A Corner of the Universe Read online

  Praise for

  ANN M. MARTIN’S

  A Corner of the Universe

  “Martin hints at a life-changing event from the first paragraph of this novel narrated by a perceptive and compassionate 12-year-old.… Hearts will go out to both Hattie and Adam as they step outside the confines of their familiar world to meet some painful challenges.”

  — Publishers Weekly, starred review

  “Martin delivers wonderfully real characters and an engrossing plot through the viewpoint of a girl who tries so earnestly to connect with those around her. This is an important book.”

  — School Library Journal, starred review

  “Martin’s voice for Hattie is likable, clear, and convenient; her prose doesn’t falter. A solid, affecting read.”

  — Kirkus Reviews, starred review

  “Martin’s characters shine.… This is a fully realized roller coaster of emotions, and readers take the ride right along with Hattie.”

  — Booklist, starred review

  “Martin excels at evoking simply the intricacies of friendship, what it enables you to give others, and what it teaches you about yourself. She also understands its perils.… [This is] the kind of novel kids mean when they ask for ‘a book about friends.’”

  — Horn Book, starred review

  “Martin deftly regulates Hattie’s growing expressiveness .… Her perspective on her own universe is well captured and affecting.”

  — The New York Times Book Review

  “A Corner of the Universe transports us back to a simpler time and place — a Midwest town in 1960 — but reminds us that family life is never as simple as it might appear .… In spare prose, Martin draws a sympathetic portrait of a smart, sensitive girl not yet sure she wants to leave childhood. Universe never succumbs to stereotype or melodrama. It tells an emotional story simply and directly.”

  — USA Today

  A Newbery Honor Book

  A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year

  A BookSense Top Ten Pick

  An ALA Notable Book

  A Booklist Editor’s Choice

  A Horn Book Fanfare Best Book

  A New York Public Library Best Book for Reading and Sharing

  A New York Public Library Best Book for the Teen Age

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Praise

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Preface

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Ninteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Author’s Note

  After Words

  About the Author

  Q&A with Ann M. Martin

  The 1960 Universe

  The Amazing Day Finder

  Copyright

  Last summer, the summer I turned twelve, was the summer Adam came. And forever after I will think of events as Before Adam or After Adam. Tonight, which is several months After Adam, I finally have an evening alone.

  I am sitting in our parlor, inspecting our home movies, which are lined up in a metal box. Each reel of film is carefully labeled. WEDDING DAY — 1945. VISIT WITH HAYDEN — 1947. HATTIE — 1951. FOURTH OF JULY — 1958. I look for the films from this summer. Dad has spliced them together onto a big reel labeled JUNE–JULY 1960. I hold it in my hands, turn it over and over.

  The evening is quiet. I feel like I am the only one at home, even though two of the rooms upstairs are occupied. I hear the clocks in Mr. Penny’s room, and footsteps padding down the hall to the bathroom. The footsteps belong to Miss Hagerty, I’m sure of it. I know the routines of our boarders, and now is the hour when Miss Hagerty, who is past eighty, begins what she calls her nightly beauty regime. Outside, a car glides down Grant Avenue, sending its headlights circling around the darkened living room. It’s warm for October, and so I have cracked one window open. I can smell leaves, hear a dog barking.

  Mom and Dad have gone with Nana and Papa to some big dinner at the Present Day Club, their first true social event since Nana and Papa’s party on that awful night in July. On this first night to myself, Dad has entrusted me with his movie projector and all the reels of film. I made popcorn and am eating it in the parlor where technically I am not supposed to eat anything, following the unfortunate deviled egg incident of 1958. Really, you can only see the edges of the stain, plus I’m twelve now, not some little ten-year-old. I would think the food ban could be lifted, since Dad feels that I am responsible enough to operate his movie equipment.

