The Center of Winter: A Novel

by Marya Hornbacher

  “Oh, hell.” Mom dropped her head onto the back of the couch.

  “Perhaps you should have started getting ready a little later.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would you like to play Scrabble?”

  “Sure,” she said, surprising me.

  “You know you’ll lose,” I said.

  “I know,” she said.

  Esau set up the board. “Madam,” he said. “Your Scrabble is served.”

  “Thank you,” she said. He pulled out her chair at the table and scooted her in. I got up and went over to watch. He sat down across from her, bowed his head, and stuck his hand out for her to shake it. “Good gamesmanship,” he explained. He passed her the bag of tiles. “A’s high.”

  She drew an o, he a b.

  “Sorry,” he said, took out his letters, looked at them for a second, and spelled out decoded before she’d even gotten her letters arranged. “Sorry,” he said again.

  “What for?” she asked.

  “Seven-letter word. Fifty bonus points.”

  “Is that true?”

  He looked at her, dumbfounded. Esau didn’t lie, hardly ever. “Never mind,” Mom said, and handed him the bag of tiles. Her letters spelled nothing.

  “You have the x,” he said. “You could spell ox.”

  “I don’t want to waste it. How do you know I have the x?”

  He shrugged. “It’s not in the bag.”

  “You felt around for it?” He did that.

  “Not exactly.”

  She spelled ox.

  “What time is it?” she asked. He looked at his watch. “Aha!” he said, and leaped up. He went into the kitchen and came back with a glass of milk, two cookies, and his evening medicine. “Five-one-three.”

  “I want cookies,” I said.

  “Go get some,” he replied, still watching his watch. I did, and when I came back, he said, “And now it is five-one-five,” and tossed the pills back with a swallow of milk. He put a cookie in his mouth and spelled boxite, hitting a double-word score on his way by.

  “Is there such a thing as boxites?” Mom asked. He shook his head.

  Davey exploded into the house, with Donna behind him, Sarah bobbing on her hip. Davey climbed up on a chair at the table and looked at Mom.

  “Are you going on a date?” he asked her.

  “I guess so.”

  “What is a date?” I demanded, feeling left out.

  “Kate!” Esau sighed. “I have explained this and explained this.”

  Mom looked at him. “You have?”

  He shrugged, looking guilty.

  “What did you tell her?” Mom asked.

  “He told me Frank was trying to steal you,” I piped up spitefully.

  “You did not!” Mom said to him.

  “No, I did not,” he said, pounding the table. His tiles jumped off his rack and he replaced them, scowling. “I said he was going to borrow you some of the time now.”

  I pulled my feet onto the chair and sat on my knees. “He can’t have you, you know.” I reached over and picked up Mom’s hand, studying her nail polish.

  “He doesn’t have me! He isn’t going to have me!” Mom said, frustrated. We looked at her, baffled.

  Davey, to make things better, recited, “Mrs. Schiller, you look very nice this evening. That is a lovely new dress. Is it new?” He’d confused himself, and furrowed his brow.

  “Thanks, Davey,” Mom said.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, relieved.

  “I don’t think you look nice,” I said nastily, and for some reason bit her thumb, hard. “At all.” I turned her hand over and fit my forehead into her palm.

  “Kate!” Esau shouted. “You are not helping.”

  We sat around the table, being miserable together.

  Davey shifted in his chair so that he was sitting on his knees. “Tarnation,” he said, stumped.

  “I’ll say,” I mumbled into the table.

  Esau got up and went into the kitchen. He came back with the baby and slumped in his chair, holding her.

  “How long do you suppose you’ll be gone?” he asked Mom.

  “A couple of hours?” she said.

  “How many hours exactly?”

  “Three.”

  I lifted my head and sighed. She stretched her hand.

  “And then you’ll be back,” Esau said.

  “Of course I will. This is where I live. I live here with you.”

  Esau narrowed his eyes at her. “Things change,” he said accusingly.

  “What changes?”

