They had room to play tag, an old sofa and card table, and a TV. If the TV didn’t do it, they would have to sit in their imaginations until dinner was over and they were allowed back upstairs.

Upstairs was a crown of light where the grown-ups floated in watery colors and shrieks of laughter. It sounded fun upstairs.

Bennie and Sadie tested the steps. They tipped a slinky down the bottom five. When they tired of its contortionism they played hopscotch up and down. The jumping tired them, and the varying heights of the old steps turned Bennie’s ankle, so they abandoned the stairs and tried the pipe corner, scaring themselves with its sporadic growls. 

* * *

The Robins brought pound cake.

Shel kissed the hostess and pointed out the raspberries in the frosting.

The hostess, Lolly, returned her a bland smile and handed Mr. Robin a glass and a napkin.

Shel laid the cake on the counter next to the pie and tweaked one of the raspberries. She supposed the cake was unnecessary, even impudent, next to the pie. But the pie would run out and Lolly would be glad to have a replacement.

The Robin and Roche dinner parties had become block tradition. The Robins hosted the second, the Roches the fourth Friday of the month. The passage of time settled around these regular pleasantries, such that one could roughly deduce the date by Shel’s hairdo or Lolly’s choice of pie. Tonight was cherry.

Lolly had also arranged for shrimp cocktail. She had the shrimp on a cutting board laid with ice chips, and Shel helped her place the shrimp over the lips of martini glasses full of Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice and a shake of Tabasco whipped together. The shrimp on the rims reminded Shel of fingers, pining and clutching at all that red.

She took her honorary apron from the drawer, knotted it over her pink chiffon and helped Lolly serve, glowing at the exclamations and nods of thanks. Wave me if you’d like another, she said to each cluster of guests. With Messrs. Robin and Roche, however, Shel said not a word. She stole silently in and out of their masculine sphere, careful not to disturb the spirited conversation, and returned to the kitchen.

“What’s the matter?” Lolly asked her.

“Nothing’s the matter,” Shel said, looking like a hiker on a mountaintop, remembering the walk back to the car. “Is this all the shrimp?”

She noted to herself that, should she serve shrimp cocktail at one of her parties, the present quantity was hardly enough. She knew the man at the fish counter, always asked after his wife and children, and she might just call on that habit of kindness.

* * *

They imagined a face in the rust of the barrel. A grinning, ghoulish face that dared them to touch it. Only a finger—make it a shy pinky, the finger of confidence—and it would impart some terrible knowledge upon the young seekers.

Sadie hovered her palm over the barrel and slapped it fast. Bennie giggled beside her.

Nothing happened. Nothing Sadie could tell, anyway, and she was somewhat disappointed.

Then the barrel kicked, scattering the children like mice.

They would return to the pipe corner within the hour, brazen after the buttered noodles, but no less skittish of the humming face, and they would frighten themselves over again by the terrible, drooling eyes on the barrel. They might even scream, though the grown-ups would not hear over the merriment upstairs.

* * *

After his third margarita Mr. Roche recounted the usual tale, if puffed with each telling, of the yawl caught between moorings. Mr. Robin listened with a twinkle in his eye for this week’s innovation. The other guests passed like fish.

Shel marveled at her husband’s tireless conversation. Could this be the same man who came home after work with a peck and a grunt before slouching in front of the TV?

It must be the giddiness of a candlelit house, the smell of pot roast with shallots, the renewed closeness of neighbors, that loosened their jaws and saw them laughing and miming with the vigor and glow of adolescents.

Shel watched and rubbed the hem of her apron. The squeak of the plastic quickened as she finished her glass and got up to refill those of the other guests. She knew they were not her guests—this was the fourth Friday, after all—but Lolly had shut herself in the kitchen, clamoring over dinner, and despite her culinary diligence the guests would feel neglected without the circulation of a hostess in apron and satin slippers, dancing the cocktail rounds. And with Mr. Robin encouraging Mr. Roche, whose nautical saga had grown ridiculous and tiresome, Shel felt somewhat responsible for the lull in excitement since the last pass of the hors d’oeuvres.

The guests had since broken in pairs or threes, leaving Robin and Roche content in their own company, lit by the fireplace and their revisited youth. Robin looked sleek and dashing in the vest Shel had bought him for their anniversary. It pleased her that he had worn it to the Roches, a show of healthy marriage and healthy vanity. He knew it flattered his youthful figure and turned the gray of his eyes to moonstone, auspicious in the witchlight of the fire. It was why he wore the vest and stood just so, looking sleek and seraphic as his wife danced helpfully by. He was not a vain man, only very aware, and he did not suppose Shel his match in that regard.

