The Year's Best Dark Fantasy and Horror 2018 Edition

Moon, and Memory, and Muchness ^{Katherine Vaz}

I begin at three o’clock in the morning. There’s a glaze over tonight’s rind of the moon. Sometimes—this being a club-dense part of the East Village—I jump out of my skin at the sound of breaking glass, a quarrel; I almost cry out for Alicia. I assemble the adorable, tiny pots of lemon curd and mango jam and the comfits that my customers steal. I use a butter-cutter pastry tool on the best butter for the pumpkin scones. A New York Times food editor asked for my secret ingredient in the crystallized-ginger muffins, but I demurred, not because it is exotic but because it’s frightfully simple: I add coconut extract. My walk-in freezer is packed to its gills, but everything is precisely labeled. Grief can do this: There’s a ferocious desire to control and align the world, as if that stops or reverses the time. Mini-quiches, miniature tortilla molds for lentil salad. I fix roulade sandwiches with Russian dressing, turkey, and Cotswold cheddar. Does a person ever conquer an eating disorder? Everything screams, Eat Me, Drink Me. As a young wife and mother, I blew up two sizes, melted down three, over and over. Now I survive on practically nothing, toast and rose-hip infusions. My Wonderland Tea Shop and its kitchen are downstairs, and I perch in small quarters above. After one day’s prep, service, and clean-up, it’s always time to start over again.

What is the “bargaining” stage of grief? Since I’ve never figured that out, I fear I’m trapped in whatever “it” is. If I hold my temper when a customer spills clotted cream on the floor, will Alicia reappear? If I smile as a woman changes her order from white tea to rooibos to the Zen Mix, will my child’s ghost appear? If I throw out the news clippings about the two young madmen who tormented and murdered Alicia, will I get un-stuck in Time? (Is that even something I want?) My ex-husband, Bill, lives with a new wife and son (already a schoolboy!) in Phoenix, and we chat on occasion; we have lunch (I watch him eat while I can’t finish my soup) when he returns for the parole hearings. I’m glad for him. He blamed me for Alicia, but I blame myself. At an arts-and-crafts emporium in Chelsea, while gathering holly and garlands for Christmas, I turned my back, and the earth swallowed her.

Above the shop, my rented rooms are so minute it’s as if I live in the cutaway of a whelk shell. Painted on the face of the ticking tabletop clock is a girl on a swing, her Mary Janes frozen toward heaven. There’s never wine on hand, because I’d drink it and then there’d be no wine anyway. Occasionally I resort to pills for sleep and glide in technicolor dreams, flowers talking, flamingoes playing a game with me as the baseball. I maintain, intact, the pint-sized tea table that Alicia loved arranging for Mr. Bun, her stuffed rabbit, and Mabel the mouse, and Jackie the toucan. At each setting are plastic wands filled with water, glitter, and tiny keys. Bill joined the little parties we threw for her animals, mint in sugar-water and vanilla wafers; he was a warm father and husband.

I used to teach poetry at a small college on Staten Island, but those eager faces, even the ones ravaged by wild partying, blazed their hopeful innocence in my direction, nearly burning me alive. Bill was an accountant. We lived modestly, us three, in Murray Hill. We sold our apartment and shared the profits after the two boys—rich, with a lawyer passionately loud about the burden of their privileges—were sentenced to only twelve years. Alicia died at age six. Eight years ago. It was yesterday.

Of course Kumiko Mori is the first employee to show up, clear-eyed, cheerful, with a red streak feathering her hair and her signature thick belt accenting a cinched waist her boyfriend likely spans with his hands. “Morning, Mrs. Dias.”

I’ve told her to call me Dorrie. Or Doreen. Old-school, she resists. I should return to my maiden name, Lewis—I’m a custard of Welsh, English, and Finnish—but then I wouldn’t have Alicia’s final name anymore. Bill Dias is of Brazilian and Irish stock.

