Center of Gravity

by Shaunta Grimes

  Dad seems distracted lately. That’s stewing in the back of my mind. Something’s going on, and I don’t know what it is.

  Normally, I’d talk about it with Megan and try to figure it out. Instead, I just pretend everything is A-OK. Nothing to see here, folks.

  * * *

  A few days later, after I cut out Darian Marshall, aka milk-carton-kid number forty-four, I start on my non-gifted-and-talented homework and wonder if Hillary is over at Megan’s.

  So far, I’ve resisted the urge to hide in the oleander to see if she shows up. I’ve also had good luck finding new lost kids to add to my collection, and somehow those two things have mixed up in my head. Like, if I spy on Megan and Hillary, I’ll jinx my milk-carton magic.

  I push the idea of spying out of my head and just start working on my history homework instead.

  TWO

  “Hey, Cookie.”

  I look up, still sitting cross-legged on my bed, although I’m lost in a book called Flowers in the Attic now. It’s about two brothers and two sisters who are locked in an attic by their mother and grandmother after their father dies. It’s gruesome, but I’m so caught up in the story that when Dad pulls me out of it, I blink and realize for the first time that it’s really too dark to read.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  He flips my bedroom light switch, and the overhead fixture pops on. He doesn’t warn me about ruining my eyes, the way Mom would have. I don’t have to hide the book, which I probably shouldn’t be reading, because I know that he won’t ask me about it. “Get your homework done?”

  I nod. “I only had history and a little Spanish.”

  “No math?”

  “I got it all done in class.”

  “Good.”

  “What time is it?”

  “About eight thirty. I’m sorry I’m so late.”

  I stand and go to pick up the pink phone on my desk. There’s a ring tone. It just didn’t ring. I hang it up again. “It’s okay.”

  “I thought you might be at Megan’s.”

  I shrug. Like, hey, no big deal that my dad didn’t show up for dinner and my best friend didn’t call me tonight. “Why were you out so late, anyway?”

  “I brought home…” His eyebrows come together in a sort of bushy V between his eyes. He always looks tired lately, but there is something else going on. Something is wrong.

  The smell of cheese and tomato sauce and grease hits my nose and makes my stomach rumble. I start to walk toward my bedroom door, bringing my book with me. “Pizza?”

  “Yes,” he says. “But…”

  I don’t want to hear what he’s going to say. “Can I go to the library after school tomorrow? I want the next book in this series.”

  “Sure, but, Tessa—”

  Something is wrong. I want to ignore it, but there’s a reason they call it an elephant in the room.

  Who can ignore an elephant?

  My heart hurts like that elephant has reached its trunk into my chest, past my ribs, and is squeezing it. I step back and the blood drains from my face.

  I fainted once, when I was ten years old. I was making pancakes with Mom and all of a sudden, I felt just like I do now. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the floor, with a sore elbow, a knot on the back of my head, and a wave of nausea washing over me. I was still holding the pancake turner.

  Do not faint. I force myself to take a breath.

  He puts a hand on my arm and the squeezing in my chest is worse. My knees go weak. I can’t breathe. My book falls to the floor, bounces off the carpet, and lands on my bare foot. I shake my head, denying whatever he’s about to say before he can even say it. But I still ask, “What’s wrong?”

  Dad picks up my book and puts it in my hand again without looking at it. Mom would never have let me read Flowers in the Attic, and I suddenly feel guilty for liking it so much. I toss it on my bed.

  “Nothing,” Dad says. “Nothing’s wrong, Tessa. Baby, breathe.”

  I believe him instantly, and the faint feeling fades. My dad’s parents died when he was in high school. I’m half an orphan. Orphans don’t lie to each other, that’s our unspoken rule. Even when Mom was sick and everyone else tried to tell me it wasn’t so bad, Dad never once lied to me.

  The panic leaves as fast as it came, and there’s a hollow place left behind. Like I’m a chocolate Easter bunny, empty in the middle. I inhale and fill the space with oxygen.

