The Center of Everything

by Laura Moriarty

  I watch Travis, but I have to pretend not to. I glance at him in the hallways, and walk by his locker when I can, just close enough so that if he wanted to say something to me, he could. I hope to get a wave, or even a secret wink to let me know for certain that he is the one who stole Traci’s clothes and crept into my room through the window, placing them on my floor as I slept. But I get nothing, or sometimes just a quick nod. He smokes cigarettes by the shrubs at lunch with other boys, and does not look at me at all. He gets detention often, and is not always on the bus.

  But now that I am blessed I am getting bolder. Sometimes I watch him just long enough for him to turn around and see me watching. Maybe I will be the one to wink.

  Mr. Mitchell is still coming over in the daytime. He’s not there when I get home from school, but the refrigerator and cabinets are full of new and interesting groceries. My mother, smiling and rested, waits for me at the bus stop, and on the walk home she asks about school, about the bus, about staying away from Traci Carmichael and turning the other cheek, her hand on the back of my shoulder.

  I look in her room one day and see one of the posts of her white wooden bed frame has splintered off, like a branch of a tree struck by lightning. Half the mattress has fallen through the bed frame, lying on the floor. When I ask her what happened, she scratches her head and looks like she doesn’t remember. She does not cross her eyes.

  “It just broke,” she says. “I’ll fix it later.”

  I look back at the bed, and then up at her. “How did it break?”

  “It just broke.”

  “It just broke?”

  She shrugs. “I was jumping on it.”

  “Why?”

  “You know, just for fun.” She pulls the door shut, nudging me out of the way. I watch her walk back down the hallway. When Star got to stay over, and we wanted to jump on my bed so we would get dizzy and fall over, my mother said no. Absolutely not. Furniture is expensive, she said, and beds aren’t made for jumping.

  Calm down and play a quieter game, she said. No more horseplay.

  I try to imagine my mother jumping on her bed, ignoring her own rules. She would put her red hair back in a ponytail and take her shoes off, her bare feet flying high in the air. I am certain that Mr. Mitchell was there with her when the bed broke; that’s why she shut the door to her room. I picture them jumping together, holding hands, Mr. Mitchell so much older, but still able to whisper something in her bouncing ear that could make her throw back her head and laugh.

  Mrs. Rowley is so thin and bony looking that sometimes I think just a very loud sound could make her shatter, all her bones splintering up like a cracked vase, then falling to the ground. So it’s a good thing she’s usually the one being loud. She’s a screamer, and although the people above us are loud, she’s the loudest. When she’s mad, we can hear what she’s saying, even though she lives in a different unit and there is a whole parking lot in between. She is mad most of the time, and we know exactly why. Kevin and Travis and Mr. Rowley don’t help her clean up. They live like roaches. They treat her with no respect, she says, and she is getting just a little tired of it.

  But just like we know things about her, she knows things about us. She’s a watcher, the kind of watcher who wants you to know she’s watching. On the morning of the last day of school, she opens the door as I’m walking to the bus stop, Jackie O growling in her bony arms. “That man sure does spend a lot of time over at your house during the day, doesn’t he?”

  I try to look over her shoulder, to see if Travis is behind her, inside. He’s been getting rides to school with Kevin’s friends in the morning, in an orange car with mud flaps painted with white silhouettes of naked women.

  “I asked you a question,” she says. “I see that big truck of his parked out here for about an hour each side of noon almost every single day.” She smooths back Jackie O’s ears. “Is that what she does now? Sit around all day, waiting for him to come over?”

  I swing my backpack over my shoulder. “Sounds like that’s what you do.”

  “Don’t you sass me. Don’t you sass. Who is he?”

  “That’s her boss. They’re having lunch.”

  “Ha,” she says. “I bet they are.”

  I start to walk away, but she calls after me, Jackie O barking in her arms. “You tell your mother that this is a decent neighborhood. You tell her this is a place for families. We don’t need any sort of indecency around here.”

