Holding the image of him, she slid her hand down her bare stomach and touched herself. She could seduce him tomorrow, if she wanted to, right there in the walk-in. She could undo the trousers of his tux and coax him into hardness even as the cold air prickled their skin and made his scrotum shrink tight around his balls. Yes, she could take him there, could lay him down on a serving tray and take him, fuck him, own him, while his wife and his daughter and the guests and the rabbi and Rona Silverman all looked at their watches and wondered where the hell the father of the bride was.
The weather held, so they had the birthday party outside. Wearing a gold mylar birthday-boy crown, Kenny opened all of his presents, flinging shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper into the air faster than Kacy could collect them. The entire cake was wolfed down in no time — why had she bothered with all the details? — along with quart after quart of ice cream, and the backyard was humming with sugar-fueled little boys with buzz cuts and wide-open mouths that were short on front teeth. Mooch the beagle nosed around under the redwood picnic tables, lapping up bits of cake from the grass. Skillet was there, too. He’d appeared in their yard that morning like a stray, his dyed-black hair sticking up in unruly tufts. He wore a pair of blue service-station coveralls with a name patch that said WOODY. There was an angry silver spike through the skin beneath his lower lip, and Kacy noticed he was trying to grow a mustache, without much success.
Marisol sat with her, watching the boys play. Kacy tried to sneak a glance at her watch, but Marisol saw her. “You do that all afternoon,” Marisol said. “Why?”
“I have a wedding after this. I can’t be late. I know that sounds awful, but I have other responsibilities. It’s just a fact.”
Marisol nodded. “I am a mother, too, Mrs. Burroughs.”
“So you know how I feel.”
“You go when you must go. I will take care of the things here.” Marisol gathered up all the used paper plates and plastic utensils and carried the garbage bag up to the house.
April — wearing a dirt-smudged beer-logo bucket hat that Kacy guessed was Skillet’s — was playing with the boys, letting them chase her, weaving and feinting with more agility than Kacy had thought her blocky frame would allow. When Kenny hurled himself at April’s leg and clung while she ran, April laughed — a rich, honest, adult laugh that Kacy couldn’t remember hearing before. Skillet was camped out on a chaise longue with a cup of fruit punch, watching April with a dazed, sleepy smile.
Roger, to whom she’d hardly spoken all afternoon, appeared on the patio and blew a four-fingered whistle that stopped the boys in their tracks. “Know what time it is, fellas?” he called out, lifting a huge papier-mâché baseball out of a cardboard box. “It’s piñata time!” He held the ball over his head proudly, and the kids clustered around him as he walked across the grass to the sturdy live oak that grew in the yard. With a short length of rope, he hung the piñata from the tree’s lowest limb.
Kacy seated herself at one of the picnic tables and surveyed the scene. She’d leave soon. Right after the piñata. “I think that’s going to be too high for them,” she called out.
“No, it’s not,” Roger said in a sugary, carefree tone that she knew was meant to rankle her. He looked up at the baseball, and then down at the little people jostling around him. “They can ride on my shoulders.”
“Whatever you say,” she said. She flicked a glob of brown icing off the table and sucked her nail clean.
Roger told Kenny to be polite and let his friends go first, so Kenny just danced in place and sized up the ball with eager eyes. April tied a blindfold on the first boy in line and then handed him a broomstick after Roger hoisted him up on his shoulders. Roger bobbed gently through an orbit around the ball, letting the kid get a few licks in, but never allowing him enough leverage to do more than rock the ball harmlessly. After a few more boys had their turns, Skillet took over piggyback duty, and Kacy was pleased to see that he was following Roger’s lead, rigging the game so the birthday boy could strike the killing blow. When it was Kenny’s turn, April lifted him onto her shoulders. She brought him close to the piñata and stood still, but Kenny missed the ball entirely, slashing wild verticals through the air.
Kacy looked at her watch. It was 4:52. Hit it, Kenny. Why can’t you hit it?
“Level swing, Kenny,” Roger coached. “Focus.”
Kenny hit the ball dead-on. Nothing happened. Twice more, and still nothing happened.
“Hold on,” Roger said. “I have an idea.” He jogged over to Kenny’s pile of presents and picked up the baseball bat he’d given to his son, a gleaming piece of lacquered ash. When he’d brought it home the week before, Kacy had tried to convince him that the bat was too big for Kenny, but he’d waved her off, tied a blue bow around it, and hidden it in their closet. Every time she’d looked at the bat since then she’d been more and more certain that it would break something of hers. It was just a question of when and what and how badly.
Roger slid off the bow and handed the bat to Kenny, who squealed when he felt the heft in his hands.
“I don’t think that’s smart, Roger,” Kacy called, but at the same time she felt herself drifting, disconnecting, her attention captured by the faint but steady chik chik chik of the sprinklers next door watering Mr. Weeks’s garden.
Roger turned to her with his hands on his hips. “It’s fine,” he said. “It’s a baseball bat, for Christ’s sake.”
“My mother says you shouldn’t take the Lord’s name in vain,” a redheaded boy said.
Roger turned to him. “Thank you, Peter,” he said.
At that moment, Kenny swung so hard he lost his balance, and April lurched sideways to keep him from falling off her shoulders. Someone shouted, and Kenny swung again just as Roger turned back to look. The bat caught him squarely in the face. Kacy heard bone crunch. She guessed it was his nose. She’d watched it happen without really seeing it; she’d thought vaguely of shouting a warning, but her mouth felt heavy and slow and it had stayed closed.
April screamed, and Roger fell, his hands clutched to his face. Kenny lifted his blindfold, saw his father bleeding, and burst into tears. Kacy ran to them and took charge. She ordered the boys — including the bawling Kenny — up to the house, where Marisol could watch them. She lifted Roger by the elbow, silently cursing him for getting hurt when the danger was so obvious, and now she’d have to waste hours waiting in a hard plastic chair outside the emergency room and she’d miss Dinaburg and the cake entirely. She had her car keys already in her hand when a better solution struck her. After all, Roger wouldn’t be any worse off if she met him at the hospital later.
“Take your father to the hospital,” she said to April. “I have work to do.” When the stunned faces turned to her, she felt the warm, buzzy lightness that comes with decisions you can never unmake. Blood streamed through Roger’s hands and speckled his sweatshirt and jeans. His eyes on Kacy were calm and lucid, which Kacy thought was remarkable, considering the pain he had to be in. “I warned you,” she said. He shook his head slowly, said nothing, and hiked up the sloping lawn toward the garage, stopping halfway to pick up a crumpled party napkin off the grass and clamp it to his face. From inside the house, Kenny let loose a piercing, frightened wail that Kacy knew would be heard for blocks, and then the screen door slapped open, and Kenny ran outside and launched himself at Roger’s leg, clinging, crying. Kacy watched as Roger knelt and spoke softly to him, wiping one bloody hand dry on his jeans before running it through the boy’s hair.