Shine Shine Shine (22 page)

At lunchtime, Sunny received an e-mail reminding her that the annual neighborhood craft show, which she had helped to organize, would be happening later on in the afternoon. The e-mail subject header was “Don’t Forget!” The last line in the e-mail promised mimosas. Sunny frowned. Would she still be going to the neighborhood craft show? What if her mother died right in the middle of it, and she had to run out to the hospital? What if Maxon fell out of the sky and she had to go catch him? What if Bubber had a breakthrough, started reciting prime numbers? She would want to video that. What if she got a huge contraction and spewed amniotic fluid all over the wide-plank oak-finish farmhouse floor of the party host? Sunny smoothed her dress down over a twisting, kicking baby in her belly. What if everyone looked at her and said, “Why are you here?” Then the phone rang. It was Rache calling her to find out if she was still going.

“Are you still going?” asked Rache.

“Well, are bald people allowed?” Sunny asked.

“Very funny. Of course bald people are allowed. Tina’s husband came last year, remember?” Rache quipped smoothly. “But seriously, if you feel weird, you don’t have to still come.”

“Do I feel weird,” Sunny wondered aloud. “Do you feel weird, Rache? Does anyone ever feel weird? Does anyone ever not feel weird?”

“What are you doing, girl? Are you flipping out on me?”

Sunny paused. “I’ll be there.”

“Well, what are you bringing for eating?” Rache asked. “Have you had time to make apps? Did you want me to cover for you? I made fairy ’shrooms.”

“No, no,” Sunny began. She felt herself in a strange dream where she was a housewife on a respectable street, talking to another respectable housewife about appetizers at a party, a party she herself planned to attend. “I’ll bring … my braided honey loaf.”

“Braided honey loaf? Is that even a thing?” Rache wanted to know.

“Of course it is, it’s my grandmother’s recipe. Braided honey loaf. It’s Dutch. You eat it backwards.”

“Which grandmother, the dead one or the one that supposedly never existed in the first place?”

“You’re hurting my feelings, Rachel,” chided Sunny serenely. “I’ve been making braided honey loaf since I was a toddler.”

“Well, okay, then I’ll see you at Jenny’s at three o’clock. Are you … is your nanny sitting for Bubber?”

“Yes, ah … yes.”

“Great, well. Pull it together. See you there, okay? Love you.”

Sunny felt like a tightrope acrobat without a rope. She felt like an actor, on a stage, with no costume and no lines. She groped in her mind for what Sunny, one week ago, would have brought to the neighborhood craft show. A basket of carefully crafted muffins, individually wrapped, to sell for three dollars each. A tray of silver jewelry, each piece bent carefully by her careful hands while her child drooled and rocked beside her, to sell for twenty-five dollars the pendant, thirty dollars the bracelet.

Now she had to make braided honey loaf. And she didn’t even know what that was. Bubber, in the front room, was seated at the piano. He had been there for the last hour. He played arpeggios ascending, arpeggios descending, arpeggios ascending, arpeggios descending, over and over and over with rapid finger movements like hammers on the keys. He was stimming on the piano.

When Bubber had first begun opening and closing cabinet doors for hours at a time, Sunny had rushed to the pediatrician. She was told that stimming is self-stimulating; some kids do it rocking or head banging but some kids do it tapping pencils, or some kids click their tongues or shake their hands around. Bubber had dabbled in head banging, of course they had been medicating that out of him, but it was why he wore the helmet. He had done his thing with the cabinet doors, and then it turned to listing, and labeling, and repeating consonants. Now he was sitting at the piano going up and down, up and down, half step by half step up, half step by half step down, with maddening accuracy. She didn’t want to stop him, though. He was occupied. And it was kind of amazing. She wondered what she herself, without her wig, would bring to the party. She wondered what Bubber, without his medications, would play on the piano. The only reason they had a piano was because in a house like theirs, a piano was kind of expected.

She felt a mild contraction and leaned against the kitchen island. Her face was naked, no brows, no lashes, no borrowed human hair falling around her face, false as someone else’s husband. She wore a babydoll dress, Empire waist filling out around the baby inside her, and a cashmere shrug, petal pink. She pulled out a hunk of ground turkey from the fridge, suddenly convinced that braided honey loaf was made out of meat.

