A Corner of the Universe Read online

  My father is an artist. He has been commissioned to paint two portraits for a friend of Nana and Papa’s. I plan to stand behind him and watch, which Dad swears does not make him nervous. Mostly what I watch are his right hand and the paintbrush at the end of it. That hand, the one that’s so important to him that he has actually tried to insure it, is a wondrous thing. Stained with ink, sticky with paint, fingernails surrounded by grime that can only be removed with turpentine, his hand flashes a paintbrush across a canvas and transforms it from a wash of white to a face or a country road or a bowl of fruit, with depth and light and shadows. I feel like I am watching a magician.

  Sometimes Dad gives me a small canvas of my own and we paint together. I stick to abstracts, except for horses.

  My father is almost always doing something interesting. If he’s not painting, then he’s working in our gardens. Or fixing something in the house. Or making greeting cards (he can even make the kind that pop up). Or taking photos and developing them himself. Or running around with the movie camera. Which is why I can feel that angry flush creep across my cheeks whenever Nana implies that Mom married beneath her. My father can do anything, it seems. But according to Nana he has cast a shadow on our family by turning our home into a boardinghouse. Dad, however, says he is lucky to be able to support his family and his career by running the boardinghouse.

  I hurry up the stairs to the third floor and am about to dash into Dad’s studio when I come to such a fast stop that I have to grab on to the door to catch myself. I have almost stepped on Dad’s project.

  He’s not painting after all.

  “Ooh, what is this?” I say. “Another movie?” Dad spent several weeks last year making an animated movie called Queen for a Day. In it a very mean cardboard queen with curly hair chases her husband the king all around their castle, trying to kill him. The king gets the better of her, though, and has her head chopped off. At which point, the queen flies up to heaven with angel wings but is turned away and sent downward to be consumed by orange and red paper flames. The movie is three and a half minutes long. I have watched it over and over again. I am about the only audience the movie has ever had.

  I look at what is spread on the floor now. I do not see any queens or flames or angel wings. What I see instead are hundreds of pieces of paper in varying sizes, shapes, and colors. As I watch, my father inches a small blue paper circle closer to a larger blue paper circle. Then he takes a frame of it with his 16-millimeter movie camera.

  “It’s called Abstract,” Dad replies. “The shapes are going to move all around the screen. They’ll rearrange themselves, form new patterns. The colors will shift.…” He inches the circle even closer to the other circle, then edges a tiny blue dot into the picture.

  I think about Nana. Nana wishes Dad had a real job, like Papa does. She wishes he were a lawyer or a businessman, something proper. But an artist? Worse, an artist who sometimes makes things he’s not even going to sell?

  As if Dad is reading my mind, he says, still inching those shapes around, “By the way, Nana is coming over for lunch today.”

  “Nana?” I repeat.

  “Yes.”

  “Is coming for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Coming over here for lunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “For lunch today?”

  Dad looks up and smiles at me. “We’ll survive, Hattie.”

  I am not so sure. Suddenly I feel like getting out of the house. I look at my watch. Ten o’clock. That is a fine time for my daily walk into town. Plus on the way I have to stop at Betsy’s to say good-bye to her. If I take long enough with both of these activities maybe I’ll miss lunch altogether.

  “I’m going over to Betsy’s,” I say. “See you later.”

  I don’t know whether Dad hears me. He has to fiddle with that dot.

  There are only three rules at the boardinghouse (if you don’t count the food-in-the-parlor ban): 1. Every boarder must pay rent on the first of the month, even if the first falls on a Sunday. 2. No pets (this rule was put into effect the day after Simon died). 3. Visitors of the opposite sex may be entertained only on the front porch or in the parlor. Mom says all these rules apply to me as well, including number one if I decide to live at home beyond the age of eighteen. I’m not sure if she’s kidding about this.

  Since there is no rule about telling Mom and Dad where I’m going, I often leave without saying anything — but not so often that they might decide to create a rule about it. The thing is, Millerton is a very small town, everybody knows everybody, and everybody likes to gossip. Half the time when I get back from one of my walks into town, Mom already knows where I’ve been. Mrs. Evans down the street will have called to say, “I just saw Hattie go by,” and then Mr. Shucard, who runs the Meat Wagon, will have called to say, “Hattie’s on her way to the library again,” and an hour later Mrs. Moore, the librarian, will have called to say, “Hattie just checked out ten more books, Dorothy.” So there’s hardly any need for me to say where I’m going all the time.

