A Corner of the Universe Read online

  I can now feel Nana looking at me, so I become intent on spearing exactly one pea with each tine of my fork.

  Mom murmurs, “Don’t play with your food, honey.”

  I drop the fork.

  “The dance is to be held on the afternoon of July fifteenth, Hattie,” says Nana. “That’s the day before your birthday. I think attending the cotillion will be a lovely way for you to start celebrating.”

  I don’t answer. Nana knows perfectly well how I feel about dances.

  I look to Dad for help. He is serving peas to Miss Hagerty.

  I look to Mom for help. “We could get you a new dress,” she says.

  Miss Hagerty springs to life. “Oh! Oh! I’ll make you one!” she cries. “I would love to do that. Who knows, Dearie, maybe you’ll find a nice young man at the cotillion.”

  One of those dresses the Dobie Gillis girls wear could be fun. But I would not dance in it. Not even if Dobie were my partner.

  I smile at Miss Hagerty. “Thank you,” I say.

  There is not a chance I am going to that dance. I missed the Christmas Cotillion because I had strep throat, thank goodness. But I had to go to last year’s Summer Cotillion for nine-and ten-year-olds, and it was a horrifying experience. Betsy wasn’t there, of course, and for the first hour no one asked me to dance, so I stood by myself, pretending to search for things in my purse, helping out at the punch table even though the chaperones didn’t need any help, trying to appear useful instead of ignored. And all the time dreadful Nancy O’Neil and Janet White kept whispering to the boys they were dancing with, and pointing at me. In the second hour of the cotillion one of the boys Janet had danced with asked me to dance, but I think it was some kind of joke, because when it ended Nancy and Janet laughed so hard, they had to get drinks of water from the fountain to keep from choking.

  Nana is looking at me, waiting for me to express some ladylike excitement about her cotillion.

  I am saved by Miss Hagerty, who says, “Let’s go through my patterns this afternoon, Dearie. I’m thinking of a drop waist with a sash, a scoop neck, and long sleeves. Maybe organdy or taffeta?”

  “Okay,” I say.

  After lunch, when we’re alone, I can confess to Miss Hagerty that I won’t need the dress. And she will understand. She always does.

  Mr. Penny, a dreamy look in his eyes, says he remembers a dance back in aught-two, which reminds Miss Hagerty of an old beau, which then reminds Mr. Penny ofWorld War One. Before I know it, the Summer Cotillion is forgotten. And the subject of the death of Hayden has apparently been dropped.

  At the end of lunch I escape from the table as quickly as possible.

  Half the time I don’t know whether to admire my mother or to be furious with her. I suppose I should admire her for being brave enough to stand up to Nana and Papa — for going ahead and marrying Dad when her parents didn’t approve of him. Dad, a painter from a middle-class family in the south, with no social credentials to speak of. But he did go to Yale (on a scholarship), and Mom knew Nana would have trouble disapproving of a Mount Holyoke—Yale marriage. The important thing, Mom has told me, is that she knew she and Dad were soul mates. Nothing was going to stop her from spending the rest of her life with him. So they got married and settled in Millerton, and Nana and Papa decided they could tolerate Dad. When Dad couldn’t quite make a living with his paintings, he and Mom bought the big house on Grant Avenue and turned it into a boardinghouse. Nana’s pursed lips whenever she rides down Grant say exactly what she thinks of our house. But Mom ignores Nana. Except for when she gives in to her. Which is about 50 percent of the time.

  When Nana leaves after lunch, Mom watches her walk away, says “Huh,” under her breath, then pulls a faded kerchief out of her pocket and puts it back on her head so she can help Toby finish the dusting.

  I sit on the front porch by myself for a few minutes. I decide to put the cotillion and the death of Papa out of my mind. I spend the rest of the afternoon doing the following: 1. Helping Cookie in the kitchen, for which I am rewarded with a piece of raspberry pie. 2. Helping Mom and Toby with the rest of the cleaning. 3. Lying on my bed and reading from my current stack of library books. 4. Taking Miss Hagerty’s afternoon tea tray to her, and explaining why I won’t need a new drop-waist organdy dress. 5. Painting with Dad in his studio.