When she had made what was essentially a sweetened meat-loaf paste, and kneaded it in a metal bowl through three more slight contractions, she looked at her sticky hands, the pasty pink results of her effort, and wanted to cry. She decided to flake on the party. She could say she was having contractions. She could say she had gotten sick. She could say that the nanny had traffic court, couldn’t get away. She rolled the meat dough into strips, braided it into a bread pan, and put it in the oven. There it would be, forty minutes later, when she pulled it out. Where would she be? Still here? Or was there time to escape out an upstairs window, plummet into another universe?

Bubber pounded the piano keys; it seemed he would never tire of that progression. One three five eight five three one. Half step up. One three five eight five three one. She went upstairs to change her clothes, put on black maternity pants and a creamy peasant top, wrist bangles and long earrings. Looking at herself in the mirror, she addressed the new hybrid of reckless bald Sunny in pleasantly haired Sunny’s expensive wardrobe.

“Own it,” she said to herself. “Own the bald. Own the braided honey loaf. Own it. Your husband is Maxon Mann. Nobel Prize winner. Your mother is Emma Butcher. Fucking awesome lady. Own it.”

The doorbell rang and Sunny ran downstairs to let the nanny come in. They had to have a nanny who was also a nurse, because sometimes that was necessary, and Maxon could tolerate only a few people coming into the house. No string of teenaged babysitters. No switching back and forth with the other moms on the street, so that there were always kids over. Sunny found the nanny humorless but well informed. Didn’t matter. Maxon agreeing to let anyone into the house was reason enough to sign off on anything.

“He’s playing the piano,” said the nanny. “Hey, that’s pretty good! I didn’t know he could do that.”

“I didn’t either. But I took him off his medication,” said Sunny. “His behavior may be erratic. He may laugh, he may scream, he may decipher texts from the Harappan civilization, he may just go to sleep. Don’t know. But I have my cell phone and I’m one street over. So call me if anything comes up.”

“Well, how long should we let him play the piano?” asked the nanny.

“As long as he keeps wanting to,” said Sunny. “Within reason. Right?”

Without further explanation, Sunny plunked the braided honey loaf, now hard and perhaps even sliceable, into a floral-themed bowl. She dropped a kiss on the top of Bubber’s head and he lolled his head back to say “Oh, I love you, Mother” in a voice that could almost be described as having inflection. His hands never stopped. Sunny felt very happy inside, hearing these words from her son even after she had taken his medicine away.

Out on the sidewalk she felt the breeze on her head, and she tapped on down the walk to her neighbor’s house. Sunny had hosted several neighborhood craft shows, but then she had allowed the honor to rotate around the friends in her inner circle. The neighborhood craft show was more of a swap meet than a commercial enterprise, although there were prices on all the items and a lot of commerce was simulated. If you bought Theresa’s hand-beaded earrings for thirty-five dollars, then she might turn around and buy Rose’s hand-stamped Christmas cards, three boxes for ten dollars each. Rose might purchase Sylvia’s aromatherapy concoctions, and Sylvia would come and sample your silver pendants. No one really left any richer or poorer than they had arrived, but they all had varied assortments of little items to disperse among their less important friends, saying, “This soap was created by hand by one of my friends down the street. She does it in her FROG, can you imagine? Doesn’t it smell just like Christmas cookies? I knew you would love it.”

The type of women that frequented the neighborhood craft show were not the type that needed extra money for Christmas. They were there playing store. They were also there for the mimosas. There was a delicately lettered sign festooned with streamers and balloons, set up on an A-frame in Jenny’s perfect yard. But if any stranger had wandered in off the street, no one would have known what to do about it.

Jenny had brought every portable surface in the house to the fore in her modern Tudor palace, little side tables carrying felted catnip balls, the dining-room table hidden under an assortment of quilted handbags and hats. Ladies of the neighborhood floated around through the front rooms: the foyer with its grand staircase, the den with its grand fireplace, the dining room with its grand mural, a Welsh countryside painted on the wall next to the French table beside the German windowpanes. Jenny was no gifted designer, but her husband had a bank account without a bottom. With adultery and divorce beating their wings in the air, she was not moved to conserve his cash.

As soon as Sunny’s foot touched the beautiful planks of Jenny’s foyer, her body knew just what to do. She drifted into the kitchen, complimented the renovations, set down her platter, and chose a perfect slicing knife from Jenny’s silverware drawer.

