Chapter 17 1957
“We have a birthday party to organize!”
Aria’s head jerks up from the flyers she’s making to advertise her new babysitting service. “For who?” she says to Flitter, who’s just danced through the door.
A fingernail-sized piece of Aria thinks maybe the party is for her. That Flitter and Calliope are planning to celebrate her turning fourteen in six weeks.
But Flitter says, “Calliope,” as if that ought to be obvious, and of course it is. Parties and Calliope go together like unicorns and rainbows, whereas plain old Aria is the complement only of uncherished things like the books around her.
“We need cake,” she says to hide the sharp stab of understanding—she’ll be the only person who knows, on December 1, that it’s her birthday. “I’ll order one from Schwab’s.”
“We’ll have it here.” Flitter casts her eyes over the shelves, pulls the high-heeled shoe lamp closer to the leather chair, drags a table out from a dusty corner, then sets the black cat statue, a gothic candelabra, and a glass diorama depicting a miniaturized nineteenth century ball on top.
“Now we have style, magic, drama, and dancing—everything a good party needs.”
Aria laughs. If Calliope is the belle of the ball, Flitter is the life of the party.
Aria pulls another object off the shelves—a casket holding the skeleton of a bird.
“Too weird?” she asks, making Flitter laugh and the sound warms up her insides and makes her see why Flitter is all one-liners and wisecracks.
“Are you getting Calliope a present?” she asks, wondering what she can order from Schwab’s that would be good enough for Calliope.
“Come and see.”
In the girls’ bedroom, Flitter opens the bottom drawer of the dresser and pulls out a book with a red leather cover.
Calliope’s name is embossed on the front in gold.
On the first page is a pencil drawing of a beaming Flitter and Calliope standing in front of a tent at what must be a county fair. Calliope’s holding a trophy aloft.
“Did you draw this? It’s beautiful.”
Flitter shrugs. “We got a photo taken after Calliope won her first beauty pageant. We don’t have the photo now because we left home in too much of a hurry.
So I drew it, best I could remember. This is gonna be her brag book, where she sticks in all the keepsakes from the movies she’s going to star in. ”
Aria’s throat tightens. This book represents Flitter’s unshakable belief in her friend, which is one hell of a gift.
“You’re a really good friend,” she tells Flitter, who stares up at the ceiling rather than let tears shine in her eyes.
“I owe her. Calliope would’ve finished high school and got good grades no matter how shitty her home life was.
But me…” She shrugs. “I wasn’t as tough.
When I had to leave town, Calliope came too because she didn’t want me going alone.
You don’t get many people in your life who become high school dropouts just so you don’t have to be alone. ”
The sound of footsteps means there’s no time to ask Flitter why she had to leave town. They hide the book just before Calliope opens the door.
“I’ve been running lines for my audition for Bob’s movie all day and I’m tired of being a dumb blonde,” Calliope says as Aria excuses herself to the bathroom.
Aria doesn’t hear Flitter’s reply because she can’t think about anything other than what’s happening to her. She’s bleeding. The visitor everyone whispers about is here. “Mom?” she whispers, then sags onto the toilet.
Her mom is in a cemetery in New York City and Aria is in the tiny bathroom of two women she’s known for only six weeks.
Aria has been left to figure out everything herself, but she’s so tired of this life where you can be decorating a table for a party with a stiletto shoe lamp one minute and staring at blood in your panties the next.
She pulls up her underwear, tries Flitter’s trick of glaring at the ceiling so she won’t cry. “Calliope?” she calls out, her voice only a little trembly.
Calliope’s head appears around the door, followed by Flitter’s. Calliope studies Aria’s face and says, “You need some of these.”
She pulls out something that resembles a giant padded snow ski and a belt.
“She looks just like you did when you came knocking on my window one night and told me you were dying,” Calliope says to Flitter.
To Aria, she says, “Flitter’s mom was very religious and didn’t tell Flitter anything about bodies.
So when her monthlies arrived, she thought she’d been stabbed.
I took her to the bathroom and did what I’m about to do now.
” Calliope demonstrates what to do with the belt and the snow ski.
Her voice is as soothing as a lullaby as she figures it all out so Aria doesn’t have to.
“From that day on she was stuck with getting me supplies each month. At least you have Schwab’s,” Flitter says, coming back with a clean pair of panties for Aria.
“Your mom didn’t buy what you needed?” Aria asks.
“Come out when you’re ready.” Flitter leaves the bathroom and Calliope follows, calling out, “I have hugs and aspirin waiting for you out here.”
After she’s cleaned herself up, Aria studies herself in the mirror.
She doesn’t look any different. But she feels different.
She got through something big without her mom.
There’ll be many more things she’ll have to get through.
While she mightn’t want to, now she knows she can.
She’s tougher than she was six weeks ago and maybe that isn’t a bad thing.
Calliope’s tough. Everything Aria’s learned so far tells her that, even though when you look at them—Flitter wisecracking and hard-edged, Calliope soft velvet and sunny—you think Flitter is the strongest, it’s Calliope who’ll survive anything.
Aria could learn a thing or two from that.
One week later, Aria jumps out of bed. Last night she sat with Flitter and Calliope in the screening room and watched a magical movie about a young orphan girl who found herself a prince.
Plus, she has three bookings for babysitting this week, and it’s Calliope’s audition today and her birthday party tomorrow, so it’s going to be a fabulous week.
Calliope will get the part and maybe Flitter will get a role too and tomorrow they can stuff themselves with cake.
Now Aria needs to set up the RCA Sound Camera to record their party tomorrow.
That’s going to be her gift to Calliope, the film—a spool of happiness that can be rewound and replayed, joy forever preserved.
She pulls the pieces of the camera off the shelf and lays them out beside the party table, which is set with china plates Maisie borrowed from the penthouse, and pale pink cloth napkins and crystal glasses that Aria found in her aunt’s suite.
Everything’s ready for food and laughter and birthday wishes.
Only half of the camera’s instruction booklet remains, so there’s a lot of figuring out to do, which takes Aria nearly all day.
Finally, as the record player swings into “Great Balls of Fire,” she heaves the camera onto its stand, runs her fingers over the buttons, and thinks how magical it is to imprint a person onto a plastic spool, to feed the spool into a projector and meet that person again.
To hear their voices, too—because this camera doesn’t just record pictures, but sound as well.
When she touches something that makes a noise start up, she jumps backward, grabbing the instructions and sitting down on the floor, trying to work out what she did.
She doesn’t hear the door of the library open, just hears Calliope’s ecstatic voice say, “Thank you, Mr. Ashenhurst. I’m so grateful. I know I’ll make the movie a success.”