Dana did not say hello. She never does when she has something to deliver, and I should have known from the first breath on the line that Wednesday night.
“Heads up,” she said. “None of the cousins will be at Maisie’s party.” I was standing at the kitchen counter with a dish towel in my hand. Maisie sat at the table behind me with her spelling words spread out, working on “necessary” for the third time.
I asked my sister what she was talking about. “Kaylee turns nine too, remember? We’re doing the rink. Saturday at two o’clock. The whole floor, the party room, the pizza. I put the money down this afternoon.”
Get a new story in your inbox every morning.
Facebook doesn’t show you every story we post. Our free newsletter does. Join 2,500+ readers.
Maisie’s party was Saturday at two o’clock. At that same roller rink in Lewisburg, the one place in Marshall County where a nine-year-old can have a party with a disco ball and a snack bar that sells nachos in a paper boat.
I had booked it in September. I had paid a deposit. I had put thirty-one invitations in thirty-one backpacks, one for every child in her class, because Maisie would not hear of leaving anybody out.
“Dana,” I said. “You know that is the same hour.”
“Is it?” Her voice was light. Pleasant, even. “Well, I guess the cousins will have to pick, won’t they? And you know how kids are. They go where the pizza is.”
I looked over my shoulder. Maisie’s pencil had stopped moving. She was looking at the page as if it had turned into another language.
I did not argue. I want that on the record. My daughter was ten feet from me, and every word of that call was going straight into her.
I have a rule I learned from my own mother. A child will forget what a party looked like. She will not forget the night she heard her mother fight about it.
“Okay, Dana,” I said, and I hung up.
“Who was that?” Maisie asked.
“Your aunt.”
“Is she coming Saturday?”
“I’ll see, baby.” She went back to her spelling word. N, E, C, E, S, S, A, R, Y. Her voice was very small spelling it.
After she went to bed I called the rink. It was past nine and I got the recording, hours and a beep. I left a message and sat in the dark kitchen waiting for a call that did not come until morning.