Lydia Netzer - Shine Shine Shine

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.”