The Center of Everything

  “Sixty-three.”

  “One hundred and forty-four.”

  “Six.”

  “Thirty-two.”

  “Seven.”

  “Forty-nine.”

  After a while, Mr. Leland, the principal, stopped looking down at his cards and just asked us whatever came into his head, his eyes shifting between Travis’s mouth and mine. “Six times twelve. Fifty-four divided by six. Eighty-four divided by twelve. Six times seven. Three times eleven.”

  And we just kept going and going and going. Mr. Leland told me that I could hold on to the table in front of me if that would help me not jump or clap every time I answered. He told Travis he would have to speak up, and he told me to be a little more quiet. Calm down, honey, he said. It’s just a game. But by then I couldn’t calm down because, more than anything, I like to win things, and it didn’t seem fair that I could beat everybody else and then still not win just because of one person. If you don’t win things, you lose them, and I think the way I feel when I lose must be the way it feels to be dead.

  So I was thinking about winning, how much I wanted to win, clenching my hands so tightly my fingers hurt and that’s when Mr. Leland said, “Thirty-nine divided by three!” and Travis won.

  I didn’t know the thirteens at all. We hadn’t even done them yet.

  All he got was a piece of paper that said he won and Mr. Leland shaking his hand. He sort of smiled when he got the paper, but then he just went right back to biting his bottom lip. I was mad, looking at the piece of paper I almost got but didn’t.

  And then Travis turned around and said, “Nice job, kiddo,” and even though this is all he has ever said to me and all he probably will ever say to me my entire life, I felt better. I’ve never seen him say that much to anyone.

  He shoplifts. A month ago, there was a police cruiser parked outside of Unit B, and I saw him getting out of the back, wearing a sweatshirt hood over his head, but you could still see it was him because he has curly brown hair that my mother calls corkscrews, and no one else I know has it. So now, twice a week, the school bus drops Travis Rowley off at the group home for boys in town instead of at our stop.

  He’s still doing it though, shoplifting. Last week I saw him in the Kwikshop when I was with my mother, his hands moving quickly, pushing two comic books into the sleeves of the blue sweatshirt. He reads these comic books on the bus, a ski hat pulled down over his hair. They are mostly comic books with covers of superheroes in masks and colorful body suits, swinging from ropes, shooting lightning out of their fingers, with names like Dark Avenger and Captain Victory.

  My mother calls Travis the little one, even though he isn’t really that little. She looks out the window sometimes and says, “That little one, when he gets older, look out. He’ll be the one getting whistles. He will break hearts.”

  When she finally comes out to the car, she has her sunglasses on and so in the yellow dress, she looks like she is in disguise, a movie star trying not to be recognized. She walks quickly, looking straight ahead, but Mr. Rowley has already gotten up from his lawn chair.

  “You’re looking good, Tina.”

  She keeps walking, so he stays where he is and starts to clap. Kevin and Travis have stopped throwing the knife. They turn around, watching.

  “Jesus, Tina,” Mr. Rowley says, scratching his beard. “Your ass looks like a bell ringing, I swear to God.”

  She gets in the car and shuts the door.

  “Ding dong!” Mr. Rowley yells, still clapping. “Ding dinga dong!”

  The engine starts up, no problem, Frank Sinatra on the stereo singing “My Way.” She gives the stick shift a good tug, using both hands. There is a loud, straining sound, like someone turning on a vacuum cleaner, but the stick won’t move. The Rowleys watch.

  “Please,” she says, her hand on the dashboard. She’s talking to the car. “Please?”

  Mr. Rowley walks closer, leaning on his good leg. Travis and Kevin follow and stand behind him, looking at the Volkswagen with serious faces, Kevin still holding the white-handled knife. They are shirtless, both of them, their chests smooth and already tan. My mother is still trying to move the gearshift. It doesn’t give, and it doesn’t give. Mr. Rowley is still just standing there, waiting for her to let him help.

  “I just need to get it into first,” she says finally. She pushes herself up out of her seat. The yellow dress is already wrinkled in the back. “It does this when I start it sometimes.”

