The Center of Everything

  “Oh.” I don’t know what else to say. I know stealing is wrong, but lying is wrong too. I’ve already lied three times today, and the day isn’t over.

  “Like I was in a bad mood because my dad and Kevin went to this fucking baseball game without me because I’m grounded. But now I feel better.”

  “But that’s why you got grounded in the first place.”

  His handle ears rise up when he smiles. “Yeah.”

  We round the corner and stop walking at the same time. My mother and Mrs. Rowley are both standing outside, their hands on their hips. They are not talking, but they are standing closer to each other than would usually be allowed. My mother sees me first.

  “Where have you been, Evelyn? Jesus, I thought you’d been stolen.”

  “We went to the Kwikshop to get you presents,” Travis says. He is not supposed to tell her this part. It’s supposed to be a surprise.

  Her eyes squeeze shut, and when she opens them, she is looking only at me. “You went across the highway? Don’t do that. Don’t ever do that.”

  Mrs. Rowley moves quickly across the parking lot and grabs Travis by the elbow and the back of his neck. “And I told you to stay away from them,” she whispers, pushing him up the steps.

  “What?” my mother asks. The Rowleys’ door slams shut, and she turns to me. “What does she mean by that?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, although I know it’s because of Mr. Mitchell’s truck, because this is a neighborhood for decent families, which does not include people jumping on beds. This is the fourth lie. I walk back inside, and she follows. The Wizard of Oz is still on. Dorothy has just met the scarecrow. I hand her the box. “Here,” I say. “It’s your surprise.”

  She tilts her head, eyes narrowed, suspicious. “It’s not my birthday.”

  “I know.”

  She frowns and shakes the box lightly. “It’s not a kitten or anything, is it? It’s not going to be something that jumps up at me? I won’t think that’s funny, Evelyn. I’m telling you now.”

  “No, Mom, it’s nice. I just got you a present. That’s all.”

  She puts a hand on her hip. “Why?”

  “Because I love you.”

  She nods, rolling her tongue across her top lip. “Good,” she says. “Good to know somebody does.” She opens the box carefully, pulling out the gum, then the rose wrapped in plastic.

  “There’s more,” I say, watching her eyes. “Much more.”

  She sets the rose on the table and pulls out the People. “Huh,” she says, her voice high. Next comes the beef jerky and the air freshener. She sets each present on the table: the horoscope roll, the Pepsi, the shampoo, the watch. She pulls the sunglasses strap out last, holding it in front of her.

  “What is this?”

  “It’ll keep your sunglasses around your neck, so you won’t lose them.”

  “Ahhhh.” She sets it down on the table and looks at all the things together, smiling steadily now. “Well, this was very nice of you, Evelyn, to get me all this.”

  “Do you like it?”

  “Yes. Yes I do.” She laughs. “These are all very useful things. Why just today I was thinking I needed to get more shampoo.”

  “And now you’ve got it.”

  “And now I’ve got it.” She picks up the beef jerky and tries to sniff it through the wrapper. “This must have cost you a lot of money.”

  “I wanted to get you a surprise.”

  “Right, the surprise. I’ve had a lot of surprises today. But this was a nice one.” She kisses me on the forehead and tells me that after my shower, if I want, we can watch the rest of The Wizard of Oz together. We can each have some beef jerky.

  It’s a nice feeling, giving her this. And later, sitting on the floor in front of the television, my mother combing through my wet hair, everything is okay again, at least for a little while. So maybe Travis is right, and sometimes you really can cancel out the bad with the good. Even if you have to lie, or maybe steal, it’s worth it to have a few moments when you’re happy, making up for bad times, taking what you can.

  six

  WE KNOW SOMETHING IS WRONG when the Rowleys’ is so quiet. Two nights ago, it was very loud, even for them, but now there’s nothing. No screaming, no slamming doors. We notice the difference right away.

  Mr. Rowley normally leaves for work about eight every morning, a ring of keys jangling from the side of his belt, sipping hot coffee from a mug that says I’D RATHER BE TROUTING. But now there is no sign of him, and we have not seen his car for days.