  “Everything!” I exploded, and stood up, and ran over to the couch and kicked it. I came and sat back down. “Everything just goes around changing all over the place. Right, Davey?”

  Davey nodded. “Yep.”

  “Like for example we used to have a dad,” Esau said flatly. “That changed.”

  “Yeah,” I said. We glowered at her.

  “Well, anyway,” she said weakly. “I won’t be gone but a few hours.”

  I snorted. “That’s what they all say. Who said you could go, anyway?” I demanded. “I never said you could go. Esau never said. Davey never said. How come no one ever asks us?” I kicked her under the table.

  She grabbed my foot and held on to it. “I said.” She stared at me. “I said, because I am in charge.”

  That was a new idea. We let it sink in.

  “But he can’t keep you,” I said. My chin started to quiver. “Okay?”

  “Okay. Are we done with this?”

  I nodded.

  “Esau?”

  “We will adjust our routine,” he said to me. “It will be all right. He won’t steal her. I told you.”

  I nodded again, slid off my chair, and slunk to the kitchen for more cookies. Davey followed me at a gallop. We got some and stood there eating them.

  “Since when is she in charge?” I complained.

  Davey stuck his hands in his pockets. “Since always, I guess.”

  I glared at him. “Whose side are you on, anyway?”

  “Yours, stupid. I’m just saying.”

  “Well, don’t. Now she’s going to go marry Frank, I bet.”

  Davey shrugged. “Probably. But we have a plan. And plus, we could always stay with my dad.”

  I thought about that. “Okay,” I said, and turned to go back in the living room. Then I turned back. “Are you going to go to the war?”

  He looked at his feet. “Course I am.”

  “You can’t.”

  “Who says?”

  “I say!” I yelled, and stalked out of the kitchen.

  “It’s your go,” Esau was saying.

  Mom spelled trees.

  “You shouldn’t waste your s,” Esau advised. She took it back. He spelled equator, and got a triple-word score and fifty bonus points.

  Mom stared at the board. “What time is it?” she asked.

  “Mother, you’re obsessing,” he said.

  “Just tell me.”

  “Five-two-seven.”

  “Got ready a little early?” Donna asked, coming into the room.

  “Shut up.” Mom stared at her letters. “Should I have a drink?”

  “No. Arrive sober. It’s only polite.”

  “Donna, I think we should be giving Sarah carrots,” Esau said. “She should be ready for vegetables and some cereals. I’ve been reading,” he explained.

  She looked at him. “Well all right, then,” she said.

  “All right.” He nodded. “Mother, it’s your go.”

  “I can’t go.”

  “Of course you can. Want me to look?” he asked.

  “No. I mean out. Tonight. I can’t go.”

  “You’re going,” Donna said.

  “You most certainly are,” Esau agreed. “We have figured it out now. It will be fine. Right, Kate?”

  I put my chin in my hands and said nothing. Mom spelled hell.

  “Can’t use it,” Esau said.

  “Why not?�
�

  “Proper noun.”

  “It is not.”

  “What is it, then?”

  “It’s—a curse,” she said, exasperated.

  “Can’t use those.”

  She dumped my letters on the board. He carefully took a look at them and spelled holster.

  “I quit,” she said.

  He looked at his watch. “It’s only five-three-six. Plus, I’m winning. You’ll forfeit.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “You are not showing very good gamesmanship,” he said, tallying up the numbers. “You lose.”

  She stalked off to her room.

  Esau looked at me and Davey. “It’s five-five-one. Should I go tell her?”

  “No,” I snapped. “Let her be late.”

  “Mom,” Esau said, running down the hall, pointing at his watch. He stopped at her door and looked in. “It is five-five-two.”

  We heard her ask, “Should I go?”

  He stared at her blankly. “It will take you exactly five minutes to get there. Do you want to be late?”

  She came out and kissed him on the top of his head. He tugged her sleeve twice, patted her stomach, and walked off down the hall.