She returned to the kitchen and set her collection of empty glasses by the sink. Lolly was crouched before the oven, checking the progress of the roast. She flicked the light off and stayed where she was, her skirt spread out like a flower on its head, and was watching her likeness in the oven door when Shel interrupted her, “What else can I do?”

Lolly stood and beat her dress back into shape. “Everything’s done.”

By done she must have meant ready, for she had taken out and iced the goblets. Shel filled them under the tap and set them round the dining table. Everything was there and square, except for the food. And the guests, of course. And the place cards. Lolly did not care for them at her parties, but Shel thought that knowing one’s place never hurt anyone. It meant the hostess had accounted for one, considered one, given one belonging and certainty in the constellation of placemats.

Shel returned to the kitchen. “Shall we ring the bell, then?”

Lolly smiled tartly. As with the place cards, she did not care for the formality of a dinner bell. It was the last thing her migraines needed, and it seemed to turn one’s home into a mess hall. But Shel had one the size of a pitcher, cast in bronze, that she had gotten for a wedding gift. She and Mr. Robin used to trot it out at their parties. He would lift the enormous bell as if winding up to throw a discus and let it drop so that the toll shook the house.

Lolly pinched the space between her eyes. “Why not? The buffet is set. Bring them in.”

The air thickened with chatter and perfume and the squeak of serving spoons through carrot soufflé, green beans and dinner rolls. Lolly sliced the roast into skinny red ribbons while Shel ladled the gravy. The table filled, the line waned, and Mr. Robin and Mr. Roche had not yet passed through.

Surely they heard the dinner call, or smelled the roast out of the oven, or noticed the silence that crouched over the heads of the diners, all darting eyes at the pair of empty chairs and squirming with hungry expectation.

“I’ll go,” Shel said, venturing toward the den.

“Please,” Lolly said, leaning into the coolness of the counter.

Shel went to the parlor and called from the threshold “Dinnertime!” and walked back, remembering with a stab of guilt to bring the children their noodles. She loaded a tray with two bowls and two glasses of milk and left it at the basement steps.

She returned to find the gentlemen in their seats and dinner underway. Mr. Roche sat at the head of the table, with Mr. Robin at the corner beside him so that the town counselor, who also lived on the block, could enjoy the opposite head.

Shel smiled down at her green beans. Mr. Robin was wonderfully aware.

Next to Shel sat Mrs. Finch, the proud potter of gardenias two doors down. Shel complimented her gardening, and the two got to complaining about the deer, who were no longer fazed by the netting over the flowers. Shel turned to ask Mr. Robin when hunting season started, but he was lost to Mr. Roche, who was going on about the yawl.

* * *

Bennie frowned at the floor. He had dropped a noodle, and it lay oily and helpless as a worm in the driveway. He picked it up and dangled it before Sadie’s nose. She slapped his hand away, causing the noodle to disappear with a singed hiss somewhere between the pipes.

They waited for the house to explode.

When it did not, they forgot all about the errant noodle. Sadie stuck her fork in Bennie’s bowl and mixed it around, giggling over the smackling noise of soft, wet things. Bennie wrenched the bowl in disgust, sending noodles like streamers into the wall.

Sadie erupted in laughter as Bennie sat stunned. She let him finish her bowl, feeling guilty for the mess, and they settled down for a round of Go Fish.

Dinner parties were not always boring.

* * *

The table was a spectacular waste of undrunk coffee and cherry pie filling. Mint chip ice cream languished in tea saucers while the runoff from the tapers inched ever toward the white cloth.

Some guests stayed to pick over the ruins. Others went for a smoke, and still others went wandering for their favorite rooms.

The Finches and Nizers took the living room, where the Roche boy watched cartoons and did schoolwork. Mrs. Nizer slipped into the blue wooden chair and marveled as always at the impossibility of her girlish figure while Mr. Finch appraised the petal curve of her bare feet.

Shel shuttled between dining room and kitchen, unhappy until the dessert plates were washed, dried and stacked in the cupboard. She noticed the chips in their gold-painted rims and felt haughty for noticing. Accidents happened over years of belonging. She too had chipped dishes. But she liked to imagine she had mindful hands that would never allow such neglect.

She dumped out the coffee and vinegared the counters and noticed, shocked that she had forgotten something so previously important, the pound cake.