  We still see Mrs. Rowley in the window sometimes, Jackie O in her arms. She holds her tightly, up by her neck, and stands there while Jackie O licks her chin. When she sees us looking, she moves away from the window and pulls the curtains down.

  “Either he left or she ate him,” my mother says.

  On the third day of quiet, still no sign of Mr. Rowley or his car, Travis comes outside with Jackie O, holding her leash with just one finger, his sweatshirt hood pulled over his hair and eyes.

  I lean my head out the door and say hello. He waves back, and I start to walk across the parking lot toward him, but Jackie O barks and growls, showing me her tiny teeth.

  “Calm down,” he says. “Evelyn’s nice.” He has to pick her up so I can come closer, and as he stands there with the dog in the crook of his arm, for the first time, I can see how he looks like his mother, his skin pulled tight around his face. His hair is growing back, turning into curls again.

  “My dad left,” he says, looking down, his fingers working to pull a bur out of Jackie O’s ear. “He went to West Virginia and he’s not coming back. He took Kevin.”

  I bend forward to see inside his hood. His eyes are dry, his heart-shaped mouth closed tight. My mother guessed that Mr. Rowley might have left, but this is worse than we thought. We did not think he would take just Kevin, leaving Travis behind. Jackie O is still barking at me, shrill and loud.

  Travis picks her up so her head is pointed away from me, his hand over her eyes, and sits down on the step, leaving enough room for me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, sitting down. It’s all I can think of. “You’re sure he won’t come back?”

  Travis nods. He says Mr. Rowley woke him up two days ago, came in and sat down on Travis’s bed and said, “Wake up, son,” just like that. He told him he and Kevin were leaving, that they had already packed. He had been planning to leave for a long time. He had been unhappy with Mrs. Rowley for a long time. He said he had only been waiting for the last day of school because he didn’t want to pull Kevin out in the middle of the school year. It was the last day of school for Travis too, but he did not mention this.

  He told Travis he had to leave or he would start drinking again. He and Kevin were going to go live with Travis’s Uncle Bobby and Aunt Terry in West Virginia until he could get settled enough to live on his own. He couldn’t take Travis too because of the fighting and because of the stealing. They would be living off the charity of others. They couldn’t afford any trouble. He would miss Travis very much, but this was what he had to do, or he just wasn’t going to make it.

  Travis puts Jackie O on the ground, and she walks closer to me, sniffing my feet. I can’t think of anything good to say. My dad left, I know, but that was before I was born. It would be worse if they knew you, and left all the same.

  He picks up a piece of bark, grinding it into the concrete step. “We fight a lot, me and Kevin.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’ve seen you.”

  “My mom said that wasn’t the real reason, though. She said she made him leave me with her. She said he was going to take both of us, but that she made him at least leave me.” He looks up at me quickly. “He’s going to send us money, still. He said he’d send five hundred dollars a month, no matter what. And I can come live with them as soon as he gets his own house.”

  I am still trying to think of the right thing to say, the thing that will make him feel better. Maybe he’ll come back. You don
’t want him to start drinking again, and maybe this way he won’t. Five hundred dollars is a lot of money. But none of these seem right. Really, I know nothing will make him feel better. There is nothing to do or say but just sit beside him on the step, and wait until he has told me everything, so we will both know the entire story, and never need it explained again.

  “That makes me so goddamn mad,” my mother says. She is looking out the window across the parking lot, as if Mr. Rowley is still standing in it, waiting for her to come out. “You don’t just take one child and leave the other. You don’t leave, period.”

  Ever since Mr. Rowley and Kevin left, the light in Travis’s room stays on late, and it is on even in the morning when I first wake up. My mother says this breaks her heart.

  “Maybe he’s just reading,” I say. “He likes to read.”

  “He’s waiting,” she says. “And that fucker isn’t coming back.”

