A Corner of the Universe Read online

  “I think I see Grant Av —”

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho!”

  “Adam?” I say, because this is not a happy shout.

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho, oh, ho, ho, ho, OH, HO, HO, HO.” His voice rises with each syllable, and when he shrieks out the last “ho” he bangs his hands on the bar.

  The woman in the car below turns around to stare at Adam again, and someone from another car calls, “Shut up, jerk.”

  “Adam,” says Leila, “I told you — my dad will fix this. It happens all the time.”

  Adam doesn’t hear her. He shrieks and shrieks and shrieks. No words, just terrified sounds. My hands begin to shake. I remember when I comforted Adam on his front porch, but I know better than to touch him now.

  I want to slide under the bar and crawl next to Leila. I am afraid of the stranger next to me.

  Adam,” says Leila, “my dad will fix the Ferris wheel.” She speaks very slowly and very clearly.

  Adam throws his head back and howls. “Do it now!”

  “It takes time,” Leila tells him.

  “Somebody shut up that werewolf,” yells the man who has already called Adam a jerk.

  “You shut up, you —” I start to say, but Leila reaches across the car and puts her hand on my wrist.

  “Don’t say anything to him,” she whispers loudly.

  I’m not even sure what I was going to call the man, but I don’t finish the sentence.

  “Fix the damn car! Fix the damn car! Oh, ho, ho, HO!”

  I turn in my seat so that I am sitting sideways. “Adam,” I say, facing him now. He won’t look at me. “Adam.” He is banging on the bar. “Adam.” Bang, bang, bang.

  I reach out; I don’t know how else to get his attention. And he knocks my arm away with such force that I am thrown backward against the side of the car. My shoulder burns. “Adam!” I shout.

  “Don’t touch me, you little …” Adam’s last words are lost in a hail of activity. He is rocking back and forth, back and forth, and our car is pitching with him. At the same time he’s trying to wrench the bar over our heads, and he is so strong — I can see his arm muscles straining — that he might be able to do it.

  Leila leans out of the car and peers over the edge. “Dad! Dad!” she shouts.

  “We’re working as fast as we can!” Mr. Cahn shouts back to her.

  “But Dad, he’s —”

  And at this moment, with a grinding shriek of metal, Adam succeeds in forcing the bar up over our heads. Then he is on his feet.

  Leila and I lunge forward. “Adam, sit down!” Leila commands.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” Adam shrieks, but he sits down.

  I look at the cars above and below us. The man who called Adam names is shouting instructions to someone on the ground. And the staring woman is still staring, but now she’s staring at Leila and me, not at Adam, and she looks concerned. “Stay calm, girls,” she says. “You’re doing a good job. Just stay calm.”

  I barely hear her. Adam has stood up again and has swung his leg over the side of our car.

  I begin to scream.

  At the same time the woman yells, “Get back in the car!”

  And the man yells, “Call the police! Somebody call the police!”

  “They’re on their way,” I hear Mr. Cahn say from below.

  The police, oh Lord, the police.

  I don’t care what Adam might do to me, but he cannot, simply cannot, climb out of our car. We are … how high up? Two stories? Three? More?

  “Leila, help me,” I say. “Grab his arms.”

  Leila and I grab Adam’s arms and yank him backward. The three of us fall to the floor of the car.

  “Get off! Get off!” Adam flails at us, with his hands, his feet. He hits, he kicks, then he scrambles to his knees and finally stands on one of the seats.

  The look on his face, I think, is of pure terror. And I remember the time, a year or so ago, when I scared my father with an old Halloween mask. I had just meant to startle him, to make him laugh. Instead, I truly frightened him, and I will never, ever forget the look on his face. It was the kind of terrified look that reminds you that no matter how rational or grown up a person might seem, some part of him is absolutely sure — knows — that an evil other-world exists just outside of our regular, everyday world. And that although we don’t expect that world to collide with our calm, predictable one … well, really, at any moment that is exactly what might happen.

