She finished up in the bedroom and moved into the kids’ room, humming softly to herself. Robbie’s eighth birthday party was this afternoon; she had to get the whole house ready for the onslaught. She made the beds, shuffled most of the toys off the middle of the floor, sat Robbie’s big stuffed clown doll up in his rocking chair, put away the clothes, went to feed the parakeet . . . and found the bird dead on the bottom of its cage.
“Oh, Tweetie, poor little twit,” she addressed the small creature, half scolding, half sad. She reached into the cage, pulled the bird out, carried it into the bathroom, and held it ceremoniously over the open toilet. “Just like the Vikings, Tweetie—carried out to sea.”
“What are you doing to Tweetie?” Carol Anne asked curiously. She stood in the doorway, watching her mother.
“Oh, honey, I didn’t see you there. C’mere.”
Carol Anne joined her mother at the toilet. Diane had special love for her youngest—the child was wise beyond her years, and had a naive fearlessness about life that was enviable.
“Honey, Tweetie’s dead. He died this morning.”
“What does that mean, Mommy?”
“It means . . . he’s sort of sleeping, like this. Only he’ll never wake up.”
“Like Grampa?”
“Uh huh, just like Grampa.”
“Then shouldn’t we bury him? I don’t think he likes the water.”
Diane smiled. “Let’s bury him in the backyard. Then you can go visit him when you miss him.”
Carol Anne thought that seemed like a pretty good plan. Her mother helped her find a cigar box full of buttons, which they emptied, then put Tweetie inside, and marched single file out to the backyard in almost formal procession. They decided near the night-blooming jasmine would be best, so it would smell nice for Tweetie. Carol Anne also put half a Twinkie in the box in case he got hungry, and covered him with one of her socks in case it got cold, and included a Polaroid of the whole family, in case Tweetie woke up and got lonely.
“I know you said they don’t wake up,” Carol Anne said with considered seriousness, almost with secrecy, “but maybe he will.”
“Maybe so,” Diane agreed. She looked at her child with unmodified love, and kissed her on the forehead.
They took turns digging the soft black earth with Carol Anne’s beach shovel. When they reached a depth of one foot, they lowered the cigar box, then covered it over.
Robbie watched this ritual from the top of the old oak tree that gnarled outside his bedroom window. It was one of the few old trees in the whole area, but wouldn’t be getting much older—it was almost dead. Twisted, black, and massive, with only a few green branches still growing near the top. Steve kept meaning to cut it down, but never found the time. Meanwhile, Robbie had appropriated it for his own use, and, as with any self-respecting seven-year-old, that use involved a lot of climbing.
He’d in fact developed a rather complex relationship with the giant oak. It told him secrets about the earth; he told it about his adventures with pirates. It contained a hidden door to an underground city at times. At other times, it was a great monster god from Jupiter, with wild flame-blackened arms, waiting to be released from its spell, and only Robbie knew the words to free it. It almost always heard Robbie’s thoughts; sometimes the thoughts made the tree angry; sometimes they laughed together.
Occasionally—as now—the tree was the living mast of an alien ship that sailed slowly beneath the ground. Robbie sat balanced in the crow’s-nest of the highest branches, viewing the journey ahead, the dramas below.
In the front yard he could see his father puttering in a father-way. That was good. Out back, Mom and Carol Anne were burying a box near the far corner. He would ask Carol Anne about it later—they were probably making an offering to the plant-people, or maybe hiding something they didn’t want Dad to see, or maybe the box was a treasure. He’d ask Carol Anne later.
Down on the porch, he watched his big sister, Dana, sitting on the floor with two of her girl friends, looking at the pictures in a fan magazine and giggling and whispering and making hand gestures of the sort he knew they shouldn’t be making. He couldn’t understand what they found so interesting in those magazines; it just made Dana mad when he asked.
Over on the next block, he saw Bill Moone set off a cherry bomb in Murphy’s garbage can, and run behind the fence. Everything stopped for a moment at the explosion, then resumed its measured pace. Murphy came running out, but only shook his head and went back inside.
Bill Moone would be coming to Robbie’s party later that afternoon—they could laugh secretly about this one together: the baffled expression on old Murphy’s face, the great way a cherry bomb in a trash can sounded just like an M-80 . . . and only Bill and Robbie would know that Bill had done it. Robbie smiled like an astronaut with all systems Go.