  My mother says that when Mrs. Rowley is mean, which is generally the case, it is really because she is just unhappy, and who could blame her with a husband like that, and Travis always in so much trouble. She says this is really the only reason people are ever mean—they have something hurting inside of them, a claw of unhappiness scratching at their hearts, and it hurts them so much that sometimes they have to push it right out of their mouths to scratch someone else, just to give themselves a rest, a moment of relief.

  I look into Mrs. Rowley’s deep-set eyes, burning at me from behind her glasses with the gold chain looping down beneath them, and I think that what my mother says could very well be true. We can hear Mrs. Rowley’s unhappiness through our walls almost every night, yelling at Kevin and Travis, at Mr. Rowley, what sometimes sounds like strangled cries, but mostly just sounds like screaming.

  At school, Ms. Fairchild tells us to have a good summer, but also to continue to feed our minds. She says she has a crystal ball, and that she will be able to look into it over the summer months to see which of us are being good, which of us are being bad, which of us are reading good books, and which ones of us are throwing our lives away watching television or some other kind of nonsense. She says if she doesn’t like what she sees in her crystal ball, she will cast a spell and cause our hair to turn green.

  She shows us a picture of her grandnephew in California, tanned and happy, his blond hair tinted light green. “See?” she says.

  “It’s from the chlorine,” Star whispers, rolling her eyes.

  Before recess, Ms. Fairchild hands me a slip of paper.

  Kansas State Fourth Grade Science Fair 1982

  Washington School Gymnasium

  July 21 2:00 P.M.

  On the bottom, she’s written GOOD LUCK and her home phone number.

  I am on the monkey bars when I see Star waving at me from behind the school. “Listen, I’m going to the fucking park,” she whispers. “You want to come?”

  I think of Ms. Fairchild, my hair turning green. “We’ll get in trouble.”

  “What are they going to do to us? It’s the last day.” She moves her eyebrows up and down, her magnetic earrings glimmering in the sunlight. “I do it all the time, and I’ve never gotten caught.”

  Ms. Fairchild is standing by the basketball court. Her head turns slowly back and forth across the playground, like the light in a lighthouse. Even if she doesn’t catch me leaving, she will see my empty chair when the class goes back in from recess. She will push her skinny lips together and breathe out through her nose, shaking her head at the empty chair, disappointed, worried that I’ve already forgotten about being blessed.

  But I also know that this afternoon, Traci Carmichael’s mother is coming in as room mother, giving out cupcakes for everyone because it’s the last day. On Valentine’s Day, she brought in white cupcakes with pink icing, a candy heart with red words placed on top of each one. Mine said LOVE YOU and Star’s said TOO CUTE. But that was before the fight, before Traci’s clothes were stolen. I don’t know if Mrs. Carmichael will give me a cupcake now. It would be terrible if she didn’t, if I were the only one who didn’t get a cupcake.

  Star says there’s a park we can go to, that we can play in the sprinklers. “I do it all the time,” she says again, pushing back her hair. “Evelyn, you should try to have some fucking fun now and then.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I’ll go.”

  We run to the chain-link fence, crouching low. Once over it, we cross a ravine and creep through backyards, staying away from
barking dogs and people watering their lawns. I take off my shoes and walk barefoot in the grass, thinking about how good it feels in between my toes, and Star does the same thing, carrying one Dr. Scholl’s sandal in each hand. It’s a good day to be outside. Nickel-sized balls of cotton drift down from the cottonwood trees by the river, floating slowly in the warm breeze and covering the ground, so that it looks like a gentle snow falling, even though the grass beneath our feet is warm as early June.

  “Fuck, it’s hot,” Star says.

  She’s right about the sprinklers in Rocket Park. Seven sprinklers sputter out arches of cool water, little rainbows in the mist of each one. Only two older girls are in the park, wearing bikinis and smoking cigarettes, stretched out on beach towels. One lies on her stomach, propped up on her elbows. The other one is pregnant, lying on her back and smoking a cigarette, so much baby oil rubbed on her round belly that it glistens in the sunlight.

