everyone donned their cone-shaped metallic-blue hats and sang the birthday song, which again made Thom feel bashful, with his parents and sister and all the children watching him while they sang (he felt an odd lunge in his stomach when they got to the verse “Happy Birth-day, dear Tho-om”) but soon enough it was over, and Thom was summoned to make a wish and blow out the candles. The other children were giggling and shouting and shoving, but they receded in Thorn’s awareness as he approached the cake, trying to remember what he’d decided to wish for, but again his scalp was tingling, his head was spinning, he couldn’t feel the ground underneath him as he approached the gigantic cake with its six candles lighted just for him. He couldn’t remember, he could not remember, so he closed his eyes and pretended to wish and opened his mouth and pursed his lips—he’d practiced this, lying in bed last night—and blew.
Then the chaos of cake and ice cream, and one by one he opened the presents, always remembering to stare at the tag and say thanks to the person who’d brought it, remembering to look surprised and pleased even if it was something he already had (a Batman coloring book, a kaleidoscope from Toys “R” Us), and as he opened the presents Abby and his mother gathered the torn wrappings and folded them neatly into a garbage bag, his mother setting aside the store-bought bows for the box where she kept her Christmas ribbons. Before Thom had absorbed what had happened, and certainly before he was ready, it was six o’clock. The four mothers assigned to pick up the children arrived promptly: the sixteen children, shirttails and hair bows askew, mouths smeared with chocolate, cried “Happy Birthday!” a few more times as the six adults (talking forgettable grown-up chatter over the noise) coaxed them out the front door and down the sidewalk.
Thom, his vision still throbbing with the bright shrieking flame-like colors and the frantic happy cries and dizzying motion of the party, stared at the front door. It had closed a final time.
His parents and sister stood with him in the suddenly hushed foyer, like actors stranded on an unfamiliar, poorly lit stage.
His mother said, “Whew!” His father gave a gentle laugh, but Abby was staring at the door, too, her face a bit long, forlorn.
No one looked at Thom.
They spent the rest of the afternoon out back, Thom and Abby going through his gifts, playing briefly with the good ones and making fun of the bad ones (there was a cheap balsa-wood airplane: “That must have set the Vaughns back at least ninety-nine cents,” Thorn’s mother laughed), and around seven o’clock his parents, after they’d finished the clean-up, had settled into their metal lounge chairs, his mother lighting one Bel-Air after another, occasionally giving out an exhausted sigh. Both his parents sipped leftover strawberry punch spiked with vodka. Thorn’s father made a face when he first tasted the drink—“This is too damned sweet, Loo; why don’t you make me a real drink?”—but since Thorn’s mother seemed unwilling to move, he finished the punch, then poured them both more vodka, to which he added more punch from the plastic pitcher, and he drank that one, too. When they finished playing with the gifts, Abby went inside and made two more plates of ice cream and cake for her and Thom, and as their parents sipped their punches, Thom and Abby sat eating quietly on top of the picnic table, their feet planted on the bench side by side.
To Thom, everything felt different. Already when he thought about the party, he could not remember much of it, or else he remembered the parts he hadn’t liked (the boring half-hour when the kids had lined up to go fishing; the embarrassing moment when everyone stared at him, singing the birthday song) instead of the parts that had excited him. He could remember the endless days when he’d looked forward to the party, his chest aching, his head reeling, but then the party had come, gone. So quickly. He had pestered his mother and Verna with questions, he’d lain awake at night, sleepless with longing, imagining the huge lighted birthday cake and the glossy, mysterious packages, he’d worried that his friends would forget to come or that it would rain or that his Grandma Sadler (who’d just gotten home from the hospital, after a gall bladder operation) would die and his parents would cancel the party altogether, but after all that fretting and wondering and thinking and dreaming and looking forward, looking forward, the party itself had glittered a moment and then passed, exactly like a candle so carefully lighted but then extinguished in one breath, and even as he sat beside his sister eating leftover ice cream and cake (which he’d forgotten to taste during the party, and which now that he was full tasted doughy and wet and sickly sweet) everything was sinking to normal, the afternoon was darkening; soon his mother would return to kitchen and start dinner, an ordinary dinner, and Thom would merely be a year older and nothing would have changed, except now there was nothing to look forward to; nothing to think about at night; no reason to count the days, wishing they would hurry past; no reason to think about much of anything, one way or the other.
It didn’t seem fair.
