Mrs. Waite's birthday cake and suicide; the mother's cirrhosis diagnosis; "Sir Osis of Thuliver"

pivotal · childhood, ~age 9, B.S.

• When: the fall around Gately's eighth or ninth birthday ("so he must have been nine")
• What: Mrs. Waite, the reclusive "witchy" neighbor by the M.P.'s garage, formed a slight kitchen-table bond with young Gately; she gave up cigarettes for weeks to afford a careful dark-chocolate cake for the neighborhood mass-birthday party (four cursive names, sparing Gately a solo cake), which the party's Mom refused to serve on a poisoning rumor and threw out. Weeks later Mrs. Waite hanged herself and was found by a meter-reader. Right around the same period (Gately ~9) his mother was first Diagnosed with cirrhosis; the child mixed the "Diagnosis" up with King Arthur, riding a mop-handle horse and calling himself "Sir Osis of Thuliver." This memory seeds Gately's later fever-dream of Joelle-as-Death (event 56).