The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  I don’t really remember the episode. And anyway it was a minor episode so I didn’t have to go back to State, about which I guess I was pretty much relieved though State is awfully nice and safe what with the Staff and the locks. In general I like locks. Mom won’t let me have a lock on my door because then she can’t get in, which she is not okay with, she says. I can see how she would feel that way but I would still like a lock. As of before the episode, she was considering letting me have padlocks that she knew the combination for so she could get in in the event of an emergency, but now she won’t ever, I can already tell. And we can’t have our new house until we are like grown-ups.

  I don’t really know why I had the episode and everything else went all to hell, it kind of happened all at once. And I wish it had all not started in the first place because now Mom is always watching. It wasn’t even that good an episode insofar as I did not get that much, comparatively speaking, done. Two drawings is completely nothing for an episode whereas usually I get sometimes hundreds. And as for numbers, well, this episode was a complete zilch. Turns out all the equations I did are wrong now that I look at them, like so wrong I can’t imagine what I was thinking when I did them. It all seems like a million years ago since what happened yesterday.

  But to explain that you have to know what happened before that so I will go back.

  It was around three o’clock in the morning when I opened my door slowly and tiptoed across the dark house to the dark kitchen for a glass of water. I nearly tripped over Mom, who had come for the same thing.

  “Good evening,” I said, reaching over the side of the sink.

  “Well, hello there. Can’t sleep?”

  “I could. I prefer not to. I am busy.”

  “What are you busy with?”

  “I am designing a house.”

  “Is that so?”

  We stood there in the dark, drinking our water. She poured another glass. “You want to show me your design?” she asked.

  “It isn’t finished,” I said. “When it’s finished, I’ll show you.” I was quiet for a second. “You can come to my room, though.”

  We felt our way through the living room to my door. We moved some papers aside and sat down on my bed with our feet sticking off. My desk lamp was on. I looked around and realized with some nervousness that it might look a little funny, the state of affairs in my room. The desk and floor were covered with books. Sheets and bits of paper covered the books and the carpet and bed. My handwriting which is pretty much a tight scribble covered the paper, every inch of every page filled. I had written first horizontally, and then turned the paper and written across it again, so that it looked like cross-stitch. I turned my pen in fast cartwheels over my fingers. It was a trick I had learned at State, for use when I was for example feeling superbusy, to relieve stress.

  “They’re running out of books for me again,” I said sadly. “I have already gotten all the way through science and I am approximately three quarters of the way through history. All I have left is the Second World War.” I stared at my desk, glum.

  “Is that as far as history goes?” Mom asked.

  “At the library,” I said, rolling my eyes at her. Sometimes I wondered if she ever paid any attention to the facts at all. Then again, she was pretty smart, and she knew more than me, anyway, about the state of affairs in general. “Not really. But Miss Kipp at the library says history is always being written.”

  “That’s true.”

  “She says it is a dark chapter in history. Right now.”

  Mom nodded. “She’s right.”

  “She made me promise not to tell anyone she said that. In case they thought she was unpatriotic.” I looked up at Mom, worried that I had broken Miss Kipp’s trust. I loved Miss Kipp with all my heart and self.

  “I see.” Mom smiled.

  “I don’t think she’s unpatriotic,” I said.

  “No.”

  Relieved, I turned around on the bed so that I faced the wall. I picked at the edge of my wallpaper, which was coming off nicely. I had made a huge hole in it, almost the length from the pillow to the foot of my bed. It kept my hands busy. I started working on the area above my pillow. “So I am keeping a record of events,” I said. “As they occur.”

  “Is that what all this is?” She gestured out at the room. Which I had to admit to an outsider might look a little messy, though it was not really messy at all.

  “Obviously. So much is happening all the time.” I turned my face to look at her. “It is an enormous undertaking.” Suddenly the weight of it, the fact of it, overwhelmed me and made me cold.

  She studied my face. “Lovebug, have you been taking your medicine?”

  “Of course.” I scowled and looked back at my wallpaper hole. I worried my thumb under a blue corner, got hold of it, and ripped. “You give it to me, don’t you?” I asked reproachfully.

  “But do you take it?” she asked, getting worried. “Have you been hiding it?”

  “Has Frank kissed you?” I suddenly wanted to know. I had been dying to know. It made all the difference, it was the central question this minute.

  “Esau, answer me right now!”

  “No I have not been hiding it!” I shrieked. Kate pounded the wall and I pounded back twice, which meant shut up!

  “You have! Haven’t you?”

  That was when it happened. I launched myself off the bed and across the room and started beating my head on the wall.

  What happens is you see yourself from outside when it happens. You watch yourself for example pressed to the wall like it is something you want to be inside, flailing in your Spiderman pajamas, and you watch your head beat on it like a hammer.

  Then you watch her, though in real life you would not be able to see her (she is behind you) fly off the bed toward you, her arms reaching to pull you back.

  She yanked me backward, I wriggled like mad and she pulled me to the floor, I shrieked, “Has he? Has he? Has he kissed you?”

  She held my wrists behind my back with one hand and rubbed my temples with the other, which calmed me a little bit, sort of. I wanted my dad. I screwed my eyes up tight and pictured my dad.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not.”