  I look at Adam now and see that he is terrified, terrified, terrified. How often has he felt like this?

  “The police are on their way,” I hear Mr. Cahn call.

  And then someone screams, two people, three.

  “Hattie!” Leila shouts. “Get up.”

  I scramble to my feet. Adam, only one foot left in our car now, is edging his way along the lighted bars of metal that make up the Ferris wheel.

  “Grab him!” shouts the woman.

  And just as Leila and I reach for him, the Ferris wheel jerks forward.

  “Adam, it’s fixed!” says Leila.

  “Come back!” I say.

  I hear the wail of a distant siren.

  Adam won’t come back into the car, though, and as the Ferris wheel begins its descent, Leila and I can do nothing but grab his ankle and hold on tight. We hold on all the way down, and I think that Mr. Cahn is making the Ferris wheel move faster than usual.

  Adam kicks at us, trying to shake us off. He kicks so hard, my teeth rattle, but I will not let go.

  At the bottom, the Ferris wheel jerks to another stop. Leila and I are still struggling to our feet when two police officers grab Adam, pry him off the metal bars, and pull him to the ground, where they try to put a pair of handcuffs on him.

  “Stop!” I say. “Don’t hurt him!” Leila and I fly after them. “Leave him alone. He’s not going to hurt you.”

  But I am not sure about that. Adam is shouting, “Oh, ho, ho, ho!” and fighting the officers, twisting and kicking and biting. They struggle to fasten the handcuffs around his wrists.

  “Are you okay?” Mr. Cahn has appeared, and he puts one arm around Leila and the other around me.

  “We’re okay,” Leila says, even though we are scraped and bruised and some of our clothing is torn.

  A huge crowd has gathered. It started to gather while we were stuck on the Ferris wheel, and now it is even larger, everyone staring at Adam, staring at the policemen. No one says much, but I can read in their eyes what they think of Adam. They are all glad he’s not related to them, that somebody else has to deal with him.

  Mrs. Cahn manages to push through the crowd and she joins us, giving me a hug. “It’s going to be all right, Hattie,” she says.

  I want to turn my face to her shoulder and melt into her, forget about Adam. But I can’t stop watching him.

  “Hattie! Hattie!” Two more figures push through the crowd. Dad and Papa.

  “What’s going on?” Dad cries, and he looks scared.

  Papa approaches the policemen. “Hey!” he says.

  He puts a hand out to Adam, but one of the officers blocks his way. “I’m sorry, Mr. Mercer.”

  “What’s going on?” Dad says to me.

  “We were on the Ferris wheel and it got stuck and Adam just … he kind of went crazy.”

  “But what is Adam doing here at the carnival?”

  “He came with me —” I start to say.

  I stop talking because one of the policemen finally manages to close the handcuffs around Adam’s wrists. They clasp his arms and start to walk him through the crowd.

  “Stand back!” they say, and the people slowly part, their eyes never leaving Adam.

  “Where are you taking him?” calls Papa. He’s running after them, running after them wearing his tuxedo and his black dress shoes, which are now all dusty.

  “To the hospital,” one replies.

  “Is that really necessary?”

  Dad has grabbed me by the elbow and is dragging me after Adam a
nd Papa and the officers. I look over my shoulder, look for Leila, but I can’t find her in the crowd.

  “Hattie,” says Dad harshly, “come on.”

  The officers have not answered Papa’s question. Obviously it is necessary to take Adam to the hospital, because he has still not stopped struggling. Even when the policemen lift him off the ground and try to carry him along by his arms, he kicks and flails.

  I am not very surprised when I see an ambulance drive through the entrance to Fred Carmel’s. The police officers drag Adam to it, and in about one second a straitjacket has been fastened around him and he has been loaded inside. Papa climbs in beside him. “We’re going to St. Mary’s,” he calls to us before the doors bang shut and the ambulance turns around and heads off. It drives silently, but in a big hurry.

