The Center of Everything

  I point at the radio. “When did this start?”

  He smiles, sheepish. “You ever hear that joke about what happens when you play a country song backwards?”

  I shake my head. It is cold, even in the car, but he isn’t wearing a hat or gloves.

  “The dog comes back, the wife stops cheating, and all the beer reappears in the fridge.”

  “You guys had a dog?”

  “You can’t take it literally.”

  “And Deena’s not cheating either.”

  “This is true.” Once we are on the highway, he asks me to hold the steering wheel while he lights a cigarette. I’m not a big fan of this maneuver, but I do it. I have to get close to him, my arms crossed over his, and I can smell his shaving lotion, alcohol and mint.

  “You see my mom lately?” he asks.

  “Yeah. Jackie O had to have surgery or something. She’s wearing this little doggie cast around one of her legs.”

  He laughs, taking the wheel again. “I know. I’ve heard all about it. That dog will outlive us all.” He looks at me quickly, then back at the road in front of him. His face is changing, still handsome, but growing older maybe. He looks tired.

  “Are you and Deena doing okay?”

  He glances at me. “Why? What did she say?”

  “Nothing. Really. I just wondered.”

  He shrugs. “I guess. I mean, it’s okay. Jack’s a cutie, isn’t he?”

  “He is.”

  Ten seconds go by without either of us saying anything. I count them off in my head.

  “How’s school?” he asks.

  “Okay.”

  He rolls his eyes. “You can talk about it, Evelyn, really. It’s fine.”

  “Well, you know. It’s the same, more or less. I’ve got Duchesne for English.”

  “AP English, right?”

  I give a little nod, but say nothing.

  “College-bound now, huh? Well good for you, Evelyn. Good for you.” When he pulls into the parking lot of Treeline Colonies, he shuts off the motor and turns toward me. I wait for a moment, looking at him, because I think maybe he wants to say something. But then I think I am imagining it. Maybe he is just waiting for me to get out.

  “Bye,” I say finally, opening the door. “Sorry it didn’t work out.”

  “No big deal. Thanks for trying, though.”

  He waits there until I have unlocked the apartment door, the Datsun idling in the parking lot. When I walk in, I hear my mother laughing. Samuel is in his pajamas, sitting in his beanbag, and my mother sits on the floor beside him. They are watching Roseanne.

  “Evelyn, honey, you’re already back? Sit down and watch this for a minute,” she says. “It’s really good. You’re just like Darlene, I swear. It’s like you’re on TV.”

  I sit down on the couch and try to watch. The studio audience is laughing, and my mother is too, but I can’t concentrate. I don’t even hear what Roseanne says, or what Darlene says back. I have to read fifty pages of Crime and Punishment by tomorrow, and I think maybe this is what’s bothering me, buzzing inside my head so I can’t hear the television.

  I brush my teeth and change into my pajamas. Two of the cats are asleep on my bed, and even when they see me standing there, yelling at them and clapping, they don’t move. I have to scrunch in on one side of my own bed.

  Even when I am tucked under the covers, my book in front of me, a glass of water by my side, I can’t read. Sometimes you can feel it when someone is watching you, even if you are turned in the other direction. I don’t understand how this works. You shouldn’t really be able to feel someone’s stare. But you can. I’ve felt it. Also, if I am staring at someone, they almost always look up. Ms. Jenkins said she knew what I was talking about, that she had felt this feeling herself, but she wasn’t exactly sure how it worked. It wouldn’t be any of the five senses, sight, touch, sound, taste, or smell. So maybe we are just imagining it, she said.

  I pull back my window shade, peering outside into the darkness. The Datsun is still there. I can hear the engine running, and the faint music of the radio, still playing country music. Inside, the tiny circle of a cigarette glows bright orange, moving slowly, back and forth.

  twenty

  EILEEN HAS HER OWN MONEY now, from the life insurance and the investments my grandfather made before he died.

  “He was considerate, planning ahead for me,” she tells my mother. “You have to give him that.”