Kumiko picks up the sign-up sheet at the counter to see how many people want to try a tea ceremony. Zero. Her grandfather is at the ready, should we enlist enough takers. Chanoyu. Sweets served to balance tea’s bitterness. Everything spotless, arranged with flowers. Tranquility, the meaningfulness of nothing-meaning-much: Who in modernity can bear submitting to a breakdown and examination of every action and minute?

I joke about how many entertainments vie for our attention nowadays, and tea ceremonies of painstaking slowness are a tough sell.

Kumiko grins and unwinds the eternity scarf from her neck. It’s autumn; our décor is purple and gilt. She hangs her scarf and coat on the hook in the kitchen as she takes the teapots from the shelf, and she says, “I need to tell you something, Mrs. Dias.”

Why does my heart skip a beat? All the servers eventually leave, but I hate giving her up. Her beauty, grace, and hard work. The faint promise of a ceremony of tea.

“Kumiko?”

But then in barrels Jason, sleepy, mild, a decent waitperson, good with card tricks at the tables while the tea brews. He wants to be an actor. The older man he lives with might be cheating on him. He’s pleasant. Less so is Alex, dragging himself in, a lean practitioner of the faint sneer, eager to convey that he’s primed for better things when he graduates from Columbia. His financial-world parents—he lives with them—encourage his refusal to abase himself with a mice-filled, starter studio apartment. I should fire him, but he keeps his disdain subdued, and it’s hard to find help.

Kumiko unlocks the front door, and hordes on their way to work pour in for cinnamon rolls and croissants to go, and the mothers-at-ease trundle in their squalling children, babies wrinkled as piglets. I feed off the tumult of children, though Alicia was quiet. Why didn’t she bellow and scream when those boys abducted her?

A girl in a fairy princess outfit tugs my apron and says, “I like apricots!”

I kneel to meet her eyes with mine, delighted. “Guess what? I made apricot tarts last night.” All true! I treasure these unexpected little connections as victories.

The mother, a natural beauty in a ponytail, a child herself, says, “Wonderful.”

Then laughs. Because wonderful and wonder belong in wonderland.

I never remember that Alicia would be fourteen now. I live for these girls who come with their mothers, a special treat. They’re joyful in this make-believe realm I’ve made. Throwback to gracious times. Tea, gen-til-i-ty. Bite-sized salmon sandwiches. The pots warmed British-style, loose leaves if you have more time, an extra spoon for the pot. I’m not raking in a fortune, but I’ve kept my nose above water.

Kumiko carries a tray of Earl Grey. More customers sweep in. Morning rush. The walls offer murals of white and red roses, white rabbits. Fish-footmen. A queen, a chorus of humans as playing cards. A caterpillar on a mushroom, hookah in mouth; the college kids flock near that one.

I wave at Kumiko over the tables, the sea of speeding New Yorkers. She does a funny mock-dance of panic. Her red-and-white Wonderland apron is spotless. Crash! A child has dropped her fragile cup; an accident. Kumiko comforts her and sweeps it up. Alex checks his phone until he sees me glaring. Jason’s sleeves are already stained with jam.

My child once found a songbird, egg-yolk yellow, with a head wound, during a walk with us in Central Park. She fed it with an eyedropper at home. Bill and I warned it wouldn’t make it. She insisted that it would, or at least it wouldn’t die alone. She was all of five, one year left to live. She named the birdie “Dodo.” I’ll never know why. Came the dawn that the bird flapped around her room, and Alicia opened the window and chanted, “Go now, go away. Fly! Go on,” though she was in tears.

One night, as a prank, Alicia put crayons in Bill’s and my bed. Her reason was that we seemed so drained she was afraid we were dreaming in black-and-white.

When I ask Kumiko, as breakfast cedes to the lunch crowd—more sandwiches, more tiered stands with savory items on top and petit fours below—what she needed to tell me, she says, “Mrs. Dias, I got that internship at Bellevue.” Her smooth skin suddenly looks like satin balled up in a fist and then let go. “It’s full-time.”

