The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  And the only thing I am mad about is that I am better now and he is all dead. When he could have just hung on a little longer. Like he told me to do. And I did what he told me. I hung on. I came home, just like he promised I would.

  Now everything is different. Here are the ways things are different.

  First my routine. There, I would wake up in the morning and they would unlock the shower room and let me take a shower. After which I would get dressed. Before which, while I was still in bed, I would lie there for a little while in the dark and watch the light turn blue in my room. My sheets, blue. My white walls, blue. Staff had taped up a lot of my drawings on my walls and I would wait until I could make out their shapes.

  I was drawing: plants, and bodies, and atoms, and cells. For school, since I was not in school, they had given me some books. Since I was too crazy for the adolescent ward, I lived with the adults, which was fine with me because I didn’t want to be around anyone my age anyway. So I was studying hard. I had National Geographics and an Encyclopedia Britannica that was missing volume W. My favorite drawings were: a drawing of a foot with all its bones; a drawing of a man-eating plant; a split atom, the best part of which was the shattered cerulean-blue nucleus; and a raptor, which is a bird of prey, such as for example a hawk.

  Then after I was showered and dressed I would go sit by the window in the dayroom. Sunrise. Blue clouds, orange and purple sky. It was my special time. My only time. Everyone asleep.

  I missed my chair. I would not tell my mother I missed my chair. No one ever sat in my chair. When someone new came, they said, That’s Esau’s chair, don’t sit there. At first, Staff tried to make me turn around my chair to join the group. Then they came over and turned around my chair, but they only did that a few times because I would get up and turn it around facing the window again, so it was a waste of their energy I guess. Someone probably said, That’s his chair, why don’t you just let him face the window in it? If he wants to. But I don’t know that for sure, I never heard anyone say that.

  The day did not begin until someone else was up. It didn’t count. When everyone else is sleeping, time stops. Nothing moves. Not even me.

  Then someone else woke up, and came into the dayroom with their knitting or their talking-to-themselves conversation, and snow started falling past my window, and the day went sucking into its hole.

  Here, it is different. Time is different here, it doesn’t take so long to get from morning to night. Everything counts whether anyone else is awake or not because even when they aren’t, there’s my father. Somewhere in the room. There and not there.

  He is not a ghost because I am too old and logical a person to believe in that. So he is not a ghost, but he is not gone. Either.

  There are so many sounds.

  Out in the yard, there’s the birds. And in through the window, the light comes up earlier, because it’s spring, and the lilac tree outside my window rubs against the screen and sends in smells. I lie in bed and wait for Kate to wake up. She scrabbles around like a rat. She thumps out of bed in the night, and then makes a rustling, just before seven, every day, and then she stops. To hear if she can hear me. We lie there listening for the other one. I hold my breath. She has no patience, because she is a girl and six and Kate, so I know she will give first.

  “Esau,” she whispers through the wall. Then the day begins.

  When a bad thing happens you wake up with it in bed. You wake up and while you’re still all foggy and half asleep you feel around because something is in bed with you, making you uncomfortable, crowding you out of your spaceship sheets. You don’t even have to open your eyes, because the bad thing is not visible. It is not a visible material object. But it is strange and bulky and you know it is there and you feel around with your hand for it and you find it. And there it is. The bad thing. The bad thought.

  And it doesn’t even have to be the whole thought. For example, before when I was crazy I didn’t have to wake up and think: I am crazy. All I had to do was feel the crinkling plastic sheet underneath my hospital sheet and think: Here. It was the logical deduction. Here. Not there. My father is the same. All I have to do is wake up a little and listen. And I can hear him, not being there. Being gone. It is a loud gone sound. And all I have to think is: Gone.