Yet the afternoon waned and dusk began falling and no one seemed ready for the day to end. His parents sat on their patio chairs, gazing out into the woods behind the house, chatting idly. Thorn’s father kept pouring little dabs of the vodka in his glass, then refilling it with punch—he’d stopped complaining the drink was too sweet—and though his mother had stopped drinking, she kept lighting cigarettes one after another, her smoke fading upwards into the darkening air in a way Thom liked to watch, his eyes straining to separate the thinning smoke from the delusive blue-gray sky spreading above the roof of their house and visible in chinks through the trees, the stilled oak and magnolia leaves. After finishing their ice cream and cake, Thom and Abby had stayed at the picnic table, slapping at flies and mosquitoes, massaging their itchy bare legs, passing Thorn’s opened gifts back and forth for inspection and reinspection, until finally Abby got tired of the mosquito bites and went inside to do homework. So Thom took the balsa-wood plane Danny Vaughn had given him and, abruptly filled with energy, started running up and down the stretch of grass in front of the patio, making airplane noises—“Rrrhmmmm, ssssstt!”—and occasionally stopping to send the plane into the air for brief unsuccessful flights.
“Be sure you don’t send it over the fence!” his mother called. “I’m not in the mood to go next door to the Hendersons and fetch that cheap little plane.”
His father laughed, briefly. “Humph.”
“…so, why was she crying?” his mother said.
Thom picked up the airplane from where it had crashed nose first into the azalea bush near the fence; he pretended to examine it, adjust the wing piece, but really he was eavesdropping. Halfway through Pin the Tail on the Donkey, the little Korean girl, Rita Kim, had plopped onto the den sofa, on the end opposite Mr. Sadler and Abby. Her face had crumpled, and she’d raised both hands to hide herself. Thom had glimpsed this from the sides of his eyes but had decided not to pay attention. Fortunately, Rita Kim was one of those noiseless criers; she would hang her head, and her shoulders would shake, her face cupped in both hands, but that was all. Abby had gone over and put her arm around Rita’s shoulders, and they’d whispered for a few minutes, and the next time Thom noticed Rita, she was happily fishing in the backyard, giving her gap-toothed grin as she hauled in a tiny blond Miss America doll wrapped in plastic.
Thorn’s father shrugged. “Her dog died, Abby said. A few days ago. Little girl can’t stop thinking about it.”
“Aww. Poor thing,” Thorn’s mother said.
So Rita K
im’s dog had died. What kind was it? How old was it? Why did it die? Thom had many questions, but he kept fiddling with the plane, his head bowed. He didn’t want to hear his mother’s answers. Last Christmas he’d asked for a puppy, and that was exactly why his mother said no. Something would happen to the dog. It would get sick. It would get run over. It would die and break Thorn’s heart. “Dogs and cats,” Thorn’s father had explained, gently, “don’t live as long as we do.”
Thom had trouble standing still—he had so much energy left over from the party, from all the ice cream and cake!—but he wanted to hear what his parents were saying. He started running again with the plane, making soft noises to himself, staying within a few feet of the patio where his mother and father had become shapeless blue-gray blurs in the dusk. The only lights were the soft-glowing yellow rectangles from the house, and the occasional flash of the fireflies that had invaded the yard, and at the patio table the bright crimson glow, every few seconds, of his mother’s cigarette as she smoked.
“Well, it happens,” his father said flatly. Thom heard the chink of his glass against the glass-topped table.
“What happens?” his mother said.
“Dogs die. That’s what.”
Again his father gave that mirthless laugh. Humph. Thom zoomed back and forth with the plane. Rrrrhmmmm. Sssstt. The fireflies winked on and off.
“Oh, that’s nice,” his mother said. “Such a nice thing to say.”
A brief silence during which Thom listened hard, and then his father said, “Well, it’s the goddamn truth. None of us gets out of this alive.”
Thom wished Abby hadn’t gone inside. They could get a Miracle Whip jar and catch fireflies like they did last summer, punching holes in the lid with an ice pick so the bugs could breathe. Soon it would be too dark for that.
“That’s nice, too,” his mother said. Her voice sounded damp, unhappy. “Why would you say such a thing?”
His father’s glass clinked against the table.
“Why?” his mother asked. “Why would you?”
Thom started careening around the yard, directionless. Feeling dizzy, he stopped a few feet from his mother, lifted the plane, aimed, and threw it with all his strength. In the faint glow of moon-washed sky, he glimpsed the plane sailing over the fence into the Hendersons’ yard.
Scraping of chair legs against the concrete patio.
“Thom?” his mother said. “What are you doing?”
Thom turned and ran to his mother; up close, he could see her face looking tired, confused. And frightened. Her eyes still moist. But her cheeks were dry, so impulsively he kissed them, first one and then the other. Then he laughed. But his mother didn’t laugh. He felt the vague push of her palms against his shoulders.
“Stop being silly, Thom. Your mouth is all sticky from the ice cream.”
She pressed one hand against her glass, then rubbed at her cheek with her wet palm; she dried it with the napkin.
Thorn’s father stayed silent.