No surprise, really. She wants to be a psychiatrist, and she deserves any portal that opens. Her future is unfurling before her. But as she gently gives two-weeks’ notice, I drop into the chair behind the counter, because the purple room is spinning.

“Hey,” she says. “Hey, Mrs. Dias. I’m so sorry.”

I say I’m glad for her. And I am. I hiss at Alex to get off his phone and stop pretending he can’t see the guests at Table Five waving their arms as if they’re in a lifeboat. For a horrid moment, I imagine unlocking the drawer near the register, extracting my silver pistol, and scaring the dumb grin off his spoiled face.

“I’ll come back with my grandpa if you get the sign-ups for a tea ceremony,” Kumiko whispers, an arm around my slumped shoulder. Jason glances my way as he passes with a lethally large serving of éclairs. What is wrong with me?

There’s work to be done, it never stops; I hug her, flooded with a vision of Kumiko in her late twenties, married, telling a depressed patient in a sea of tears that there are endless reasons to go on. Her office has bronze statues of naked bodies. On the wall is a picture colored by the son I figure she’ll have, a smiling family with a cat, all bigger than their house.

Alex forgets the chutney requested by two grand dames at Table Three for their walnut bread. They declare, in ringing tones, that they did not ask for the jasmine teabags; they want the expensive Tienchi Flower, twelve dollars a cup.

Jason approaches them and says, “Shall I fix that?”

“Someone should!” trumpets one with so much plastic surgery that her nostrils are holes, her head a skull. She seems ready to start throwing the dishes.

“Where is the manager?” asks her friend, wearing an honest-to-God turban with a jewel on it, like the kind favored by fraud magicians who saw people in half.

Am I invisible? Alex stands helpless, a pleading expression trained on Jason for rescue. Much of my tearoom is staring.

“Shall I get their tea?” whispers Kumiko. “Or just kick their asses?”

She does make me smile.

Because she knows what to do without being constantly told, Kumiko sidles into the kitchen, unlocking the cupboard where I store the expensive stuff. I have some Yellow Gold Bud—it sounds like weed—painted edible gold: $120 an ounce.

Turban Lady launches into a tirade about the city falling apart; I gesture at Alex and Jason to attend to the rest of the room, to distract it, as I force myself to coo at the women that we’ll put everything right. Did they know Tienchi Flower—a refined choice!—relieves pain and cure rashes?

They assault me with a barrage of nonsense: Is the water in my Wonderland Tea Shop drawn from the tap, or do I have a proper reverse-osmosis system? Did I bribe some inspector to grant me that “A” grade? Why do so many menu selections start with “M”—mountain mint, marvelous mango, mascarpone, macaroni, moon cakes, and much about melons? Molasses. They suggest I need a haircut. I venture they needn’t be rude. Why is the Duchess on my mural so fatheaded? Why can’t I say what I mean? Why is the clock on the wall five minutes fast? Are the macarons—another “M”—stale? Why are crumbs on their butter knives? Why is my expression blank; why am I trembling?

“Excellent, ladies, here’s your tea,” I murmur as Kumiko brings out a fragrant batch in the teapot painted with Dutch children skating on a pond. I want to gorge on a stack of pressed cheese sandwiches until my body threatens to resign.

After the imperial pair finishes and offers parting complaints and leaves nary a tip for Alex or Kumiko, I notice a mother and daughter tucked in the corner. The girl is black-haired like my Alicia, five or six; I wander closer to see that yes, her eyes are Alicia’s green. She smiles, a tooth missing.

Alex interrupts my reverie with a rare apology; sorry he got that order topsy-turvy. His apron is off; he never stays a second past his shift. His lashes brush the lenses of his hip glasses.

I assure him it’s not the end of the world, not by a long shot.

He’s not accustomed to admitting a failing, to feeling bad. He’s not used to making a slight mistake that someone pounds into the dirt with a sledgehammer.

Kumiko and Jason commandeer the room as I approach the corner table. The mother lights up and whispers at me companionably, conspiratorially, “Gosh, those ladies were something else. How do you stand it?”

