Sputterpub's Blog

Her parents were at the front door when she got home. Melanie felt a sudden urge to go, possibly owing to all the beans.

“I need the bathroom.”

“I knew you wouldn’t use theirs,” said her mother as Melanie edged by. She didn’t understand the comment, and apparently neither did her dad. He looked a question at his wife.

“Their house is filthy.”

Melanie hadn’t noticed.

In bed a short while later and too stimulated to sleep, Melanie considered the Swansons. They’d only been in the neighborhood about a year, but they moved in with a splash and had never ceased being conspicuous. They were sparkly people, to Melanie’s eyes. Each was good looking and dressed well, and moved with a sharp edge, crisp and like a coloring book picture that has been outlined in dark crayon. They seemed to be always smiling or laughing. They had an awesome dog. Melanie wished she could have a dog or a cat, but her mother said animals are filthy and wouldn’t have one in the house. Her dad’s tropical fish aquarium was not the same thing.

Melanie didn’t like to be dirty herself, so she wasn’t longing for an unclean house. In fact, one of the conditions contributing to her wakefulness at that moment was the stickiness at the back of her knees when she bent her legs. She normally took a bath every night and got into her bed warm and clean, but the party had used up her bathtime that night. Still, she couldn’t see the Swanson house as sufficiently dirty to avoid it.

As it happened, she didn’t get the opportunity to decide. By the end of January the Swansons had sold their house and moved away. Their residence on the block lasted thirteen months. They had reason to move.

Christmas and Hanukah coincided that year. The festival of lights ran from the evening of Tuesday December 17th to Christmas day. It was a sociable week for the whole neighborhood. Everyone’s mood seemed good.

When Melanie came home from school the Friday after Christmas break, she headed straight to the kitchen for a snack. Her brother was already home – he only went half days – playing with his new Tonka truck in the living room. Melanie’s mother was at the sink, rings on the windowsill dish and hands in the soapy water. She knew Melanie had entered the room but she didn’t turn around. She kept washing dishes as she told Melanie that Dabney’s mother had killed herself. Then she turned off the water, wiped her hands on a towel, and lit a cigarette.

Melanie understood suicide. Her father had her sit with him and watch a television broadcast of “Madame Butterfly” two years earlier, and Melanie had accepted the idea of a person deciding to end her life. What she hadn’t understood was why a writer would choose to end a story with such a sad irrecoverable act, but that question had nothing to do with Dabney’s mother, or father, or Dabney.

Melanie felt solemn. And sorry. Of course she asked why, but her mother couldn’t answer. A week later, she noticed the For Sale sign stuck in the lawn in front of the Swanson house, and then she witnessed occasional traffic in and out. Within a month a big van pulled up and moved the furniture away. Melanie never saw Dabney or her father or Sheba leave. The next day when she woke up, their car was gone.

Sheba wasn’t invited to the Halloween birthday party. Nor were the neighborhood babies. The cut-off age was five. Melanie’s brother Brad didn’t get to attend. The status that exclusivity granted to Melanie more than made up for her inadequate costume.

The grownups wore regular clothes to the party. Dabney’s mama had chosen an orange shirtwaist dress, and “Halloween’d” it with a shiny black belt, black high heels, and black gloves. Her hair cascaded in waves around her shoulders, reflecting glints of lantern light and apparently matching her dress. She had sparkly earrings on that were mostly hidden by her hair, but her bracelets – several on each wrist and at least one heavy with charms – made tinkling music and more light when they flashed with her movements. Dabney’s mama seemed to be in constant motion, bringing platters to tables or her own ice-heavy glass to her orange lips, furthering the impression of glint, sparkle, music.

The food was good. The hot dogs tasted like home but Melanie only had one because she promised her mother she wouldn’t eat more. The beans were different and delicious, chewy and almost sweet, and her mother hadn’t issued any instructions about them, so Melanie kept serving herself from the big dish at the center of her table. The bowls of candy would have been like heaven except Melanie had just acquired her annual sack of Halloween goodies the night before. It was the birthday cakes that impressed her.

Each table had its own cake. Each cake was such dark chocolate inside that it looked black in the party light, and bore orange icing decorated with a jack o’ lantern face. Baked into the cake was a silver charm. The guests were told that the person at the table who got the charm would receive a prize.

A silver charm. Not plastic, not pot metal like a Monopoly token: real silver. Melanie’s next door neighbor was the lucky one at her table. As usual he ate so slowly that everyone else had already finished their cake and pushed the plate toward the table center. Barry was on about his third bite from last when he “yowch’d” and brought his left hand to his jaw. He cupped his palm beneath his own chin and spat out metal. The cleaned-off charm was a dainty little horse.