  Star runs out in front of me, dodging the spray of the sprinkler long enough to get behind it and take aim. I scream when I feel the first slap of cold water on my shoulder, and then on the side of my face. The sunbathing girls look up and glare at us, even though their radio is playing music that is louder than we are. They talk for a moment, glare at us again, and the unpregnant one helps the pregnant one to her feet. They fold up their towels, turn off their music, get in their car, and drive away.

  “Pregnant women aren’t supposed to be around sprinklers,” Star says. “It can be bad for the baby. That’s why they left.”

  I am the one to discover we can pull the sprinklers right out of the ground. We do this, chasing each other as far as the hose will stretch. We slide into stretches of mud, rinse ourselves off, then slide in the mud again. It’s wonderful. The sun moves across the sky. I begin to get tired, feeling the first pinpricks of a sunburn on my nose and shoulders. We are both dripping wet, our hair sticking to the sides of our faces. And then the sprinklers turn off, all at once, slowing to a trickle and then nothing. Star stops running and looks at me, the dry sprinkler still in her hand.

  “I’m hungry,” she says. We have missed lunch.

  “What do you usually do?”

  “I don’t know. I’ve never done this before.”

  We go to Arby’s, and I spend six dollars of the science fair money because Star hasn’t brought any. We sit shivering in a booth with a sunny window, our wet clothes too cold for the air-conditioning, dipping salty fries into ketchup.

  “This is great,” Star says. She doesn’t chew with her mouth closed. “When I grow up, I’m going out to eat like this every single day.”

  “That’d be expensive,” I say. Six dollars, gone, just like that.

  “I’ll be rich. I’ll be a stewardess.”

  “They aren’t rich.”

  She rolls her eyes. “They are. We had one come and talk to us on career day in Florida. She said the only bad part of her job was that she had to sleep in hotel rooms and eat out in restaurants all the time. That’s what she was complaining about.”

  There are five french fries left. Star puts them all in her mouth at the same time and swallows, looking at me the whole time. “So I was like, if that’s the worst thing, let me at it. You’ll never hear me complain about it. No cooking, no dishes. Plus you get to fly all over the fucking world. And all the pilots fall in love with you.”

  “Did she say that?”

  She pushes her hair back over her shoulder. “No, but you know that’s what happens.” She reaches for her Coke, poking a straw into the lid. “The only thing is, you have to be careful not to get fat. If you get even a little bit fat, they’ll fire you.”

  “Why?”

  Star swallows, her eyes scanning the restaurant. “It’s bad for the plane…if the stewardesses are fat.” She sees me squinting and looks away. “Anyway, it’s a rule.”

  I look out the window. Right there, on the street in front of the Arby’s, is Mr. Mitchell, wearing a Royals baseball hat, easing out of his truck. He stops to put money in the meter, fishing in the pockets of his jeans for change.

  “What?” Star asks. “What are you looking at?”

  “It’s a friend of my mom’s.”

  “Like a boyfriend?” She moves to my side of the booth so she can see him.

  “Kind of,” I say. He takes his baseball hat off and wipes sweat from off his forehead, looking right at our window. If he sees us, he doesn’t show it.

  “He’s too fucking old for your mom,” Star says.

  We watch him walk into the flower shop across the street. He smiles and holds the door open for two women coming out.

  “Do you think he’s buying flowers for your mom?” Star asks. She is almost sitting on me now, waiting, trying to get a good look. We wait, watching the door, not looking away. No one has ever gotten my mother flowers.

  The glass door of the flower shop opens again, and Mr. Mitchell steps out carrying red roses, their stems wrapped in green paper. Star and I look at each other, mouths open, eyes wide. For a while, there are no words, nothing we can say. We watch him get back in his truck, Star clutching my sunburned arm.

  “Roses mean love. He must love her,” she says, nodding the way she does when she talks, whether she’s lying or not.

  My mother meets me at the bus stop, wearing a blue dress that is too hot for the day. She is also sunburned, especially on her nose and cheeks.

