I was a mature eight-year old then. I was aware of time’s passage and even had my own version of calendar; to me we had passed through the seasons of fireflies and of hurricanes, and were moving through crunchy fallen maple and oak leaves to Halloween time. A week later I went to the party filled with opinion about tragedy and dressed as a ghost. But no other guest had watched Madame Butterfly. The closest empathetic ears belonged to those who had wept at “Old Yeller,” but even though my father wouldn’t let me see that movie, I knew that at least there was a real reason the dog had to be destroyed.

Siesel was dressed as Marie Antoinette. I had to have that explained to me because history was not my subject. I disliked the hair; I loved her natural curls so much that I didn’t approve of pushing them under a wig, no matter how elaborate the wig. But I was very impressed with the satin brocade and the amazing ribbon-tied high-heeled shoes.

That year Siesel seemed older than her mother. With her heels, her towering wig of curls, and the empire-wasted gown pushing up what there was to push up, Siesel looked more like sixteen than twelve. And her mother chose to wear an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny yellow polka-dot bikini. She had a beach cover-up over it, but that was unbuttoned, and in the lantern light of the party she looked like a teenager. She wore all her gold bangles, and they tinkled with the ice in her glass when she raised her arm for repeated speeches and toasts. Her eyes had a funny panicked appearance, like a rabbit caught in headlights, and I noticed that Siesel’s father kept trying to get her to go inside and leave the party to him.

There was no fifth party. The next year the neighborhood kids just grabbed bags and went trick-or-treating, and then winnowed out the unwrapped items and traded away the unwanted items and tried to make the collection last till Thanksgiving. A few months after the fourth party, Siesel’s family shrank and then moved away.

It was early January. There had been enough snow to layer the sidewalks with a thin sheet of ice but not enough to close school. I came home one Wednesday, pulled off my boots as required in the small entry area, draped my parka as preferred on the second-lowest hook, and walked into the kitchen. I was quiet because it was likely my baby brother was sleeping. I knew my other brother was outside building a fort and sneak-eating snow.

My mother stood at the sink, probably washing dishes. Her platinum rings sparkled in the tiny blue glass dish on the windowsill, and her cigarette rested in a U-slot of the brown ashtray, its smoke ribboning upward in the sunlight. She spoke immediately, quietly, without turning around. That was uncharacteristic behavior, so I paid attention.

“Honey, something very sad happened today.” I knew instinctively that Mom should have turned then and let me see her eyes, but she kept facing the sink, back stiff and arms moving. “Siesel’s mother died.”

“How …” I started to ask, but she continued. “It’s very terrible,” she said, and “Apparently she took too many sleeping pills and isn’t going to wake up. Siesel’s father found her when he came home for lunch today. Thank God for that. At least Siesel wasn’t the one to discover it.”

I wondered if the “it” meant Siesel’s mother, if you became an “it” that soon after death. I was shocked and had questions about the death, but not about the suicide. After all, I had seen Madame Butterfly. I knew when I watched the opera that suicide must happen, because no one would include such a concept in a production if it were fiction, because who would believe that anyone would kill herself? If it didn’t really happen …

Siesel and her father and Gretel moved soon after that. I never knew where they went. The last thing I noticed about them was a hideous lethargy that seemed to pull their muscles closer to the ground, so it was an effort for each of them to climb into their Buick the day they drove away.

Their images remained in me. They lurked with the memories of child ideas and occasionally twinkled in peripheral revision. Almost half a century later I mentioned the family to my parents. Dad swept his recollections slowly, like a St. Bernard’s big head, and after a lag said, “The father wrote for television.” Mom declared with strange satisfaction, “All I know is that you came home from those parties to use our bathroom. You said their’s was dirty.”

“Don’t you remember the mother killing herself?” I asked, surprised at my own surprise.

“Did she?” Dad’s face looked puzzled.

“Oh yeah. I think she did die,” my mother said. She took Dad’s elbow. “But I don’t remember how.” She looked vacant, recollecting. “He was pretty funny. She was a ditzy blonde. She used to say there was no point in making the bed if you were just going to use it again that night. Their bathroom wasn’t clean.”