The Center of Everything

by Laura Moriarty

  “I saw you today. I saw you buying roses.” I am surprising him by how much I know. “Where are they?”

  He turns and looks at me, and when his blue eyes meet mine, they flinch. “How did you see me buying roses?”

  He sounds angry, like I am in trouble, and I wonder if he knows I am lying about the teachers taking us to the park. “I was at Arby’s, after we went to the park. I saw you come out of the flower shop. You bought roses.”

  He takes his thumb out of his mouth, holds it under the faucet, and asks me what I was doing at Arby’s on a school day, the cut from his thumb turning the water from the faucet pink before it rushes down the drain. He has a ring too, just a gold band though, no diamond.

  “Oh. They were for your wife?”

  He shuts the faucet off and rubs his eyes. He looks up at me and then down, shaking his head. I can feel my mind stretching, putting pictures together very quickly. I see Mr. Mitchell carrying the roses out of the shop, then going home and giving them to his short, small-eyed wife. Oh Merle, thank you. She would put them in a vase on a table in their house. She could be looking at the roses in the vase right now, this very moment, her nose against their red petals.

  He must not hate Mrs. Mitchell after all. He might love her again, maybe as much as he loves my mother, but in a different way. Or maybe the same way, at different times. Or perhaps he doesn’t really love either of them at all. I feel bad for him, standing there, looking down into the sink. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t tell her.”

  “Aw Jesus,” he whispers, his hand over his eyes. He grabs a paper towel and wraps it tightly around his thumb, so it looks like a little finger puppet, a tiny mummy. “Evelyn, I…” His eyes move around the kitchen, like it is someplace new to him, a place he doesn’t know. “Okay,” he says. “I better go. Shit. I need to leave. I need to just leave right now. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

  He kisses me on the forehead, picks up his keys, and walks out, gently closing the door behind him.

  “Where’d he go?” my mother asks. She is wearing a tight flowered dress with no sleeves, her hair wet, slicked back, water dripping down on her sunburned shoulders. She is wearing red lipstick and perfume that smells like strawberries.

  “He’s gone.” I pick at a piece of melted cheese on the side of the pizza box. “He left the pizza.”

  She looks at the pizza and then at me. “What do you mean gone? Where did he go?”

  “I guess he had to go home.”

  She sits down on the couch, looking around the room like she thinks maybe I am lying and actually he is still here, only hiding. “Did he use the telephone?”

  “No.”

  “Did he say he’d forgotten something?” “No.”

  She crosses her arms, looking at me. “That doesn’t make any sense, Evelyn.”

  “Do you want some pizza?”

  She stands up, her hands on her hips. Her hair has already started to dry in the warm breeze coming in through the screen door, red curlicues springing up around her forehead. “Evelyn, did you say something to him?”

  “No.” I pick up a piece of pizza. I won’t tell her about the roses. It will just make her sad. He shouldn’t have been coming over here anyway.

  “That just makes no sense to me. No sense at all.” She rubs her lips together. “What did you say to him?”

  “Nothing.”

  We hear a car. My mother runs to the window, but it’s only Mr. Platt from Unit D, his El Dorado slinking onto the highway. “Well that’s great,” she says. “Just great.”

  “Have some pizza, Mom.”

  She watches me, saying nothing. “I’m not hungry, Evelyn.” She goes back to her room and closes the door.

  I am sitting on the front step when she comes out from her room an hour later, her cheeks tear-stained, her sunburn worse. She sits down next to me, holding a slice of pizza, the pepperoni picked off. “Hey there, you,” she says.

  I nod, squinting into the Rowleys’ front window. They are sitting at a table, all four of them, the glow of a television flickering in the corner of the room. Mrs. Rowley turns and sees me looking in, my mother sitting next to me. She gets up and closes the curtains.

  My mother is no longer crying, but she looks bad, the skin on her nose starting to peel. Her hair has dried funny, one side flat against her face, the other side still curly. She looks at my burned arms and face, frowning. She goes inside and comes back out with a jar of cold cream.