  “You’re going to get a big surprise,” I tell her. I am so excited about the roses I could blow up. The whole way back to school and then home on the bus, I have been imagining her taking them into her arms, saying, “Oh Merle,” like a woman in a soap opera, smiling at what she knows they mean.

  But my mother frowns and says she doesn’t need any more surprises. When we get inside, she looks at me, squinting. She wants to know why my shoes are wet, how I got sunburned.

  “They took us to the park,” I say. “They do that on the last day.”

  Her eyebrow moves up. “I didn’t hear anything about a park.”

  There is a knock at the door. Mr. Mitchell, wearing no baseball hat and a different shirt from before, is on the other side of the screen, holding not roses, but a box of pizza. He cups his hands against the screen to see inside. “Shakey’s Pizza,” he says.

  I run to open the door for him and reach up to see inside the box, to see if it’s pepperoni. He holds it high above my head, laughing. “Uh, Miss, that’ll be eleven ninety-five with tax,” he says. “Uh, Miss, you can’t have the pizza until you pay.”

  “Evelyn,” my mother says, holding the door open for him, “did you ever think to stop and say hello to him before you started grabbing? Were you raised in a barn?”

  I stop jumping. “Hi.”

  “Hi, squirrel.” He tousles my hair with his free hand. “If you hold on a moment, I’ll set this down on the table and let you dig in.” He looks up and smiles at my mother as she walks around the counter to get a knife, running her hands through her hair.

  “I wasn’t expecting you this evening,” she says. “I’m just a mess.”

  “Sorry to stop by without calling. I ended up having to come back into town, and I thought I’d see if you-all wanted to have dinner. I didn’t mean to interrupt. If you want me to come back later…”

  “No no,” she says. “Don’t be silly. I just need to take a quick shower. I walked down to Pine Ridge because I heard they were hiring.”

  He makes a face. “You walked that far in this heat?”

  “It wasn’t bad going there, just coming back.”

  “Were they hiring?”

  “They took my application. They wanted to know if I had a car.”

  “Oh,” Mr. Mitchell says. “Well, maybe they’ll call.”

  “Maybe.” She shakes her head, looks down at her sunburned hands. Only the tops of her hands are red; the palms are still white.

  “If they don’t,” he says, “we’ll work something out.”

  My mother gives him a long look, smiling slowly.


  He tells her if she wants to jump in the shower, he will help me make a salad so it will be ready when she comes out. She likes this idea and disappears down the hallway, humming to herself. He takes lettuce, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes out of the refrigerator. He gets a bowl down from the cabinet above the sink. He knows where everything is.

  “Okay, squirrel,” he says, lifting me up on the counter. “Your job is to tear up the lettuce. You think you can handle that?”

  “Aren’t you going to wash it first?”

  “Huh? Oh yeah.” He holds the head of lettuce under the faucet and hands it back to me. He scrapes and chops the carrots, whistling “On Top of Old Smokey.” I don’t know how long he is going to wait to bring in the roses, if he is going to do it in front of me or not.

  He starts to sing, making up words that are wrong.

  On top of Old Smokey, all covered with cheese I ate a bad hot dog, threw up on my knees.

  He laughs, and I laugh too. It would be nice if Mr. Mitchell came to live with us. I wouldn’t mind if he moved right in with us and married my mother. It wouldn’t even be so bad if we just kept going on this way, with him living somewhere else but coming by sometimes to give us pizzas and flowers, cutting up carrots while my mother takes a shower.

  He asks me why I am so sunburned. I tell him they took us to the park. When lying, it is important to keep all your lies the same.

  Mr. Mitchell looks up at me and smiles again. “You’re a good kid,” he says. “I like having you around.”

  I hear the shower water turn on. “When are you going to give her the roses?”

  He looks up. “Huh?”

  I roll my eyes. “The roses you bought today. From the flower shop.”

  He yells “ouch” and “dammit,” and I look down to see he has slipped with the knife and cut his thumb, the one on the same hand as the two purple fingernails. He looks away and puts his thumb in his mouth. “What do you mean?” he mumbles.