“There are worse things,” I say. The child is daintily eating the mozzarella—M!—flatbread, and her teacup, the artful scarlet-rose one, holds the Sweet Dreams & Citrus that shivers when she brings it to her lips.

What else may I do for them; are they having a good time; what else may I bring?

The mother is around my age, nearing forty, though she is much more in the forty-is-the-new-twenty category, olive-skinned, mahogany hair with yellow highlights. Her bracelets jangle out music. The girl has a rhinestone barrette shaped like a spider, and she tells me proudly that her name is Charlotte.

“Did you spin any webs for Wilbur?” I ask; my blood flows as if gates have lifted in my veins. The child beams at me. “Yes!”

We chat about the places where Charlotte’s Web made us cry, and the mother adds that she even gets teary-eyed in public when she recalls certain parts.

I almost say my little girl loves books, too. I wrote and taught poetry, once.

“I’m Betty,” says the mother, “but my friends call me Bird.”

The creature my child saved, brought back to life. Yellow feathers now yellow streaks in hair. Betty praises the butter’s sweetness and the apricot tarts, today’s special. It’s lovely to be here. Her clothing is pressed, high couture. Piercing her ears are diamonds. “Look at us, enjoying high tea,” she says to Charlotte. Because it’s around twelve o’clock.

I explain that high tea is so-called because the tables are high. People at a social gathering wander and graze on food and drink set up for easy access. “High” doesn’t signal the hour. Americans think of high noon. Gunslingers! Time to settle scores.

“That’s amazing!” Betty proclaims. Her daughter nods. They’ve learned something, together. They probably dance at night, Mother making Baby giggle by offering to toss her into the stars. I’m dying to ask what Betty “does,” other than care for this smart, pretty, alert child. My skills in chatting with customers need sharpening.

Charlotte swings her legs and gazes with a devotion at her mother so profound that I glance away, because it’s not meant for me. Well-trained, a city girl, she thanks me for the tea, the cup, the mozzarella and desserts. Kumiko clears tables; Jason shines the coffee urn. My staff knows nothing about Alicia, nothing of my history. Charlotte near-shouts, “Could we have my birthday here, Momma? May I, please?” Her fingernails shine with dots of crimson polish still wet-looking.

Betty wholeheartedly agrees… Certainly! Charlotte’s sixth birthday will be here next week, at the Wonderland Tea Shop! We live only two blocks away! Sorry she must hasten now, she tells me, but she has a deadline. Her aspect clarifies as familiar, from the papers and from my long-ago, long-slumbering days as a poet. It’s Betty Lezardo, the novelist whose successes have been capped recently with a National Book Award.

A soaring career and the most darling child alive; a woman my age accomplished and kind.

When I inquire if she’s Betty Lezardo, she shyly nods and asks for my name.

Dorrie. Doreen Dias.

A hand extended to press against mine. Betty/Bird says, “I have a question about your murals.” She points—artist’s eye—toward the Hatter and March Hare, the crazy duo at their table, in leg irons. That, she avers, is odd enough. “But where is the Dormouse?”

Almost no one catches that omission. That absence.

“The Hatter and Hare pinched the Dormouse several times, in the original story,” I say. “Remember? It didn’t do them any harm. They used it as a cushion. They poured hot tea on its nose, to torment it. I don’t want to stick it anywhere near those two.”

Betty finishes her tea. Basic green, superior for weight-watching and longevity.

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.

Charlotte continues, her face upturned toward me, “One day, I’m going to paint you a picture, Mrs. Dias.”

I tell her I can’t wait.