  He said I could do everything myself this evening, and I have, without a single mistake or accident. I set up the screen at one end of the parlor. I lugged the projector out of the closet, hoisted it onto a table, and threaded it with a reel of film, making all the right loops. Turned on the projector, turned off the light, put the bowl of popcorn on a pot holder in my lap, and settled in to watch the film labeled HATTIE — 1951. It’s one of my favorites because my third birthday party is on it and I can watch our old cat Simon jump up on the dining room table and land in a dish of ice cream. Then I can play the film backward and watch Simon fly down to the floor and see all the splashes of ice cream slurp themselves back into the dish. I made Simon jump in and out several times before I watched the rest of the film.

  But now I am holding the tin from this summer. I consider it for a long time before I take out the reel and fasten it to the side of the projector. I thread and loop and wind, doing everything by the light of a little reading lamp. When I finish, my hands are shaking. I draw in a deep breath, turn on the projector, turn off the light, sit back.

  Well. There is Angel Valentine, the very first thing. She is standing on our front porch, waving at the camera. We have an awful lot of shots of people standing on our front porch, waving at the camera. That’s because when Dad pulls out his camera and starts aiming it around, someone is bound to say, “Oh, Lord, not the movie camera. I don’t know what to do!” And Dad always replies, “Well, how about if you just stand on the porch and wave?” So there is Angel waving. Pretty soon Miss Hagerty and Mr. Penny step out of the house and stand one on each side of Angel and they wave too.

  And then later, on another day, in dimmer light, I see Nana and Papa standing on their own front porch, waving. They are dressed for a party. Papa is in his tux with shiny shoes, and Nana is wearing a long dress, all the way to her ankles, a shawl wrapped around her shoulders. I don’t remember where they were going, dressed like that. But they are happy, smiling, their arms linked, Papa patting Nana’s hand.

  And then suddenly there is Adam. He won’t smile or wave at the camera. He would never do anything you asked him to do when the movie camera was out. So he is standing in our yard tossing a baseball up and down, up and down. When the front door opens and Angel steps out, looking fresh and cool in a sleeveless summer dress, he drops the ball at his feet and stares at her as she waves at Dad, then sits on the porch swing and opens a book. I play the scene backward, then watch it again. Not for the entertainment value, but so I can see Adam once more.

  Next comes the carnival. I sit up straighter. There’s the Ferris wheel. Mom and I are riding it around and around, feeling awkward because Dad won’t turn off the camera. We smile and smile and smile some more, huge smiles that eventually begin to look branded onto our faces. And there’s the Fourth of July band concert, our p
icnic spread in front of us. Adam is eating in a machine-like way, refusing to look at the camera. Everyone else dutifully makes yummy motions, pats their stomachs, grins in Dad’s direction. I let out a quiet burp, for Adam’s benefit, which makes him laugh.

  Finally there is my birthday party — the one Mom and Dad gave, not Adam’s. Adam’s was private. And it was a once-in-a-lifetime event. This party is the one we have every year. I look at the cake, the presents. No Simon now. He died when I was five, and we never got another pet. Everyone is laughing — Mom, Nana, Papa, Cookie, Miss Hagerty, Mr. Penny, Angel, me. Everyone except Adam, who is focused on the decorations on my cake. We don’t know it yet, but this is the beginning of the sugar rose incident, and Adam is about to storm off and Dad is about to stop filming.

  Presently the reel clicks to an end and the tail of the film flaps around. I turn the projector off and sit in the dark for a few moments, thinking about all those happy images. The smiling, the waving. I want to cry. My father’s movies are great, but they don’t begin to tell the story of the summer. What’s left out is more important than what is there. Dad captured the good times, only the good times.

  The parts he left out are what changed my life.

  On early summer mornings, Millerton is a sleepy town, the houses nodding in the heavy air. Not even six-thirty and I can feel the humidity seeping through the window shades and covering me like a blanket. Everything I touch is damp.

  I’m pretty sure I am the only one in the house who is awake. I lie in bed for a while, listening to the birds. I’m not about to spend the morning in bed, though, even if it is the first day of summer vacation. Some of my classmates wait all year long for summer just so they can sleep late every morning. Not me. I have way too much to do. I roll out of bed, dress in shorts and sandals and the sleeveless blouse Miss Hagerty made for me on her Singer sewing machine. The blouse is white with a big X of blue rickrack across the front.

