The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  “Why are you crying?” I settled into her side, tucking my feet under me.

  “Oh, you know. Just stuff. Nothing serious.” She rubbed my head.

  “You look sad.”

  “Yeah. Well, you know what, kiddo?” She looked down into my face. “I am sad. I get sad sometimes. But there it is.”

  I worried.

  “Quit looking so worried,” she said.

  I started plucking lint off her nightgown. She watched me do that for a while. Then she said, “You almost done with that?” so I stopped.

  “Dad’s dead,” I said. I started gnawing on the heel of my hand.

  “Yep.” She took my hand.

  “Since Christmas.”

  “Yep. Katie tell you that?”

  “I asked her.”

  She nodded. “Did you go in your closet?”

  I shook my head, pleased.

  “Hot damn,” she said, and squeezed my hand happily.

  I sat there feeling warm. “Night’s almost over.”

  “How did it go today?” she asked. I could feel her watching me.

  “Okay. Scary,” I said. “It felt like Dad was around here somewhere. The house is all funny now.”

  “That’s for sure. Do you miss State?”

  I flushed. She’d caught me. I shook my head.

  “You can, you know.”

  I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. She understood. “So many things are different,” I whispered.

  “I bet.”

  “It was so sunny today,” I said. “And I got stuck in the bathtub.”

  “You did?”

  I nodded. “And then we had to look in my closet, and then my afternoon medicines made me stupid and I couldn’t draw and I fell asleep on my floor.” I sighed.

  “Long day.” She played with my ears. It made me sleepy. “You know, you can call me at work. Anytime you want, and I’ll come home. You know that, right?”

  “Yeah.” I nodded. I would try to be well, but it was still good to know. The number was easy, and I liked it: 218-9786. “I’m better now, though,” I said, looking at her. “Night’s better. Safer.”

  “I have to agree.”

  “Is that why you don’t sleep anymore?” She didn’t answer me. She looked so sad.

  I reached up and petted her cheek. She smiled.

  “You’re lonely. I bet,” I said, hesitantly. I had a list of feelings that they gave me at State.

  She nodded. “Sometimes.”

  We looked out the window, watching the sky turn a dark red at the horizon, over the Andersons’ house and the fields out in back of it.

  “Me too. Sometimes,” I said. I looked at her. “Dad’s not coming back.”

  “No.”

  “For always.”

  “That’s right.”

  I nodded.

  “You don’t really believe that, do you?” she said.

  I thought about lying. I wanted to be all right. I concentrated, but it came out the truth anyway. “No.”

  She took my face in her hands and put her forehead to mine. “That’s okay. Me neither.”

  “Oh,” I said. I put a pillow on her lap and looked up at her. “Okay.”

  “Okay.”

  We turned to watch the sky turn purple, then orange.

  My mother was putting lilacs in Ball jars all over the house. Kate thrust her face in the great purple and white bunches and breathed in as deep as she could and bruised the petals and staggered around dizzy. They were her favorite smell.

  We were going to school.

  Davey and I were sitting at the table, eating pancakes. Sarah was in an old high chair, leftover from when Kate was a baby. Mrs. Donna, Davey’s mom, brought out a fresh batch and piled them on our plates. She was over a lot. I liked that. She was comforting.

  “Pancakes with your syrup?” she asked Davey. He ignored her and kept mashing the soggy mass on his plate with a fork. “Li’l Miss Kate, git your butt over here and eat something before you pass out,” Donna said, and went back into the kitchen. Kate staggered over and collapsed in a chair.

  She looked at us dramatically. “I just love spring,” she gasped.

  “Eatcher breakfast,” Davey commanded, and pushed her plate closer.

  “Eatcher own breakfast.” She picked up her fork and started eating the edges.

  “What if they hate me?” I said. I didn’t want to go. I wondered if it was too late to back out. Mom had told me a million times I could change my mind. I cut my pancakes into square bites.

  “They won’t hate you,” Davey said. “Why would they?”

