Каарон Уоррен - The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Betty has ordered new living room furniture. I picture their high-ceilinged home, with bookcases and a kitchen in candy shades. The fireplace has tiles from her love affair with Art Deco. Tempera-painted pictures by Charlotte. Of jellyfish and friends, Mom and Dad, the aurora borealis she discovered on a nature show, leaving her stunned.

Betty/Bird splurged on a Carolina Herrera dress to attend an upcoming literary event and got a matching floral number for her child. Her husband, Vincent, is a corporate lawyer on business in Chicago and promises to be back in time.

“Beautiful Momma!” cries Charlotte.

“What do you think, Dorrie?” Betty says, showing me a picture on her phone of her modeling the dress. She gleams with pleasure. Is she ever scared or afflicted or desperate?

“Not bad,” I say.

Yesterday my landlord increased my rent. I tuck Charlotte’s hair behind her ears as she sips from the cup with a winking man in the moon. Kumiko makes her celebrated corn fritters, her last days drawing near.

A glorious truth about tea is that it’s like that quote from Heraclitus, about not being able to step into the same river twice. No sip from a pot is like a preceding mouthful. The steeping deepens; the color mellows. A second pot aiming to recapture the perfection of an earlier one is doomed. It’s itself, with its own intensifications.

We shut the restaurant for Charlotte Lezardo’s sixth birthday. I am blurry with insomnia, puffy from succumbing to such lunatic, midnight cravings that I wolfed profiteroles drowning in chocolate sauce, a shameful sight, chin dripping, fingers smeared. In addition to my rent going up, I’ve received notice of a tax increase.

About a dozen girls and six of the mothers—and one father—show up at four o’clock. Jason finishes tying balloons to the chairs. We’ve shoved a few tables together. Alex has the day off. Kumiko is cutting crusts off the tomato-and-basil sandwiches. Charlotte is a vegetarian because she does not want to harm animals. My Alicia was the same. I’ll never forget the evening she wept enough to smash me to pieces when she looked at a pork chop and realized it was from a piggy.

“This is fantastic!” declares Betty/Bird, gripping Charlotte’s hand and surveying the streamers twisting from the ceiling’s light fixtures to the sconces.

“Mrs. Dias!” the birthday girl cries, flinging herself into my grasp. Grateful. She’s in a sparkly peach-tinted belted dress, and Betty/Bird wears a chic white shift. Does she never spill? She moans about the price of the blow-out she treated herself to. We exchange girlish asides about how women lie to husbands about the cost of salons. I haven’t much focused on my good years flying by without a real romance since my divorce. (One or two misfiring relationships, sex tales from the crypt, don’t count.)

Another mother exclaims how terrific it is to discover this darling spot hiding in the Village. Everyone piles into seats, Charlotte in the place of honor. There’s mint and orange tea, and Charlotte’s Birthday Mix, rose and lemon. The grown-ups down mimosas as if they’re on fire inside. Kumiko, Jason, and I cart out teapots, desserts, and finger food.

Jason offers to read tealeaves. There’s squealing. Gifts stacked high are wrapped in neon papers with cascading, curled ribbons. I keep a tiara on hand for these events, and I crown Charlotte. She rewards me with her happiness.

Jason, reading her leaves, announces, “Well! This is incredible!”

“Tell me!” begs Charlotte.

“Mmm,” muses Jason. “What’ll you pay me?”

The birthday girl giggles. “Please?”

A dramatic pause. “Miss Charlotte. I believe I see—” and he scrutinizes the cup. “I hate to disappoint you. But since you’re already adorable, you’re stuck with growing up adorable. Since you’re already smarter than I am, you’ll get even smarter. Hmm… it’s murky. I’m trying to read what you’ll do with your life…”

“I’m going to be a writer like Momma,” Charlotte offers, voice hushed.

“Don’t tell her,” he replies in a stage whisper, “but you’re going to have so many fans, they’ll mob you. Your picture’s going to be everywhere! How does it feel, to be a star?”

Applause. Betty’s the perfect vision of the proud mother. Charlotte reaches up to award him a kiss. She’s not timid with strangers. Her mother should warn her about how that’s good in one way but bad in another.

Jason moves on to a woman waggling her cup (violet sprigs) at him. The dipped strawberries and cucumber sandwiches vanish. Betty calls for champagne! Out come the flutes, and the red velvet cake with vanilla frosting and piping of a web cascading off “Charlotte.” Happy sixth birthday, love. The gifts are abundant, T-shirts and a lacey dress that elicits sighs, and from me, Through the Looking-Glass . She contemplates the book in a hush, solemnly rises, embraces me again, and says, “Best present ever.” Betty converses with a friend, slapping the table with glee over a story I can’t hear.

Charlotte continues, her face upturned toward me, “One day, I’m going to paint you a picture, Mrs. Dias.”

I tell her I can’t wait.

And I don’t know what comes over me, my sorrow at peak agony; maybe my unrest is from cramming a surfeit of sickly-sweet junk down my gullet alone in the chilly hours after days of hunger. It might arise from something as simple as Kumiko and Jason having no clue about Alicia; what could they possible offer, were I to break down and inform them? They clearly haven’t Googled me. Maybe I’ll flat-out die if I mount those stairs to my bide-a-wee lodgings tonight where, under a waning moon with my memories, I’ll tolerate another night of intoxicated dolts in shouting-distance putting their twelve-dollar drinks on their credit cards because, God knows, the hour of reckoning will never come. Maybe I’ve always been murderous about wanting to kill those guffawing bastards who took my Alicia. Or maybe I’m welling up with nothing, and everything, a formulating of an admission to the police: I thought my girl was gone, but she’s come back to say hello, to tell me, using the tea party I prepared for a birthday numerically matching the last one she knew on earth, that she would have been sensible and strong, lovely and thriving, unafraid of the arts and other people, maybe, just maybe, like the mother I lost my chance to have been. She’s come to my rescue. Or rather Charlotte has lightly muscled her into view.

A trance envelops me; a mist descends. The party’s streamers sway. Kumiko gathers the ripped paper and puts the gifts in our Wonderland tote bags. She says softly, “Bellevue wants me to start tomorrow, Mrs. Dias. A few days early. What should I tell them?”

I smile and hand her an envelope with the bonus I’ve been saving, along with a set of blank books with ornate covers. She has mentioned wanting to take notes about patients by hand. Her head is bowed. Mine, too.

The guests file out, profuse in their thanks, and Jason is rushing because he has an audition… I tell him I’ll clean up. Go on.

Kumiko cries at the door. I hug her and say, “There, there. Going now isn’t much different from leaving in a couple of days, right?” The children want to know what’s wrong, and I say nothing. Nothing; my friend is moving on. And I watch her disappear.

Betty is lingering over more champagne. As if it’s finger-painting, frosting mars the table, floor, and chairs. Betty glances up as if she just noticed she’s in my place. Empty now, except for her and Charlotte and me.

I’m behind the counter. While Charlotte heads to the ladies’ room, Betty comes over, weaving slightly, to pay the bill. “That was memorable,” she says. “So glad we found you.” She adds she’s not sure when they’ll be back but hopes it’s soon.