One by one, around the table, they all get the fish eye. Andrea suspects something is up. “What?” Josh asks. “Are you waiting for us to sing Happy Birthday to you?”
“Yeah, right,” Andrea snorts. “That’s just what I want.” Then, as if that might actually happen, she looks hard at Howie and warns him, “Don’t you dare.” Howie is the only one of them capable of singing Happy Birthday.
When they finish eating, Josh announces that he has a friend coming and goes to wait for him by the door. Chaz goes to the refrigerator to get the Pepperidge Farm cake. Bunny excuses herself to go to the bathroom, and Teacher says that he has to make a phone call. “But stay here, okay?” he tells Andrea. “Don’t go anywhere,” and Andrea asks, “Where would I go?”
Howie, seated directly across from her, is grinning like an imbecile.
“Do me a favor,” Andrea says. “Lose the smile.”
“But it’s your birthday.”
“Exactly.”
From the four corners of the dining room, Bunny, Josh, Chaz and Teacher converge around the table. With varying degrees of enthusiasm and volume, they all wish Andrea happy birthday, and Andrea says, “I don’t believe this.”
Josh says that denial, refusing to believe, is the first stage of grief.
“But she’s not grieving.” Howie is confused. “She’s happy.”
“Howie,” Josh says, “do you know where you are?”
As if he were dealing cards, Josh distributes the paper plates, and Jeanette asks, “Has anyone seen Nina?” Chaz slices the Pepperidge Farm with a plastic knife, taking care not to get crumbs on the gifts wrapped in paper without tape or the origami hats, which are folded in the same way as hats made from newspaper, except these hats are made from wrapping paper, yellow with red polka dots. The bold colors are almost too much amid the drab shades of beige.
Howie tells Andrea that Evan made the paper hats, and Bunny wants to know, “Who’s Evan?”
Teacher raises his hand.
Andrea is about to open her birthday card when Nina arrives. Instead, without taking her eyes off Nina, Andrea puts the card down on the table. Except for the many bits of dried blood on her head that glisten beneath the thick coat of an antibacterial ointment, Nina is bald.
“Oh, baby,” Jeanette wails. “What have you done?”
As if Jeanette’s question were not rhetorical, as if it weren’t all too obvious what she’s done, Nina says, “I yanked out my hair.” And as if yanking out her hair were an excellent reason to be inordinately proud, she adds, “All of it. Every last strand.”
“But why?” Jeanette asks. “Why would you do such a thing?”
Why? Because the impulses of mania fly like bats at night, that’s why.
Nina takes no notice of the pizza or the cake, but she zeros in on the paper hats. “Party hats! I love party hats.” Nina takes a paper hat for herself. The antibacterial ointment that coats her head oozes through the yellow and red paper, and Bunny flees the table.