Happy Any Day Now Read Online Free Page A

wasn’t inclined to share her bounty with Irwin’s first family and he wasn’t punctilious about child support. Right after the split, he sent some money, some herring, a few presents. Then he faded away.
    On her salary as a sewing machine operator at a bathing suit factory, my mother made sure we had enough to eat and a roof over our heads. And music lessons for me. Which were, in her mind, as much a necessity as milk and bread. There wasn’t much left over for indulgences.
    “I never had a birthday party in my life. At least none I can remember,” I said, not uncheerily thanks to the sangria.
    My confession precipitated an astounded whisk of breath. Then Marti said, “You never told me that. If that isn’t the most pitiful thing I’ve ever heard. Makes me want to cry.” She was a tough broad; tears were generally off-limits. She wasn’t crying now, but her classic features were squinched in sympathy. “You never had a birthday party. We’ve got to rectify that.” Her eyes were way too bright. “Lordy, Lordy, I am so ready to rectify.”
    “Marti . . .”
    “Okay, I’m thinking fifty guests. One for each year of your life. And a theme.” A warning tingle fired through me as Marti waxed enthusiastic. “You have to have a theme. Hawaii is hot this year. Leis, mai tais with the little umbrellas. And the men could wear those tacky flowered shirts.”
    She was putting me on with the Hawaiian business. Maybe. You never knew with Marti.
    Oh God.
    • • •
    “Of course you have birthday party,” my mother said later that afternoon. “First-year party,
Tol
, very important in Korea. Baby survive so we celebrate. In Korea, party held in banquet hall but I have only few Korean friends so we hold at home. Many balloons. Many gifts. You wear
hanbok
and I put makeup on you, like tradition. Aunt Phyllis try to make cake like
saeng
cream cake with canned fruit.” She threw her head back and laughed. “Oh, so awful. But she try.”
    We were in the activity room of Blumen House, the assisted living complex where my mother lived. Really, the activity room was
where
she lived. She dropped into her fourth-floor apartment for sleep and breakfast, and took lunch and dinner in the communal dining room. But mornings were spent in the activity room playing gin rummy and canasta, afternoons were dedicated to mah-jongg marathons, and betweentimes she gambled online on one of the computers provided for residents.
    I’d waited fifteen minutes for her to finish her mah-jongg game, which was conducted with all the fervor of a blood sport. Because she’d won the two-dollar pot, she was in a good mood.
    “You pick out violin, remember I tell you.”
    I did remember the story of how I reached for the miniature violin over the stethoscope and the thread of long life on a table of objects set before me, but not that it happened at my first birthday party. I thought the choice that predicted my future had been made at one of my mother’s fortune-telling sessions with Lulu Cho. My childhood memories were spotty, a protective device, no doubt.
    “Okay, first birthday,” I said. “Were there any after that with friends my own age?”
    “You were not friendly girl, Judith. Not many friends.”
    It was tough making them, I refrained from telling her, when you were shuttled to five schools in twelve years.
    Every time the landlord raised our rent, we downshifted to an apartment for less money and the bonus of a free month. Lulu Cho’s husband had a truck. He moved us, looking sadder and sadder as the neighborhoods got seedier and seedier.
    “You have just one friend. Brenda Himmelstein. You love Brenda Himmelstein. Only one.”
    Third to fifth grade. My longest stretch in one school, PS 139, and my happiest because of Brenda Himmelstein with her normal family, her salesclerk mother, her bookkeeper father, even a brother who was a pain in the ass. She called me Mutt for my mixed background, but affectionately, and I called her