And I don’t know what comes over me, my sorrow at peak agony; maybe my unrest is from cramming a surfeit of sickly-sweet junk down my gullet alone in the chilly hours after days of hunger. It might arise from something as simple as Kumiko and Jason having no clue about Alicia; what could they possible offer, were I to break down and inform them? They clearly haven’t Googled me. Maybe I’ll flat-out die if I mount those stairs to my bide-a-wee lodgings tonight where, under a waning moon with my memories, I’ll tolerate another night of intoxicated dolts in shouting-distance putting their twelve-dollar drinks on their credit cards because, God knows, the hour of reckoning will never come. Maybe I’ve always been murderous about wanting to kill those guffawing bastards who took my Alicia. Or maybe I’m welling up with nothing, and everything, a formulating of an admission to the police: I thought my girl was gone, but she’s come back to say hello, to tell me, using the tea party I prepared for a birthday numerically matching the last one she knew on earth, that she would have been sensible and strong, lovely and thriving, unafraid of the arts and other people, maybe, just maybe, like the mother I lost my chance to have been. She’s come to my rescue. Or rather Charlotte has lightly muscled her into view.

A trance envelops me; a mist descends. The party’s streamers sway. Kumiko gathers the ripped paper and puts the gifts in our Wonderland tote bags. She says softly, “Bellevue wants me to start tomorrow, Mrs. Dias. A few days early. What should I tell them?”

I smile and hand her an envelope with the bonus I’ve been saving, along with a set of blank books with ornate covers. She has mentioned wanting to take notes about patients by hand. Her head is bowed. Mine, too.

The guests file out, profuse in their thanks, and Jason is rushing because he has an audition… I tell him I’ll clean up. Go on.

Kumiko cries at the door. I hug her and say, “There, there. Going now isn’t much different from leaving in a couple of days, right?” The children want to know what’s wrong, and I say nothing. Nothing; my friend is moving on. And I watch her disappear.

Betty is lingering over more champagne. As if it’s finger-painting, frosting mars the table, floor, and chairs. Betty glances up as if she just noticed she’s in my place. Empty now, except for her and Charlotte and me.

I’m behind the counter. While Charlotte heads to the ladies’ room, Betty comes over, weaving slightly, to pay the bill. “That was memorable,” she says. “So glad we found you.” She adds she’s not sure when they’ll be back but hopes it’s soon.

What possesses me? I’m calm. I take her money. The gratuity is twenty percent on the nose. I unlock the drawer that holds my silver pistol and take it out and put it on the counter, the business end pointing in her direction. Her eyes turn the size of saucers.

“I want to see your home,” I say. I stick the gun in my large, floppy handbag. Exhaling in gusts, she says, “Dorrie? What are you doing?”

“I won’t scare your girl,” I say, nestling the pistol against the debris in my bag. “She won’t see this, unless you refuse to do as I ask.” I need to absorb the dwelling that might have been mine, what it looks like, feels like; I want to observe, via Charlotte’s room, how Alicia might be enlivening her own space. The one upstairs is stuck in time.

Charlotte bounces back to us, haloed with the lavender from the bathroom’s soap dispenser. There are three tote bags of presents.

“Good thing there’re three of us!” I trill. “I’m free to help you carry the gifts to your house. It’s a way to keep the party from ending.” I keep one hand in my purse, as if I’m about to pull out my wallet. Betty’s mouth stays open.

“Oh,” says Charlotte. “That’s nice.” But she’s watching her mother and says, “Momma?”

“Yes, my sweetheart,” says Betty/Bird. A damp patch blooms on her white shift. She bends to kiss her daughter’s head. “Let’s go home.”

Out we go, and I fumble with the outer lock, and as Betty glances around, I bring my purse around to face her, and she freezes. Charlotte is merry from the festivities.

I don’t get out much. The air is crisp with fall, spiced and reddened and golden. People stride by, in a hurry. The sidewalk is cracked. “Slow down,” I hiss at Betty.

After a tiny yelp, she starts shaking. She whispers, “I would have invited you. I don’t understand. I would have invited you over.”

“That’s not true,” I say.

Charlotte, carrying the lightest tote bag, stops to adjust it on her shoulder.

“Did you have a lovely birthday?” I ask her.

“The best ever, Mrs. Dias,” she says. Her spider barrette catches a glint. “Thank you so much.”

Betty, color drained, begins to hyperventilate and gasps at me, “I don’t understand.”