  Mr. Rowley nods and lowers himself into the car, holding his bad knee with his hand. He steps on the clutch pedal, and the stick moves into first right away even though he is using only one hand, the ball of muscle in his arm sliding down like the bulge of a mouse inside a boa constrictor.

  My mother says thank you, not looking at him, but up at the sky. Travis sees me looking at him, and he meets my eyes without smiling before I can look away. “Yup,” Mr. Rowley says, patting the dashboard. “But you need a new clutch. I hope you’re not trying to go far.”

  He tells her she will have to put her foot down on the clutch pedal while his foot is still on it so the car won’t stall again, and I can see by her face she is worried this is a trick. She holds on to the door and puts her right foot on the pedal, and Mr. Rowley slides out behind her, using the door as leverage, his hands right next to hers as he pulls himself up. I am waiting for him to say something or even worse, but he doesn’t. He stretches his good leg out of the car, and then the other. My mother slides back into the seat, the engine humming now, ready to go.

  We watch Mr. Rowley walk back across the parking lot, Travis and Kevin behind him. He swings his arms, his hands rounded into loose fists. The limp looks like a bounce.

  The sky is a bright, bright blue, almost turquoise, with no clouds, the sun still high, and I am excited just to be on the highway, going this fast. I hang my head out the window the way a dog would, the spring breeze blowing hard on my face as we sail along on I-35 past grain elevators and rest stops, clusters of cows behind barbed-wire fences and fields of blue stem grass that look so green I can’t stand it. Frank Sinatra is singing “I’ve Got the World on a String,” for the second time since we left, but it’s so pretty out I don’t care.

  “I knew a girl who fell right out of the car hanging her head out the window like that,” my mother says. “She went splat.” She pulls me back in the car by my arm. “Listen, you know we’re going to see my father. Your grandfather.”

  “Okay,” I say, but I’m still looking out the window, at a red tractor moving slowly along a tan-and-brown-striped field. There are butterflies already, monarchs. Ms. Fairchild said the monarchs come through Kansas every spring, millions of them, moving north with the birds. Or maybe the birds move with them.

  “My father and I haven’t talked for a while. Evelyn? Are you listening?”

  I look at her and nod.

  She talks quickly. She says her father is a lot older than Eileen, and that he grew up on a farm in Nebraska. He was in the Korean War before he met Eileen, when Eileen was still just a teenager, and he has a Bronze Star because when he was in the war another man got shot, and my grandfather carried him seven miles to a hospital. On the way there, he got shot too, but he didn’t put the other man down.

  “He’s a hard worker,” she says, only one hand on the steering wheel now. The other one is up by her mouth, her thumbnail between her teeth.

  She keeps talking. She has six younger brothers and sisters, but only four of them will be there today because one of them, Stephen, is in the army in Virginia and another one, Theresa, is married in Texas with babies of her own. But I’ll meet four of them today. She counts them off on her fingers—Daniel, Joe, Stephanie, and Beth—my aunts and uncles, she says. I won’t need to call them that, and probably shouldn’t. Beth is younger than I am, so that would be a little weird. They live in a nice house. Her father works at Boeing now. He helps make airplanes.

  “Where did the bullet go?”

  “In the arm,” she
says, looking in the rearview mirror. She has it tilted at an angle where she can see her eyes, not the cars behind her. “And he’s missing a finger. He lost it working in the winter. Frostbite.”

  “Which finger?” I look down at my hands.

  “His pinkie.” She wiggles her own pinkie at me. “Don’t stare at it when you see him.”

  I try to imagine it, what he will look like, a four-fingered hand over his arm where the bullet went in, nice enough to carry another man when he himself was bleeding, mean enough to do what he did to Eileen’s mouth. But I know I can’t really imagine him, the way he will look. It’s like trying to imagine my own father, always someone to make up, knowing that whatever way I try to imagine him I am probably wrong, at least about something.

  “Why doesn’t he come over to visit like Eileen does?”

  She smiles, tilting her head back and forth. “He doesn’t like me very much.”

  I watch her face. “Why not?”

