*Featured image courtesy of anncapictures on pixabay.com*
Emmalene wanted her daddy to do like everyone else’s—to fix her chain when it fell off her bike, to make enough money so they could move from the boarding house on Main Street, where Mommy and Daddy slept in the big bed and she and Ricky lay on a mattress beside the radiator that hissed in winter. She wanted to feel proud of her daddy like the sisters on The Brady Bunch were proud of theirs. Emmalene’s daddy had potential, her mommy said on the phone to Aunt Lisa. A whiz at electronics, he could talk his way into any job, though keeping it was another matter—a challenge, Mommy said.
Sometimes he spent the day in bed smoking Camel cigarettes and nursing a bitch of a hangover. Emmalene wondered what colors in her Crayola box would best capture that. On the mornings he didn’t wake to drive her and Ricky to school, she tried to draw the sheets he was tangled up in; she had a hard time making them look real.
The week before her seventh birthday, Mommy told Emmalene they were throwing a birthday party. Daddy’s new job was driving a taxi—just temporary, she’d said to Aunt Lisa. Cash was trickling in again, and since they’d given Ricky a party the year before, it was her turn.
“Seven is a lucky number,” Daddy said. And that was that.
A few days before her birthday, Emmalene folded paper in fourths and scrawled: Please Come to My Party: Saturday, June 3. The marker was mostly dried out and the lettering streaky, but she managed to finish each of her invitations, leaving them in the mailboxes of several girls she knew who lived on Main Street, and Exeter, too.
The morning of her birthday, Emmalene stared at the water stains on the ceiling, her stomach gripping. “A worry-wart, my Emmalene,” Mommy said of her to Aunt Lisa. Teachers’ comments on her report cards confirmed the same: Emmalene seems anxious. Emmalene has potential, but excessive tardiness and absences impede her progress.
She had been ashamed of the D’s that stood out as though carved from blocks of wood. “What’s the problem?” Daddy had asked Mommy. “The kid’s smart.”
Emmalene smoothed her hands along the sheets. Today was her birthday, and things could turn out nice. Or terrible.
She thought about Patricia from down the street, whose mother sometimes looked after her and Ricky. The month before, the girl had turned twelve, and Emmalene watched Mrs. Lewis set the table with china plates she’d brought from France after the war.
“They’re running late,” she said in her thick accent.
That day, Emmalene had listened to the needle of the record player scratch along the spent 45 while Patricia pressed her face against the screen door. No one else had come, and now Emmalene felt the same sensation in her stomach as then.
But seven was a lucky number, and Daddy had left early for his shift. “A good sign,” Mommy said, twirling the cord around her finger and listening to Aunt Lisa. “He promised he’ll be on time,” she said, adding, “but could you pick up the cake?”
Since the room where Emmalene’s family ate and slept and dreamed was too small for a party, the owners of the boarding house permitted them to use the kitchen and common area upstairs. It smelled of Pine-Sol, and when she tripped on a crack in the tile, Emmalene crossed her fingers and ankles, spinning around twice for good luck. The skirt was a mini, so it didn’t flounce. She liked the skirt but hated the shoes—black Mary Janes that pinched her feet. At the store, Emmalene had pointed to brown saddle shoes, but Mommy said, you could dress patent leather up or down, and you can’t always get what you want.
Aunt Lisa entered carrying a box and a present, setting both on the counter. While she smacked at the sash to let in cool air, Emmalene rocked on her toes, peering at the fat yellow rose above the curved E. She would claim that for herself. “Already seven,” Aunt Lisa said. She kissed Emmalene’s nose, then pulled a bobby pin from her pocket to fix a wisp of hair that had slipped from the girl’s French braid.
Diagonally, from one end of the room to the other, Mommy and her aunt twisted crepe paper, adding a placard that read, HAPPY BIRTHDAY, in the middle. The table was pushed against a wall, paper plates and napkins arranged, and bowls of potato chips and Fiddle Faddle set out. They pierced small triangles into cans of Hawaiian Punch and scooped black olives into a dish for adults who might stay. Aunt Lisa found ashtrays and then helped Mommy tape up the vinyl sheet for Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey.
“What else do you have for entertainment?” Aunt Lisa asked, lighting a cigarette.
“Nick will take care of that,” Mommy said of Emmalene’s daddy.
She shot Mommy a look then blew smoke straight at the ceiling. “Right.”
At two o’clock, Ricky’s friend knocked on the door, and fifteen minutes later, all but Susan Pickett, sick with the mumps, had arrived. “Back at four o’clock—lots of shopping to do,” their mothers said, disappearing with their chilly smiles. “Of course—take your time!” Mommy called, picking up a limp balloon and placing it on the table.
When Musical Chairs and Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey were exhausted, Ricky and his friend stomped on balloons scattered on the floor, laughing the way boys will and making her friends shriek. This Emmalene didn’t like one bit.
“We should light the candles and sing,” Aunt Lisa said. A preschool teacher, and a little bossy, she liked to keep things moving.
“Not ‘til Nick gets here.”
Aunt Lisa cupped her elbow; the ember of her cigarette glowed red-hot. “Please—you know where he is…”
“Don’t even start,” Mommy hissed.
“It’s almost three thirty.”
“Five more minutes,” Mommy said. She poured more Hawaiian Punch and added chips to the bowls.
Finally, there were footsteps on the stairs.
“You call this a party?” Daddy asked. A six-pack in hand, he’d stripped the tab of a can already, but he was smiling, and so Emmalene hugged him, the scent of the beer much like the murk of the Merrimack beside the mills.
“Happy birthday, Baby.”
“Thank you, Daddy.”
“I left your present in the car,” he said. “No time to wrap it.”
“That’s okay.”
“Hello, Nick.”
“Hey, Lisa—wanna beer?”
The smile she flashed didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m good,” she said.
“Let’s start with the cake,” Mommy said.
“Hold on now,” Daddy said, picking up a bag of balloons from the table. “What do we have here?”
He pulled out a long, skinny balloon. After filling it, he twisted it in two. He blew up more, creating legs and tiny ears for a poodle, giving it to Cindy Parker. The children clapped their hands and asked for a giraffe, a pig, and how about a sword?—that, from Ricky and his friend.
Daddy was sweating. Raking hair from his brow, he stretched and blew, contorting balloons while Emmalene held her breath, absorbed in a talent she hadn’t known he possessed, worried any minute they’d burst in his hands. But each balloon held.
Daddy made Mommy a diamond ring she wore on her wrist while lighting the candles, and Aunt Lisa graciously accepted a red flower bobbing on its green stalk. For Emmalene, the princess of the party, he made a crown, opening another beer only after he’d given it to her.
She doubted there was a present in Daddy’s car. No, he wasn’t the sort to fix bike chains, keep appointments, or pay the bills on time, but on her seventh birthday, Emmalene’s daddy had done what she needed, and that was exactly enough.
Lorie Adair is the recipient of several Norman Mailer Scholarships and Arizona Commission on the Arts Creative Writing fellowships. Spider Woman’s Loom was a finalist for the Southwest Writers Award and a semi-finalist for the Dana Award. She has written for NPR affiliate, KJZZ, and her fiction and creative non-fiction have appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, Kindred, Praxis Journal of Gender and Cultural Critiques, and Terrain.org. She earned an MFA in Creative Writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles. She currently resides and teaches in Phoenix.
