We plan Patty’s birthday party. The caterer is booked, the cake ordered. Everything, to Collette’s excitement, is coming together nicely.
She thinks keeping me busy will help me through my grief. She says it will do me good to have something to look forward to, although Jonathan is constantly on my mind.
I hear Pauline on the phone with the kids’ entertainment center in Boston, where the carousel will be coming from.
“We can’t have everything delivered at one time,” she tells them. “It must arrive in stages.” She’s silent before continuing, “That’s right. Spread the delivery out over the course of two weeks. Everything needs to come up the service elevator. You’ll have access to the back of the building.” More silence. “Yes, thank you so much for your understanding. We look forward to receiving it.”
She and I share a knowing look and she clicks her teeth. None of us need the neighbors looking on and speculating. We need this to be discreet.
“We have a big day ahead,” Collette tells me. “We need to start thinking about who to invite to Patty’s party.”
I raise my eyebrows. Yes, that one detail I haven’t been able to wrap my head around.
“I really want to give the guests enough time to prepare,” Collette says. “Make sure they can attend since it’s the most special day of the year.”
I wait for Collette to bring out a list. A group of kids from the building or a list of kids she’s remembering from way back when. But those children would be in their twenties by now. Some of them may even have kids of their own.
She doesn’t provide such a list, though, only looks at me expectantly. A minute passes and her stare takes on a more serious expression as I return it, not knowing what else to do. But then I realize with a start what she’s getting at, and the top half of my body straightens like a rod. She means for me to figure it out on my own.
But we don’t know any kids.
“I’m sure you will take care of this,” she says, getting up from the sofa. “Those playdates Patty’s been having…” What playdates? “The group of children she loves spending time with…” There are no kids. “I’d like Patty to have her best friends join us on this day.”
I want to pull the hair from my head. What children?
I can’t go down the street and knock on doors, recruiting kids from the neighborhood. The parents would look at me like I was crazy. So many living on the Upper West Side know the Bird family and may even know Patty is gone. They’d start talking, the rumor mill building. No one within a twenty-block radius would send their children to a party when they know the Bird girl is no longer alive. The story would spread like wildfire.
I think about the party planning we’ve done so far, the steps we’ve taken. The cake and snacks and decorations that have been ordered.
Is it possible to order child actors? An off-Broadway performance group that we can pay?
But my shoulders slump—that would never work. Those people wouldn’t be capable of keeping their mouths shut. The party will be too bizarre and too deliciously full of gossip. People would be saying how Collette should be locked away in an asylum.
I must bring in people who won’t talk. But how? And where?
How have the other nannies pulled this off?
“Okay…” I say slowly, but my mind is racing. I look to Pauline for any guidance. Suggestions on where to get some kids.
But Pauline lifts our coffee mugs and heads for the kitchen.
“We’ll need invitations,” Collette says. “I know the perfect place.” She eyes me carefully. “You up for another outing? We can head to the invitation store.”
Henry drives us, and there, among the invitations, I keep asking Collette questions. I need her to give me some idea of what her expectations are. Who do I address them to? Where should I find these children?
After all, she’s hosted this party every year for twenty years—surely, she can tell me what she’s done in the past. Who she’s brought to the penthouse on West Seventy-eighth and forced to sit around a table and sing “Happy Birthday.” It couldn’t have been only Collette, Pauline, and the nanny.
Unless—it’s make-believe kids. Collette will imagine their presence. She’ll think we mailed the invitations, when really, they’ll have gone in the trash.
Collette is flipping through books of card stock and talking excitedly about patterns and layouts, admiring watercolors and drawings from each artist.
“These children need to come with their parents,” she tells me. “They can’t be dropped off like last time. I need someone escorting the children up to the apartment and back down again.”
I temper my worried look—imaginary parents too?
“And the children need to be dressed nicely,” she adds. “We’ll have the carousel for them to play on, but they need to look handsome. Their Easter best.” She gives me a smile. “You think you can handle that for me, sweetie?”
I stammer but nothing comes out.
She browses another row of card stock. “I don’t want you doing what Anna did last time, that silly girl. No one showed up—can you believe that?” Her hand rushes to her throat. “I mean, no one came, Sarah. I could have killed her. She said she’d sent out invitations and then she asked if I could see the kids, when there wasn’t anybody there. She kept pointing and saying, ‘But they’re right there. Can’t you see?’ But there were no children. It was so confusing. We had to make up something to Patty about the party being rescheduled or else she would have been devastated.”
So, there it is. Anna’s mistake had almost become my own. I’m going to have to find real kids at a real playground. I’m going to have to convince their mothers to show up. How in the world am I going to get this done?
I open Google Maps on my phone and scroll thirty, then forty blocks north of West Seventy-eighth Street. Soon, I’m hovering above 125th Street in Harlem.
Collette holds out one of the sample books with a design for an invitation card. It’s pastel with a train circling the track, lions and zebras waving from the open compartments. Hanging from the caboose is a smiling clown. And stenciled above the train, the words You’re Invited!
I take one look at the card.
The floor shakes and an unsteady feeling rushes over me. A violent heave in my stomach.
I throw up.