  I tiptoe down the hallway. My room is at one end, the staircase at the other. In between are my parents’ room, Miss Hagerty’s room, Mr. Penny’s room, Angel Valentine’s room, a small guest room, a bathroom, a powder room. (It is a long hallway.) It must be 6:45, because just as I pass Mr. Penny’s room, it erupts with chiming and clanging and peeping and chirping. Mr. Penny used to run a clock repair shop. He’s retired now, but his room is filled with clocks, and of course they all run perfectly. At quarter past, half past, and quarter to every hour, they ding and cheep and whir, sounds we have all grown used to and can sleep through at night. On the hour itself, cuckoos pop out of their wooden houses, one clock chimes like a ship’s bell, animals waltz, skaters glide. Mr. Penny even has a grandfather clock, which I think he should have, since he could be a grandfather if he had ever had any children. A sun and a moon move across the face of that clock. And even though Mr. Penny is not one for kids (not now, never has been), he lets me wind it with the little crank once a week, keeping my eye on the weights inside until they are in just the right position. Mr. Penny says I am responsible.

  I tiptoe down the stairs and into the kitchen. I am still the only one up. This is good. If I’m going to start breakfast for everyone I like to have the kitchen to myself. I set out some of the things Cookie will need when she arrives. Cookie is our cook and she helps Mom with the meals for our boarders. Her real name is Raye Bennett, which I think is beautiful, a name for a heroine in a novel, but everyone calls her Cookie, so I do too. I sometimes wonder if she wouldn’t like to be called Raye or Mrs. Bennett, but nobody in our family asks too many questions.

  In the summer I am in charge of Miss Hagerty’s breakfast tray. Miss Hagerty is the only one of our boarders who takes breakfast in her room. This is primarily because she is old, but also because oh my goodness no one must see her before she has had a chance to put her face on, and she needs energy for that job. So every morning I make up her tray, which is always the same — a soft-boiled egg in a cup, a plate of toast with the crusts cut off, and a pot of tea. Since Miss Hagerty appreciates beauty, I put a pansy in a bud vase in the corner of her tray.

  Seven-fifteen now, a key in the front door, and suddenly the kitchen comes alive. Cookie bustles in at the same time Mom and Dad stumble downstairs. My parents are still in their pajamas, smelling of sleep, and in Dad’s case, of Lavoris mouthwash.

  “Good morning,” I say.

  “Good morning!” cries Cookie, always cheerful.

  “Morning,” mumble Mom and Dad.

  Mom collapses onto a kitchen chair. “Hattie,” she says, “you’ve already fixed Miss Hagerty’s tray?”

  Well, yes. I am holding it right in front of me.

  “She’s industrious,” says Cookie, who has opened four cupboards, taken the carton of eggs out of the refrigerator, and turned on the fire under the skillet. “Like me.”

  I am pleased by Cookie’s comment, but I don’t know what to say, so I say nothing.

  Mom considers me. “She could be a little less industrious and a little more outgoing.”

  I stalk out of the kitchen, the moment ruined. I would like to stomp up the stairs, but I can’t since I am carrying the tray and I don’t want to slosh tea around.

  I knock at Miss Hagerty’s door.

  “Dearie?” she calls. For as long as I have known Miss Hagerty (which is all my life, because she has lived in our boardinghouse since before I was born), she has never called me anything but Dearie. When I was little, I thought maybe she couldn’t remember my name. But I notice she doesn’t call anyone else Dearie, so I am pleased that it is her special name for me.

  “Morning, Miss Hagerty,” I call back. “Can I come in?”

  “Entrez,” she replies grandly.

  I balance the tray on one hand and open the door with my other. I am just about the only person who is allowed to see Miss Hagerty early in the morning before she has put her face on. And she is something. She is propped up in bed, a great perfumy mountain. Some of the mountain is Miss Hagerty’s astonishing bedding — floral sheets and quilts and lace-edged pillows, woolen throws that Miss Hagerty and her friends knitted. She sleeps under the same mound of bedding whether the temperature is 90 degrees or 20 degrees. The rest of the mountain is Miss Hagerty herself. Miss Hagerty reminds me of her bedding — soft and perfumed, her plump body always draped in floral.