Three blocks away, at the top of the nearest hill, two kids started a skateboard race—in slow motion, at that distance. Robbie lifted his eyes a fraction and peered beyond them, to the horizon. Dark clouds obscured the sky. They looked cold.
Storm coming in.
Diane had things pretty much ready for the party by a couple of hours later—crêpe paper hung, tail-less donkey on the wall, favors on the dining room table, virgin cake as a centerpiece. Dana and her friends were recruited to do some of the decorating. The request was met initially with grand protestations from Dana; her girl friends acquiesced easily, however (it wasn’t
their
brother’s party, after all), so Dana could do little but look martyred and hang crêpe.
Robbie got ready early—showered, hair combed, clothes neat—so he could devote the extra time to getting things just right: the right toys available, the rest cached away. He had an urgent whispered conference with his mother explaining that Carol Anne would be allowed to join the party only if it could be assured she wouldn’t follow Bill Moone around all the time, bothering him. Diane gave her assurance.
Before too long the party guests started arriving—some alone, some dropped off by a parent; all cleaned and brushed and bearing brightly wrapped gifts. Several parents stayed: a couple of moms to help Diane orchestrate the chaos; a few dads to watch the football game in the den.
The game was well into the first quarter by the time the party was underway, though, so some disgruntled fathers were forced to miss one or two key plays during the shuttling of the revelers. Jim Shaw’s father was the last to arrive, carrying two cartons of Michelob Lite and a giant bag of Nacho Doritos.
“What’d I miss?” Shaw demanded, pulling a beer from the brown paper bag.
“Sshh!”
“Haden fumbled!”
“Sacked!”
“Oakland’s bringing out Bahr.”
“Three more! Jesus! I was ahead on points when I left home, now I’m pushing.”
“Sshhhh!”
In the next room, the volume of the birthday celebration was rising exponentially. Pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey and clothespin-in-the-bottle established the proper tone of frenzied giddiness, but it wasn’t until musical chairs that the first tears came—Carol Anne’s, when she lost her seat to Robbie in the third go-around.
Diane decided that meant a critical mass of excitement was being reached, and activity needed to be somewhat diffused. So she started everyone off on the Treasure Hunt. Each person received his own special secret clue, and was turned loose—anywhere on the ground floor, inside or out, Dad’s den excluded. Lots of little treasures, one big prize. They all oohed and aahed as the clues were passed out, and the hunt was on.
Carol Anne couldn’t read the clues, so she was made Mom’s Special Helper in the kitchen, for which she got her own Special Prize—a Lady Doctor Kit, complete with stethoscope, tongue depressor, thermometer, hat, and note pad. She spent the next fifteen minutes listening to the hearts of Diane and the other moms, while the furtive skittering of pint-sized treasure-seekers could be heard all over the nether regions of the house, punctuated by an occasional squeal of discovery.
Carol Anne soon became bored, though, so she meandered unobtrusively into the den, where the other party was going on, and sat in Steve’s lap.
“Daddy, wanna hear my dream?”
“Not now, sweetheart, Daddy’s busy watching the game.”
“What’s Haden think he’s doin’?” raged Shaw.
“Gettin’ creamed is what.”
It sounded pretty boring to Carol Anne, so she left, wearing her stethoscope, and headed upstairs to see if Dana wanted to play.
In the den, the game started getting really exciting.
“Look at that Dennard run!” Steve marveled.
“Lester Hayes! Fuckin’ Lester Hayes is there! He’s there! He’s . . .”
Out of nowhere, the channel changed, all by itself, to “Mister Rogers.” The fans jumped up in shock and dismay.
Steve ran over to the back window and screamed out: “Tuthill—you asshole!”
“Turn it back! Quick!” begged Shaw in baffled outrage.
“Sorry, guys,” Steve muttered, returning to the set. “When my neighbor uses his remote . . . he’s on my same frequency.” He manually turned the channel changer back to football.
Diane stepped in sternly. “Okay, which asshole’s talking like that in front of twenty kids?”
They gave her deferential attention with one eye, keeping the other on the game.
“But Tuthill—” Steve began to protest. Diane stalked out, her point made.
A second later, Mister Rogers was singing again. Everyone groaned. Shaw actually wrung his hands. Steve walked resolutely over to the window, pointed his remote control box, and fired.
