it is.”
She batted her overly done eyelashes at Chunk. Chunk smiled awkwardly, then gave me a look that screamed: For God's sake, Lily, save me from your friends.
We moved from the kitchen to the living room and set Connie up at the head of the table, the chocolate cake in front of her. I lit all six candles and everybody else gathered around to sing “Happy Birthday.”
I tried to ignore the fact that we were all wearing surgical masks, but I couldn't quite shake the idea that we looked like doctors about to operate.
With sheer will I pushed the image out of my head, because that was the only way to keep from crying. Little girls’ birthday parties shouldn't feel like a scene out of a horror movie.
When the song was over, Connie leaned forward to blow out the candles. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the others taking an unconscious step back. I couldn't really blame them. Paranoia was, after all, the order of the day. Still, my heart broke a little more.
Connie didn't notice, or if she did she didn't make a big deal of it. She was too focused on the candles. She blew four of them out on the first huff before she ran out of breath and went after the other two. I wondered if she would remember this as the birthday she couldn't blow out all her candles because her face mask got in the way.
After the cake, Connie and June went out on the patio to play. Connie was showing June her binoculars, and the two of them were scanning the line of oak trees between our house and the creek. Looking for birds, I guessed.
I didn't like how close they were standing. While Avery and Lynn were hounding Chunk with all things liberal I slipped away to separate them. Gloria had the same idea, for we reached our daughters at the same time and gently nudged them apart, so there was a few feet of space between them.
Gloria's eyes met mine and we both flushed with embarrassment.
“Mommy,” Connie said. “Stop it.”
“Oh, look, honey,” I said, pointing over the tree line. “Is that a hawk?”
“No, Mommy. That's a buzzard.”
“Oh,” I said.
Gloria and I tried not to look at each other.
The power came back on just before it got dark and the party really started to pick up. Coke had been plentiful the last time Billy went shopping and he had bought two cases. When the lights came back on, Billy and Chunk went into the kitchen to cut limes. I went to the closet and pulled out two bottles of sugar cane rum we'd had left over from our Superbowl party earlier in the year. We brought the Cokes, the limes, and the Bacardi together in the dining room and made Cuba Libres.
Midway through our third round of drinks, the party drifted out to the patio where we could enjoy the evening breezes carrying the scent of cedar down from the hills. It was turning into a beautiful night, not too hot, no clouds, and lots of bright stars over the uneven line of dark hills to the west.
The dollop of shaving cream was still hanging from Avery Cameron's nonexistent chin when he got up on his soapbox.
“It's Republican sponsored racism, if you ask me,” he said, his voice slurred. The rest of us groaned.
He waved his drink around negligently as he spoke. “Seriously, remember when all this started? Remember then? The President on the TV saying how boxing us in here was for the good of the nation? How he'd do everything he could to preserve our dignity?”
Avery stared around the room, looking for someone to challenge him. No one did. Only Lynn spoke, and that was just a grunt of support.
“Dignity,” he said, nearly spitting the word out. “Crap is what we got, not dignity. Just crap. And you know why?” He leered at us, swaying badly, the dollop of shaving cream holding on tight. “I'll tell you why. It's because San Antonio has got so many Hispanics. You think if this happened someplace else where the population was all white the Republicans would be sitting on their butts like they are? No, of course they wouldn't. It's racism, that's what it is. Republican sponsored racism.”
Billy laughed at that. “That's bullshit, Avery.”
“Billy,” I said, and pointed at the girls with my chin. “Little pitchers, remember? You put bad stuff in, you get bad stuff out.”
“Sorry, Lily.” Then, to Avery, he said, “There's no such thing as Republican sponsored racism. You do know that, right?”
“You're blind, Billy. You've bought the crap they sold you. It's like New Orleans all over again. Nobody gives a crap so long as the people getting the mean end of the stick are poor and brown.”
“Oh come on, Avery. You can't possibly compare what's going on here to New Orleans. That's the biggest load of-”
“Can one of you nice fellas get a girl a refill?” Gloria said, cutting right between Avery and Billy and handing her glass out to Chunk. I saw her eyelashes beat up and down shamelessly.
Chunk groaned, but took the glass and got up.
The party ran late. Connie and June fell asleep on the living room floor, and Billy and Avery argued politics, making less and less sense the more they drank. Finally, I couldn't listen to them anymore. I went in to the kitchen to save Chunk from Gloria and Lynn. Both women seemed determined to get him to take off his clothes. Chunk had hated it when he was sober, but now that he had plenty of rum in him, I think he was starting to enjoy the attention. My new mission became saving Chunk from himself.
When I went into the kitchen, Gloria was running a finger down Chunk's chest and staring up at him with doe eyes that were supposed to make him melt. It looked like they were doing their job fairly well.
“So do they really call you Chunk?” Gloria said, and giggled. Neither of them had their masks on.
“They sure do.”
“Why is that?”
“Well,” Chunk said.
Gloria bit her bottom lip coyly.
Chunk said something to her that I didn't hear and she giggled again. She put a hand over her lips when she laughed, the way some women do.
“Don't cover your mouth like that,” Chunk said. “You're pretty when you laugh.”
Gloria beamed. “I like you,” she said. “You're so interesting. We never meet interesting people around here anymore. Everybody's so damned worried all the time. I just hate to worry, don't you?”
That, I thought, from the woman who spent all night chasing her daughter around the yard.
“I sure do. You know, I read just a couple of days ago that 60 percent of all women worry about the way they look naked. Can you believe that?”
Gloria batted her eyes and summoned up a believable school girl blush. “60 percent, really? Well, it is a hard world to be a woman in, you know.”
“I believe it,” Chunk said.
I could swear his voice was getting deeper by the minute, Chunk trying to sound like Barry White.
Chunk said, “Seems to me it's got to be a confidence thing. Like a woman needs to feel right with herself, but also with her man. You know what I'm saying? She's got to be shown she's beautiful, and not just because she put her hair up fancy or put on makeup. The man's got to step up there and validate her.”
Gloria nodded with every word. “You are so right,” she said, and I imagined her as a fish with the hook firmly caught in her mouth. “You know women so well, Mr. Dempsey.”
“Call me Chunk.”
He put a hand on her hip and she giggled again.
I had heard enough. I cleared my throat and the two of them straightened up like a pair of kids whose parents had just walked in on them. They both slipped their masks back into place.
“What did you guys do with Lynn?” I said.
“She went to the ladies’ room,” Gloria said. “Mr. Dempsey and I were just having the sweetest conversation. Did you know, Lily, what a charmer your partner is?”
“Oh yeah, he's a charmer all right.”
I looked around the kitchen. There were about a hundred wrecked limes all over the place and the linoleum
