The lights went off. But the room didn’t fall completely dark. A man whose face I couldn’t see, but who was wearing jeans, came from the kitchen holding Sandy’s carrot cake, now a ball of light. Through a tangle of arms I saw the light make its way to my mother, who sat straight in her chair, head held high, like a queen perched on her throne.
The man set the cake in front of my mother, so that the spotlight was on her now. He started to sing in a low, even tone. I wanted to see who this person was, this man in jeans with his shirt tucked in, but no belt. We pushed our way closer to the front, fighting through the drone of all the zombies. We finally made it to the table as the song wound down, but the singing man was nowhere to be seen. He must have slinked off into the darkness. Our mother was visible, though, and when she saw her two boys she raised her cup and nodded, an empty gesture to her loyal subjects.
The song ended, and someone said make a wish. My mother leaned over the cake. “I can’t do this all by myself,” she said. Sandy had used a candle for each year, instead of two wax numbers. “I need some help.”
I felt my brother pulling away from me, drifting from the crowd to help my mother. Yes, I thought, it should be him. He’s the stronger one, the one better at blowing up balloons. But before he made it to her side, another figure stepped into the light. It was the singing man. I could see the waist of his jeans floating by the candlelight, flickering by my mother’s face. Though it wasn’t until he bent down, grinned in the orange light, that I saw who it really was. That tan face. Those big teeth. Rick.
He put his hand on my mother’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, little lady, I’m real good at putting out fires.” He poked my mother in her ribs, and her arm flew out, hitting my brother.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t see you there,” she said. “Would you like to help?”
My brother didn’t answer. He was staring at the burning candles, watching their shape change with every breath. He put his hand over the fire, and slowly lowered it until the flame kissed his flesh.
Rick slapped my brother’s hand away from the cake. “What are you doing, moron? Trying to kill yourself?”
My brother studied the palm he let burn.
“Relax,” our mother said. She shifted in her seat so she was facing my brother. “You can help too, if you want. You and your brother.”
“Yeah, good idea,” Rick said. “For once the world could use your hot hair.” He patted my brother on the back and I saw my brother’s face immediately change.
“Don’t touch me,” he said. He blew on his burned hand, and looked at our mother. “Why would I want to help you?” he said. “Rick’s a jerk. Why would I want to help a jerk?”
“Hey,” our mother said, and the rest of the room went quiet, though none of the zombies moved.
“It’s fine,” Rick said. “I’ve been called worse. By worse.” A few zombies chuckled, and my mother glanced around the room uneasily.
“You don’t have to help,” she said, “if you don’t want to. You can just stand there and be quiet.”
“I don’t want to stand here. I don’t even want to be here. Why can’t we go to our dad’s or something?”
Our mother sighed. Rick turned to one of the zombies to make what he must’ve thought would be an unheard remark. “Boy wants to run out on his mother. Must get that from the old man.”
And true enough, my mother didn’t hear Rick’s comment. But my brother did. I saw his face, burning orange, change into a new kind of anger. Then he said something he’d never said before.
He said, “Hey, Rick, why don’t you go to hell. Asshole.”
My mother exploded from the table, knocking over her cup of wine. “What did you just say?” She pushed Rick out of the way and grabbed my brother out of the crowd, dragged him into the hall. She must have not wanted everyone to see her scold my brother, though with the music off and the zombies silent, we could hear everything. Her hand smacking my brother’s butt. Her saying, Look at me. Look at me. If you want to be rude, be rude from your room. My brother said fine. He would. He didn’t want any stupid cake. What kind of cake was carrot cake anyway? A cake with a vegetable in it? Stupid. A second later we heard the bedroom door slam. My mother returned, apologized to Rick and the rest of the zombies. He’s just mad about the pool or something, she said, and waved my brother’s anger away like it was a housefly.
“That’s no excuse,” Rick said. “That boy needs to learn some manners.”
My mother took her seat and looked around nervously until someone yelled for her to blow out the candles before the apartment burned down.
“Yeah,” another zombie droned, “we want food!”
Rick got on his knees so he was level with my mother. He looked her in the eyes. “Go on,” he said. “This is your birthday. Don’t let anyone spoil it.”
My mother took a breath. Rick put his hand on hers and they looked at each other the same way they had at the golf course. Like they had their own secret.
“Ready?” Rick said. “Make a wish.”
My mother bent over the cake. I saw her thoughts go far away as she stared into the fire and visualized whatever it was she most wanted. She and Rick closed their eyes. They opened their mouths and blew, their streams of air rushing the candles until every flame turned into smoke.
* * *
I returned to my room. When I opened the door, the lights were still off, but I could feel my brother’s presence. He was seething on the bottom bunk.
“Leave me alone,” he said, but I didn’t move. I stood in the doorway, wanting to help, to cheer him up. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “Get out of here.” He threw something at the door, not soft like the sock ball. It clacked against the wall, and I picked it up off the floor. It was a toy man, one of the good guys. He told me to leave again, and this time I listened. But as I left I heard my brother talking to himself.
He said, “I hate him.”
* * *
My mother opened her presents while Cornbread and Sandy passed around plates of cake. All of the gifts were bottles of booze, some guy’s funny idea he got everyone to agree to. I took my cake to the sliding glass door, where it was just me. I had never had carrot cake before and didn’t expect the inside to be the same color as the rust on our van. After forking the cake around and deciding I wouldn’t like it, I stared out the door, thinking about the pool, Chris, the woods. I didn’t have a particular thought, just a sinking feeling, like I got when we used to take trips to the lake. Back when we were a whole family, our dad would borrow a boat and we would drive it out to the middle of the lake and cut the engine. This was the only time we escaped Leavenworth. My brother and I would put on life vests and swim out while my dad drank beer, argued with my mother. My brother would swim around, pretending to be an aquatic assassin, while I floated in the brown water, afraid to venture too far from the boat. I would lie on my back and stare at the sky, its gray as endless as the water around me, until the sinking feeling crept in. And in the middle of the lake, there were no sounds to comfort me, nothing except the water lapping in my ears. I realized I could stay out here all night and the waves would never stop lapping. I could take my vest off and sink to the bottom, the gray sky turning into a cold black, and still the lapping. My family would return to shore, hitch the boat to the van, and drive the long distance home. They would realize they had forgotten something, scratching their chins until my mother gasped when she realized what was missing. Me. They would speed back, search the spot I was last seen, but they wouldn’t find me. All they would find was the lapping, the sound of the big scary world, the sound of me left behind, forgotten.