  I wanted my dad to run in and grab me and wrap me up in the quilt that Great-grandmother Katerina had made so that I would be safe. But my dad was dead. If my dad wasn’t dead, he would call the doctor and I would tell him everything. If he wasn’t dead, he would tell Frank to go straight to hell, whether or not he kissed my mom. If he wasn’t dead, for that matter, Frank who I liked but wanted to go away wouldn’t be coming over all the time in the first place.

  I desperately did not want to go back to State. Even though it was safe. If I went back to State who knew how long they would keep me and what all could happen when I was in there. Last time for example my dad died. And he had said to hang in there and I was going to hang in.

  I turned my face to the side. “I’m ready to get up now,” I said.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “I will not bang my head if you let me up.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Very sure. I don’t want to bang my head.”

  “You did a minute ago.”

  “I know. It was a bad choice.”

  “What choice would you make now?”

  I studied one of the papers near my nose. “I would like to go in the closet.”

  At State they encouraged me to remember that closets were for clothes, not people, but that in emergencies it might be necessary.

  “Is this an emergency?” she asked. “Have we run out of other options?”

  “Has Frank kissed you?”

  “No.”

  “You’re lying.”

  “I’m not. Do you need to go in the closet, or could we wrap you in the afghan?”

  “Closet.”

  She let me up and I walked meekly to the closet, swung open the door, and sat down, tucking my legs up and wrapping my arms around the
m.

  “You can come over here,” I said. “And talk to me.”

  She sat down with her back against the foot of the bed. We faced each other below a row of ironed shirts. I liked to iron.

  “Kiddo, you’ve got to tell me,” she said. “I think you’ve been hiding your medicine. And not taking it. And that’s why you’re up all night. And that’s why there’s all this paper, with all this scribbling on it—”

  “It is not scribbling!” I shouted, and whacked the closet wall with the back of my hand. I put my knuckles to my mouth and sucked on them. “There are important, very important things there,” I said through my fingers. “They are encoded. They are for me. Me, not anybody else. I am working out a system. That is why it is encoded.”

  “I apologize,” she said. She sat there with her bare feet sticking out from under her nightgown. “You know what?” she said.

  “What.”

  “We’re a hell of a pair,” she said.

  “Yes.” I nodded, feeling miserable.

  “You’ve been hiding your medicine.”

  I tipped over and lay on my side, still facing her, my arms wrapped around my legs.

  “I have been saving it,” I said quietly, “for emergencies.”

  She nodded. “How long have you been saving it?”

  I shrugged. “Two weeks.”

  “You have quite a bit saved up, then.”

  I nodded.

  “Did you think you would run out?”

  I shrugged. “I just thought it would be good to be prepared.”

  “For what?”

  I poked the floor and recited, “Best to be prepared. Never want to be caught with your pants around your ankles. Never want to wonder where your next meal’s coming from. Gotta plan for the contingencies.” I sat up. “This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency, we will broadcast a high, sharp tone. Watch this,” I said, and dove under my bed. I hauled out a folded gray wool blanket, the first-aid kit, a gallon of water, a tangled set of jumper cables, four moldy oranges, a jug of antifreeze, and a twenty-pound bag of rock salt. I sat back on my heels and walked along like a crab, putting them in order. Then I walked, crablike, into the closet.

  “We’re saving money too,” I said, pleased with the pile of my things.

  “Who is this we?” she asked, looking in wonder at the pile. It was everything from the back of her car. The things you were supposed to have with you if you got stranded in the snow. So you wouldn’t freeze to death. It happened.

  “Kate and me. Obviously.” I rolled my eyes.

  “So you were saving these things. And your medicine. Where’s that?” she asked casually.

  I shook my head firmly. “Gotta keep it in a warm, dry place. Says so on the bottle. Can’t risk it. Gotta keep it safe. It’s the backup plan.”

  Her head snapped toward me.

  “Not what I meant,” I said, putting my head in my hands. “Not to off me!” I pounded my thigh, frustrated. “I have no such plan of attack.” I sighed. “Not to, I promise. Merely in the likely event of an episode.”

  “But that’s why you have episodes!” she nearly yelled. I scooted backward in the closet and glowered at her. She looked like she wanted to shake me. “You have episodes when you don’t take your medicine, remember? That’s what it’s for. You get dark, Esau, you get like this, confused, and you hate it!”

  I stared at her.

  “You don’t remember it, do you?” she asked, as if realizing it for the first time.

  I shook my head and turned so I lay on my back with my neck up one wall of the closet and my feet on the other.

  “You just remember the good part. Where you have lots of ideas.”

  I nodded. “I get the answers.”

  “You record the events.”

  “Exactly.” I smiled and slapped the carpet, pleased.

  She sat plotting.

  “Will you be all right if I get up and go to the bathroom for a minute?”

  “You’re not going to the bathroom,” I said calmly. “You’re going to call the doctor.”

  “Do you mind if I call the doctor?”

  “I have no need of a doctor.” I turned my head and gazed at her, my eyes low lidded, like a snake’s.

  We sat there, trapped.

  “Kate!” Mom finally yelled.

