“Grandma, I was just kidding about being disrespectful to my parents. And seeming proud of it. It was just a dumb joke.”
“Apology accepted.”
“So I was thinking that next Saturday—”
“Edna, I said I think a party might be a bit much.”
Mary did not want to go on about it. She cleared her plate and went outside to get her husband. She thought it was funny that Edna could sit there for so long with that shocked look on her face. She didn’t see how Edna could get anything out of Edward with it, so she figured it must appeal to some weakness in Jill.
There was a glimmer of light left in the West. Mary still found the desert sunsets beautiful though she’d seen thousands of them. She moved the tray aside and took Zeke’s hand.
“Let’s go, honey bun. Time for bed.”
Every evening she wondered: Would this be the time he finally wouldn’t budge? But he balanced on his legs and made his way into the bedroom without her help.
Zeke hadn’t said a word since “I love you, Mary,” last winter. He’d gone a few months without a word before that. He used to talk in his sleep, but then that stopped, too. She could tell he was going to say something that last time because he grasped her hand extra hard as she pulled him up. He was conscious. Mary hoped he’d do that again, but she tried not to expect it so she wouldn’t always be disappointed. Life was hard to believe these days, but she knew it wasn’t permanent. The doctors said that when people with this kind of head trauma start to decline, they can go rapidly. She’d keep him comfortable for as long as he was breathing. She couldn’t imagine living without her husband, though in the current state, she really wasn’t living with anyone anymore.
It would never occur to Mary to make Zeke a party, but if Edna was going to do it, she wasn’t sure she wanted to deprive him of it. It might be good for Zeke to be with people, more than it would be bad for Edna to get her way another time. He could still sense activity around him. Mary used to be sure she was doing exactly what Zeke would have wanted, but she was less and less certain of it all the time. It could be the last party he’d ever be at. Mary had to think about it.
Edna had blown it with Grandma the night before, but like a hearty pioneer woman, she wasn’t giving up so easily. She apologized profusely the next morning while continuing to make the case that the party was still a good idea for Grandpa, in spite of her terrible disrespect. Edna had a list of reasons memorized, but she didn’t need them. In a surprising turn, Grandma agreed that they could have the party. Next Saturday was fine. Grandma’s calendar was empty. Once again things that had seemed hopeless progressed.
“Is there anyone you’d like to invite?”
Mary furrowed her brow. A party might be more trouble than she thought.
“I’ll think about it.”
Later Edna found a list on the table. Grandma’s writing said:
Sheriff Wegman and Mrs., Bill and Winnie Bishop, Johnny Bishop, Ken Bishop, Jill Warner, Jenny, Shep Caulfield, Laura, Raul, Freddy.
Grandma had surprised her: twelve guests was a healthy number. Edna never would have thought she knew that many people. Edna wasn’t thrilled about inviting that sheriff who’d scolded her, but the more people at the party the better, with the exception of the kind-of-pretty Jenny. Edna briefly considered whether there was any way to not invite her. She was clearly on the list. Edna could be Machiavellian (she knew the word because her father accused her of being that way), but she decided she shouldn’t do anything questionable. She would behave perfectly, at least as far as anything to do with Johnny was concerned.
Invitations were a huge consideration since they set the tone of any event, according to Shimmer,
which of course recommended the best places to get them made. It was too late to get paper invitations for the party, and Edna doubted Desert Palms had a paper store anyway. Paper invitations were still the most effective, in spite of everyone’s access to everything on their phone. It was statistically proven that people were more likely to come to your party if they received a paper invitation to it, and they dressed better, too. Shimmer had graphs illustrating the results of the studies.
From her grandparents’ cabin, Edna had no way to send a cyber-invite either. Jill would be appalled. The last resort for inviting people to a party was by phone, because a phone call was never going to happen at a convenient time, according to Shimmer’s Invitequette. (“Who wants to navigate a calendar while getting groceries into the car?”) In fact, directly phoning people was almost considered an invasion of privacy, but Edna had no choice. She was inviting twelve people to a party, people she’d never spoken to before, all by phone. She usually liked doing things that would bother her mother, but this was not something she was looking forward to.
