in fact look perfect. The gouge she’d cut in the ear was undetectable. Susan and Chuck and Al, the baby, had reseated themselves at the table.
“Here goes,” Mary said, taking up the cake knife. The rabbit cake was jaunty and whimsical, with just the right expression of benign surprise. She had done wonders with gumdrops and licorice. The air around her was dense, spangled with odd moments of light. Billy huddled beside her.
“Hmm? Oh, sorry.” She raised the knife and, with a firm smile, cut into the cake.
1960/ Billy and Kate were playing when the voices started. Kate rolled the die, lost a turn because her boyfriend was late picking her up. She was fat and not nervous and she didn't mind. She only wanted to win. Billy rolled the die and got sent to his father's car to pin up his hem. It was his regular bedroom and it seemed like they were safe.
Then his father's voice, shivering with fresh rage, leaked in under the door. “Where do you think money comes from? Mary? You think I know a secret place where it grows? I don't. I do not know a place like that.”
Kate leaned over the game board and said, “He's gonna murder her.”
“No, he isn't.”
Billy's mother said with furious patience, “Constantine, the money's gone. It's spent. So just get out of my way, all right? I'm trying to work.” Billy could hear his mother in the kitchen, cleaning. The mop handle banged against the kitchen cabinets insistently, like a horse kicking its stall.
Kate said, “If you come home from school one day and she's not around, call the police and tell them to look in the freezer. Don't look yourself. You'll go crazy if you see your mother in there.”
“Shut up,” Billy said. Kate maintained a system of complicated, ever-changing rules. She was Billy's best friend, a year older. She had five brothers in trouble, and she didn't mind about noise,
“That's the way it works, isn't it?” Billy's father shouted. 'That's how it works. You spend the money, you don't talk to me about it, and then after you say, 'The money is spent.' That's the system here. Right?”
“What do you want, Con? Requisition forms? You want me to check with you every time one of the kids needs some new underwear?”
“You can buy 'em all the underwear you want. We're talking here about a goddamn stuffed monkey that cost nine dollars and fifty cents. Am I right? Did I miss something?”
“Of course you're right. You're always right.”
The monkey sat pertly on Billy's bed, staring straight ahead with bright black eyes and a bemused, elderly expression. Its coat was a thick tangle of lush chocolate-colored curls. In the store with his mother Billy had looked at the monkey and she'd bought it without question, as if she herself felt the tidal pull of her son's desires. He wasn't even sure if he'd really wanted it. He wanted a Barbie like Susan's but his mother wanted him to want the stuffed monkey and so he did. He owned it now.
Kate said, “Seeing their mother dead is the one thing people never get over. If you see your mother dead, that's it, you go crazy, and nobody can help you.”
She rolled the die, got a date with Bob, her favorite. Billy preferred Ken and Poindexter, though Poindexter was supposed to be the date nobody wanted. Billy liked the way Poindexter's harmless face looked on the card, his orange hair and his little harmless eyes.
“Yay, Bob,” Kate shouted.
“Shh,” Billy said. When his father was home he was supposed to play other games.
“I love you, Bob,” Kate said. She kissed the card with Bob's face on it.
“Be quiet,” Billy said.
“Mm-mm, Bob,” Kate hollered. She stuck out her sharp pink tongue and licked the card. Billy threw the die at her. She threw it back, hard enough to hurt, and without quite having meant to, he told her she was so fat she'd need Bob and his whole family to take her to the prom. She left, weeping furiously, and Billy sat in his room for the rest of the afternoon, after the fight downstairs had worn itself out and after Kate had called from her house to tell him she'd grow out of being fat but he'd be stupid forever.
Billy was lying on his bed looking at his comic strip when his mother called him to dinner.