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wears a clown hat. I wear a king hat.”
    “Okay.”
    “Write it so you don’t forget, Mommy.”
    “I’m writing it. Charlie Brown tablecloth, hats.”
    “I wear a king hat.”
    “I’ve got it. See the k ? That’s for king hat.”
    “Will I have a cake?”
    “Of course you’ll have a cake. It’s on the list.”
    “Where is the k ?”
    “This is cake. Cake has a c. ”
    “Can I have a cake with Mickey Mouse?”
    “I don’t know if Baskin-Robbins makes a cake with Mickey Mouse.”
    “Please, Mommy. I love Mickey Mouse. He’s my favorite.”
    “I’ll see if Baskin-Robbins makes a cake with Mickey Mouse. If they don’t, we’ll try Carvel. And if they don’t maybe you’ll settle for Donald Duck.”
    “Donald Duck is okay. Mickey Mouse is my favorite.”
    “So I heard.”
    “I’m going to be four years old, Mommy. I’m a big boy, right?”
    Ten four-year-olds were coming with their traveling road show. They were in the same class at nursery school, their birthdays all fell at approximately the same time, Billy went to their birthday parties, they came to his. Joanna and Billy planned the menu together. His party was going to be “fantastic,” he said, which meant pizza, soda and ice-cream cake. They located Mickey Mouse in a nearby Carvel, she got the little baskets for the little candies—once, at her agency she had organized an elegant dinner party for one hundred executives and their wives at The Rainbow Room. She shopped for party favors. She bought Billy his big-boy present from his mommy and daddy, a giant Tinker Toy set; she found matching Charlie Brown paper plates and tablecloth, and on a Sunday in April, with Ted nearby to wipe up the stains, the munchkins came and wrecked the house, little Mimi Aronson, who was allergic to chocolate and did not say so, broke out from M&M’s on the spot, and alongside her Joanna Kramer had hives again.
    “Ted, this is no time to play with a dump truck. We’re cleaning up.”
    “I was just looking. Don’t be so tense, for crying out loud.”
    “It’s eleven o’clock at night. I want to get to sleep.”
    “I’ll finish.”
    “No, you won’t. I don’t like the way you clean.”
    “It’s good I’m not a cleaning woman.”
    “You don’t have to be. I am.”
    “Joanna, think about the good part. It was a wonderful party.”
    “It should have been. I worked my ass off.”
    “Look—”
    “You think all this got done by magic? The perfect little baskets and the goddamn Charlie Brown motif? I spent three days on this fucking party.”
    “Billy was really happy.”
    “I know. He got his Mickey Mouse cake.”
    “Joanna—”
    “I do terrific parties for kids. That’s what I do, terrific parties for kids.”
    “Let’s go to bed.”
    “Sure. All this can wait until the morning. I’ll be here to do it.”
    They fell asleep wordlessly. She got up in the night and went into Billy’s room, where he was sleeping with his “people,” as he called them, a teddy bear, a dog and a Raggedy Andy. On the floor were the spoils of the day, the giant Tinker Toys, the dominoes, the Tonka Truck and the bowling game that come with the victory of being four years old. She wanted to wake him and say, Billy, Billy, don’t be four, be one, and we’ll start all over and I’ll play with you and we’ll laugh and I won’t yell so much and we won’t fight so much, and I’ll hug you and I’ll kiss you and I’ll love you very much, and the terrible two’s won’t be terrible, and I’ll be a sweet mommy, and three will be wonderful, and four, by the time we get to four, you will be my little man and you’ll hold my hand on the street and we’ll chatter away about everything, and I won’t be perfect, I can’t be perfect, but I won’t be mean, Billy, not so mean, and I’ll care more and I’ll love you more and we’ll have so much fun—I’ll really try, if we could just start over, Billy. But she went into the kitchen so she would not wake him