He had to give the charm to Dabney’s mama but he got a package of Sea-Monkeys for his prize. As did the winner at Dabney’s table, a boy who didn’t live in the neighborhood. Freddie’s father was the winner at the grownup table, and it looked to Melanie like his prize was a bottle of something.

Melanie didn’t care about not winning Sea-Monkeys but she would have loved to have the charm. She’d asked her parents for a charm bracelet for her last birthday but they told her that kind of jewelry lacked class. She didn’t understand the term – it meant school to her – but she gathered that her parents wanted her to wear simple, small ornaments, if any. She opted to go without, but she still liked charms.

The party ended soon after the cake ceremony. The grownup table got a little noisy and then Dabney’s father gently pushed her mama off his lap, stood up, and started the goodbyes. Melanie would have enjoyed the adventure of taking the backyard route home, climbing the low fence in the dark, but she behaved herself and went out through the Swanson house. She got to pet Sheba on the way. She was careful to keep her hands free of dog slobber. Behind her Freddie threw his arms around Sheba’s neck and kissed the dog’s ear. Freddie seemed to always have green snot in his left nostril. It reminded Melanie of a pistachio half. It was gross.

The weather was mild. The sun had gone down an hour before and had taken none of the autumn warmth with it. The yard was lit with paper lanterns strung like big Christmas ornaments from the maple trees. The tables sparkled with glassware and china. Each one had a bunch of flowers and a chimneyed candle on its white cloth. It looked like a grownup party. It seemed like real life.

Melanie was enchanted. She was still a quarter year shy of her eighth birthday but she felt like she had arrived.

She was at the worst table but she didn’t mind. The hosts had set up two wooden tables-with-attached-benches in addition to the one that was a permanent fixture in their yard. The original table held places for the adults. The central table had the biggest flower arrangement and was for the birthday girl and her twelve and thirteen year-old peers. The other borrowed table, the one closest to the fence, seated the neighborhood kids who were invited to attend even though they weren’t close friends with Dabney. They ranged in age from eleven year old Freddie to Melanie, almost eight.

It was a Halloween birthday party. Among other items of good fortune, Dabney had been born on October 31. The actual party was a day late because Halloween that year had fallen on a Thursday, but that was lucky too; everyone got to go trick-or-treating the night before and then reuse their costumes for the party.

Melanie wasn’t proud of her outfit. Her mother was too busy to make a costume for her, too impatient to let Melanie create her own, too thrifty to consider a purchase. Melanie was a hobo that Halloween, which wasn’t very different from the peddler she’d been the year before. Her outfit was fashioned from an old suit that her father never wanted to see again. It was comfortable to wear but it wasn’t dramatic, scary, or lovely. Although Melanie thought it might be nice to be the standout costume of the evening, she preferred not to be noticed. She felt privileged to be at the party and she just wanted to soak in all the sights and sounds in that festive back yard. She hadn’t yet heard of anthropology or even journalism, but she was getting pretty good at spying on adults and the older neighborhood kids; she just wanted to observe.

She was at the least of the tables and that didn’t bother her at all. It made sense to her that the seats with Dabney and her schoolmates were central, and that the table closest to the house was reserved for the grownups. Melanie and other younger kids were next to the rail fence that ran at the back of the yard. They had an excellent view of the other tables, but they were cloaked by shadows themselves. They received exactly the same treats as the other guests, and got to watch Dabney’s mother walk across the yard to bring them goodies. Dabney’s mother was the most glamorous mom on the block.

Melanie didn’t know her name, but she expected it to be different. She thought of the woman as Dabney’s mama (which is what Dabney called her) or Mrs. Swanson. Melanie’s mother taught her to call most of the neighborhood mothers “Aunt Ruth” or “Aunt Grace” or Aunt Whatever-Her-First-name-Is, even though they weren’t real family, but she referred to Dabney’s mama as She or Her.

Melanie figured the name would be odd, like other things about the Swanson family. They only had one child, which was unusual for the block. They all had reddish blonde hair. They owned a big slobbery wonderful dog called Sheba. Sheba was a St Bernard like Melanie had seen on TV: huge and shaggy and gentle. The dog was so large that some of the babies in the neighborhood tried to ride her, and Sheba stood quietly for those attempts. Unlike the other households, the Swansons were neither Catholic nor Jewish; they didn’t leave their house for regular Sunday services and when they did attend, no one knew where. But the strangest fact about the family was their southern origin. No one else in the area came from Mississippi or spoke with their songlike cadence. It was to that heritage that Melanie attributed Dabney’s name and the family’s hospitality.