  “Well,” I say, a little awkward. “Did you get pepperoni?”

  “No, not this time.” When I try to walk out to the kitchen, he puts a hand on my arm again and stops me. “I brought someone home to meet you.”

  I keep my back to him and close my eyes. “Who?”

  He inhales and exhales, then does it again, like he’s blowing himself up. I think about the old-fashioned bellows my gran has by her fireplace. I think about the Wizard of Oz’s hot-air balloon. And I wonder when we’re ever going to stop feeling so empty.

  Finally, he just says, “Lila.”

  Whoever Lila is, I decide immediately that she’s not really anyone. Another teacher at Dad’s school. A neighbor. A distant cousin.

  She is definitely not a woman. My dad has not brought a woman home to meet me, the way that Shannon Hadley’s dad introduced her and her brother to a woman he was dating last year.

  No way.

  No. Way.

  “Who’s Lila?” I finally ask, when Dad doesn’t say anything more or let go of my arm. “Is she a teacher?”

  “A volunteer at school.” He squeezes, then lets me go. “A literacy volunteer. Just be nice. Please.”

  He leaves my room without looking back.

  I kind of want to close my door, turn the lock, and pretend there isn’t a woman on the other side of it that my dad wants to introduce me to.

  A woman he thinks he needs to warn me to be nice to.

  It would work. For a while, anyway.

  But not forever.

  * * *

  Lila looks like she walked right off the cover of one of the Seventeen magazines I have stacked on my nightstand.

  I’ve always been on the short side, like my mom, who was only five two. Lila is about six feet tall. Close to as tall as my dad, who is six three. She’s slender and all angles, in a hot-pink jumpsuit and a pair of gladiator sandals with black leather straps that wrap up over her ankles.

  Her hair is sun-streaked blond. It’s perfectly crimped and pulled up in a ponytail on the right side of her head. She pushes a loose strand behind her ear when she sees me.

  She does not belong in our living room, and not just because I don’t want her there. She should be at college, I think. In a dorm. Or somewhere getting her picture taken for Seventeen magazine.

  “Hi,” Lila finally says when neither my dad nor I say anything.

  “Um, hi.” The word comes out automatically, but my jaw feels rusty. Like I’ve forgotten exactly how to make all the parts of my mouth move together to form words.

  “Okay.” Dad inhales through his nose. “Let’s do this.”

  Lila shoots him a sharp look, and I want to sink into the ground. I don’t want to “do this.” I want to cover my ears and stomp my feet and make him stop.

  It would work for a while.

  But not forever.

  “Gordy.” There’s a tone in her voice that sparks a warning bell in me. But I’m stuck on her calling him Gordy. No one calls him Gordy. His friends sometimes call him Gordo—left over from when he was a kid. But mostly, he’s just Gordon.

  Or Mr. Hart if you’re a literacy volunteer at his school.

  Dad doesn’t lie to me. Whatever this is, it’s going to come out. Anyway, before I can try to hold it off, he takes a deep breath and the whole truth comes out with his exhale. “Lila and I are getting married.”

  I was so sure that he was going to say that he and Lila were going on a date that it takes a minute for me to understand what actually came out of his mouth.

  My rusty jaw swings open. Lila’s
perfectly freckled cheeks are flushed, and she gives me a look that says she’s sorry.

  “What?” I ask. She closes her eyes and shakes her head once. I turn away from her, back to Dad. “What did you say?”

  His look begs me to help him. To not make this harder on him than it has to be. “Tessa.”

  Right. I’ll make it really easy. “You can’t get married.”

  His shoulders sag a little. “I know it’s sudden.”

  “You can’t get married!” Why am I the only one who knows this? I slow down and talk to him like he’s a little kid who doesn’t understand. “You are already married.”

  He fidgets with the band on his left ring finger. “Tessa.”

  “You can’t marry her!” I swing back to look at Lila, one arm sweeping to encompass all six feet of her. “I don’t even know her.”

  Lila says, “I should go.”