  She’s ready to do plenty of giving, now that all the money is hers. She bought Samuel a special chair for the shower so my mother won’t have to lift him into the tub, and also a machine that actually says “Yes” when he presses the green circle and “No” when he presses the red one. The voice sounds like the voice of a robot, like the car in Knight Rider. She also bought us a microwave, a new coffeemaker, and a food processor. The UPS man comes to our apartment once a week now, delivering boxes. He’s very tall, very handsome, and he smiles at my mother while she signs her name.

  For Christmas, Eileen stays in Wichita with Beth and Stephanie, but she comes up the next day. She gives me too many presents—a Walkman, a pair of earrings, and a cream-colored cardigan with pearls for buttons. In the card, there is a check for six hundred dollars, my name spelled out carefully in large, childlike letters. On the memo line, she has drawn a heart.

  “Eileen,” I say, shaking my head. “It’s so much.”

  “It’s to help you with school.” Her hair has just recently started to turn gray, but she is wearing it in two long braids, one on each side. She wears red and green glitter around her eyes. “For college. Save it up for next year.”

  “Pretty generous,” my mother says, steering Samuel’s hand away from Eileen’s braids. He groans and hits the NO button over and over again. Now, because of the machine, we have to hear him say no as much as he wants to say it, the steady robot voice speaking for him, no no no no no no no.

  “Well it’s from your grandfather, really,” Eileen says. “He’s the one who made this all possible, God rest his soul.” She looks up at the ceiling as if he is really up there, floating around like smoke. My mother nods solemnly, but as soon as Eileen turns away, she catches my eye, and raises both of her middle fingers toward the ceiling like they can fire bullets. She laughs silently, her mouth open wide. I make a quick hissing sound, and she puts her hands back in her lap.

  She has been doing things like this lately, my mother, not acting like an adult. Two weeks ago, she came home from work and then called McDonald’s on the phone, asking for DuPaul, plugging her nose to disguise her voice, saying she was from the Internal Revenue Service. She asked him why he hadn’t yet turned in all the forms for 1988 yet, and if he knew about the special Kansas tax on condiments. She kept going and going with this, not letting up, not cracking a smile even though she could have because she was just on the phone and he couldn’t see her anyway. But then he heard Samuel crying and realized it was her. When I went in to work the next day, he was still laughing about it.

  “Your mother,” he said, stacking cups by the soda machine, “is a piece of work.”

  He got her back the next week, getting all the other employees and five paying customers to individually tell her there was something in her teeth when really there was nothing. My mother thought it was hysterical.

  But she is straight-faced again by the time Eileen stops looking at the ceiling. She tells Eileen it looks like I’ll get a scholarship, and so I won’t need so much money.

  Eileen leans across the table, taking my hand. “Evelyn! A scholarship? That’s wonderful!”

  I nod. Ms. Jenkins helped me get a scholarship to KU; I’m going to major in biology. If you major in biology and you do well, you can apply to go to Costa Rica your junior year. The pamphlet for the Costa Rica program has pictures of students with backpacks walking through a dense forest, taking notes, looking at beetles the size of my fist. SEE THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE FIRSTHAND! is printed at the top. I want to do this. I want to go to the Gal
ápagos Islands.

  “She might get to go to Costa Rica,” my mother says. Sam swings his fist back and forth on his tray, hitting both the YES and NO buttons, the robot voice speaking for him every time. No yes no yes no.

  “Costa Rica?” Eileen says. “Goodness, why would you want to go there?”

  I smile and shrug. “Just to go.” There is no need to bring up Ms. Jenkins and biology with Eileen. I fold the check carefully, slip it in my pocket. “Maybe I’ll go to Ireland too.” I say this as I think it.

  Eileen looks happy about this. “You could look up my mother’s birthplace.” She squints into her lap. “Mallow. That’s where she was born. In County Cork.”

  I imagine myself going to Ireland, looking up Eileen’s twelve aunts and uncles. I would have so many cousins. If I found the right town in Ireland, I might be related to everyone in it. There is a commercial on television where this happens: An American traveling in Ireland goes around to little cottages, trying to find his Irish cousins he has never met. When he finds the right cottage, they bring him in and give him beer. They make him dance with them while someone plays a fiddle.