  I can turn my head to the left and face the wall. Through the wall is Kate. I can wiggle one arm out from under the blankets and peel the wallpaper. If I look hard enough, she will rustle. If I think, Cough, she will cough. I am not crazy. It’s true. Or I can turn my head right and look at the homework on my desk, which I stack in alternating directions for different subjects. I am not allowed to do my homework again once it is done. I am not allowed to get up in the morning and work on it all over again, erase all my answers and redo the problems and tear up the book reports and start over once I have done them, because I did them well enough the first time and it’s not efficient to do the same thing twice. I made up that rule. Because doing my homework twice is not magic and it will not make me any more right and it will not make my father less dead.

  I don’t know what the date was when I went to the place. The next thing I remember was a Thursday, because there was Salisbury steak. The next thing I remember, I was sitting at a long rectangular table eating my peas, which came in a small dish on the tray next to the Salisbury steak. Also, there was a carton of milk, a square of orange Jell-O, and rice. It was the best thing I had ever eaten. And all of a sudden I woke up eating it, so at first I thought I was dreaming I was eating peas.

  Then I was startled awake.

  “Hungry?” asked the man across from me. He was Geronimo, but I didn’t know that yet. I looked up at him.

  “I guess so,” I said, pushing my finger across the plate to get the last bits of sauce.

  “Ate like you ain’t had a square meal in a year.”

  “Well, it’s good to see,” said the grandmother next to him. She wore gloves with lots of rings on her fingers, and a pillbox hat on top of her stiff gray hair. I couldn’t imagine what a grandmother had to be crazy about. “He’s growing and he needs plenty of protein. I have sons, three sons, and one summer they ate me out of house and home, grew a foot. All I ever saw of them, they wanted something to eat. Swore I’d never cook again, ha! Famous last words. This one, they should send him up two dinners, he won’t go hungry.” She cut another strip of steak in half and placed it daintily in her mouth. “Doris, this steak,” she said, “is really quite satisfactory.”

  I looked around for Doris, wondering if they could find me another dinner. The only other ladies in the room were a nurse and a woman who sat on the other side of the young, agitated man to my right. His knee bobbed rapidly under the table and his left hand worried the fabric of his gray wool pants. He stared at his plate. Every so often, in a rush, he’d take a bite, looking fierce. Then he’d go back to looking worried. The woman who was maybe Doris wore a pink-flowered housecoat with snaps. Her bosoms rested low on her chest and embarrassed me. She sat slumped over her plate, her gray hair wandering out of the loose bun knotted at the back of her head. She didn’t look clean. She looked crazy.

  She did not even lift her hand to wipe away a tear that rolled off the tip of her nose.

  The nurse sat at the head of the table with a stack of blue folders, one of them open, and she was filling out a form. She laid down her pen and looked at me.

  “Esau, would you like to introduce yourself?”

  I ate my Jell-O. Maybe if I didn’t look at her she would forget me.

  “Esau,” she said more firmly. I decided to hate her.

  The man to my left leaned close and said into my ear, “She’s a witch. More or less harmless. The trick is not to say her name. It gives them more power.” He glanced over at her, then leaned in again. “Witches. Naming. You know what I mean.”

  I nodded. She didn’t look like a witch, and to be totally honest I was not sure there was such a thing in the first place, but then again, better safe than sorry.


  “Darling,” said the grandmother, wiping the corners of her mouth, folding her paper napkin neatly, and placing it on her plate. “I’ll start. I’m Ellen. I’m up from the city because I tell you my sons are plum out of their mind and they’ve gone and put me here because all I did was went and fell down. That is all. I was wearing my fur coat and getting ready to go out for the evening and wearing a low heel, just a little wedge, and just that afternoon Mavis had come by and she must have waxed the floors a little thick because I tell you, I stepped up to the landing and that little wedge heel went out and I was on the ground, boom, down I went. And for heaven’s sake I wasn’t down there but a minute when all of a sudden. All of a sudden.” She threw her hands up and looked around the brightly lit room. “And now, here. Here, of all places!”

  “Terrible,” said Geronimo, shaking his head.

  “Ellen, we’ve been over this.” The nurse at the head of the table had her hands folded in her lap.