  My mother has gotten a new job at the Blue Market grocery store in the Pine Ridge Shopping Plaza. She is not worried about the walk, but she doesn’t like the idea of leaving me alone for eight hours, plus the two hours it will take to walk there and back. Last summer she worked at Peterson’s, but the library was on the way, and in the morning she would drop me off in the Volkswagen with a sandwich, a thermos, and a bag of Fritos. I want to do that again now, but the library is on the other side of town from the store, too far away to walk.

  “I’ll be fine,” I tell her. “I’m not a baby.”

  She chews her thumbnail, looking out the window at the cars on the highway. “No,” she says. “You’re going to have to come to work with me. Travis can come too if he likes. Have him ask his mom, and tell him he’ll need to pack a lunch.” She looks at me and shrugs. “Sorry. That’s the best I can come up with right now.”

  Surprisingly, Mrs. Rowley says yes. Or at least this is what Travis tells us. She does not pack him a lunch, but Travis shows up at our door at eight o’clock. My mother makes a lunch for him.

  The walk to the store is long and hot, cars honking as they pass us on the highway. But once we get to the store, it’s nice. Travis and I go in before my mother so they won’t think we are with her, and we sit on our knees in the air-conditioned aisles, reading magazines, but never for very long at one time. We have been instructed to keep moving, to not stay in one place long enough for anyone to notice us. We are allowed to go anywhere in the strip mall, as long as we don’t go onto the main road, and we check in with my mother every half hour. Checking in must be done in secret, so my mother will not get in trouble. At quarter till and at quarter past, Travis and I are to stand in the front of the store by the cash registers, until we are sure that she sees us. We know she sees us when she tugs on her ear twice; that’s the signal. After that, we are free to go for thirty more minutes. We are not to talk to strangers. We are not, under any circumstances, to go up to her while she is working, unless one of us is bleeding. And for God’s sake, she says, almost every morning, looking at both of us. Please don’t steal anything. Please. If we screw this up, that’s it.

  She’s worried we’ll be bored, but there are plenty of things to do. There is a pet store to the right of the parking lot, with tiny bunnies jumping around a big pen on the floor, and there are also puppies that cost four hundred dollars, and kittens, and fish, and even a large, hairy tarantula with a sign on its aquarium that says DO NOT TAP ON GLASS!!!! We spend most of our time there until Travis taps on the glass, and we are told to leave.

  But there is also an arcade, dark and cool as a cave. We play Pac-Man and Space Invaders, and already Travis and I both have the high score on two of the machines. We ask people we don’t know in the parking lot for quarters. It is my idea, and I am better at it than Travis, stopping people coming out of the store. I can make myself cry, saying I need to call my parents but don’t have any change. I look for old people to ask, thinking they will have softer hearts. No one ever says no.

  After three days of this, Travis says he doesn’t want to do it anymore. It’s wrong, he says, taking old people’s quarters.

  I am hurt by this. I feel stupid, or maybe like a bad person. “It’s the same as stealing,” I tell him. “You steal.”

  He considers this, then shakes his head. “It’s different.”

  We go back to the store, read more magazines. Travis finds Carrie by Stephen King, and we take turns reading it to each other in scary voices. A man with a bow tie asks us if he can help us with something. No, we say. We’re fine.

  “Well,” he says. “Run along now.”

  At quarter till and quarter past, we stop whatever we are doing and go to the front of the store, where my mother stands in her green smock and yellow name tag that says HI! I’M TINA! I’M HERE TO HELP YOU SAVE BIG!, punching numbers into a machine, asking questions of customers who sometimes answer her, sometimes not. How are you doing today? Paper or plastic? I like your shirt. Did you get that around here? Is this stuff any good? I haven’t tried it.

  She says it makes the day go faster, to try to talk to people, to make them remember she’s a person, to make herself remember too. But sometimes they don’t want to talk to her, or they look surprised when she starts talking, like she is part of the cash register, not supposed to talk.