  “’Cause I was gone.” I felt so sick. I put my hand to my forehead.

  “So what?”

  “So no one else just suddenly disappears because they’re crazy or something,” I snapped at him. He looked hurt. I felt bad and put my cut-up pancakes on his plate.

  “You’re not crazy,” he said.

  “Yeah,” Kate said loudly. “And we’ll beat ’em up if anyone says different.”

  “We can’t,” Davey said. “They’re bigger than us.” Kate looked crestfallen.

  “Does everyone know Dad’s dead?” I asked.

  Kate shrugged and nodded.

  “How does everyone know?”

  “’Cause one day he was alive and then one day he wasn’t,” Donna said. “Claire! That damn bush is gonna be totally bald, you take any more flowers off it. Leave it be.”

  My mother came in through the screen door, her arms loaded down with flowers. She stood there with the morning light behind her, a fiery halo of red hair.

  “Look at you,” she said to all of us at the table.

  “Esau’s going to school today,” Kate said.

  She smiled. “I know.”

  I opened my mouth, but I still couldn’t think of a reason I shouldn’t go. Maybe if I didn’t have to talk all day it would be all right. Maybe if I just said absolutely nothing. My words were sometimes not totally organized when they came out of my mouth. They’d think I was an idiot. I wasn’t an idiot. I was better than any of them, as long as I didn’t have to talk. My dad would know what to do. My dad was dead. I wanted to go to math so bad I could hardly see. I wanted to show everyone how much I knew now, and then they’d be sorry they ever said anything to me, ever.

  I decided that if I were my dad, I would tell me to keep my trap shut and show those fools what’s what.

  “What if someone asks me where I was?” I asked no one in particular.

  “You tell ’em,” Kate said, pointing her fork at me severely, “to go straight to hell.”

  That was what it was like, once my dad died. Or maybe it was always that way. No one could remember anymore, what with the lilacs everywhere, and my mom so sad and strange, and me trying to stay well so they didn’t send me away.

  It was very, very important that I not go away. I felt like I was holding still so nothing could bump me and break me apart. It is so easy to get broken. People don’t know that, but I knew.

  After school, I stood waiting for Kate and Davey on the sidewalk. It had gone okay. Nobody talked to me anyway, really. They just mumbled, “Hi,” and left me alone. They were scared of me, I think.

  I was feeling kind of sad. So when Kate came busting out of the school and jumped up on me like a monkey, I felt better.

  “Git off,” I said, happy. She scrambled down.

  Davey handed me his satchel to carry. “Did anybody bug you?”

  “Nope.” We started walking.

  “Did they say you were crazy?”

  I shook my head. “Nobody said anything.”

  “See,” Kate said importantly. “What did we tell you? You should listen to us more often. We know stuff.”

  “My mom made a pie,” Davey said, so we went to his house.

  Davey’s dad’s truck was parked in the dirt driveway. Their lawn wasn’t mowed and the screen door leaned up against the house, off its hinges. We went around to the back door, kicking our way through
the dead daylilies, which were keeled over on their faces in the narrow footpath to the backyard.

  I peered through the window in the door while Davey dug in his bag for the key. “Where’s your mom?” I asked.

  “Dunno,” he said. “She’ll be home eventually.” He jimmied the lock and finally it turned. We pushed into the kitchen and stood there, looking around.

  It was clean but it looked like it was dirty. There was a plastic tablecloth on the table, wiped down but still sticky. It smelled like shut windows, like people breathing, and old air.

  “You have to cut the pie,” Davey said, getting a chair and climbing up to a cupboard. He got out three glasses and poured us milk. I dropped our book bags and looked through the drawers for a knife. It was a cherry pie. We sat down and ate without talking.

  Davey set down his fork and sighed. He folded his hands on his belly.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I finally asked him.

  “Nothing.” He shrugged.

  “He gets like this,” Kate explained in a whisper.

  “No I don’t,” he said, scowling at her.

  She shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  “Why are we whispering?” I asked.

  “They’re sleeping,” Davey said.