She wrote out a little speech. She noted that her prison sentence in the desert would be half over by the day of the party. The second half of Edna’s summers always flew by as soon as she noticed their mid-point. She didn’t mind being at Grandma and Grandpa’s cabin anymore. Knowing she was insane didn’t seem to influence her feelings; Johnny had kissed her, and if nothing else happened, it was worth the entire summer. Somehow it was a defining moment, better than Maui and Paris and horseback riding and ice cream eating combined. One kiss beat all of that. Edna had always heard that people in love are crazy, and now she knew it for a fact.
There were so many things to consider before making her calls. The party had to start in the early evening because it was too hot outside during the day, and there was neither the space nor the air-conditioning inside the cabin for fifteen people to be comfortable. She wished she could invite everyone at night, when it would be even cooler, but there had to be some daylight. Grandma and Grandpa didn’t have outdoor lighting. According to Shimmer
,
people can chat in darkness, but not for too long because it becomes a strain. Edna would light candles when it got dark, and the party would be ending soon anyway.
She practiced her speech and got up her nerve. Sheriff Wegman already hated her, so she called him first for practice. Edna could tell his voice mail was an old answering machine by the clicking sounds it made and the static beep at the end of his gruff recording.
“We’re out, leave a message.”
“Hello, Sheriff Wegman. This is Edna Miller, Mary Miller’s granddaughter. I don’t know if you remember me.”
This felt horrible.
“We’re having a celebration for my grandfather, Zeke Miller, on Saturday, July 31 at six p.m. at 71200 Cottontail Trail in Dream Valley, and you and Mrs. Wegman are cordially invited. Grandma is making her award-winning Pineapple Upside-Down Cake. We hope you can make it.”
Edna fell short of saying that it was actually Grandpa’s birthday. She still didn’t know when it was. She kept forgetting to ask. She didn’t really want to know because it probably wasn’t soon, and she didn’t need any more reasons to feel stupid while making these phone calls.
“Bishop’s,” a voice answered. It was Jolly Man, who was probably Johnny’s grandfather.
“Hello, I’m calling for Bill or Ken Bishop?”
“This is Bill.”
Edna tried not to sound like she was reading off a page when she invited him to the party, but she still felt the strain in her voice.
“Well, we’d be delighted, Edna.”
“Great. Is Johnny there?”
“No, he’s not. Shall I give him the same message?”
“He already knows about it, but I hadn’t told him the time yet.”
“I certainly will tell him.”
She was being so mature, not needing to track him down. Pretending to be a happy, uncomplicated girl could be fun sometimes.
“Is Jenny there?”
“Why, yes.”
He handed over the phone.
“Hello?”
“Is this Jenny?”
“Yeah.”
It was the hardest invite yet.
“This is Edna Miller. I’m Mary Miller’s granddaughter.”
There was silence on the other end. A person might say “hi” or “I saw you at the store” or something. Edna leaned against the wall, twirling the phone’s long cord.
“We’re having a party for my grandfather next Saturday at six, and you’re invited.”
“Seriously?”
“Yes.”
“Um, OK. Yeah, I guess I can go.”
“Terrific. See you then.”
The phone rang off the hook for a few hours compared to its normal silence. Everyone who had been invited to Grandpa’s party had either answered the phone or RSVP’d right away, and they were all coming to the party. Edna found this unusual. She was used to her world, where degrees of busy-ness denoted standing. No one would immediately RSVP. At Jill’s seminars women often greeted each other with:
“How are you?!”
“Oh, busy. Crazed. Absolutely crazed.”
“Oh, me too. I’m
totally
crazed.”
Edna pictured these crazed women flailing around the shops, cafés and freeways of Los Angeles.
The initial steps that had seemed insurmountable—solidifying the date for the party and inviting people—were conquered, but there was no time to enjoy these victories. Edna had no idea what in the world to do with these people for several hours; eating a piece of Pineapple Upside-Down Cake would only take a few minutes. Parties had DJs or activities like attending a concert or a Lakers’ game, rock climbing or snorkeling. There was nothing to do here. And as quick as it may be to have a piece of cake, there wasn’t even anywhere to eat it. Edna looked around her grandparent’s bleak compound. Their two-seater picnic table might squeeze four. The dead weeds around it shook in the wind and seemed to taunt her, saying, “Go ahead. Try to make this place festive.”