  “You’re really burned, Evelyn,” she says, rubbing the cream onto my shoulders. This is what smelled like strawberries, the cream. It feels good on my skin, taking away the sting. “If you would have told me they were taking you to the park, I would have made you wear sunscreen.”

  “You’re burned too,” I remind her. “I’m sorry Mr. Mitchell left.”

  She stops rubbing, her fingers still on my back. “Well, if you don’t know why he left, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

  I don’t say anything. She rubs some cream on her own throat and the backs of her hands. “So what’s my surprise?”

  “What?”

  “My surprise. You said I was going to get a big surprise tonight. And now I could use one.”

  I look back at the Rowleys’ window, the closed curtain. “Later,” I say, trying to think.

  She gives my leg a poke. She’s trying hard to smile. “Tell me now. I want my surprise now.”

  I think of the roses in Mrs. Mitchell’s vase. He is at home with his wife now, maybe sitting with her at a table. He maybe sings for her. Maybe he tells her the same jokes.

  “Later,” I say. “You’ll get it later.”

  My mother goes inside to watch television, but I stay out on the step, trying to figure out what to do. I consider giving her Traci Carmichael’s heart-shaped locket, but then I think about what would happen if Mrs. Carmichael ever saw her with it, maybe in the grocery store, how terrible that would be.

  Mr. Rowley and Kevin come out of their apartment, both of them patting their stomachs like they have eaten too much. “Why so glum, chum?” Mr. Rowley asks, but he does not wait for an answer. They get into Mr. Rowley’s car and drive away.

  The door opens again, and Travis steps outside, leaning over their balcony. Someone has cut off all his curls. Now his ears look like handles for his face.

  “What’s the matter?” he asks. He is talking to me. It takes me too long to believe this, and already he is turning around, starting to go back inside.

  “I screwed something up,” I yell. I wave for him to come over, the way a crossing guard tells you it’s okay to walk across the street. To my surprise, this works. He closes the door behind him and walks quickly down the wooden staircase of Unit B, his hands in the front pockets of his jeans.

  At first I do not think I will even be able to stand up, but then I am standing, walking across the parking lot toward him. He looks at me, waiting, his green eyes large, far away from each other, like the eyes of a fish. “I need a surprise for my mother,” I say. “By tonight. And I don’t have one.”

  He tilts his head. “Is it her birthday?”

  “Kind of. Something like that.” It’s strange to actually be talking to him face-to-face, like he is just another person. He has become almost like just a story in my head now, someone I made up to make me feel better, to have something to do. There are little gold flecks in the green of his eyes, and they are looking right at me. That little one, when he gets older, look out.

  He squints across the highway. “There’s the Kwikshop. You could get her something there.”

  “It needs to be something nice. I have eight dollars.”

  “You can get her something nice, then. There’s stuff there girls would like.” He turns and starts walking. “Come on. I’ll go with you.”

  Again, it’s difficult to move. The afternoon has gone so badly that it seems unlikely that something this good could happen at the end of it. But here it is, standing in front of me, good on the hee
ls of bad.

  He turns around, zipping up the front of his sweatshirt. “But if you want to go, we have to go now. I’ve got to be back before my dad and Kevin get home. I’m supposed to be grounded.”

  “What about your mom?”

  He makes a face. “The Wizard of Oz is on. She’ll be camped out all night.”

  I smile. My mother is also watching it, lying on the couch underneath the quilt Eileen gave her for Christmas. She tried to get me to watch it with her, but I’m sick of it. It’s on every year, and I’ve seen it so many times that I can say the lines right along with the movie, from “Auntie Em, Auntie Em” to “I’ll get you, my little pretty,” down the yellow brick road and back again to the scary flying monkeys who turn out to be people and then back off to see the Wizard who is really just an old man who is very nice but not exactly dependable to “You had the answer inside you all the time, Dorothy, just click your heels three times.” My mother said, “Okay, Evelyn, you’ve seen it before. I get the picture.”

  She said she knew all the lines by heart too, but she still wanted to watch it. She pulled the quilt up to her eyes, but when Dorothy started to sing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” she knew I could see she was crying, and she said it was just because she liked the song.

