For fear of upsetting the child, I omit mentioning the other detail about the Dormouse that gets glossed over: When Alice left the table, the two madmen were stuffing the poor tiny thing headfirst into the teapot. Another reason I had the muralist clap the madmen in leg irons. Were they trying to kill it? Or just escalate the torture? The Dormouse appears at Alice’s trial in the famous book… so it survived, unless its appearance is obeying the rubric of fantasy and it’s come back from the dead. But the madmen, at the very least, must have watched it struggle for air.
Betty and Charlotte’s tea and edibles are on the house, in thanks for wanting the birthday under my roof. My face is an unreadable mask over agony when Charlotte throws her arms around my middle to say goodbye and rests her head where I can hold it, that soft dark hair.
No reason to add that the two Princeton dropouts who drowned my child for kicks stuffed her headfirst into a drainpipe near the Hudson. She was not raped. The defense attorney cited this as cause for leniency. I hold my breath sometimes, to own the exact feeling she suffered. But I can’t begin to fathom it. I’m not at the mercy of someone else.
The customers disappear, a breather before the late afternoon tide, and then nothing; we close at six; then prep for tomorrow and me under an afghan as I watch an umpteenth rerun of Mad Men, starving myself, alert to street noises. I should take my pistol upstairs, but I hate having it near Alicia’s Mr. Bun, Mabel, and Jackie. Does Charlotte have a spider doll, a pig? Is Betty’s book award in a frame? The water runs hard in the kitchen; Kumiko is scrubbing the grill pan. Baking soda and boiling water clean the pots; no detergent to interfere with the delicate balance of tea. Jason is belting out lines from Cats because he’s in the chorus; Kumiko groans and orders him to stop. She meets my eyes with sadness that she’ll soon be gone. I let myself feel touched she’ll miss me.
Some drunken fool is yelling as time-wasters spill out of a bar. Two in the morning. Scratchy blanket, gut like a drum. I awaken from my recurring dream of carrying a sleeping Alicia, her head on my shoulder. Since her death, she is sunk everywhere, and therefore everything is Alicia: flour, lightning rod in the distance, Mrs. Marcy’s lapdog drowsing as she drinks chrysanthemum tea. Alicia is the blue of the caterpillar on my wall.
A prayer for her phantom to visit; a prayer I won’t keel over of fright. A rattling of my shop’s door! I should sleep with the gun near, though I barely know how to fire it.
The sound goes away. Probably they’d only invade my refrigerator. Zucchini frittatas tomorrow; hibiscus herbal tea on special.
In the week of planning Charlotte Lezardo’s party, I get to know her and her mother better; they stop by for tea daily. Charlotte favors a brooch with a fake-emerald lizard. Momma allows her a hint of rouge, “just for fun.” Betty wrings her hands about writer’s block, and I say, Oh, that must be awful. Terrible.
Betty has ordered new living room furniture. I picture their high-ceilinged home, with bookcases and a kitchen in candy shades. The fireplace has tiles from her love affair with Art Deco. Tempera-painted pictures by Charlotte. Of jellyfish and friends, Mom and Dad, the aurora borealis she discovered on a nature show, leaving her stunned.
Betty/Bird splurged on a Carolina Herrera dress to attend an upcoming literary event and got a matching floral number for her child. Her husband, Vincent, is a corporate lawyer on business in Chicago and promises to be back in time.
“Beautiful Momma!” cries Charlotte.
“What do you think, Dorrie?” Betty says, showing me a picture on her phone of her modeling the dress. She gleams with pleasure. Is she ever scared or afflicted or desperate?
“Not bad,” I say.
Yesterday my landlord increased my rent. I tuck Charlotte’s hair behind her ears as she sips from the cup with a winking man in the moon. Kumiko makes her celebrated corn fritters, her last days drawing near.
A glorious truth about tea is that it’s like that quote from Heraclitus, about not being able to step into the same river twice. No sip from a pot is like a preceding mouthful. The steeping deepens; the color mellows. A second pot aiming to recapture the perfection of an earlier one is doomed. It’s itself, with its own intensifications.
We shut the restaurant for Charlotte Lezardo’s sixth birthday. I am blurry with insomnia, puffy from succumbing to such lunatic, midnight cravings that I wolfed profiteroles drowning in chocolate sauce, a shameful sight, chin dripping, fingers smeared. In addition to my rent going up, I’ve received notice of a tax increase.
About a dozen girls and six of the mothers—and one father—show up at four o’clock. Jason finishes tying balloons to the chairs. We’ve shoved a few tables together. Alex has the day off. Kumiko is cutting crusts off the tomato-and-basil sandwiches. Charlotte is a vegetarian because she does not want to harm animals. My Alicia was the same. I’ll never forget the evening she wept enough to smash me to pieces when she looked at a pork chop and realized it was from a piggy.
“This is fantastic!” declares Betty/Bird, gripping Charlotte’s hand and surveying the streamers twisting from the ceiling’s light fixtures to the sconces.
“Mrs. Dias!” the birthday girl cries, flinging herself into my grasp. Grateful. She’s in a sparkly peach-tinted belted dress, and Betty/Bird wears a chic white shift. Does she never spill? She moans about the price of the blow-out she treated herself to. We exchange girlish asides about how women lie to husbands about the cost of salons. I haven’t much focused on my good years flying by without a real romance since my divorce. (One or two misfiring relationships, sex tales from the crypt, don’t count.)
Another mother exclaims how terrific it is to discover this darling spot hiding in the Village. Everyone piles into seats, Charlotte in the place of honor. There’s mint and orange tea, and Charlotte’s Birthday Mix, rose and lemon. The grown-ups down mimosas as if they’re on fire inside. Kumiko, Jason, and I cart out teapots, desserts, and finger food.
Jason offers to read tealeaves. There’s squealing. Gifts stacked high are wrapped in neon papers with cascading, curled ribbons. I keep a tiara on hand for these events, and I crown Charlotte. She rewards me with her happiness.
Jason, reading her leaves, announces, “Well! This is incredible!”
“Tell me!” begs Charlotte.
“Mmm,” muses Jason. “What’ll you pay me?”
The birthday girl giggles. “Please?”
A dramatic pause. “Miss Charlotte. I believe I see—” and he scrutinizes the cup. “I hate to disappoint you. But since you’re already adorable, you’re stuck with growing up adorable. Since you’re already smarter than I am, you’ll get even smarter. Hmm… it’s murky. I’m trying to read what you’ll do with your life…”
“I’m going to be a writer like Momma,” Charlotte offers, voice hushed.
“Don’t tell her,” he replies in a stage whisper, “but you’re going to have so many fans, they’ll mob you. Your picture’s going to be everywhere! How does it feel, to be a star?”
Applause. Betty’s the perfect vision of the proud mother. Charlotte reaches up to award him a kiss. She’s not timid with strangers. Her mother should warn her about how that’s good in one way but bad in another.
Jason moves on to a woman waggling her cup (violet sprigs) at him. The dipped strawberries and cucumber sandwiches vanish. Betty calls for champagne! Out come the flutes, and the red velvet cake with vanilla frosting and piping of a web cascading off “Charlotte.” Happy sixth birthday, love. The gifts are abundant, T-shirts and a lacey dress that elicits sighs, and from me, Through the Looking-Glass. She contemplates the book in a hush, solemnly rises, embraces me again, and says, “Best present ever.” Betty converses with a friend, slapping the table with glee over a story I can’t hear.