The Candy House(76)
At the mention of laundry and socks, Mom’s wandering attention visibly engages, so Dad pushes on and the rest of us join in: My pale green hoodie isn’t in my closet and Molly’s hand puppets have holes in the tops and Mom hasn’t called the Seattle Seahawks to see if they’ll sign Brian’s jersey and return it if she includes a preposted envelope and our burger buns weren’t toasted and she hasn’t bought chocolate chips to make blondies for Molly’s Girl Scout party and she’s missed two vet appointments and now Fizzy hasn’t been spayed and it seems like she might be in heat and we’re missing a lightbulb in the downstairs bathroom and there aren’t any double-A batteries for the Wii remotes and the Ping-Pong table is sagging and wasn’t she going to get the lawn guy to take a look at those yellow patches, and wasn’t she going to figure out where those three screws Molly found on the kitchen floor originally came from? And the kitchen counters are supposed to be resealed every six months—has that happened? Because they’re staining more easily when we spill dark liquids on them like coffee or berry juice, and we’re all out of cheese and low on kitty litter and the sewing basket is getting kind of full and the wood glue she used to help Brian make that ramp for science class hasn’t held, they should have used nails like he told her in the first place and could they repair it with real nails tonight?
Mom sits up straight in her chair, her eyes dilated. “Yes,” she says. “We can.”
* * *
“It’s two years since she threw out that lovely husband of hers,” Mom says when the invitation arrives. “That’s something to celebrate?”
“You have no idea whether she threw him out,” Dad says. “Maybe he stormed out. Maybe she’s having this party to reward herself after two rough years.”
“Believe me, he was pushed out. And that so-called brother of hers is behind it.”
“You are not a credible source.”
But a day or two later, Dad is the one who returns to the topic while Mom is reorganizing the kitchen cupboards and I’m doing homework on the computer in the study.
“Noreen, in light of all that has transpired,” he says, “I think it is essential that we go.”
“Go?”
“To Stephanie’s party.”
“I should go?” Mom asks.
“That is what I mean by ‘we.’?”
“Bruce, can’t you see that this is a trap?”
“It concerns me when you speak in that way.”
“You should be concerned!”
“It concerns me not only because it is delusional, but because we tend to project our own states of mind onto other people. So the fact that you believe our neighbors may be plotting against you suggests that you may be plotting against them.”
“Electrifying our fence will only hurt them if they touch it,” Mom says.
“You are not electrifying our fence.”
“Not yet—I need to read a little more about electrostatic energy,” Mom says. “But I’ve bought all the materials.”
Dad shuts his eyes—the equivalent, for Dad, of burying his face in his hands.
“You go,” Mom says. “The kids and I will stay home.”
“No, Mom,” I call to her from the office, where I’ve been eavesdropping. “We’re going. Our friends will be there.”
“You call them friends, Hannah,” Mom lashes out, confronting me from the doorway with hands on hips. “But your connection to them is situational. Years from now you’ll look back and marvel at what you could have seen in most of these people.”
“You’re probably right,” I say, because Mom’s predictions have turned out to be right a surprising number of times. “But in three weeks, when the party is, they’ll still be our friends.”
* * *
Stephanie’s cocktail party is on a warm evening in mid-June, close to the end of the school year. My AP exams are done and the scores haven’t come in yet and the sky is still pale summer blue. I’ve always loved parties with every age included, even before my friends and I started getting drunk alongside the parents. Here it is, the world that made me: a fantasy I get to believe in for one more year, according to Mom. This, too, is a fairy tale, and after I grow up, these parties will become part of the lost mythical land of my childhood.
Mom waits for us at the kitchen table wearing a black dress with big white polka dots—an odd choice for a person who claims not to want to be noticed. She holds a seltzer bottle in each hand.
Dad comes downstairs in one of the dapper bow ties he always wears to parties. “I’m guessing they have seltzer,” he tells Mom.
“He may be serving,” Mom says. “And I will not accept a drink from that man.”
All of us leave our house through the front door as if we’re walking to church. I go ahead with Dad, our arms linked. We descend our pebbled driveway and then turn back up the white paving stones that lead to the Salazars’ front door.
“We could have just climbed over the fence,” Mom says. Dad gives her a severe look, and she smiles. “Kidding.”
The front door is open. People are milling around just inside it, the women in bright summer dresses, the men in seersucker shorts or patterned golf pants, holding gin and tonics. They all work in the city, and everyone knows which ones are richest. We’ll never be rich-rich, according to Mom, because lawyers can only bill by the hour. “But when the bubble bursts, and I’m guessing it’ll be soon,” she’s been saying lately, “your father will still have a job.”