“Charlotte,” I say, “didn’t you promise me a picture? Why don’t we get it, once we get home?” The child is slowing, staring at the grownups.

“But I haven’t done one specially for you,” she says.

“How about if you pick one you’ve already done, and I can have that?”

She weighs this and speaks with caution. “All right. Momma, what’s wrong?”

My hand rides the pistol, cool, silver. The poor woman loses the starch in her knees and buckles. “Momma!” Charlotte shrieks.

“She’s fine,” I say, gripping her arm to help her along. “It’s just a little too much champagne.”

“That’s right,” croaks Betty. “We’re almost home, honey.”

They live close but at a remove from the racket of the bars. An Indian market offers its scents of turmeric, star anise, and cumin; the fruits on display shine like jewels. I’m a mite faint myself. A boy on a phone jostles Betty, and her cry is sharp and anguished. Charlotte becomes more puzzled. She pats her mother fondly on her back. Leaves scratch the asphalt, and the tips of midtown peer over the streets to watch. The fear in Betty’s eyes has infected her whole being, saturating her. She’s quivering. Charlotte puts an arm around her mother and seems to be humming, singing. I had to witness a child giving comfort, a mother and daughter bound together to defy terror, while at the same time I protect the girl from the worst of it.

Their doorman in his cap and jacket with golden frog-closures leaps forward to help with the packages. I blurt, “No, we’re fine!”

“Mrs. Lezardo?” he says.

“We’re okay, Ralph. Thank you.” Betty looks ejected from a wind tunnel, and her daughter guides her ahead. My hand trembles on the gun.

Betty collapses into sniffling in the elevator as we shoot up to a top—but not the top—floor. There are mirrors and elegant brass trim, and the unscratched wood is polished. I adjust the angle where I stand to keep the pistol in my bag trained on her. Charlotte hasn’t registered how steadily I’ve kept my hand out of view.

And then at their threshold—her reaction is worse than I expected—Betty shoves the key in her lock after the fourth try and cracks, disintegrates into a shambles, weeping. She genuflects from trembling and drops her tote bag. I scoop it up. Charlotte bleats, “Momma, are you sick? What’s wrong? What can I do? What happened?” Her pleading eyes on me, she beseeches, “Help us. Help me.”

My turn to shake, rendered speechless. Did some disturbed part of me long to see a cheap imitation of my Alicia’s fear and worry in her last hour, so I could heal it? “Let’s go inside and get her some water.” I can’t look at Charlotte; I’m propelled forward despite knowing I should bolt.

Disappointingly predictable: It is in fact my dream apartment. Large and open, lined with books, flooded with light. The large kitchen at the far end has bar stools so dinner company can chat over appetizers as Betty watches the water boil for pasta. Corked bottles of wine display various levels, half, or a few fingers remaining, or three-quarters, rich purple-reds. How do Betty and her husband Vincent not hear them screeching, Drink Me? Under one of those netted domes to deflect insects is a plate of cookies… Don’t they shriek, Eat Me? In the adjacent dining area, the chairs are wrapped in beige cloth with ties behind them to resemble the backs on the dresses of bridesmaids. An office is visible off to the side, a laptop open. More rooms farther down a hallway. A spiral staircase to a loft.

Crayoned pictures on the living-area wall. I venture slightly out of Betty’s range as I inspect them. A blue cat floats in a sea of red water. I fall in love. What’s in Charlotte’s childhood realm; what are her toys, dolls, books, paints? But I can’t explore that and still keep Betty at bay. I can’t maintain a gun trained on her from another room. She’s slight, but fear might impart the strength she needs to disarm me, or worse.

“I would have invited you in!” Betty shouts, dropping onto the plush red sofa. She unleashes a fresh wave of sobs.

“Momma!” Charlotte screams, and then it happens, what I’ve wanted to see, what I half-sensed—and didn’t—was my reason for doing this worst thing of my life: Charlotte hugs her tight, and Betty clutches her as if she’ll die if she doesn’t and swings her daughter to a tucked-away point, to protect her. “Go to your room, Char,” she whispers.

