“Shall we?” Phyllis unlocks the car and Wanda climbs in. Already, she would follow this woman anywhere.
Chapter 35
Kirby dreads Wanda’s birthday parties. It was easier when she was a baby. There were no parties. No need to celebrate a day that felt like a foot on his windpipe. But then she started talking and walking and demanding to know whether there would be cake. To which he could only say, “Of course there will be.” And now there is. The power is back on, so he hangs fairy lights from the trees the morning of the party and hooks them up to the house with an extension cord. This is perhaps the only thing on his to-do list that feels familiar. Lights. Yes, he can turn on the lights, at least.
The cake comes from the grocery store, like always. This year, an ice cream cake was requested and procured. The guest list is small. Wanda doesn’t have any friends her own age to invite. There was one, he recalls, but she’s gone now; he doesn’t remember her name. This lack upsets Kirby: the stoic set of Wanda’s little shoulders when they pass a kid she recognizes on the street, or, back when the daycare was open, the afternoons he would pick her up and see the remnants of someone’s cruelty on her face. She never talks to him about it. Frida would be good at this, he thinks. She would know how to make their daughter feel better. She might even know how to win the other kids over. And at the very least, she would know how to keep their meanness at bay. If Frida were here, she would be in charge of the party: ordering him around, telling him where to hang the streamers, the lights, where to set up the folding tables and chairs. The cake would be homemade, and the lemonade, and the snacks. The guest list would be longer. The music would be better. She was good at these things. Now that she’s gone, he allows himself to believe she was good at everything. That they would be unconditionally happy if only she were still here. When she died, he was beginning to think he barely knew her. Now that he’s lived with her ghost for ten years, he is an expert.
He’s arranged the party for Sunday, the day before Wanda’s actual birthday. He bought her a toy bucket truck, with a boom that lifts and lowers and little doors that open, and wrapped it in the only wrapping paper he could find in the house, a roll with green Christmas trees stamped all over it. He looked for ribbon, but there wasn’t any. Brenda is invited, and Phyllis, and Lucas of course, and Emilio and his wife, who still live nearby, and the fire chief, Arjun, who is the closest thing Kirby has to a friend. In past years, he and Arjun hosted a softball game and then a cookout for all the emergency response crews, but it’s been a while since they had time to put together something like that.
It doesn’t seem like a good guest list, but it’s the best he can do. Usually he can convince one or two of the mothers from the daycare to bring their kids, but when the whole place shut down he realized he didn’t have anyone’s phone number. He tries not to keep thinking about the people who aren’t here, but it’s impossible not to. Flip would be eighteen. A senior. What kind of man would he be? It’s useless to imagine. He was eight ten years ago, and he’ll go on being eight forever.
The party begins and everyone he invited arrives. Wanda seems happy. Lucas regresses to his most childish self to make up for the fact that there are no other children here, which Kirby appreciates. His remaining son chases Wanda around the yard in a game of one-on-one tag, and something about the way he wiggles his fingers and pretends to be an ogre scratches at Kirby’s memories, but he senses danger in this recollection and turns away. After a little while, when Wanda has been caught and the adults have sipped their lemonade and eaten their Ritz crackers with cubes of cheese on top, they all gather around a card table set under the bedraggled citrus trees. Kirby brings out the ice cream cake, which, despite the heat, steadfastly refuses to melt. All the adults sing and use their bodies as a shield so that Wanda has time to make a wish and extinguish the flames with her own breath before the wind does it for her. She just beams at the cake, not blowing. They finish the song. Still the candles burn, flickering in the breeze that slips through the cracks of this imperfect fortress, and still Wanda watches the shivering flames, not blowing.
“Make a wish,” he says.
“I’m thinking,” she chides him.
“Oh, sorry,” he says, and the guests laugh good-naturedly as they wait, clustered together, for Wanda to complete the ritual. Finally, she squeezes her eyes shut for a second, then blows. Everyone claps. Wanda insists on cutting the cake herself and makes sure that there is an icing rosette on every piece.
There are presents. A mini field kit from Phyllis. A set of glitter pens from Brenda. A dolly from Emilio and his wife, Claire. A plastic fireman’s helmet from Arjun. Three new paperbacks from Lucas. When she opens Kirby’s bucket truck last, she gasps and he feels proud, proud that she loves what he loves, proud that even if this party could have been so much better, it didn’t turn out half-bad in the end. Golden hour peaks and then fades, the yellow sunlight slipping down behind the treetops. The sky dwindles to a dusky blue. The fairy lights Kirby hung earlier finally make their mark, casting a glow over the lawn. He goes around and pours a little gin into everyone’s lemonade. Arjun and Kirby talk about their dwindling crews, while Emilio and Brenda throw darts, half listening. Claire dozes on a lawn chair. Lucas gets another slice of cake. The partygoers linger, sipping from their paper cups, making observations about the fruit trees, and a sense of quiet contentment settles. No one wants to leave just yet. They can all sense the finitude of these days in Rudder. They watch Wanda sitting cross-legged in the grass while Phyllis identifies each item in the field kit and explains how to use it, and each of them longs for this little girl’s oblivion. Her naivete. But Wanda knows more than they could imagine. They forget how much children understand. She doesn’t have words for what she knows, but she feels the quickening of change as strongly as the adults do. Perhaps more so. Kirby finishes his drink and watches his daughter play in the scrubby grass, caressing each item in her new field kit. He isn’t used to seeing her this happy. It reminds him of when she was a baby, just beginning to smile. It occurs to him that she is the future of this place—if only it didn’t seem like such a curse.
Chapter 36
On Monday, the school assembly is solemn. The principal, a balding man the students call Mr. Gorgich, makes announcements about things that have changed since Valerie: PE is canceled for the foreseeable future, due to the live oak that fell through the gymnasium’s roof. Outdoor sports are canceled, obviously, given the flooded fields. And the sixth grade teacher has “decided not to return,” which means that the fifth and sixth grade classes will merge. Mr. Gorgich has more to say, but by then the room is awash with murmurs about the missing teacher. He soldiers through a brief list of remaining after-school programs. No one listens. Finally, he bangs his fist on the podium to regain their attention and asks for a moment of silence to commemorate the anniversary of Rudder’s most devastating disaster on record. The most lives lost in a single day. He doesn’t say Hurricane Wanda outright, but he doesn’t need to. Wanda can feel the eyes burning into her. She can hear the scattered whispers. It’s like this every year.