  One morning she wakes up sick, running to the bathroom. She tries to go in to work anyway, but we walk for only ten minutes along the shoulder of the highway when she stops and looks at us, her hand on her stomach, and says we have to go back home.

  “Do you want some juice?” Travis asks. He holds out the thermos my mother bought for him.

  “No,” she says. “No.”

  She is sick again the next day, and the day after that, and then her boss at Blue Market calls and tells her not to come back.

  So she doesn’t. She stays home and walks around in her bathrobe, looking at the television but not watching it. She lies on the couch with one hand over her stomach, the other one over her eyes.

  “What are you going to do?” I ask. She needs to have a job.

  “I don’t know,” she says.

  It is hot summer now, too sticky and miserable in the daytime to be outside for more than a minute. Travis comes over, and we sit by the fan in my window, sucking grape Popsicles. I show him my lima bean plants, my triptych, and my graph. The two plants that have been in sunlight are even taller now, and I had to replant them in bigger containers.

  “This one had fertilizer,” I tell him, touching the leaves of the larger plant. “See?”

  “Huh,” he says. But I can look at his face and see he is only being nice, trying to act interested.

  Even when my mother’s stomach stops bothering her, she stays in her nightgown all day, unshowered. She walks around the house making a weird, high-pitched groaning sound, almost like she’s trying to be a horse again. When she does this, and we are in the same room, it’s difficult for me to read or hear the television.

  “What’s the matter?” I ask.

  “What isn’t the matter?” she answers.

  She tries to call Mr. Mitchell at her old job. She leaves messages for him, telling the person on the phone to tell him it’s urgent. Finally, someone calls back and says he doesn’t work there anymore, that he has moved away somewhere with his wife. She holds the phone away from her ear and looks at it, like she can see the person on the other end through the holes in the earpiece.

  I stay back in my room to get away from her, reading the books Ms. Fairchild gave me last year in a brown paper grocery sack. They are mostly Judy Blume books, Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing; Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret, but there is also Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. I save this one for last because Ms. Fairchild told me the story already, and I know it’s a true story, a real diary of a girl who gets killed in a war. It ends without having an ending because the Nazis come get her before she has time to finish it. All of a sudden, it just stops.

  It’s sad reading her diary, because the whole time she’s locked up
in the attic she keeps saying maybe the war will end so they will get to come out and live like normal people again, but you know, when you’re reading it, that it won’t. You know the whole time she’s going to die. If it weren’t a real diary, but just a story that someone made up, she would have lived, and maybe married Peter. But since it’s a true story, anything can happen, even the very worst.

  Travis starts walking back down to Pine Ridge, spending the long afternoons there by himself, and then with other kids he meets there, older kids with skateboards and BMX bikes. He stops by and asks me to come too.

  “No,” my mother says, not even looking at me. “You’ll get hit by a car.”

  In July, the gas company cuts us off, but this isn’t so bad because it’s too hot for hot water anyway. I wear my swimsuit all day, jumping in and out of the shower, shrieking when the cold water hits my back. My mother tells me to be quiet. She says she has a lot on her mind, and that I shouldn’t try so hard to get on her very last nerve.

  I wake up one morning and see her sitting on the kitchen floor, the window fan blowing on her face, a ketchup stain on the front of her nightgown. You’re supposed to sleep in your bed.

  “How are we going to get to Topeka?” I ask.

  “What?” She says this like she doesn’t really want to know what I asked. I turn off the fan, and she opens her eyes.

  “You said you’d figure out some way to get me to Topeka for the science fair. You promised. Ms. Fairchild said she would take me if you wouldn’t, but you told me you would and it’s in four days.”

  “I’ll figure something out,” she says, closing her eyes again. “But later. Not right now.” She has turned ugly, her nightgown stained, her skin oily, her hair dark.

  “You keep saying that. What’s wrong with you? Are you sick?”

  She opens her eyes. They are dull, glazed over. “I said I’d figure something out and I will, okay? Please go away, just for a minute.” She reaches behind me and turns the fan back on.