“Not while you’re sad. I love you, Momma! Don’t cry! What’s wrong? I love you!”

“I’m good,” Betty whispers. “Baby, don’t you worry. I’ve got you.”

I take my hands out of my purse and it’s my turn to crumble, into a Lucite chair with a stylish decal of a teenaged girl with standing-up cobalt hair. There was a lot of pure hate in what I did, I’m aware of that: Such a perfect existence you have, Betty; it’s a replica of the reel I starred in, inside my brain in my youth. What do you look like when you might be in danger of loss?

But mostly: How else can I enact some message to my Alicia that she’s the only one I wanted to comfort me in those days and weeks and months when I sobbed and shook and couldn’t face the terror? What might it look like, my child holding me when I’m afraid, sickened by the world’s violence? She holds me and begs me not to be shattered because she’s here, here to stop my grief. I’ve wanted her consolation.

Does anyone fathom what it’s like to be scared every second walking down the street, afraid a monster will lunge? No wonder I seldom go out.

They’re crooning together, guarding one other, clinging.

There’s one thing—it should have been obvious—I didn’t count on. Brilliant child, attuned, she’s calculating that the only thing different in their home is… this virtual stranger.

“Why are you here?” Charlotte asks me, sitting next to her mother and holding her hand. Betty raises her head.

“I came to carry your gifts, and to look at your pictures.” I get to my feet and calculate the distance to the door. “I should be going.”

The green eyes study me; the sequins on her peach-tinted party dress catch dying light. “Did you make Momma cry?”

If the windows could open, I would leap out of one.

“Mrs. Dias wanted to make sure we got safely where we belong, bunny rabbit. Isn’t that nice?” says Betty/Bird. She’s sitting straighter, wiping her eyes, turning a hollow stare at me. “Sometimes grown-ups get a little sad.”

The exit is perhaps a ten-second sprint. I’m not sure what she’s doing, other than a masterful job of reassuring a child.

“What made you sad?” asks Charlotte.

“Oh,” she says, gathering her daughter’s hands back once again in her own. “I was crying because… well.” Betty bites her lip, drawing a spot of blood. Her aura of stellar cheer roils with darkening shades, and she peers at me with downright tenderness. No wonder her writing wins prizes: She reads deep; she kindles; she is aware of others.

I hear the words from her float into the air. “Mrs. Dias once had a little girl too, and some very bad things happened.”

“What?” asks Charlotte, scarcely breathing; she turns her attention full at me.

I’m arrested, immobile, unable to inhale.

“Well, just some bad things,” says her mother. “The little girl went to heaven. It’s too bad we can’t visit there, while we’re here on earth. So this lady wanted to spend more time with someone who reminded her of—” and she stops. No need to finish.

It is my turn for water to stream from my eyes. I can’t blink it away. Easy enough to Google my name and learn my nightmare. Betty did that. Like everyone who knows my story, she had no blooming idea how to bring it up or convey how she wished she could take away my pain: Surely the birthday party was her trying to share with me a fleeting memory of joy. And this is how I repaid her. Charlotte dashes to me, and I kneel, and the size of my baby when I lost her is in my embrace. Betty trembles on the sofa.

How long do I hold on?

Another shock awaits: as I rise to go, Charlotte patting my back as she did her mother’s, a stirring, a rustling, happens above.

A girl about aged thirteen or fifteen appears at the railing cordoning off the loft. Her hair is tousled, as if from sleep. She’s in those jeans ripped to shreds and a loose shirt, with a black bra strip drooping. “What’s going on?” she asks.

“You’re home from school early, Elsie.” Betty’s voice is subdued.

“Flu, I think.” Elsie regards me and says, “Hello. Do you know my mother?”

My mouth opens, fish on the shoreline, last air, nothing coming out.

Elsie says, “Dad’s at the airport, I think, Mom. He’s on his way.”

“I was just leaving,” I manage, barely loud enough to be heard.

Charlotte tells her older sister that she had a great tea party thanks to me, and that I’m sad.