  “Who are?”

  He rolled his eyes at me like I was stupid. “The baby and my dad.”

  “Your dad’s here?”

  “His truck’s here, ain’t it?”

  “Why isn’t he at work?”

  “He doesn’t have a job anymore. Why isn’t your dad at work?” Davey yelled, pushing back his chair and going to the counter for the pie.

  “My dad’s dead,” I said, surprised.

  Davey shrugged and pushed the pie pan toward me. “I want another piece,” he said.

  Upstairs, the baby started crying. Davey climbed off his chair and went thumping up the stairs. He staggered back in, carrying baby Sarah. She stared at us with two fingers in her mouth. Kate hopped up and got a bottle out of the fridge.

  “You wanna hold her?” Davey asked me. “It’s easy,” he said, setting her on my lap. “Just don’t drop her.”

  I sat paralyzed. The baby’s hair was a thick, soft spray of black. She stared back at me, blinking. We studied each other. She looked like a miniature girl Davey. Even more serious, maybe. She bobbled a little, like she wasn’t very good at sitting up yet.

  She took her fingers out of her mouth and sighed heavily. Then she stuck them back in and leaned on my chest.

  Kate and Davey polished off their pie and went out the back door to play. I said I’d stay and watch Sarah.

  It was so quiet in their house that the steady ticking of the kitchen clock above the stove was loud enough to make a person crazy. Sarah breathed in and out. Suddenly, she took off one of her socks and played with her toes. I measured it: Her whole foot was as long as my thumb. Her big toe was smaller than the tip of my pinkie, and the tiny little nail curved up.

  I tickled her foot. She giggled and squirmed in my lap.

  There was a creaking. I looked up and froze. A man was standing at the top of the basement stairs. He had his hand on the door frame. I’d startled him as much as he’d startled me.

  He crossed the kitchen and bent to get a beer out of the refrigerator. His back to me, he popped it open. He looked like a bag of rags. His hair fell over his collar, gray and brown.

  “Who’re you?” he asked. I almost wasn’t sure he was talking to me. I could feel my words scramble. I panicked. My arms tightened around Sarah. He turned and came over to the table. He hadn’t shaved in days, and his stubble was white. He reminded me of my dad, but scarier. For a wild second, I wondered if he was my dad’s ghost.

  He pulled out a chair and sat down. He stared at the pie pan, then took Davey’s fork and started picking at the pie.

  “Guessing you’re Arnold’s boy,” he finally said. “By the looks of you.”

  I nodded.

  “Ain’t seen you in a long while. Didn’t recognize you, you got so big.”

  I watched him finish the pie and wash it down with beer. He studied me. His eyes were watery. They hurt to look at.

  “Tell you, you’re the spitting image of your old man,” he said. “When he was your age. Spooky, is what it is.” He shook his head and looked out at the garden where Kate and Davey were playing. I followed his gaze. Davey was standing on a stump, wearing a pith helmet, and Kate was collapsing, shot.

  “Damn shame,” he said.

  I looked at him.

  “About your dad,” he said gruffly. “Sorry to hear.”

  “Thanks.”

  He looked at me. “Well, you can talk, then.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Just don’t like to, much.”

  I shook my head.

  He laughed. It was like he was barking. His mouth didn’t move when he did it, it was just a noise he made. “Can’t say I blame you.” He pushed himself to his feet and weaved over to the refrigerator again. I realized he was pretty drunk. “You want a beer?” he asked.

  I thought about it. For some reason it seemed like the right thing to do. My dad would have taken a beer, I thought, if he were sitting here in this chair. “Okay.”

  He set one down in front of me. “We ain’t properly met,” he said, sticking his hand out. “I’m Dale,” he said.

  I shook his hand. “Esau,” I said.

  That settled, he popped the tops off our beers and sat down. “Here’s to your old dad,” he said, lifting his. I lifted mine back and took a tiny sip. It made me sneeze. Sarah turned around at the noise, delighted.

  “We were friends back in school,” Dale said, looking out the window. “Arnold and me. He was a smart fella, your old man.”