  “You, missy, can shut your smart little mouth,” Ellen said, pointing a finger at her. “You have no idea.” She sniffed, studying her hand, out in front of her. “Darling, look at this pretty one. It’s a topaz.”

  She stretched her gloved hand across the table to me and I leaned over to look. In among the cluster of gems on her fingers was a fat square yellow one the color of amber.

  “Amber happens from the pressure of the earth’s plates shifting and squashing the skeletons of dead insects and plant life, which is why you can sometimes find a piece with a whole preserved fly or mosquito for example in a chunk of amber.”

  She stared at me. “Is that so,” she said, shaking her head. “I had no idea.”

  I loved her forever.

  The man next to me leaned in and said, “Name’s Bob Thornton. Paranoid schizophrenic. Nothing to worry about. Shock therapy, meds, just in for a checkup. They put cameras in my shaving mirror, bastards, caught me. By the by, she was drunk.”

  “Who was?” I whispered.

  “Tch, tch, tch. No names!” He tipped his head meaningfully at Ellen. “When she fell.”

  I looked at Ellen. “Oh,” I said. She saw me looking at her and smiled. She held a hand up and waved, although we were only separated by the table.

  “So. Now. Geronimo, introduce yourself. Have some manners, for pity’s sake,” she said, slapping him lightly on the arm.

  He stood up, pushed his chair in, tucked in his shirttail, and bowed. “Geronimo,” he said. “It is a great pleasure to meet you.” He sat back down. Ellen patted his knee.

  Bob leaned in. “He’s reincarnated. He took over the body of a guy named Charlie. Charlie, wasn’t it?” he said, turning to look at Geronimo, who nodded.

  “That is correct.” He crossed himself. “May the poor sucker rest in peace.”

  “My name is Jonathan Siebald Peters the Third,” said the man to my right, “and I am very, very, very nervous right now and I request permission to be excused from this fucking please excuse my French ridiculous farce of a dinner experience.” He stood, picked up his tray, and set it on a counter in the corner. His back turned, he shifted from the heels to the balls of his feet like he was exercising. “Which is not to say,” he said to the wall, “that I wish to cause any offense to any of the persons present, most especially the ladies, with the exception of the evil bitch at the head of the table who is in no way qualified to lock or unlock doors, let alone tell me when I can take a piss.”

  “You are not well liked,” Geronimo said to the nurse sadly.

  The nurse opened another folder and wrote something down.

  A very small man, as narrow as a bean, sat at the end of the table. He cleared his throat. “If I may remark.”

  “Go ahead, Captain,” said Geronimo grandly.

  “Thank you. I would ask,” said the little narrow man to me, “after your rank.”

  “He is a colonel,” Geronimo answered.

  “Sir, I did not ask you, sir. The question was directed toward the young man, sir.”

  “Quite so. Continue.”

  “I have no rank,” I said.

  “Certainly you have a rank. It is an orderly system. Without order, we would live in a state of chaos, which is no way to run things, making strategy virtually impossible. There would be,” he said, “no plan of attack.”

  Jonathan whacked his head on the wall once, hard. “A sane person might reasonably ask,” he shouted, “against whom this particular offensive is directed.”

  “Darling, now, please don’t bump your poor little head,” Ellen said. “It hurts me terribly.”

  “My apologies.”

  “Your rank, young man, is that of lieutenant.”

  “Here here!” Geronimo cried, raising his milk carton in a toast. “Quite so, sir. With all the decorations, privileges, and rights that are afforded that fine rank.”

  “Sir, thank you, sir. And he will progress through the ranks according to skill and bravery demonstrated.”

  “Yes he will. Yes he will.” Geronimo glowered at me. “What in God’s name, Lieutenant, do you mean by showing up at mess in your pajamas?”

  “Oh, my stars,” Ellen sighed. “The poor thing didn’t even know his name until just a minute ago. Let him get his bearings.”

  Jonathan laughed maniacally. “Yes! He didn’t even know his name! Let alone his fucking rank!”