  I look at Dad. He begins to talk a mile a minute. “Okay. We’ll take the car and go back to the party. I’ll drive Nana to St. Mary’s, and you stay with your mother and help Ermaline and Sherman send the guests home and clean up.… St. Mary’s … where is St. Mary’s?”

  Dad is running me through the carnival. Just outside the entrance I see our Ford. It’s parked all crooked, and one door is even open.

  “Get in,” says Dad.

  I climb in beside him.

  “Now tell me how Adam wound up at the carnival tonight.”

  I stare down at my hands and mumble the truth.

  “What?” says Dad.

  “I asked him to come with me so he wouldn’t have to spend the evening alone in his room,” I say loudly. “It seemed mean.”

  “Did you ask Nana and Papa’s permission to do that?” Dad glances at me, and I shake my head.

  “Why?”

  “Because I thought they’d say no.”

  Dad looks straight ahead as he sends our car careening out of the parking lot and heads it toward Nana and Papa’s house. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I know what he is thinking. And I know I am in big trouble.

  There are days when I wish I didn’t live in a stupid boardinghouse, when I wish I could wake up like a normal person without listening to a thousand cuckoo clocks, without running into Mr. Penny in the hallway before he has shaved, without having to make Miss Hagerty’s breakfast. Some days I would like to smash Mr. Penny’s clocks and Miss Hagerty’s dusty knickknacks. And I would like to sit down at breakfast with my mother and my father and no one else and also not have to look at Angel Valentine who is more beautiful than I’ll ever be.

  I feel like this almost every day during the week after Adam falls apart on the Ferris wheel.

  On Sunday evening, not twenty-four hours after the policemen take him away, Adam comes home from the hospital. I think the doctors might have wanted him to stay longer, but Papa has a chat with them, makes an enormous donation to the hospital, and the next thing we know, he’s driving Adam home.

  Everyone is furious at me.

  Mom and Dad have several talks with me on Sunday. The night before, when Mom and I were helping Ermaline and Sherman with the ruined party, Mom would not talk to me at all. She makes up for that the next day.

  “Do you have any idea what you did last night, Hattie?” she asks.

  It is late morning. We are in the parlor. Mom and Dad are on the couch, sitting squished together at one end like they need each other for protection. I am cross-legged in an armchair.

  “I know I shouldn’t have told Adam to sneak out of the house,” I say, “but what does that have to do with anything? He’s been to the carnival before. He just never wanted to go on any rides.”

  “Hattie,” says Dad, “you are treading on thin ice.”

  I open my mouth, then close it.

  “Adam is Nana and Papa’s child,” says Mom.

  “He’s not a child,” I tell her.

  “Hattie,” says Dad.

  “In some ways he is a child,” says Mom. “But in any case, you do not make decisions about him. That is up to Nana and Papa. And I think you know that, Hattie, or you would have asked permission to take Adam to the carnival. Why didn’t you ask permission?”

  “Because Nana and Papa would have said no.” I say this with a huge sigh.

  “And why do you think they would have said no?”

  I want to say, “Because they’re mean,” but I know better. I shake my head. “I don’t know.”

  “Because that’s too much for Adam — going out at night to a carnival … so much stimulation and excitement.…” Mom’s voice trails off, like maybe she is remembering something.

  “It would have been all right if the Ferris wheel hadn’t gotten stuck,” I say.

  Mom just shakes her head at me.

  “Hattie,” says Dad, “even if the Ferris wheel hadn’t gotten stuck, what do you think would have happened if Nana and Papa had gone upstairs during the party and discovered that Adam was missing?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You really were not thinking,” says Dad.

  “Well, none of you were thinking about Adam. You never are.”

  “Believe me, I am always thinking about Adam,” says Mom tightly.

  “What were you thinking?” Nana asks me.

  It is Sunday night. Adam is at home. I am already in trouble with Mom and Dad, and not allowed to leave the house until Saturday. Now Nana has come over, and it is her turn to have a talk with me.

  What was I thinking? How can I tell Nana what I was thinking?