Not a soul had touched it. It sat perfect and whole at the edge of the counter.

It should not have hurt her feelings. Everyone knew that Lolly had made pie, and they would have insulted her by eating cake. In fact, Shel had made the insult by bringing it at all.

But she could hardly stand to just show up empty-handed, as if she—as if the party did not matter. Besides, Mr. Robin liked her pound cake. The smell had enticed him from the brood of his study, and more than once on the short walk to the Roches he had offered to carry it, causing Shel to blush like a mourning dove.

Thinking of Mr. Robin, she put the cake on a tray with some plates, forks and napkins and brought it upstairs, growing excited as she rattled down the hall. She paused and twisted a raspberry to last-minute perfection as she neared the master bedroom and the caws of male laughter within.

“I thought you might like a treat,” she announced, stepping into the cone of lamplight before the doorway. She set the cake beside the wine and answered Mr. Roche’s queries about his wife’s health. Lolly was resting.

Mr. Roche pouted and got up to serve. Shel fished in her apron and proffered the serving knife, handle out. As he thanked her and took it, the toothed edge cut her finger.

Shel sucked her teeth over the broken skin, between which a sluice of red dots rose and darkened.

“What happened?” Mr. Robin asked.

She was surprised that he had noticed, and ashamed. She buried her hand in her apron. “Nothing, dear.”

“Are you alright?”

“Don’t worry yourself,” she smiled, backing away. She had intruded. He and Roche had come here to talk over the senate and the scandals of the moment, and she had intruded.

“If you say, Shelley.”

His moonstone eyes touched hers, lighting in Shel a thrum of incredulity and gratitude.

Then he looked on. Mr. Roche had cut the cake.

Shel left and drew the door shut behind her, leaving the two to their cake and politics.

* * *

The children dosed fitfully on the sofa. They would not wake, given the pasta and the hour, but they were jogged in their sleep by the bump, kick and hum of the pipes.

* * *

Shel stopped at the guest bedroom to check on Lolly and then returned to the party. They had slid into the dwindling phase of the evening, when conversation wandered toward a contented attention to the guttering fire. Shel bandaged her hand, took off her apron and stood at the carpet margin, admiring the tableau of tired, twined happiness.

She gave the kitchen a final sponge and turned down the lights. Then she climbed back upstairs to retrieve the remains of the cake—were there any at all, she thought with a puff—and remind Mr. Robin of the time. She opened the door.

Within the room was silent.

Mr. Robin got up. “How was your evening, Shel?”

Neither he nor Mr. Roche seemed to remember her entry a half hour ago.

“Lovely,” she answered, moving quickly to the table.

She did not at first recognize the cake. Gouged and slouching, its layers knocked into disarray, it resembled a crumbling castle. The top was not much disturbed, except for the discoloration left by the raspberries, which were gone. All of them. There was nothing to show for her ingenuity but dim, pink stains.

Mr. Roche, licking his fingers, smiled at Shel. “We’ll be down in a minute.”

He shut the door after her with a brass snick.

* * *

Shel clutched the walls as she descended the stubbed steps to the basement. The children slept, and even in their distant dreamland they seemed to recoil from the high hum of the pipes. She followed the noise to the rusty barrel and saw on it the face the children had seen. The face of long, ghoulish agony.

The barrel kicked and Shel did not jump. She studied its stripes of corrosion, bright in one spot by the reflection of her forehead, and wondered what secrets the water boiler—for that was the function of the barrel—guarded. She guessed, by the size of it, a person could fit inside. A person in fetal fold, boiling alive, boiling to slosh, or else causing the boiling by her unvented temper.

No one knew of this person. She warmed their hands in the sink and flushed their backs in the shower, and they hadn’t the faintest clue as to her existence, though they appreciated her warmth, unaware that it was anger, not kindness, that caused it.

Shel turned away. It was time to go home.

She roused her daughter from the sofa and made the way upstairs.

* * *

Lolly would not come down.

Shel appreciated her friend’s lack of formality and hoped a night’s rest would set her right. The husbands shook hands at the door, and Mr. Roche stooped to kiss Shel on the cheek. She accepted it with a fiery flush and wished him goodnight. She held the last of the pound cake in one hand and led her daughter with the other as Mr. Robin confirmed the second Friday.

“We’ll be there,” said Mr. Roche.

He sent the Robins off with a presidential wave and lingered on the steps as the Robins bobbed down the driveway.