  “Where in God’s name is the orderly? Poor Jonathan’s in terrible distress,” Ellen fretted. She shot a withering look at the nurse. “Someone’s going to be sorry if he doesn’t get his pills pretty soon, is all I’ll say.” She pursed her lips. The nurse ignored her.

  I leaned over to Bob. “Are we waiting for medicine?”

  He nodded. “Also, we can’t leave until everyone’s talked politely. Part of social skills program, you know how it is.”

  Jonathan pounded the wall with his fist. “Doris, if you would please speak, it would free the rest of us to continue our evening, yes? Would it not?”

  Doris gazed into her lap.

  “Does this happen every time we eat?” I whispered to Bob.

  He nodded.

  “How long does it take?”

  He shook his head slowly.

  “My friend, we could be here for days.” For the first time, he met my eyes with terrible intensity. “But then,” he said, “it hardly matters. In the universal scale of things.”

  Jonathan gave up. He slid down the wall and lay facedown on the floor.

  “Who is the president?”

  “President Johnson. Ladybird.”

  “Ladybird?”

  “Ladybird ladybird.” I chewed carefully on my right wrist. To stop from talking. The words were getting out today. I knew they were the wrong words. I hated the doctor. The room had two chairs. I was dressed, had gotten dressed before anyone else and sat on the couch in the dayroom so when the doctor arrived I’d be ready for The Assessment. So far not so good.

  “You think Ladybird Johnson is the president.”

  “No.”

  “All right. We’ll move on. How old are you?”

  “Twelve.” I got up and went to stand by the window, which looked out on the road.

  “Are you uncomfortable?”

  “No.”

  “Are you nervous?”

  “Nervous. Yes. Very nervous.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “Questions.” I climbed up onto the radiator and wedged myself onto the windowsill.

  “What year is it?”

  I paused. “I don’t know.” I hated that one. Doc Parker never asked me that one. He always skipped that one, even though I know it was on the list of questions, he always skipped it, he knew to skip it because it didn’t matter anyway.

  “It’s 1969. Do you know where you are?”

  “State.”

  He laughed.

  “Not funny.”

  “No?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me the names of your family.”

  “Claire Arnold Kate Oma Opa.
”

  “Very good.”

  “Very good.” He seemed to think I was an idiot. “Not an idiot.”

  “I know you’re not an idiot. I think you’re a very intelligent boy, actually.”

  “Math.”

  “Really. Math in particular?”

  I wrapped myself in a curtain with only my feet sticking out.

  “What’s the square root of five hundred and thirteen?”

  “Isn’t. Doesn’t. There isn’t a have one.”

  “I see.”

  I peeked out of my curtain. “Bats hear with their toes.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  I nodded, beginning to like him better. “Two hundred and six bones in the body. Approximately. Human body. Not bats. Axial and appendicular skeleton. Mostly toes, fingers. Carpals, metacarpals. Things like that.”

  “You are absolutely right. You could be a doctor.”

  “Definitely not.”

  He laughed. “I’m sorry. That wasn’t funny.”

  “Yes it was.” He laughed again. I studied him. He was fifty-four. That was how old he was. I could tell. And he was married and he had two children, daughters, and he was okay. Yes, he was. He would not do anything bad now that he knew about my math.

  “So, okay, not a doctor. What do you think you’d like to do?”

  “Scientist-inventor.”

  “Excellent profession. A fine choice. What will you invent?”

  “Cures.”

  “For?”

  “Things. Bad things.”

  “Brain things?”

  I nodded. “And fears.”

  He whistled low through his teeth. “Wow. You’ll be much in demand.”

  “Probably.”

  “What sort of fears you think you’d like to cure?”

  I shrugged. “Darks. Snakes and sharks. Kate my sister’s nightmares. People and daytime. Dying.” I hopped off the windowsill and walked sideways over to the chair. I sat down and watched him out of the corner of my eye.

  “Are you afraid of dying?”

  I shook my head.

  “Other people dying?”

  I chewed my thumb knuckle. Nodded.