  Mrs. Rowley doesn’t like my mother, and my mother doesn’t like her; they won’t speak to each other face-to-face. But I like the idea of them watching the same movie in different houses, both of them so wrapped up in the same old story they won’t even notice we’re gone.

  When we walk into the Kwikshop, the bells tied to the door handle jingle, and Carlotta, the woman who works there evenings, looks up from her magazine and frowns.

  “Where are your mothers?” she asks, holding up her hand flat out to us, like STOP. Her fingernails are long, painted red, filed sharp like arrows. “We don’t want you kids coming in here without mothers.”

  “We don’t have mothers,” Travis says, already moving down one of the aisles. “We’re orphans.”

  Carlotta can’t see him, so she glares at me. “Yeah, you’re hilarious, buddy,” she says. “You steal one thing, and I call the police.”

  “We’re not here to steal,” I tell her. “I have money.” I reach into my pocket and bring out the wad of bills, all that is left from the twenty dollars. She leans over the counter and eyes the money, and I can’t help but stare. Carlotta is an interesting person to look at on any day because of all the colors on her skin: pink blush streaked across her cheeks and not rubbed in, red glossed lips, and yellow teeth. But on this day, there’s even more: two large hickeys sit on her neck just over the line between her orange smock and her throat. They’re blue and bruised at the center, green around the edges. She sees me staring, and her hand goes to her throat.

  “Hmm. Well, I’ll be watching you both.” She points up to the circular mirrors in each corner of the ceiling. “I can see you at every point in the store.”

  “Can you see me now?” Travis asks. His voice is coming from the aisle with the corn chips.

  “Yes,” Carlotta says.

  “What am I doing?” he asks.

  “Bothering me.”

  Travis stands up, leaning on the handle of one of the glass refrigerator doors. “You could get her a pop,” he says. “Everybody likes pop.”

  “It has to be nicer than that.” I look around the front aisles. Sewing kits. Sunglasses. Tiny jars of instant coffee. Work gloves. My mother has use for none of these things. Superglue. Rows of doughnuts, crackers, and animal cookies. Aspirin. Cough drops.

  “Get her sunglasses,” Travis says. “Everybody likes sunglasses.”

  “She already has some.”

  Two workmen come in to pay for gas and cigarettes, wearing khaki overalls and yellow gloves. One of them moves very slowly, his eyes on Carlotta’s neck. She looks flustered, trying to work the register and watch us at the same time.

  “I see how you two are spreading out,” she yells. “I can watch you both at the same time.” She smiles at the man buying cigarettes. “Kids.”

  A Kwikshop Supergulp mug sits next to the cash register, filled with miniature long-stemmed roses, each one wrapped in plastic with a red bow around the top. A white card in front of the cup reads THE GIFT OF A RED ROSE IS A TRADITIONAL WAY TO SAY “I LOVE YOU” in Magic Marker. One rose costs a dollar fifty.

  “Yeah, that’s nice,” Travis says, slapping two quarters on the counter. He is already drinking a Dr Pepper. “Get her flowers. Girls like flowers.”

  I peel back the plastic wrap and sniff the top of the rose. No smell. “Are these even real?” I ask. Travis has moved to the back of the store again.

  “Yeah they’re real,” she says. “They’re just tiny. Who’re you trying to buy something for?”

  “My mom.”

  Carlotta stops chewing her gum. “Hmm. That’s kind of sweet. Is it her birthday or something?”

  “No. She’s just sad.”

  She frowns. Carlotta knows who my mother is, and I know she likes her. My mother comes in to buy milk when she can’t get to the store in town, and she leaves pennies in the bowl that says TAKE A PENNY, ADD A PENNY. Carlotta likes my mother’s hair, and has told her this, several times. “Those curls,” she tells her. “You can’t get that from a permanent wave. It’s just not the same.”

  “Why’s your mama sad, hon?”

  “She just is.”