“What is it, Sunny?” asked Jenny sweetly. She was putting on a brave face. The husband was in the dining room, wearing a tweed jacket and a leather golf cap, his long white hair pulled back in a horrible little ponytail. He had piercing black eyes and a nervous mouth. But Jenny was keeping her distance. With her friends around her, she would carry on.

“It’s braided honey loaf,” Rache interjected. “Norwegian, you know.”

“Dutch,” said Sunny.

“Oh, neat! I want to try some … later.” Jenny moved off gracefully to praise Angela’s mother’s handbags.

Sunny stood there at the sideboard, looking around the gleaming heads and smooth shoulders of her neighbors. They were good people, and smart people. She did not feel, without her wig, that she was suddenly better than them, that they did not deserve her. Instead, the opposite. Here they were, unsuspiciously they had brought her into their fold, let her rise to the top of their pecking order, had listened to her advice, had followed her lead, and now she had betrayed them. She could feel them avoiding her gaze when she faced them, but felt their eyes on her behind her back. In some ways, she was invisible, but in some ways, they couldn’t take their eyes off her.

Then a strong knock sounded on the door, and it flew open, revealing a familiar figure in the doorway, bold and sure. Les Weathers entered the room. The women went to him like butterflies. They offered to take his jacket, they led him to the food table, pressed a plate into his hand, a fork. Their voices lilted up an octave. Suddenly Jenny’s husband, who had been telling a story of how he got beat up half a block from home, walking to a party at the Hardisons’ last New Year’s Eve, was abandoned. They had all heard that story anyway. Here was Les Weathers of Channel 10 News. He greeted them, flashing his white teeth, patting shoulders and nodding, but then Les Weathers made a tall, blond beeline for Sunny.

He took her by the elbow, bent his head toward her in concern, and said, “Sunny, are you all right? How’s the baby? Hanging in there?”

“We’re okay,” said Sunny.

“Oh, good,” said Les Weathers. “I’m glad to see you out and about, taking in the nice fall air.”

“Yes, well,” said Sunny, “I need to go soon. To the hospital.”

“What’s wrong?” he gasped, instantly renewing his posture of concern. “More contractions?”

“No, it’s my mother.”

Les Weathers furrowed his brow and the few ladies around Sunny said “aww” and “ooh” sympathetically. They knew about the mother, how she had been retrieved from Pennsylvania in an advanced state of death, and how she had been lingering at the hospital.

“How is she, Sunny?” asked Rache. “Is she conscious? Did she say something?”

“Oh, I took her off life support,” said Sunny. “She’s dying. She’s going to die now.”

When she said these things, she felt her rib cage weaken. In her mind, she saw the slice of muffin she had been holding fall out of her hand. Someone dove for it, scooped it into a napkin, disappeared it. She imagined Les Weathers’s strong, broad arm around her, and she almost felt herself leaning into his starched shirtfront, his sternum smelling briskly of lime and confidence. She wanted to cry and scream and wail, there in front of everyone, her face twisted up and red, her hands clawing apart his hairdo, pulling his ears off. But these things didn’t happen. The muffin stayed in her hand. The box of feelings she had packed in the hospital room remained packed, and nothing escaped it.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” Les Weathers, more to the gathering of women than to Sunny.

“She’s okay. She’s had a rough time. But she’s dealing with it. Look.”

“I feel bad,” Sunny said, and coughed a little bit. She saw herself, as if from across the room, keeping it together, mouth solid like a line across her face. How much she longed to scream it out at them: I FEEL BAD! I FEEL BAD THAT I PULLED THE PLUG ON MY MOTHER! I KILLED HER AND I FEEL BAD! SHE IS GOING TO DIE! But she would not. She would not be something that would be remembered for years, something people would tell their husbands about later, tell their sisters about on the phone. No, they would not talk about some wrinkled tearing thing clinging to the big man with the ironed curls of hair and the cleft chin, squeaking and spouting. They would report, instead, the smooth alien in the peasant top, saying calmly, “I do feel bad that I pulled the plug on her.”

“Sunny, you must have had to!” Rache put in, and Jenny put one hand on Sunny’s back. “You had to let her go, and it was time! You did the right thing.”