  I rush through the second-floor hall, hoping to avoid Mom and Toby, who have both vacuum cleaners up and running and might try to hand one of them to me. Toby has to come over three times every week in order for us to keep the boardinghouse clean.

  Our house is an enigma, which is a word from one of my sixth-grade vocabulary lists. It is the third largest house in all of Millerton, but nobody considers it a mansion, which is what everybody considers Nana and Papa’s house, the second largest in town. Our house was a ramshackle mess when Mom and Dad bought it just after they got married. I have seen it in a movie that Dad took in 1946, and it looks like a house from a scary Halloween story. The paint was peeling off, the shutters were hanging at angles, entire steps were missing from the staircase, windows were broken. It had been slated for demolition — until Mom and Dad bought it with the money Nana and Papa gave them for their wedding. Bought it for a song, as Dad is fond of saying. Mom and Dad and their friends set to work fixing it up and turning it into the boardinghouse, and Miss Hagerty was able to move in before I was born.

  Now it’s a very nice house, but it does not compare with Nana and Papa’s grand one. Our house (according to Nana) is a business, and theirs is a home. At our house, Mom helps Cookie with the cooking and Toby with the cleaning, Dad tends the gardens, and when we need to go somewhere we hop in our ancient Ford station wagon and Dad drives. At Nana and Papa’s, the cooks cook, the maids clean, the gardeners garden, and the chauffeur drives. And he does not drive a used Ford station wagon, which, by the way, Nana and Papa offered to replace three years ago with a nice new station wagon, but Dad put his foot down and privately told Mom that we are not a charity case.

  Our house looks like one thing, but it is something else altogether.

  Five seconds later I am down the stairs and have shot through the front door and called good-bye to Miss Hagerty, whose needles are clacking away, a long heathery shawl trailing off of them and piling up in her lap. I run across our lawn to the sidewalk, then down Grant Avenue two blocks to Betsy’s house. As I suspected, the McGruder family Ford station wagon (just like ours, only brand-new) is parked in the driveway, every door open. The car is pretty much jam-packed and still one McGruder after another comes bustling out of the house carrying something else to be added to the load. I think of the I Love Lucy episode in which Fred Mertz packs the Ricardos’ car for their trip to California, tying boxes and suitcases in precarious piles everywhere, including on the hood. The inside of the McGruders’ car is packed to the very roof, except for a tunnel through which Mr. McGruder can peer when he looks in the rearview mirror. Mrs. McGruder and Randy, Betsy’s older brother, are busily tying things to the roof rack on top of the car. And there is still stuff on the lawn waiting to be added to the load.

  Every year it is the same. The day after school ends, Betsy’s family takes off for two entire months at their house in Maine. I always think they will never get the car packed, but then they
do, and they leave, and I don’t see Betsy again until shortly before school starts. Betsy is my best friend (technically, she is my only friend), and we have never once spent summer vacation together.

  Betsy struggles through the McGruders’ front door carrying two more suitcases, sees me standing on the sidewalk, drops the suitcases, and waves.

  “Hi!” she calls. “I didn’t know if you were coming.”

  Well. I have come to see Betsy off every year of our lives since we were five.

  “I brought you something,” I say, pulling three pieces of Bazooka bubble gum out of the pocket of my shorts. “Save the comics,” I add.

  “And I’ll send away for the free stuff,” says Betsy. She pauses. “I wish you would come with us.”

  I look at my feet, the ground. “I know. I’m sorry.”