  “Well, a flower is enough, then. If any of my kids ever bought me even a flower, even a fake tiny flower like this, I’d fall over dead. I’d be like—” She gasps and makes a croaking sound, her eyes wide.

  I shake my head. “It’s not enough.”

  She blows a bubble, large and light purple. “You could make her a care package. Put a lot of little stuff in there, you know?” She gets a brown cardboard box out from under the register and sets it on the counter. She is able to hold it with just her nails, not touching it with her fingers at all. “Now you just fill it up with lots of little stuff she might like. We’ll put the flower in last, so it doesn’t get smushed.”

  I like this idea, and collect small items from each aisle: a tester bottle of White Rain shampoo. A can of Pepsi. A pink cord to hold her sunglasses around her neck when she isn’t wearing them, and a black wristwatch, water resistant up to two hundred feet. An air freshener, shaped like a flower with a smiling face in the center. Travis suggests beef jerky. I have never seen my mother eat beef jerky, but he says it’s good, and it’s only thirty-five cents.

  “What’s her horoscope sign?” Carlotta asks.

  “I don’t know.”

  She blows another purple bubble and looks at me as if I am a bad person. “When’s her birthday?”

  “December twenty-eighth.”

  “Hmm. Capricorn. No wonder she’s down.” She reaches across the counter and picks up a small green tube that says CAPRICORN. “See, this unrolls into a piece of paper with all her astrological information. It can guide her through her whole year—career, family, romance, money…. It’s a dollar.”

  I nod quickly, put it in the box.

  “I’m a Capricorn too,” she whispers, leaning closer, the hickeys on her throat moving up and down like small, uneven eyes. “Good things are coming our way, this summer. You tell your mama that. This summer belongs to the goat, hands down.”

  I pick up the green roll again, holding it more carefully now. This summer belongs to the goat. I like knowing that my mother will have a good summer, that the next three months are already certain, printed and rolled up into a wand.

  “You could get her a magazine,” Travis says.

  “I’m out of money.”

  “Here,” Carlotta says. “Take my People. I’m already done reading it, and it looks new.”

  “Thanks,” I say. On the cover, a man is carrying a woman wearing a ruffled pink dress with white tights, and the words say WHODUNIT ON DYNASTY?

  “I’m done with it. No biggie.” She goes to work on the cash register, her fingernai
ls clicking against the buttons. “Okay, that’s seven dollars and ninety-five cents, with tax.”

  I give her all of my bills. She gives me back a nickel.

  “Well, there you go,” she says. “That’s nice of you to want to give something to your mom. I used to have kids, and I guess they were sweet to me too once.” She leans her elbows on the counter. “Now they’ve gotten big and they don’t give me shit.”

  Carlotta does not look old enough to have grown children. I tell her this, and she smiles and says I’m a little sweetie, and that I made her day. But I didn’t say it to be nice. I said it because she really doesn’t look that old.

  I follow Travis out the door, the string of bells jangling behind us.

  Once we’re out of the store, Travis begins unloading various items from the pockets of his jeans and the sleeves of his sweatshirt: five packs of gum, Tic Tacs, and a lightbulb.

  “Here,” he says. “Give this gum to your mom.”

  “You stole all of that? Just then? I was standing right by you.”

  He wiggles his fingers. “Magic,” he says. He opens my mother’s care package and puts the gum inside. And now I know for certain, without asking, that he is the one who took Traci’s clothes. I also know it is better not to say this. It’s just something we both know.

  “Why do you steal things?”

  He thinks for a moment before answering, turning the lightbulb from hand to hand. “Because I want to get things I don’t have money for.”

  “But you just gave me some of the things you stole.”

  “So?”

  “So you must not have wanted them.”

  “I wanted them so I could give them to you.” He shrugs. “I don’t know.”

  When we get to the highway, Travis pinches the skin at my elbow, as if I will run in front of a car if left on my own. Once we are on the other side, he stops walking, cupping his finger and thumb around his mouth. “I think it makes me feel better somehow, stealing. Like I get something for nothing, and it makes up for other times. You get something for nothing for all the times you just get nothing.”