  “Pete’s sake! What?” I heard her shout through the wall.

  “Get in here!”

  I heard her fall out of bed and open her bedroom door. She appeared, her quilt wrapped around her shoulders. She blinked and took in the situation.

  “Are you in a dark?” she asked me.

  “No,” I said. “Definitely not.”

  “Go get Donna,” Mom said.

  “What’s wrong with you, then?” Kate asked me. “What are you doing in the closet?”

  “Kate!” Mom said. “Go get Donna right now.”

  “I am in the opposite of a dark,” I explained.

  “Oh.” She crinkled her nose at me. “Are you seeing pictures?”

  I folded in half and put my head to my knees. She said to Mom, “Betcha he’s seeing pictures. He sees pictures, you know.” She turned and trailed down the hall to get Donna.

  Mom looked at me. “Are you seeing pictures?” she asked.

  “They’re mine.”

  “I know. I’m just asking.”

  “That isn’t your business, madam.” I chewed the cuffs of my pajamas.

  I heard Donna’s feet slapping down the hall. She came in and saw me and put her hands on her hips. “How many days has he been up?” she demanded. They looked at me.

  “Four,” I mumbled, peeking out between my knees.

  “Jesus Christ,” she breathed, winded. “Claire, who’s your doctor? Christ almighty,” she said, looking around my room.

  “Parker. Tell him it’s an episode.”

  “Not an episode,” I shouted into my knees.

  Kate stepped gingerly across the floor, moving papers out of the way with her toes. “Can I come in there too?” she asked. I scooted over to make room for her. She sat with her back against the wall and looked at her feet. She patted my knee. “You want I should go get the emergency medicine?”

  Davey wandered into the room, shoved paper and books off my bed, climbed in, and promptly fell asleep. Davey could sleep through anything.

  “What?” Mom said. “You’ve been hiding it for him?”

  Kate looked guilty. She screwed her mouth up and said, “He asked me to and I said I would and it’s none of your business anyway so never mind.” She crossed her arms.

  “It’s her business now,” I said. “You can tell her.”

  “Why?” Kate asked.

  “’Cause she already found out.”

  “How?”

  “How should I know? She found out, is all. Nothing to be done. Might as well tell her the whole thing.”

  Kate looked at me skeptically, then said to Mom, “We hid his medicines.”

  “So I hear.”

  “We wanted them in case of contingencies. In case of an episode. This is an episode, isn’t it?” she asked me.

  “No.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” she asked Mom. Mom nodded. Kate’s eyes widened. She whispered loudly, “I’ll go get the emergency medicines,” hopped up, and ran out of the room.

  A while passed while me and Mom had a staring contest.

  “Will you take your medicines now?” Mom said.

  “Negative.”

  “Why not?”

  “I do not presently need them.”

  “Yes you do.”

  “Nevertheless I will wait for the doctor’s orders.”

  She sighed. We waited. The hands of the Mickey Mouse clock made their way around. After a while, Donna and Doc Parker walked in, looking exhausted. Doc Parker nodded to my mom, set his bag down on the floor, loosened his tie, and crouched in front of the closet. “How’s it going in there, young man?”

  I sat cross-legged, facing the cor
ner of the closet, my back as stiff as a Zen monk’s.

  “All right if I join you?” the doctor asked me. He untied his polished oxblood shoes, stepped out of them, lined them up neatly, and crowded his long limbs into the closet. He looked like Alice in Wonderland, trapped in there, three times the size of everything else, including me. I leaned back into Doc Parker’s shoulder and sighed.

  “Looks like we’re in a bit of a fix, then,” the doctor said.

  “He’s been saving his pills,” Mom began, but the doctor waved a hand at her.

  “Esau, buddy, we’re going to play twenty questions. Ready?”

  “Yes.”

  “Know where you are?”

  “Closet.”

  “Ten points. Remember what you ate for dinner?”

  I did not.

  “Skip it. Doesn’t matter anyway. Remember the last time you got some sleep?”

  “Tuesday.”

  The doctor studied his hands. He had large, heavy hands, which were good when a person needed to be picked up and set on the examining table, also when a person needed to be rolled up in a blanket. I was glad he was here. “Quite a while, then, hup?”

  “No. No. I have been busy with the project.”

  “Who’s the president, my friend?”

  “JFK. The project of creating a system. My system of contingency plans.”

  “Afraid the president’s Nixon, Esau.”

  “Oh,” I said, and reconsidered. “I don’t like him. He’s weasly.”

  Doc Parker laughed. “Man’s entitled to his opinion, anyway, that’s sure. Now, I know you hate this one, but what year’ve we got going on here?”

  I punched the wall and the doctor grabbed my wrist on the rebound. He held my hand firmly.

  “What sort of project you working on?” he asked casually, picking up a blackened sheet of paper, covered with my tight, intersecting script, and holding it far out in front of him. He peered down his nose and turned it in several directions.

  “I am encoding the answers.”

  Doc Parker brought the paper close to his face. “Know what that looks like to me?” he said.

  “What.” I smiled.

  “Looks like the periodical table, is what it looks like to me.”

  I shrieked, pleased to have been found out.