  Mom kissed Davey and me and left. We sat there, arranging letters on the Scrabble board.

  “Esau’s not getting weird, is he?” Davey asked.

  I looked up sharply. “No.”

  Outside, at six o’clock, it was already pitch black.

  ESAU

  When it happened, it was the beginning of winter. On the walk to school, the first snows hung heavy on the fir branches, falling off with their own weight. When it happened, there was never any light. We woke up when it was dark, and when we walked home from school it was already dusk, a purplish gray. It felt comforting, like a quilt of winter settling down around my shoulders, keeping me safe.

  I was not sad. I had only just been feeling a little fragile, was all.

  Just sort of like I was shatterable, and so it was better in my room with the door closed and I slept sometimes in the closet and got back in bed so I was there when Mom woke me up. Well, I didn’t exactly sleep in the closet. I just stayed there, awake. But I took my things in with me, the things I kept in case of emergency, the blanket for heat, and the antifreeze, and the jumper cables, and a flashlight and also my notebook and charcoals and a book on Frank Lloyd Wright because I was designing a house.

  Frank Lloyd Wright is a character, I am telling you. I liked his thinking. Clean, flat lines that don’t mess with the shape of a place. No excess in Frank Lloyd’s houses. No curves. A curve is not a real line. Well, sort of it is, but it looks like it could just go off by itself just about anywhere before you had the situation under control. So no curves in my Frank Lloyd Wright prairie house that I was designing for me and Kate and Davey when we had our money saved up. By the time we were on our own, which who knew when that could happen, we would be pretty well set and it was best to be prepared was our motto. And so we could build a house in the event of unexpected catastrophe such as Mom marrying Frank and Donna leaving Dale so that we had no parents.

  So I was designing the house because for some reason neither Kate nor Davey could draw worth a damn. And anyway I was biggest so I got to decide what went where.

  Which is all beside the point anyway because all I was saying was Frank Lloyd Wright has a house in the desert. We have never seen a desert and we don’t know what it looks like except from The Ten Commandments with Charleton Heston on TV and we’re pretty sure there are snakes. Frank Lloyd Wright also has a house in Wisconsin, which is right next door. And both these houses are like mazes. They keep a person safe, contained. And since Frank Lloyd Wright spent like years sleeping out in the desert just to get the feel of the place, it made sense that I spent time in my closet trying to capture for us the feel of very safe.

  And anyway, once fall started like usual I was feeling kind of fragile. Because it always starts in fall and then it goes downhill from there. So I was saving up my medicines for in case of an emergency such as an episode, which was entirely possible. I was going pretty crazy feeling like my skin had come off in the bath or something, and now all my nerves were on the outside of me, getting brushed up against and bumped and jangled all the time and I started to get that feeling again that everything could get at me, with its hands, that things were going to get me and maybe eat me, it was that scary. Like it always is. But what I had learned in State was this, to go to a safe place and 1. CONTAIN yourself, 2. DISTRACT yourself, to 3. CALM the fear. CDC. It was easy to remember. It was like STOP DROP ROLL. SDR. Easy. Under my desk, into the closet as need be. Also useful in the event of an earthquake or nuclear fallout.

  Which meant that despite the fact I was all nerves and jangling and despite the fact that I was all crashing and cymbals inside my head, and the thing had started again where it felt like there wasn’t much of a wall between me and a thing outside of me, such that for example we would be sitting at dinner and gradually all the sounds would move from outside to inside my head like the forks and knives grinding on china would get lodged in my left ear (cochleal area) and the clock behind me would move into my skull and keep ticking, at the base of my skull, and just sit back there ticking, over and over, ticking and ticking, and Kate to my right drinking water in big gulps as if she were sitting on my shoulder gulping loud on purpose just to drive me crazy, which she wasn’t, and the light fixture with its one flame-shaped bulb that flickered just a little came into my right eyeball and flickered there, making it impossible to see out of that eye and also I had to press the heel of my hand into it to make it stay a little stiller, and then the talking, talking, talking, all of them at once and the baby crying and I would put my hands over my ears and scream and Mom would right away hustle me to my room to wrap up in the quilt and have a little song and rock while we sat on the bed.