Quickly, Thom retreated back into the yard, far enough that his parents could not see him. They’d started collecting their glasses and pitcher, the ashtray.
“I’m getting eaten alive out here,” his mother said to no one in particular. But as she neared the back door she stopped and called out, “Thom?”
He didn’t answer.
‘Thom?” Her voice sounded wobbly, uncertain. “Happy birthday, honey…”
His father had gone inside.
“Thom…?”
He didn’t answer.
That’s when she came at him, her large blurry face floating dreamlike through the dark, her moist red lips puckered for a kiss, slightly parted. Just in time he turned his head, and the kiss landed on his cheek, not his lips, and it was a messy kiss.
A wet, greasy kiss. A sticky kiss.
His cheek tingled, the skin along his arms and neck seemed to crawl. The sweetish fruity odor of her breath filled his nostrils.
“Happy birthday, honey,” she muttered again, vaguely, but he didn’t answer, didn’t even glance in her direction. He sensed her quick retreat, the absence of warmth. He let out his breath, relieved.
She’d stopped a few yards away. She cleared her throat. “Don’t stay out much longer, you hear? And be sure to bring your presents inside.”
He knew that in a few seconds she would think to turn on the backyard floodlights, so he could see to collect the gifts. He dreaded the moment when this would happen.
He stood quietly in the yard, his ankles itching from the mosquito bites. They were eating him alive. None of us gets out of this alive. Happy birthday, honey. He didn’t yet know that words, even good strong words like friends, would never again have as much power to thrill, enliven, console him. He saw the reddish aureole of his mother’s hair at the kitchen window; she was washing dishes, just as she had washed away his kiss.
Around him the fireflies were winking on, off; on and off. As if lighting his path to the future.
He longed to race inside the house and wash his face, but first he waited there in the yard until the darkness was complete and the fireflies had vanished. He turned from the house toward the black woods, and when he waved his hand before his face, Thom could see nothing. He wasn’t even there.
After half an hour, as the crowd swelled and the buzz of conversation grew louder, Thom felt uneasy, for the atmosphere was that of a cocktail party, as though everyone had forgotten why they were here.
At least there wasn’t the cheerful distraction of food, the lubrication of drinking; many of the clustered groups scattered through the park’s worn grassy stretches had a subdued, earnest quality, though Thom suspected they weren’t talking about Connie. Many were local activists who’d come here to network, to schmooze, having known Connie slightly, if at all; a few, he suspected, were “memorial service addicts,” who simply showed up at any service like this. But Thom drew a deep breath. He tried not to feel judgmental. Around him a large group had gathered, so large that he’d been able to absent himself from the bright unruly recollections of Connie they’d begun swapping back and forth, as though competing to offer the most colorful memory, the most outrageous anecdote. Pace and Warren stood closest to Thom, and Reginald and James had joined the group, James’s proprietary arm slipped around Reginald’s waist; Alex and Randy had arrived with their usual airy greetings and air kisses, cell phones at-the-ready on their belts. To Thorn’s surprise Valerie Patten had come rushing up, too, effusive with relief that she wasn’t late and introducing everyone—at long last—to her husband, “Martin Luttrell,” a bashful sandy-haired man who shook hands vaguely, not meeting anyone’s eyes. There were a few others, too, mostly friends Thom hadn’t seen since his Christmas party. But everyone had a Connie story, and they traded them with a Connie-like zest, as if somehow they must compensate for his gaping, unaccountable absence.
Like Thom, Warren stayed abstracted from all this, though he laughed politely as Pace recalled one of Connie’s doomed romances.
“Remember that kid he idolized from the gym, the one who had such an angel face?” Pace harrumphed. “A waiter at Mick’s, but Connie said he had the body of a Greek boy by Michelangelo—said he was twenty-five but looked sixteen.”
“Oh, I remember him,” Reginald said. “Andrew. The one Connie was always following into the shower room, hoping to get a glimpse.”
Pace said, “Right! But the boy was so modest, he wore his towel until the second he stepped behind the shower curtain, so poor Connie caught only the tantalizing flash of his buns!”
“I think I remember this story,” Valerie said, seeming eager to say something. “I think he told me this one.”
Beside her, Martin Luttrell wore a polite but vaguely constipated expression.
Pace said, “He told you, Val? About Connie finally getting himself invited over to the boy’s place, and then when they got down to business, the boy pulled something out from under the bed…?”
“Um, maybe I’m thinking
of a different story,” Valerie said.
“Oh yeah, I remember!” Alex said, with his cackling laugh. “An economy-sized can of Crisco!”
The others laughed, shaking their heads.
“What’s worse,” Pace said, “the can was almost empty.”
“Quêl dommage!” Alex cried, mimicking Connie’s eye-rolling look of outrage. “So much for my choirboy! My Greek angel!”