“No,” I say to the birthday girl. “I’m happy I met you.”

I run a hand through my hair. Elsie is the age my Alicia would be. Charlotte isn’t my stand-in for Alicia; Elsie is. And it’s like standing in the surf, when it drags its curling self back to the sea and a person feels she’s sailing backward even though she’s not moving. I’ve barreled through the worm-hole, speeded forward in the time machine, gone through the glass, lost my grip on make-believe: This would be my baby now.

They let me stumble away. I don’t look back, not even at Elsie, rumpled and blossoming, self-possessed, appraising me from on high.

I ask Time to dash forward, and He obliges in spades; the months bunch up in heaps. The slightest crashes still startle me, either at work in Wonderland or in my upstairs rooms, with the compounded fear that the police have come to drag me off. This never happens: This is how thoroughly Betty and Charlotte—and Elsie—want to be shut of me. I should be glad for the immensity of Betty’s forgiveness. No wonder her existence in the world-at-large is more vast and far-reaching than mine.

I’ve turned Alicia’s shrine into a study, to write in. Mr. Bun sits on a shelf, watching over me. My spirit thanks Betty for reminding me that words matter. I touch the pictures Alicia did ages ago, so the colors enrich my blood. I eat and drink normally, or close enough. I speak less and less to Bill, my ex-husband. I’m happy alone. The stars over the city are pinpricks that soothe me. All the heavens do. When the moon shines in a curved rim at its bottom, it’s called the Old Moon holding the Young Moon in its arms.

An editor who read a story of mine in a small magazine asked if I’d write about The Real Thing That Happened To Me. I replied that it’s bad enough those boys will be free in a few years; why do I want to bolster their notoriety? I’d submit page after page of:

Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias, Alicia Renée Dias

The accent marks can serve as a guide to letting it be sung.

I won’t turn my child or criminals into cash. To atone for my own violence, I’ll do something that stays known only to me. Aid to a victims’ support network, I’m thinking.

The serving girl who replaced Kumiko is exasperating. I fired Alex. It’s a revolving door. We lack enough sign-ups for a tea ceremony, though I hope for a reason to contact Kumiko. One day I’ll marvel at bumping into her by chance and confess I need her as my psychiatrist.

The Dormouse remains missing.

Now and then, I picture Charlotte growing, attending school. Does Elsie get in some harmless teenaged trouble? Vincent, their father, loses hair. At the dinner table, he entertains his wife and daughters with anecdotes that leave them hysterical with laughter.

One day, on Facebook, I note a picture on a friend’s page and gasp. It’s Betty Lezardo. In another fashionable dress, at a literary event. I enlarge the photo, clicking until I can better countenance her face. There’s no mistaking it, and it’s my doing, I’m sure: A slight but definite sidelong glance distorts her eyes, as if fearing what’s behind or not trusting what might be gaining on her. She clutches a glass of white wine with a burning marble of fluorescence in it, from the lights overhead. Her face screams forty-ish more than what I saw on her, like a time-lapse. She appears completely haunted.

Next to her is Elsie, in an LBD, a gateway garment to female adulthood. The skirt flares. Elsie Lezardo, the person who pried me out of fantasy and hurled me into the reality of forward history. Is she sixteen? Has that much time sped past? What are her crushes and career plans, her despairs so enormous she refuses to believe they’ll subside with time? There’s no Charlotte, because this is a grownup party.

Once, thinking of Alicia as she’d be—Elsie-sized now—I fell asleep in Central Park in Sheep Meadow, on a sloping lawn, and leaves like crisp scuttling crabs walked sideways over my face. I sat up with a start. I am alive, I thought.

I’ll never behold Charlotte, Betty/Bird, or Elsie again in the flesh. If we happen upon each other by accident, I’ll cross the street unless they do it first. When I awaken in the morning, I put on a kettle and answer it when it screams. And then I open my front door to Wonderland, and the strangers come in, good and ill, and I serve them the best of what I’ve made from my hours in the night.