  For the past three years the McGruders have invited me to spend the summer with them, and each time I have thanked them and thanked them, then said no. Mom cannot get over this. A free trip to Maine. Two months of swimming and lobsters and hiking and fir trees. It sounds wonderful, but I don’t want to go. I also don’t want to go when Nana offers (as she has for the past four years) to send me to overnight camp in Vermont, the very same camp Mom went to when she was my age. These trips sound nice, but I just want to spend the summer in Millerton — visiting with Miss Hagerty, painting with Dad, walking downtown, and reading my piles of library books. Besides, what if I were to get sick while I was away? I have never been away from home without my parents, and I am not about to start now. Mom says, “What are you going to do when it’s time to go to college?” I choose not to think about that yet. That is years away. For now, I just want things all safe and familiar. My life may not be perfect, but it is what I have known.

  Miraculously, the McGruders manage to pack their car in a manner suggesting that it will not tip over before they reach Southwest Harbor. Betsy and I hug, promise to write every day, and then wave to each other until the station wagon is out of sight.

  I continue downtown. I take this same walk nearly every day in the summer. I don’t always go at the same time, but I always take the same route. A block after Betsy’s house, I turn left onto Nassau Street, and walk along it, passing by some of Millerton’s finer houses. They are not as large as ours, but they are as grand as Nana and Papa’s. My favorite features a fountain smack in the center of the front yard, an enormous daffodil showering the marble beneath it day and night.

  The grand houses give way to a few smaller houses, and suddenly I am in downtown Millerton. I let out a little sigh. I love Millerton. I hope I never have to leave it.

  I always walk along the east side of Nassau Street first. I check out the Garden Theater to see what’s playing there. Lately, Mr. and Mrs. Finch, who run the theater, have been holding a Shirley Temple Festival, which does not really interest me. Sure enough, the marquee reads Baby Take a Bow. Oh, well, I’ll just have to wait for something new. I don’t have a spare quarter anyway. Nana would probably treat me, but if I go with Nana I will have to dress for church, which includes wearing white gloves, which means no chocolate or buttered popcorn, and that’s no fun.

  I am walking away from the Garden feeling slightly disappointed when I see the first of the red and blue signs. It is tacked to the kiosk by the newspaper stand. I think I see the word “carnival,” so I step closer. I read COMING SOON! FRED CARMEL’S FUNTIME CARNIVAL! A FESTIVAL OF FUN. CARNIVAL PARADE — JUNE 25th.

  Half a block later I see another sign. FRED CARMEL’S FUNTIME CARNIVAL — RIDES, MIDWAY, PRIZES, SIDESHOW, FOOD FROM MANY NATIONS! ARRIVING JUNE 25th.

  And in the next block, two more signs. Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnival will feature a bearded lady, a tattooed man, Pretzel Woman (and more). There will be a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a fun house, and a haunted mansion ride.

  I have to start saving my money. This sounds even better than when the circus came to Millerton two summers ago.

  I look at my watch. It is now 12:10. (My watch is always exactly on time, thanks to Mr. Penny.) Nana will have arrived ten minutes ago. I don’t want to go home. But my stomach is growling, and I don’t have enough money to buy lunch in town. Also, today is Cookie’s pie-baking day.

  I jam my hands in my pockets and take the rest of my walk in a big hurry. I call hello to Mr. Shucard in the Meat Wagon, to Mr. Hulit in his shoe store, to old Miss Conroy in Stuff ’n’ Nonsense. I wave to Jack, who has just pulled his Good Humor truck up to the corner, and I tell him maybe I’ll see him later. I cross the street at the next intersection, and Miss Julian, Millerton’s first lady policeman, says, “Happy summer, Hattie!” I turn left and rush down the other side of Nassau Street, past Papa’s law office and the redbrick library. I’m about to run by Clayton’s Yarn Shop when Mrs. Winterbotham steps out and catches me by the elbow. “Be a dear, Hattie,” she says, “and tell Miss Hagerty her angora is in.”

  “Okay,” I say. I keep on running and am home by 12:25.

  I look for signs of Nana. Nothing. No cars in front of the house. Either Nana isn’t here after all, or she walked.

  I tiptoe inside, closing the screen door silently behind me. I am about to call hello when I hear Nana and Mom in the parlor. They are talking quietly.

  “I’m afraid it’s going to be the death of Hayden,” Nana is saying.

  I step on a squeaky floorboard then, and Mom and Nana look up sharply.

  “Good afternoon, Hattie,” says Nana.