  Eileen frowns, shaking her head. “’Course there wouldn’t be anybody left from her side. They all died as babies. Just two of her brothers lived, and I think even they died in the war.”

  My mother and I stare at her. She isn’t looking at us but is scratching her head, trying to remember the names of the two brothers. “Owen and Paul. Or Peter? It started with a P.”

  My mother puts her fork down. “The rest of them died? You said there were thirteen.”

  Eileen nods, spreading mayonnaise on a piece of bread.

  “Ten of them died? As children?”

  She shrugs. “They didn’t have the medicine we do now, Tina, the antibiotics. There was consumption, and not always a lot to eat. It was harder to keep your kids alive.”

  “Oh God.” My mother crosses her arms on the table and puts her head down on them. “It’s too horrible. I wouldn’t have wanted to live.”

  Eileen takes a bite of her sandwich. “Yes you would have. You would have adjusted to the times. You would have found strength in the Lord the way they did, and you’d have carried on.”

  I think of Mr. Carmichael, lying in the grass and crying next to his lawnmower. Ten times that.

  “I would have tried to find strength in doctors,” my mother says. “I think after the third one died, I would quit messing around.”

  “There wasn’t a lot doctors could do back then, Tina. They just had to pray and hope. But let’s not talk about all these sad things,” she says, squeezing my hand. “It’s Christmas. Look at this new camera I bought. Let’s take pictures.”

  She holds the camera up. I put on the new earrings she gave me for the picture, leaning forward so Samuel and my mother will fit in the frame.

  “Beautiful,” Eileen says, and I hear the click. She is standing by the window now, the light hitting her face so I can see the glitter in her eyeshadow, creasing in her wrinkles when she smiles. “I want one of me and Evelyn.”

  My mother belts Samuel into his chair and takes the camera from Eileen.

  “Aaaa! You’re taller than me! My granddaughter is taller than me!” She looks up at me, her forehead grazing my chin. It’s true—I’ve grown five inches in one year, suddenly taller than all of the boys in my class except Stu Svelden. It has taken some getting used to, being up this high. I’m still bumping into things.

  My mother takes two more pictures, Eileen standing beside me, her arm around my waist.

  I love having a Walkman. I can play my Tracy Chapman tape as much as I want, and I don’t have to worry about my mother saying that if she hears it one more time she will have to put her head in the oven and end it all. By early March, it’s warm enough to go walking, and I do, up and down the highway, the headphones snug inside my ears. I am reading a book on birds so I will know the names of the ones I see when I’m walking—red-winged blackbirds, dickcissels, indigo buntings. This spring alone, I have seen a fox, two deer, and a skunk, moving away from the highway, scurrying through the corn.

  Sometimes I walk all the way to Travis and Deena’s. Deena and the baby are always home, and she looks happy when she opens the door and sees it’s me. She tells me to sit down anywhere I can find, that she is sorry about the mess. She offers me a Tab from the fridge, but warns me to keep an eye on it, to not get it mixed up with the other cans lying on the table. “Travis leaves his fucking butts in the empties,” she says, shaking one so I can hear the cigarette rattling inside. She’s grown her hair out to her shoulders again, but she has recently cut her own bangs, and I think maybe she cut them too short. Also they are not straight, but slanted across her forehead at a diagonal. Maybe she was tilting her head when she did it.

  Jack is almost eighteen months old, walking now. It’s like he was a baby one day, and then by the next time I came over, he had exploded into something else. Samuel is still in the wheelchair, still using the buttons and the robot voice to tell us yes and no, but already Jack can tell you no himself, with clenched fists and a red face, and say “I want juice,” even “I love Mommy.” I know my mother would give anything to hear this from Samuel, just once. But Deena gets to hear it all the time, and she just smiles and says, “I love you too, cutie.”

  She dresses him neatly, in little overalls and tennis shoes with pictures of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He has a basket of books by the couch, and as soon as I sit down he hands me one and crawls up on my lap, as if this is a routine I should know. He still has Travis’s eyes, but now he has teeth, and his smile looks like Deena’s.