  I place the tray on Miss Hagerty’s lap. She prefers to eat her breakfast in bed. I draw back her curtains, then sit in an armchair and look around. There is barely a free inch of space in Miss Hagerty’s room. The sewing table is piled high with fabric. From her quilted sewing bags spill cards of lace and bias tape, buttons and needles and snaps. Every other surface of the room is covered with perfume bottles, china birds, wooden boxes, and glass bud vases.

  Neatly arranged on her dresser are twelve framed photos of me, one taken on the day I was born, and the others taken on each of my birthdays since then. I see myself change from a chubby baby to a chubby toddler to a skinny little girl to a skinny older girl, watch my hair lighten to near white, see the curls fall away to be replaced by braids. I think the photo mirror is a great honor. Miss Hagerty says she considers me her granddaughter. And I wish she were my grandmother. That has to be a private wish, though, since I already have two grandmothers. It’s just that Granny lives in Kentucky and I hardly ever see her, and Nana … well, Nana is Nana.

  “Miss Hagerty,” I say while she begins the process of slathering the toast with the egg, which she has mushed up in its cup, “what’s wrong with being shy?”

  “Nothing at all, Dearie. Why?”

  “I don’t know.” I can’t quite look at Miss Hagerty.

  “Well, don’t you worry about getting a boyfriend. Trust me, even shy girls get boyfriends.”

  That was the last thing on my mind, but it is a fascinating thought. Almost as fascinating as the fact that Miss Hagerty, never married herself, is practically an expert on boyfriends and husbands. Not to mention on hairstyling and makeup. She is always saying things to me like, “De
arie, you could soften those sharp cheekbones of yours with a little blush — right here.” Or, “Look, Dearie, how this eyeliner will make your gray eyes spring to life.” I am not allowed to wear makeup yet, but I store up these tips for when I am in high school.

  Later, when I leave Miss Hagerty’s room with the breakfast tray, I try to imagine myself with a boyfriend. I could be like Zelda Gilroy on Dobie Gillis. Or maybe I should be like Thalia Menninger, since she’s the girl Dobie is always after. And I wouldn’t put him off, like Thalia does. I would be happy to sit with Dobie in the malt shop. He’s a little old for me, but he’s awfully cute. I would wear swirly skirts, and blouses with puffy sleeves, and wide patent leather belts, and I would tease my hair so it puffed out behind a pink elastic headband. At the malt shop, Dobie and I would buy one malt with two straws so we could sip from it together, and everyone who saw us would know we were boyfriend and girlfriend. I only hope that Dobie would do the talking for both of us and it really wouldn’t matter that I’m shy.

  As I carry Miss Hagerty’s tray down the hall Mr. Penny comes out of his room wearing wrinkled pants and a wrinkled shirt, and his morning face. I say, “Hi, Mr. Penny,” and keep on going because he absolutely cannot have a conversation until he has a cup of coffee in him.

  I take the tray back to the kitchen, and join Mom and Dad, now dressed and fresh looking, in the dining room for breakfast. Mr. Penny will join us later, I know, but Angel Valentine will not. Angel watches her waistline, plus she is ambitious about her secretarial job at the bank, and she says it makes a good impression if she is at her desk in the morning before her boss arrives. So Angel breezes into the dining room dressed like one of those Dobie Gillis girls, gulps down a cup of coffee, and runs out the door calling, “Enjoy your first day of vacation, Hattie.”

  I think Angel is absolutely wonderful, and I wish I were her little sister, even though I have known her for only a month.

  After breakfast, everybody bustles off. Mr. Penny, who is generally in a hurry, says he must go into town lickety-split, right now, he has errands to do. Miss Hagerty decides to sit on the front porch and knit. Cookie gets busy with lunch. Toby diAngeli shows up to help Mom clean the bedrooms. And Dad goes to work in his third-floor studio.