  My mom is really good at being a mom, especially since my dad died. I bet she was sort of bored before she had kids. She cracks up when I say this and I like to make her laugh. I am pretty good at making people laugh and I figure even if I don’t get the joke, they did, so they can have it.

  Anyway it didn’t happen very often and I learned at State it’s just sensory overload. I pictured it in my head like blinking red neon lights, SENSORY OVERLOAD, and a big loud horn sounding in my head and the fireman’s bell. At State, Staff said that was a pretty cool thing, that I had that kind of forewarning and could get to shelter quickly.

  So when I was hoarding my medicines unfortunately it turned out to lead to sensory overload. And to feeling like I was a raw nerve. I drew a picture like that and hid it. A picture of me covered with my nervous system. It is pretty good.

  The nervous system is the most amazing thing possibly ever. The human body is a giant walking electrical storm. So if you have ever seen an electrical storm on the plains, like I have, well, it is something else let me tell you. It is a thing to make you afraid of God. And that is what it is like inside the human body all the time. Basically we’re made of lightning. A very complicated, very precise map of electrical sites that cast lightning bolts at each other and they light up and cast them somewhere else. Spine to brain to foot. Amazing. And what is even more amazing is that this whole system and also parts of the organs can keep right on functioning with or without any effort on your part, even in a coma or after we are dead for example, though very briefly. That would be enough to make me not want to be the mortician because suddenly this dead body kicks you. Or lifts its hand. Like it has something to say. That would freak me out for sure and you have to have a strong stomach to be the mortician. Also there is something very weird about putting a tag on a dead toe. Kate and Davey both say it’s no different than a live toe and so I guess I am the only one who thinks that.

  The picture took me two weeks. I worked on it at night. I taped it to the wall and drew it standing up, to perfect scale so it was exactly the size of me, so I would have a sense of me and also of just how int
ricate the nervous system really was. I did the spinal column first and then the head. There are a lot of nerves. It is hard to draw fast enough to keep up, but it is very exciting work so you are very motivated and don’t want to go to sleep so it is important not to take your medicines which make you sleep. Also the excitement is sort of like a race where you can’t stop. Which sometimes scares me but I always forget that part and only remember the progress. Like when I was simultaneously drawing the electrical system of me and the blueprint for the house. I would go back and forth and back and forth because when you are doing your best work it is important not to lose your momentum, important not to let a thought slip, and thoughts are slippery things, they can get away if you don’t get them down on paper right away so it is important to have a lot of paper around just in case. And my brain would go click and it was time to work on the body and then it would be some hours later and my brain would go click and it would be time to work on the blueprint. And back and forth like this and I have to say I am pretty impressed with how I kept up with my brain, which was pretty busy. There was a lot of lightning. The brain was superhard. So were the hands. Turns out there are tons and tons of nerves in the hands, also in the tongue. And so but what I was thinking as I was doing the brain, which looks like a road map (and actually I drew it from several angles so you could really get a good look at the frontal and posterior lobes), was that the medicines were messing with my nerves. Of course they were, that was their whole point. They were interfering with the system. And I have to say I just couldn’t see how that was a good thing at all, though I did not like the episodes any better than anybody else but I was figuring out a way to have the very productive part without the crazy thing that always happens, which I hate.

  But so I didn’t know how the electrical impulses looked was the problem. I didn’t know what directions the medicine sent them. I could not accurately assess their activity or record their whereabouts. I could not keep a log. So I decided that in the interest of accuracy I would, for a length of time later to be determined, stop taking my medicines. Plus which, since pretty soon Davey and Kate and me were probably moving into our new house, it was best to be prepared was our motto, and you have to have a contingency plan like Dale said so we saved up the medicine for in case.