  “Sun?” he asks, pointing at a sun on the cover of the book. The sun is neon yellow, with wide eyes and a large, smiling mouth.

  “That’s right,” I say. “Sun.”

  The book about the sun is his favorite, the one he always chooses. It’s about the smiling sun’s journey across the sky; the only words in the book are the sun’s greetings to everyone it wakes. “Good morning, rooster! Good morning, cow! Good morning, Farmer Joe!” He has it memorized. Halfway through the book, the sun moves on to different countries, waking Asian people in pointed hats, Africans watching it rise along the beach. “Good morning, Asia! Good morning, Africa!” At the end, the sun is back in America, saying good morning to the rooster again.

  Jack flips the book back to the first page. He wants me to start again. “Sun?” he asks.

  “Welcome to my world,” Deena says. She’s lying on the couch, eating a bag of Chee•tos. L.A. Law is on television, the sound too low to hear. She wears pink-and-white bunny slippers, her feet up on the armrest.

  “You know, Deena, if you ever want to go out, I think I could take care of Jack by myself now. Really. He’s older. I won’t get freaked out.”

  “No no,” she says, still looking at the screen. “All I want to do is lie here. I like being with him. It’s just nice to have someone else here.”

  She doesn’t say where Travis is, whether it would be nice to have him there or not.

  I start coming over more, once a week. We watch TV. She paints my toenails. We talk about Jack, about what’s on TV. We don’t talk about school. I don’t talk to her about next year, even though this is what I am most excited about right now, what I am thinking about all the time. I’m moving into the dorms in Lawrence on August 14, a hundred and thirty-two days from today. I already got a letter saying I will be in McCullom Hall, and my roommate will be Tia Boldrini, a girl I do not know, also a freshman, from Chicago, Illinois.

  Libby isn’t going to KU. She’s going to Boston College, because that’s where her father went. She says Traci was going to go to Wellesley, because that’s where her mother went, and then they would be in Massachusetts together. They were going to have lunch together once a week in Boston and maybe go to museums and also on double dates. But now, like me, she’ll just be on her own.

  It’s strange to think what it would have been like if the accident hadn’
t happened, if Traci and Adele were still alive. Libby and I would not have gotten to be friends, so she might not have been the one to tell me, but still, I might have heard they were going to go to expensive colleges in Massachusetts so they could have lunch together anyway, and I just would have hated them even more. I would have wanted something bad to happen to them in Massachusetts, something small, maybe just a car splashing mud on their clothes, ruining the lunch.

  But now that something bad really has happened to them, I wish it all would have worked out for them. I wish they would be having lunch together in Boston next year, just the way they planned. Really, it wouldn’t have hurt me for them to have had that. And it doesn’t help me at all, now that they won’t.

  In May, Ms. Jenkins has to go to a conference at the university, and she gets permission for me to come with her, not to the conference, but just to the campus, so I’ll be able to see my new home. She comes and picks me up in her little car, waving at my mother from the driver’s seat.

  “You’re going to love college, Evelyn,” she says, scratching her head, the air rushing in from the windows. She won’t turn on the air conditioner. “It’ll be a whole new world.”

  We exit off the highway and cross a bridge over a slow-moving river into Lawrence. It’s a pretty town, not like Kerrville at all. There are a lot of small houses with shade trees, the campus on a hill in the distance. Some of the streets are paved with red bricks instead of asphalt, and Ms. Jenkins’s car jerks unsteadily. She winces as we bounce along, but still, I like the way it looks.

  I keep thinking about The Day After, though, how it was filmed here. I think of the voice on the commercial saying, “This is Lawrence, Kansas. Is anybody there? Anybody at all?” It must have been strange to live here when they were making the movie, to know that the whole world was going to see your town nuclear-bombed on TV. I see people sitting on their porches, in their cars at red lights, and I wonder if they got to be extras. That would be even more strange, to lie on the ground, pretending to die of radioactivity in the background while the real actors said their lines.