  Hi, Nana,” I reply. I wait for the conversation to continue. Which Hayden are they talking about — Papa or Uncle Hayden? And what is going to be the death of him?

  Nana acts as if she hasn’t just mentioned death. She stands up, a little tottery in her heels, steadies herself on the arm of a chair, and brushes some imaginary wrinkles from the skirt of her dress. “Well, Hattie, are you going to join us for lunch, then?” she asks. I can feel her taking in my shorts, my sandals, my sweaty hair.

  I glance at Mom. She looks pained. I know she doesn’t care what I wear to lunch, but she doesn’t want to contradict her mother. Actually, that’s not quite true. Mom will go against Nana’s wishes where big enormous things are concerned, like who she marries and what kind of house she lives in. But when it comes to these smaller things — my appearance at lunch when Nana has come over — Mom often gives in. I do not understand this. I think these little things are supposed to be peace offerings, but for what? For running a boardinghouse or for something else, some adult thing I am not part of?

  “How about running upstairs and brushing your hair, Hattie?" Mom says finally. A compromise. She will try to please Nana, she will try not to annoy me unduly.

  I do this very, very slowly, to demonstrate that it is something of an ordeal after all. When I’m done I tiptoe downstairs, hoping Nana will continue her conversation about the death of Hayden.

  I am halfway down the stairs when Dad comes clumping along behind me. I speed up, pretend I wasn’t eavesdropping.

  “How was downtown, Pumpkin?" he asks me.

  “Fine.”

  “Ready for Nana? Come on, I’ll escort you." Dad takes me by the arm, and we walk downstairs together.

  Mom and Nana have finished talking and are sitting at the table in the dining room. Nana eyes my father’s paint-spattered shirt (he must have switched to the portraits after I left this morning), but she has mostly given up commenting on him. She knows he can be pushed only so far, and she tries to hold her tongue around him.

  Dad pretends to be oblivious to Nana. He slides into his chair, reaches for his water glass.

  I look around the room. Six places are set at the table. That means Miss Hagerty and Mr. Penny will be eating with us. A few minutes later they arrive. Miss Hagerty drifts in, wafting lavender perfume ahead of her. Mr. Penny rushes in, checking his watch.

  Well. We are some group. I know why Nana doesn’t eat here very often. For one thing, we are rarely dressed in what she would consider an appropriate fashion. Also, although Nana does
get to sit at the head of the table when she visits (unless Papa is with her), no maid magically appears from our kitchen, discreetly offering dishes and bowls, waiting patiently at our elbows while we serve ourselves. And no little buzzer is hidden under the rug by Nana’s foot, a buzzer with which she can silently summon the maid from the kitchen.

  Mom starts passing around dishes, and we fill our plates. At first no one says anything. We can all feel Nana looking us over. Suddenly we become very aware of our manners. Are our napkins wherever they’re supposed to be? Are we keeping one hand in our laps at all times? Mr. Penny checks Miss Hagerty’s place to see if he has used the correct fork. I check Dad’s plate to see how I am supposed to leave my knife when I am not using it. I know there is some rule.

  Nana clears her throat, and the rest of us jump. “Well,” she says. “Does anybody have any interesting summer plans?”

  I don’t pay attention to the answers. What I would like to know is why Nana is here in the first place. Nana and Papa rarely come to the boardinghouse for meals. I suspect that Nana’s cook has the day off. But surely Nana could have eaten leftovers by herself. No, there is some reason she has come by today, and I think it has to do with whatever it is that’s going to be the death of Hayden.

  I return to my earlier question: Which Hayden was she talking about? Most likely she meant Papa, since he’s much closer to death than Uncle Hayden is. And much closer to us. Uncle Hayden, Mom’s older brother, lives in California, and we hardly ever see him.

  I am mulling over the things that could cause the sudden death of Papa when I hear Nana utter two words that make my stomach jump, and cause me to put down my fork, stop eating, and pay attention to the conversation. The words are “Summer Cotillion.” Nana, in her brightest company voice, is saying, “… and I’m on the dance committee. We’ve been working very hard all spring. We expect this to be a wonderful event. The dance is to be for eleven-and twelve-year-olds.”