From across the yard, a distant voice roared angrily. “Don’t start, Freeling!”
Steve stormed out the sliding glass door to the patio at the side of the house, and yelled over his fence to a man standing in the back doorway of the house behind them. “We got a game going on over here, Tuthill!”
“My kids wanna watch ‘Mister Rogers’!” Tuthill yelled back.
“I don’t care what you’re watching, as long as you show a little mercy with that thing!”
“Move your set!” neighbor Tuthill’s voice rang out before he slammed his back door.
“Move yours!”
“Mister Rogers” went on again just as Steve reentered the den. The assembled moaned; Shaw tossed a handful of Doritos in the air. Furiously, Steve aimed, and fired his remote once more. A muffled “goddammit” could be heard from the Tuthills.
Carol Anne, meanwhile, made it upstairs and slipped into Dana’s room. Dana lay prone on the floor, having a Serious Conversation with Heather and Serena.
“Hi, Dana, wanna hear my dream?” Carol Anne asked.
“Hi, squirt. Not right now; we’re talking.”
“Can I listen to your heart?”
“I haven’t got a heart, punk.”
“What are you talking about?”
“How gross this place is.”
“I don’t think it’s gross.”
“That’s because everything about it has the mentality of a five-year-old—which is fine if you’re five, squirt, but it’s a drag for the big kids.” She sat up, unbuttoned her shirt. “Okay, here, you can listen to my heart.”
Robbie suddenly burst into the room with a clue in his hand. Dana closed her shirt and shouted. “Robbie! Mom!”
“Jeez, take it easy, I thought the treasure was here. It’s only you trolls, though.” He ran out as she threw a shoe.
“Come on, let’s go to the drugstore.”
The three girls got up and left.
Carol Anne wandered down the hall toward her parents’ room.
Robbie sat on the stairs, studying his clue:
Between the frill and the grill
. He thought at first it had meant between the frilly apron on the living room couch and the grill of the heating vent against the wall. But there’d been nothing around there. He’d looked all around the kitchen grill, even though there were no frills there at all. Then he’d gone up to Dana’s room, which was full of frills, but of course had no grills—and anyway, creepy Dana was there. So now what? Bill Moone already
had
his prize—a great ray gun that sprayed red light with D batteries. So where was this frill and grill stuff?
The barbecue grill outside! That was it! It was right next to that real frilly tablecloth Mom dumped over a pile of bricks way out back. He jumped up and ran downstairs, tore out the side door, and across the grassy yard. Some kids had found their prizes, and were gloating smugly in the living room; others were still hunting all over the house, up-ending pillows, looking under rugs; others had given up, and now either played or moped. Robbie made it out to the grill, looked inside it, behind it, under it. Nothing. He went to the cloth over the bricks, peeled it back, poked around between the gritty cinderblocks until . . . wait . . . yes, over there, wedged in among those three—with the excitement of impending triumph, he reached into the little cove, put his hand around the object . . . and jumped back with a yelp. Something had bitten him.
He looked at his hand, more startled than anything else. His index finger was a bit red, and still stung. He peered back into the dark collection of upright bricks at the obscure thing—whatever it was. There . . . did it move? Robbie picked up the barbecue poker in his right hand, raised the poker over his head, kicked away one low wall of bricks, and jumped back.
It was the clown doll.
His old stuffed clown doll, grinning devilishly, a little too broadly. It gave Robbie the creeps to look at it now. He backed off.
This didn’t make sense. Was this his prize? Couldn’t be. Besides, the clown had been up in the bedroom just before the party; Robbie had seen it there; he was certain. Sitting right up in the rocking chair. Now it grinned at him from a funny angle, caught between two bricks.
For a brief moment, Robbie’s teeth chattered.
Then he heard his mother call him from the house, so he turned and ran back in.
The party continued. Prizes were passed out, even to those who hadn’t discovered their own. The Opening of Presents took place on the living room floor, with only one serious squabble developing over first use of the Malibu Speed Raceway Set. E. Buzz came in from his Frisbee marathon and barked a lot.
Finally the main event: the cake, the candles, the singing, the blowing-out, the paper plates, the plastic forks. The traditional food fight. It was during the earliest tactical maneuvers of saturation cake-bombing that they all heard the screams. Coming from upstairs.