When the cake came out, everyone sang badly, and Maude told more stories. Polly thought she wanted the party not only because she was the queen for the night, but so that these people, survivors and descendants, might understand her glory years before boring decades of good deeds and children, because she loved the way people admired the photos of her laughing and gorgeous and young. A definition of true death was that it happened when the last person who remembered you died, and maybe this is what panicked Maude. With this party she was forcing people to see her disappearing dead, her mother and father, sister and brothers, lovers, world. Maude was the last person to keep her father—dead at forty-four—alive, and with a completely different span, Polly might be the last to keep Papa and Dee alive, just as Helen and Sam might remember Maude.

What resounded, through the years? Ariel, Asta. All the peripheral shit faded, but it was fun in the meantime. Late in the evening, Maude started telling stories again. She had a funny habit of throwing her chin up when she was fibbing, and most of the family knew the trait.

“Murderous Swedes!” she yelled.

Polly wished she’d heard the story. Everyone laughed, but it wasn’t really a joke.

Polly moved through remnants after everyone went to bed, after almost everything was cleaned up. She collected stray glasses from the lawn, made a pile of sweaters and purses by the door, emptied the dish drain, ate someone’s forgotten serving of tart.

When she lost steam, she sat at one end of the heaped dining room table and read Sam’s stack of family tree notes. Out of an innate sense of fairness, he’d tried to say something interesting about everyone, but some of the stories were sadder because of their brevity. Asta had been the best dancer, Papa’s little brother had been brain-damaged in a fight but loved to sing. The cousins had all fought or served as nurses, in World War II, if they weren’t home with babies.

At some point, as people became more incoherent, Sam had veered from biography to the life of the mind and asked people what most scared them. A wrinkled sheet with answers was tucked into the notebook. Jane, whose thesis had compared the world’s apocalypse stories, was terrified by floods. Merle, whose paternal grandfather had seen a horse blow into a tree, feared tornados. Jane said Dee had been obsessed with earthquakes, and that Papa had fretted whenever a child was by a high window. Ned was sure insects would inherit the earth, and had nightmares about jellyfish. Harry imagined the ground collapsing under his feet.

They were all disaster people. Other answers:

Maude—being blind

Hans—freezing to death

Drake—looking in a mirror and seeing no face. Or falling.

Josie—nurses

Helen—Dad disappearing

Mom—deep still water

Sam—