  “Next question, please.” She glances up at the mirror.

  “Is he nice?”

  She rubs her lips together. “He has a temper.”

  “You have a temper.”

  She looks at me. “No. No I don’t.”

  “Is he going to talk about Jesus all the time like Eileen?”

  She smiles. “Yes. But he likes to talk about God more. Eileen loves Jesus, and he loves God. That’s why they get along.”

  I hang my arm out the window, waving it in the wind. “Who do you love?”

  She laughs, putting her sunglasses back on. “I love you, Evaloo. I do I do.”

  Eileen and my nine-fingered grandfather have a real house and a real yard. The house is green with white trim, on the turnaround of a dead-end street. An American flag hangs in the front, and a tiny gold eagle is perched on the front of their mailbox. One side of the house is two stories with a brown front door, and the other side is a two-car garage. The other houses on their street have this same shape, but they are painted different colors, some brown, some white, some light yellow with brick. Shade trees rise over the backs of the houses, one with a tire swing hanging down. There are kids riding on bikes and skateboards, none of them wearing pink dresses. Two women sit on chairs on the lawn next to Eileen’s. They look up from their magazines when our Volkswagen pulls into Eileen’s driveway, Frank Sinatra floating out the windows.

  “It’ll be fine,” my mother says, even though I haven’t said anything. She holds my hand when we walk up the driveway, her hand tight around mine.

  The doormat is a picture of Jesus holding out his arms and smiling, WELCOME stamped in cursive over his smiling face. It looks like I am standing on Jesus, my white shoes on his neck, and this seems like it could bring bad luck. I step off.

  A boy opens the door. He is tall and thin, all throat and elbows, wearing a mesh football shirt and shorts. The visor of his baseball hat knocks into my mother’s forehead when he hugs her.

  “Daniel! Oh my God! Oh my God!” She holds him away from her, squeezing his shoulders. “You’ve gotten so big! You’re taller than I am.”

  “Well shit, Tina, I’m about seventeen.” He bends down and looks at me. He has Eileen’s nose, and a retainer. “Hey, is this my niece?” He looks up at my mother. “She looks like you. Weird.”

  We follow him inside. There is baby blue carpeting everywhere, two girls stretched out on it, playing Chinese checkers. They look up at us, saying nothing. They also have Eileen’s bony nose, my mother’s dark red curls pulled back from their faces with plastic bands.

  “This is Stephanie,” he says, pointing at the older one. “And this is Beth.”

  Aunt Beth. She could be eight. Daniel makes hand signals for them to stand up, like a policeman waving traffic through a stoplight. They do not stand up, but they smile, and when they do, they look like small, flat-chested versions of my mother. They look more like her than I do.

  “Hi,” the older one says. The younger one, Beth, says nothing. She’s just a watcher.

  “Hi,” my mother says. “It’s okay if you don’t remember us. I came by once when you were still just a baby, Beth. Evelyn was just a toddler, maybe three.” She nods at Stephanie. “You two played together, out in the yard. But there’s no way you could remember.”

  They say nothing. Daniel comes back, handing each of us a glass of ice water. My mother is smiling in a way that looks like it would hurt if you did it for a long time. “I used to baby-sit him,” she says, pointing at Daniel. “How do you like that?”

  Another boy walks in the front door, this one younger than Daniel, and he has a dog on a leash. He has the same red hair, and the same nose. The dog is a German shepherd with a pink collar, and when it sees me and my mother it starts barking, its teeth sharp and yellowy white. My mother puts both hands on my shoulders, and pulls me behind her.

  The boy has to hold the pink leash with both hands. “No, Rita! No! Stop barking!”

  Daniel takes the leash, dragging the dog away. He uses his foot to push the dog behind a door, shutting it quickly. “Guess Rita doesn’t know you’re family,” he says, leaning against the door. He smiles, and again there is the metal retainer. But Rita is still barking, throwing her weight against the door, so it sounds like someone kicking. “Dad’s new dog,” he says.

  My mother looks at the door. “Where’s Marilyn?”

  “He had to put her down. Hip problems.”

