THE AFTERNOON OF THE PARTY, Edith wrestled with the paper streamers she’d found in the closet. The meeting of the crepe, stiff with age, and her fingers, less agile by the day, made for a difficult task. Her initial plan, a network of twists and turns that would crown the apartment, was forgotten in favor of more simple designs: she wrapped paper around the bowls that held appetizers, hung it in vertical strips from the windowsills, formed an X on the bathroom door. She imagined herself making an “X marks the spot” joke to a warm reception, pouring drinks and recounting anecdotes in equal measure, as Declan had always done. As she set out various bottles of liquor her husband had left behind, most of them untouched since his death, Edith remembered the parties they’d held decades ago: her daughter skirting her ankles; her son carrying trays as though they were frangible artifacts; Declan always changing the record, hunting the perfect song for the moment; their guests, couples arm in arm, the men and women dividing more and more throughout the evening to talk about their spouses; the few people still single, a little more tipsy and loud, reminding those married of what they’d given up and gained; the phone calls to babysitters, requesting another hour; the good-bye of the last guest; the cleanup of stray peanut shells, half-drunk cocktails hiding in the bathroom, on windowsills, the beds of potted plants. How she and Declan held each other those nights after the parties, proud of their lives, how in the morning they laughed through their headaches, retelling the night before, asking each other, I said that?
—
IT WAS PAULIE who ultimately convinced Edward to come. “You know I love being friends, Eddy,” he said, leaning against the hallway in a neon-green sweat suit belted by a strip of bright blue pleather that held a pair of drumsticks, “but maybe you could use some more!” Paulie had reached out and touched the tip of a drumstick to Edward’s nose, and it was in that repulsed moment he flinched and agreed.
Upstairs, Thomas reasoned with Adeleine, who had become skittish again, had begun taking things off shelves, souvenir pennies and brittle bonsai trees, and setting them elsewhere.
“You won’t even be leaving the building. If you start to feel like screaming, all you have to do is walk out the door and up two flights of steps.”
After a time she nodded and moved to her closet, where she stood vacant and inert, as though waiting for a late train.
Three blocks away, Claudia took privacy in the bathroom, a small space made smaller by the clutter of scented creams and violet sprays and aromatic candles that clung to every surface, and began to compile the essentials in a shoe box she would take to Paulie’s. She tried to ignore the leaden steps of her husband, who had hardly spoken to her since the hospital, and had walked around agape as she packed her things. “Whatever it is you’re telling yourself about me,” he had said in their darkened bedroom the night before, “you can’t edit out how much I wanted a life with you.” Claudia hadn’t contested this, and it was the last thing she’d heard before falling asleep.
She wound her hair in the bun she wore to work, nursed wispy flyaways into cooperation, and thought about the coming evening. That night, she was sure, she would corner Edith, puff up her chest, demand a change in the management of the building. The bar of light above the mirror buzzed softly, as though listening, considering the holes in her argument.
—
THE EVENT BEGAN with a great deal of circling, a recurrent rearrangement of positions that would have looked, from above, like a natural disaster drill. Paulie, too excited for his own good, bounced between dusty walls and gray windows, from Edward to Edith to Claudia. Music was his idea: watching Adeleine, who wasn’t speaking, and Edward, who was never more than a foot away from the crumbling crackers Edith had set out, Paulie thought everyone could use a song. He sprang laterally to the shelf where Edith kept her records and tried to control his excitement while he touched them, these things that breathed music in their rare way. Once he made his selection, he requested Edward’s help, knowing that the compelling alien arm might prove beyond his grasp. He had never touched one, though he had watched his mother, in her melancholy floating moods, get up from the couch where she sat with feet tucked, reading, flip the record and realign the needle with an accuracy and control he envied so much that he had felt starved.
Edward sighed and narrowed his eyes. “Did you ask her?”