Inside, the kitchen table barely fit her family around it when they were having a soda, never mind fifteen people with forks and plates. In any case, the table was strangely bolted to the floor and not in a convenient spot for people to walk around. There definitely weren’t enough chairs. Edna had invited a dozen people over, and she couldn’t even offer them a place to sit down.
In the real world, parties were assigned a planner, a theme and booked. Perfect Party did her last birthday, and Edna wondered if they would come to Dream Valley. Why couldn’t she order a party over the phone with her emergency credit card? If this was not an emergency, Edna didn’t know what was. She simply had to have a great party.
She knew she’d get in trouble for spending money without asking, but her parents would have already have seen pictures of the party by the time they got the bill. They might think it was a good thing for her to have done. It was something they’d do themselves, if they’d thought of it. Edna was sure she was doing the right thing, and even if not, they wouldn’t be as mad as if she bought games or a new iPad.
They still had “information” on landlines. Grandma had written down the number by the phone, so Edna was able to call Perfect Party once Grandma was outside and absorbed in moving rocks around her garden. The woman who answered was named Janice, and she sounded really nice. Edna did her best to sound like an adult. She loved ordering things; it was like waving a magic wand. Perfect Party had tables, chairs, glassware and catering. Edna ordered whatever she wanted or thought she might want in both white and blue. She needed a masculine color for Grandpa, but without pictures she couldn’t decide, so she’d choose once she saw them. Or maybe she would mix them. Perfect Party could set up anywhere they could drive to in less than five hours, and Dream Valley was only four hours away. All Janice needed was Edna’s credit card, and Edna felt very grown up saying the numbers to her. Janice had to run the card. Edna waited for a long time before she came back to the phone.
“Edna, honey, I’m afraid you’re beyond the limit on this card for the deposit.”
Edna had no idea that her credit card had a limit, but when she called the number on the back of it, she found out it was five thousand dollars. Whether that was a lot or a little for a deposit on a party didn’t matter as much as the fact that she couldn’t get a party brought out to Dream Valley with it. It wasn’t even enough when she cut what she asked for in half, and only in one color. If five thousand dollars wasn’t enough for a party deposit, it was not sufficient emergency funding for anything, and she planned to discuss this with her parents sometime when she was speaking to them again. Edna’s only source of money was those tyrants, but she couldn’t beg them to pay for this. With an over-five-thousand-dollar deposit, it was expensive enough for Jill to butt her nose into so she could control everything and, God forbid, be at. There was no point in having the party if there was any chance of that. Even Nanny wouldn’t help. Edna had asked her for money once, and Nanny had told her parents. She was crushed by the betrayal, and her allowance had been cut off for two weeks.
Edna couldn’t come up with an idea of how to have the party, but the day she invited everyone was going to come whether she liked it or not.
If the midday sun had a sound, it would be one of those menacing vibrations that drove people insane. This wasn’t helping. She got that scary, claustrophobic feeling, and her chest was tight. She was trapped at the cabin with nothing but her grandparents’ ugly furniture. She didn’t even see how Mrs. Anderson, with all her strength and tenacity, could find a solution to this problem. Could Mrs. Anderson chop down the eucalyptus trees and build a table and fifteen chairs with them?
Sick of looking at the porch and the cabin, Edna went down to the garage. She had been spending more and more time there. It should have had room for two cars, but it was crammed with stuff and barely fit the Bronco. It had cracks that let in wind and sand. Furniture that had come here from San Diego had never been unwrapped, but it was getting beaten down by the desert anyway, even under the blankets protecting it. The cabin didn’t have much room for furniture, but it wasn’t like it was ever going to. What was Grandma saving it for? Edna turned around the taxidermied raccoon and fox that stared at her. She couldn’t move the giant fish, so she just had to deal with its giant eyeball. She was eventually able to ignore it. Her grandparents must have been outdoorsy; their old tent leaned against a wall. It was more than likely unusable; Edna’s tent let in rain after being stored for two years. They’d probably never go camping again anyway.