  “I just thought Adam would want to have fun last night,” I say. I am squirming in my seat.

  “You thought you knew better? Better than Papa? Better than I?”

  I shrug. “Maybe,” I say, and I see Nana’s face harden. “Adam wants to have fun just like anyone else,” I tell her. “But you keep him hidden away in his room. You and Papa want to live your lives and pretend that Adam doesn’t have any problems —”

  “Hattie!” exclaims Nana, and she slams the palm of her hand onto a table, knocking a china dish to the floor.

  I look at her, sitting primly in our parlor, her legs crossed at her ankles. She is wearing a pale blue summer suit, complete with gloves and the hat with the bird on it.

  “Hattie,” she says again, and she leans down to retrieve the dish. When she has set it carefully on the table she continues. “I don’t know how last night’s plan came up, but I have a good idea. And that is why you are forbidden to go to the carnival again.”

  “What?”

  “You never did things like this before you met that circus child —”

  “Leila? This isn’t Leila’s fault!”

  “Excuse me, Harriet, I am speaking.”

  “Sorry.”

  “And what I say goes. No more carnival.”

  “But Leila doesn’t have a phone. I have to see her so at least I can tell her —”

  Nana looks at me so sharply that I stop speaking. “That is my final word,” she says. She stands up. “Last night could have been a lot worse, Hattie. You don’t know.”

  I glare at Nana. After a moment I say, “Can I see him?” Nana looks confused so I say, “Adam. Can I see Adam? I want to find out how he’s doing.”

  “He’s all right. He needs time to calm down. I don’t want the two of you to see each other just now.”

  “Fine,” I say, and fling myself out of the armchair, run to my room, and slam the door.

  There’s no use asking Mom and Dad to talk to Nana about her punishment. They won’t stand up to her. They never do. This is why I decide I am not going to speak to Nana or Papa or my parents.

  What Leila and I did was wrong. But now I have been put in the middle of something else entirely. Something about Adam and the adults and things that happened before I was born, maybe even before Adam and Uncle Hayden and Mom were born.

  I decide that I hate my family.

  It is Wednesday when the Strowskys arrive. I am sitting on our front porch steps, chewing on a strand of hair, not helping Cookie in the kitchen, wondering how Adam is feeling over in tha
t huge house with Nana and Papa, and wishing Mom and Dad and Nana and Papa were all dead and that I could live with Angel Valentine, whose looks I decide I could put up with. Also, I am composing a letter to Leila in my head and trying to figure out what the mailing address for the carnival would be.

  I am sitting on the top step chewing and staring when a Ford station wagon that is even older and more battered than ours pulls up at the end of our walk. A woman is driving. Crowded next to her in the front seat are a boy and a girl. The entire rest of the car is jammed with suitcases and cartons.

  The woman gets out of the car. She’s holding a piece of paper. She looks at the paper, looks up at our house, looks back at the paper. Then she closes the car door, leans in the window, and says something to the kids.

  I spit out my hair and stand up as the woman starts to walk toward our house. She holds up her hand to shade her eyes from the sun.

  “Hello,” she calls to me. “Is this the Owen boardinghouse?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “Do you live here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know if there are any rooms to let?”

  “Well,” I say, “not really.” All the rooms are full. Only our own guest room is empty and that’s pretty small.

  “Oh.” The woman drops her hand and turns around.

  I look back at the car and see the boy and girl watching us through an open window.

  “Wait,” I say. “You should talk to my parents, though.”

  Which means that I will have to talk to them, and I have not said one word to them in almost three whole days.

  I am madder at my mother than I am at my father, so I run upstairs to Dad’s studio, pound on the door, and yell, “There’s someone downstairs to see you. She needs a room.”

  By the time I run back to the porch, the woman is sitting on a chair, and the boy and girl are sitting together on the swing. The girl looks like she’s about my age; the boy is a little younger. They have the reddest hair and the saddest faces I have ever seen. The three of them are absolutely silent, just waiting.