Money had been tired all year. In February the office cut her hours and then restored most of them. In March Walter died on a Tuesday, a stroke while Pearl was out buying oranges. Denise organized the repast because her hands needed a job. She put Imani in a black velvet dress from the church closet and told people the girl was sensitive, she didn't understand, while Andre stood in a too-warm jacket holding programs nobody had asked him to hold. Pearl saw it and went to sit with her sister instead of standing up. Grief had tilted the room. She did not trust her voice at her husband's table. She regretted the sitting every week after. The regret did not become a muscle until this Sunday.
Last October Andre turned eight on a Thursday. Denise worked late. Leon stopped at the grocery store and bought a sheet cake, white with a blue border, Andre written in gel that smeared in the trunk. At home he lit a red Christmas candle from the junk drawer. Andre blew it out and asked if they were singing. Leon sang. Imani sang the wrong words. Andre ate one slice standing up and saved a second under a paper towel, waiting. Denise came in after nine, saw the smeared name, and felt what she later called relief. He had been taken care of. She would not have to do it. She kissed his forehead in the dark and said, "See? You had your cake." In the morning the frosting had stuck to the towel. He had not wanted to eat it without her. She scraped it into the trash and told him at breakfast that waste was a kind of greed too. He nodded. The nod went where he kept the other nods.
This year, in July, Leon had said, "Let's not split them. One party. Both. He felt it last time."
Denise had been folding towels. "I already said we'd do something."
"Something is what he got."
"Don't."
"I'm not accusing you. I'm asking."
She had looked at him over the towels and seen the man who had left and come back and believed that coming back was a renovation. "One party," she said. "The first Sunday in October. It covers the week. I'm not buying two cakes and two sets of plates and listening to Tanya tell me I do too much."
Leon had heard the yes and not the architecture of it. He had told a man at the shop, "We're doing both kids this year," and the man had said good man, and Leon had carried the phrase around like a receipt. He did not ask about the banner. He did not ask about the hat. He saw the dress on the hanger and thought Imani looked like a party, and he saw Andre's blue shirt on the chair and thought the boy looked clean, and clean seemed like enough of a contribution from a father who had bought the ice.
Andre, who was not invited to the July conversation, built his belief out of scraps. Leon said both. Denise said the party is Sunday, be ready to help. Pearl said, on a Wednesday, "I'll be there for your birthday week, baby," and put his face in her hands in a way that made him feel located. At school on Friday, the day after the pancakes, his teacher Mrs. Ellison had asked if he'd had a good birthday. He said, "The party's Sunday." She said that was nice, a weekend party, and gave him a sticker he put on his folder and did not show his mother, in case the sticker looked like he was still asking.