  “I’ll call you.” Dad doesn’t look away from me, though.

  * * *

  The facts:

  Lila is a literacy volunteer at the high school where Dad teaches American and World History to ninth and tenth graders.

  She’s twenty-three.

  She’s pregnant.

  My dad made her pregnant.

  “She’s going to have a baby,” he says. Again. He’s looking at me like he might break into a talk that starts with When a man and a woman really love each other. “I know it’s … well, it’s bad timing is what it is.”

  “Bad timing? Dad.”

  I wonder if any other girl, ever in the history of the world, has had to have this particular talk with her father. I’ve seen enough after-school specials to know that it happens the other way around sometimes with girls who are a little older than I am—a teenager has to tell her dad that she’s pregnant.

  But this? This is ridiculous. I don’t even know what to say, so he just keeps talking. “We need a fresh start. You’re going to like Lila. She’s a—”

  “A fresh start?” I cannot process any more facts. I don’t want to know what Lila is. “This is a fresh start?”

  “We need … something.”

  “You think we need this?”

  He opens his hands in front of him. “It’s what we have.”

  “How could you be so stupid?”

  He lets my rudeness slide. Since Mom died, he pretty much lets anything slide. “Lila’s father is giving her a house for a wedding gift.”

  That makes me blink in surprise. The pressure in my chest lets up a little. It’s weird but at least a little better. “So she’s not going to live here.”

  “Tessa.” It’s his turn to speak slowly. “He’s giving us a house. All of us.”

  “We don’t need a house.” It’s like we’re speaking different languages, carefully pronouncing each syllable in the hopes that the other person will get the gist. “We already have one.”

  “The house is in California.” I hold up a hand, trying to stop whatever he’s going to say next. “Please. Please, Tessa. She can’t live here. We can’t live here with her.”

  “I’m not moving to California.” I have never heard that begging tone in my dad’s voice before, and it scares me. “You can’t make me.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  “I’ll move in with Gran.”

  The look on his face makes my heart hurt again. With a single word, he proves me wrong about letting me get away with anything. “No.”

  I add to my mental list of facts. He’s right. Lila can’t live in our house. The idea of her sleeping in my mom’s bedroom makes me feel like I might really be sick.

  And I can’t leave him to live with my grandmother. Or, I suppose I could try, but I won’t. I don’t want to leave my dad. That was an empty threat, although it was true when I said it.

  Even though it has been ten months, three weeks, and six days, I still have a hard time remembering from minute to minute that Mom is dead. I don’t let myself think “gone” or “passed away.” She’s dead.

  She survived being a combat nurse in Vietnam, but she got sick one year, ten months, and twenty-three days ago, and 368 days later, she died of breast cancer.

  She would not leave my dad, and neither will I.

  “I don’t want to move to California,” I say.

  “The house is right on the beach. And really close to Disneyland.” As if he’s giving me the ocean and Micky Mouse as consolation prizes. Your mother is dead. Your father got a twenty-three-year-old literacy volunteer pregnant. But at least you get to go to the Happiest Place on Earth.

  “I don’t care.” I’ve only ever lived in our house. My best friend lives next door. I started middle school this year, and it was the first time I’d ever changed schools. I’ve never been the new kid before.

  Mom dying turned me into a milk-carton-hoarding weirdo. I can’t even imagine what moving to California with my dad and his pregnant … whatever she is … who I only just met, will do to me.

  Mom used to say that my imagination is too big for my body.

  I am afraid right now, sitting across from my dad and trying to understand all these facts, that maybe I’ll crack apart into hundreds of pieces.

  “Let’s give it a year,” he says. “Please, Tessa. A year. If you hate it, we’ll come home.”

  “We” doesn’t just mean him and me. It never will again. And in a year, it won’t just mean him and me and Lila, either. We both know that.

  THREE

  “Let her stay with me.” Gran is Mom’s mother, and she lives alone in a condominium complex for people fifty-five and older. Mostly much older, like her. When Dad starts to say, again, that I can’t stay with her, her mouth purses. “Just until the end of the school year, anyway.”