  “Oh.” She looks at the other boy. “Well, God, I guess you’re Joe.”

  The other boy nods, says hi, and my mother laughs. And then they all four just stand there, staring at us like we have just come down from Mars, like we have green heads and noses where our eyes should be. Rita is still barking, growling, trying to sniff us through the small opening under the door. The water that Daniel gave me smells and tastes like soap.

  My mother clears her throat, her hand on the back of her neck. “This is a little strange, isn’t it? I know it feels strange for me.”

  Only Daniel smiles back. She turns to him, lowering her voice. “Is he here?”

  “No, he’s still at work,” Daniel says. “Man, this is going to be in-tense, isn’t it?”

  I hear Eileen’s voice from a different room. “Is that them? Are they here?” She walks into the entryway, carrying a wooden spoon with mashed potatoes on the end of it. When she sees me, she looks down at the dress and makes a squealing sound, leaning down to give me a tight hug. “Did you all meet Evelyn? Isn’t she just beautiful?”

  All four of them look at me carefully, but say nothing.

  “Well, she is, stupids,” she says, kissing the top of my head. She hands the spoon to Daniel and tells him to go in the kitchen and make sure the potatoes stay warm but don’t burn. She tells Beth and Stephanie to set the table.

  “You two come with me,” she says, and leads us into another room. It’s not a kitchen, and there isn’t a TV in it, so I’m not sure what it’s for. A piano sits in one corner, a gold sofa and two matching chairs in another. Someone has spilled something on the baby blue carpet that stained, something brown or dark green in the shape of a boot. I sit next to my mother on the gold sofa, little pillows on each side of us. Eileen sits in one of the chairs.

  “I’m just so glad you two are here,” she says. “So glad.” She claps her hands and bounces a little, like she is riding in a car on a bumpy road.

  My mother smiles with her lips together. She looks around the room, at the oil painting of the ocean crashing onto rocks above the piano, the gauzy gold curtains in the windows. She picks up one of the pillows, fingering its baby blue fringe.

  “This room is exactly the same,” she says. “Time warp.”

  “Some things are different.”

  “Let’s hope so.”

  Eileen reaches over to my mother’s face, smoothing down her hair. “Just be nice, Tina. Just be nice and everything will be okay.”

  “I’ll be nice if he’ll be nice.”

  Eileen frowns and looks away.

 
My grandfather is a very big man, broad shouldered and so tall that he has to duck when he first comes through the door. My eyes go right to where his pinkie should be, and it’s true: there’s just a little white stub there, the end smoothed over with pink, dimpled flesh. He sees me looking and wiggles it at me before he even says hello.

  “Hi,” I say, still looking at the stub.

  “Hi yourself.”

  He looks much older than Eileen; a flap of skin hangs between his chin and his neck, and one of his eyes has a red vein zigzagging across the white part. His hair is dark red, cut short like a soldier’s, and he’s wearing a white shirt with a blue striped tie. Rita stands behind him, watching us, no longer barking.

  “This is Evelyn,” my mother says.

  He nods at me, smiling, and then looks back at my mother. “It’s good to see you again, dear, so grown up.” His voice is very low. I can hear the ticking of my mother’s watch, her wrist just below my ear, her hands still on my shoulders.

  He starts to pull on his tie, loosening it, unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up. Eileen bulges her eyes at him.

  “I’m glad you’ve come here today, Tina,” he says, very slowly. “Your mother has missed you.”

  My mother nods, rolling her lips between her teeth. If the whole night goes like this, people speaking so slowly and with such long spaces in between, it will seem like forever. I wish my mother and I were already back at home right now, sitting in front of the television, eating grilled cheese.

  He clears his throat. “You’ve been missed.”

  “Thanks, Dad.” She’s still standing behind me, her hands heavy on my shoulders. Eileen catches my eye and winks.

  Beth and Stephanie appear in the doorway. “Table’s set,” Stephanie says. Neither of them looks at me. They are both watching my grandfather’s face.

  “You girls get a chance to talk to your sister?” he asks. “And little Evelyn here?”