  I swished a sip of beer around in my mouth.

  “Never thought he’d come back here, you know that? Surprised the hell out of me. He was gonna be an actor.” He laughed.

  “He was?”

  Dale nodded. “We all got our crazy dreams.” He took a swig of beer. “Crazy, dumb-ass dreams.” He looked at me. “How’s your mother, then?”

  I shrugged and drank another swallow. I was feeling a little light-headed. I didn’t want to talk about my mother.

  We sat quietly and drank. I realized after a while that I had drunk a whole beer. My head felt like it weighed about a million tons.

  “You miss your dad, I guess,” Dale said.

  I glanced at him. He was looking at me intensely. “Yeah.” My mouth felt like rubber. “I wish he wouldn’t have gone and died,” I blurted out.

  Dale wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Well, hell,” he said. “Life can hit a fellow pretty hard. You just remember your old man kindly, now.” He stood up and pushed in his chair. “He was a good man.”

  He turned and went back down the stairs.

  Right about then, I heard Donna’s voice in the backyard. She came up the steps and in the kitchen door and saw me sitting there.

  “Well, I swear, what on earth’s the matter with your eyes?” she asked, worried. She came over and leaned in to look at me. She sniffed. “Have you been drinking?” she asked, sounding shocked. I figured it was no use to lie.

  “I had a beer,” I said.

  “What in the hell you gone and done that for? Did Dale give you a beer?”

  I sat there, feeling woozy.

  “Answer me.” She grabbed the baby and hiked her up on her hip. The baby cooed with glee.

  “No,” I said.

  “Oh, the hell he didn’t. Damnation—Dale!” she yelled, leaning into the stairwell. “I’ll have your sorry ass! What in the hell are you doing feeding this poor child booze? He ain’t but twelve years old, for Chrissakes!”

  She stared into the black hole of the basement stairs. No sound came up at all.

  “Well, shit,” Donna said. She shook her head and sat down heavily where Dale had been sitting. She studied me and the corners of her mouth started to twitch.

  “You g
ot a pretty good drunk on, there, dontcha?” she asked.

  I nodded. “I think so.”

  She laughed. That made the baby laugh, which made me laugh. She got up and set the baby in a high chair and started making supper.

  I studied the stairwell, picturing Dale sitting down there with his beer in the dark. Maybe there was a little window, like in our basement, a little tiny window that let in some light. Maybe he was looking up at it. Dizzily, I willed him to look up.

  My mom was in the garden and I was lying in the grass looking for bugs. Every so often I’d look up to make sure she was still there, in her white gardening dress with the big blue flowers across the skirt.

  “Esau, where’s your sister?” she called, bending down and yanking at a weed.

  “Don’t know.” There was a grasshopper perched in front of my nose in the bucket of an aspen leaf, watching me from his sideways eye.

  “Can you go find her, please?”

  “What for?”

  “For I said so, that’s what for.”

  I didn’t want to scare the grasshopper. “She’s inside.”

  “Well, bring her outside.” My mother had spent the last three days in the garden. All day. It was May. She got like this.

  The wind from my breath startled my grasshopper and I got up and went inside. Kate was in her room, lying on her bed.

  “Whatcha doin’?” I asked her.

  “Nothing much.”

  “Mom says come outside.”

  “What for?”

  “Don’t know. She just said I had to come get you.”

  Kate sighed heavily and turned onto her side. She flung her arm above her head. “Can’t,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “I’ve got the sads.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. Well. Mom’s still gardening.”

  “Sheesh.”

  Kate had her shoes off and was rubbing her feet, in their socks, together. She did this to make herself feel better. She’d done it since she was a baby.

  “What’re you so sad for?” I asked.

  She shrugged, such as she could lying there on her side. “Don’t know. Sunday.”

  “Oh yeah.” She didn’t much like Sundays. She said they were depressing. “Well, school’s almost out.”

  “I know.”

  “Then Sunday won’t be any different from any other day.”