  “No.” Just the one word, like when I threatened this exact thing. Dad leaves no room for argument, and that helps. He will not move to California with Lila and leave me behind. He doesn’t bother to tell her again that we aren’t even leaving until school lets out in a couple of weeks anyway.

  “I don’t know how you could do this,” she says quietly. “How could you do this to Maggie?”

  Dad stiffens. This is the first time Gran has brought up Mom, and it feels like she’s crossed a line. My anger shifts from Dad to Gran as he takes my arm and steers me toward the front door. “We’ll be late.”

  “That was mean to say, Gran,” I call over my shoulder.

  Gran stops Dad with a hand on his elbow. “I’m sorry, Gordon. I know you didn’t … that you wouldn’t…”

  His hand hovers over hers. “I just need to get through today.”

  “I can’t go,” Gran says. “I just can’t.”

  “I know.” Dad finally gives her hand a squeeze. “It’s okay.”

  Having Gran at his wedding to Lila would be sort of like having Mom there. I try to think of something to say to make everything better, but there isn’t anything.

  Gran hugs me tight and walks down our sidewalk to her ancient yellow station wagon. The back is full of flats of flowers and they make me smile, despite the fact that I still feel as hollow as a chocolate Easter bunny. No matter how crazy the world has gone, my gran will have flowers on her patio just like every summer.

  “Ready?” Dad asks.

  I’m not. I can’t even imagine that I’ll ever be ready for this. But when he opens the door to his blue Chevy pickup truck, I climb in.

  I have added a few more facts to my list over the last couple of weeks, mostly from eavesdropping. Dad is glad that all of this is happening so close to summer. He is afraid that he would have lost his job, if they knew that the reason we’re moving to California is because he’s marrying Lila. And he’s afraid that if he was fired, he would never get a job again.

  The baby is due in August. I took my puppy calendar off the wall and counted back. Lila is approximately 198 days pregnant.

  Dad has applied for a California teaching license, and he has an interview set up at a high school near the house Lila’s father gave her.

  He did
that before he brought Lila home for dinner a couple of months ago. It was already decided by the time I met her. I think Dad has probably known about the baby for a while.

  They are getting married today, at the courthouse. Lila’s family was invited, but they didn’t come. Maybe they can’t, like Gran can’t. Maybe they’re angry at my dad the way I imagine he’d be angry if I married a forty-year-old man when I’m twenty-three.

  Or maybe they aren’t here because Los Angeles is a thousand miles away.

  I don’t know the answer, but I’m curious.

  Lila’s waiting for us to pick her up. She hasn’t been back to our house since that first time. Dad hasn’t made me see her again. He asks every few days if I want to and I say no, and he lets me get away with it.

  That’s all about to stop.

  When we pull up to her apartment complex, she’s standing out front in a white cotton sundress. She is even more beautiful than I remembered.

  And now that I know the facts, she is very obviously pregnant. She looks like she has a small planet tucked under her dress.

  “She looks like California.” I’m not sure where that came from or what I mean by it. It just comes out. Maybe it’s about the way it looks like the sun has got caught in her long hair.

  Dad doesn’t respond. Instead he just looks at her and says, “We’re going to be okay.”

  I’m not sure if he’s trying to convince me or himself. It sounds like he believes it, though. He puts an arm around me and pulls me closer to him when Lila opens the passenger door. She climbs in beside me.

  None of us talk on the way to the courthouse. That rusty feeling is back in my jaw, and I don’t think I could speak, even if I had something to say.

  * * *

  They are married by a short, round woman with steel-gray hair that’s permed as curly as steel wool. She tells a story about a rose and how it needs water and good soil to bloom, and then a few minutes later, she marries my dad to this person who is not my mother.

  He puts a gold band on Lila’s finger. I’m relieved that it doesn’t look anything like Mom’s wedding ring. It didn’t occur to me that Dad might give Mom’s wedding ring to Lila until that moment. In the next instant, I know that he never would have.