“It’s her whole class,” I said. “Twenty-two kids. Mrs. Olson put the invitations in the Friday folders. Every kid got one. That’s the rule over there.”
Shauna looked over at the pile of children around our daughter. One of the boys had picked Piper up off the ground and was trying to spin her, and she was laughing so hard she had the hiccups.
“She hasn’t laughed like that in a week,” Shauna said quietly. “Not at the waterpark, not at the show. She was polite the whole time. She said thank you to everybody. Nolan’s mom thought she was the best-behaved kid in Missouri.”
“She’s a good kid,” I said.
“She asked about you every night,” Shauna said. She was still looking at Piper, not at me. “Every single night. She wanted to know if you ate the cake. I told her you were fine. I didn’t know if you were fine.”
I did not say anything. There was not anything to say to that.
Shauna turned and looked at me then. Her eyes were wet, and she was angry at them for it, I could tell. I was married to her for five years. I know what her face does.
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“I knew in November,” she said. “You were right. I knew in November and I didn’t call you because I didn’t want to have the fight. And I couldn’t tell his mom no. She paid for everything for me. Everything except Piper.”
“Okay,” I said.
“And then we got home, and I felt like the worst mother in the world. So I sat down and figured what it cost for her, and I sent you half.” She laughed, but there was nothing funny in it. “I think I wanted you to be mad. If you were mad, then it was even. Then it wasn’t just me.”
“I wasn’t mad,” I said, and then, because I promised myself I would be honest, “I was mad. For about a day. But I didn’t want her stuck between us over seven hundred dollars.”
Shauna looked down at the rented shoes on the counter for a long time.
Then she sat down on the bench, pulled off her snow boots, and started lacing up the red-and-blue shoes. She did it carefully, double-knotted, the way she always did everything.
“Which lane is she on?” she asked.
“Three,” I said. “With bumpers. She’s still mad about the bumpers.”
Shauna stood up and walked down to lane three, still in her gray parka, past twenty kids and three of their parents who had stayed to watch.
Piper saw her coming and stopped, a pink eight-pound ball hugged to her chest.
“Mom?” Piper said. “You’re bowling?”
“If you’ll let me,” Shauna said. “Is it my turn?”
Piper looked over at me, because she always checks with me when something surprises her. I nodded. She held out the pink ball to her mother with both hands, like she was handing over something holy.
Shauna has never been much of a bowler. Her first ball went straight into the bumper, bounced across the lane, hit the other bumper, and came to a slow, tired stop about halfway down. Every kid on lane three groaned.
“That’s okay, Mom,” Piper said, patting her mother’s arm. “That’s what the bumpers are for.”
Shauna’s second ball knocked down four pins. Piper jumped up and down and screamed like her mother had won the Super Bowl, and the kids on lanes two and four turned around to see what all the yelling was about.