  When Dad announces that it is six o’clock and time for dinner, I am honestly surprised. This is why I love summer and don’t want to be anywhere but here. All year long I look forward to these days that stretch out endlessly ahead of me, filled with walks and books and painting and Miss Hagerty. And free of class presentations and gym and dances and snippy, gossipy girls. Best of all, when each day ends, the evening still yawns ahead.

  We eat dinner together — Mom and Dad, Miss Hagerty, Mr. Penny, Angel Valentine, and I. As soon as the table has been cleared, I glance expectantly at Miss Hagerty.

  “Lemonade?” she says.

  “Cookie and I made it this afternoon,” I reply.

  Miss Hagerty looks like she wants to clap her hands and jump up and down. Instead, she says, “I’ll wait for you on the porch.”

  “Lemonade time, is it?” says Mr. Penny. He almost smiles.

  And Angel Valentine, who has changed out of her work clothes and is gliding through our dining room in her bare feet, looks at me with interest. “There’s lemonade?” she says.

  Angel is so wonderful that sometimes I forget she has only lived with us for a month. She doesn’t know all our routines.

  “In the summer,” I tell her, “starting with my first day of vacation, we have lemonade on the porch every night after supper.”

  The truth is that only Miss Hagerty and I have lemonade on the porch every night. Mom and Dad rarely join us, and Mr. Penny joins us if he feels like it. I wonder if Angel Valentine will want to be a part of these summer evenings.

  I open the refrigerator, take out the pitcher of lemonade that Cookie and I made, and set it on a tray with glasses. I carry it carefully to the porch. I am serving Miss Hagerty and Mr. Penny and Angel when I hear Dad say, “Hattie?”

  I turn around. Dad is standing at the door, looking at me through the screen. “Can you come inside for a moment?”

  I start to say that we are about to have our lemonade, but I am stopped by the tone of Dad’s voice. What he has said is not really a question, but an order.

  “Okay.” I set down my empty glass.

  Dad motions me to the parlor, where I see Mom seated on the couch. She is sitting up very, very straight and tall, and looks uncertain, like she is about to have her school picture taken. I am still standing in the doorway when she says, “Hattie, your father and I need to talk to you about something.”

  I collapse onto a chair. I decide that they are going to make me go to the cotillion.

  “This is very serious,” Mom adds, and instead I decide that I am about to find out what will be the death of Papa.

  “It’s Papa, isn’t it?” I ask.

  “Papa?” Mom repeats. “No, it’s …” She looks to Dad for help. Dad looks back at her and shrugs his shoulders, a tiny little shrug.

  “Hattie, I suppose we should have told you this a long time ago,” Mom says.

  What? What should they have told me?

  Mom has spread her hands in her lap and is touching the knuckles of her left hand with the index finger of her right. She sighs. “Your uncle Hayden and I have another brother,” she says at last. “Adam. Your uncle Adam.”

  “I have another uncle?” I reply. This is especially interesting, since Dad is an only child, and Hayden has never married, so I thought he was my only relative, apart from my grandparents. I have always envied Betsy, who has a total of fourteen aunts and uncles and nearly thirty cousins.

  “Yes,” Mom replies, still poking at her knuckles, still not looking at me. “Adam is the baby of the family. He was born when I was sixteen, and Uncle Hayden was eighteen.”

  I do some figuring in my head, and I frown. “Then
Uncle Adam is only twenty-one or twenty-two,” I say.

  “Twenty-one,” Mom murmurs.

  “Where does he live? Why haven’t I ever met him?”

  Mom just twists her hands around, so Dad says, “Adam has been away at school. In Ohio. Since he was twelve.”

  “Twelve?” I am shocked. Who goes away to school when he is twelve and doesn’t come back? I do a little more figuring and realize that I was one or two when Adam left. So I probably did meet him, but I would have been too little to remember. “Doesn’t he come home for vacations?” I ask.

  “Hattie,” says Dad, “Adam … has some problems.”

  “What kind of problems?”

  “He’s not like other people,” says Mom.

  “What do you mean?”

  Another look passes between Mom and Dad. “He has … mental problems.” Dad says the last two words in a loud whisper.

  “He’s been living at a special school.” Mom also whispers.

  “Then is he retarded?” I ask. This is the way it always is with my family. Twenty questions. I wish my parents could tell me things straight out.

  “No, he’s not retarded, exactly,” Mom answers. “It’s that he’s not quite … right. He has some trouble controlling himself. He’s unpredictable, erratic.”

  “Nana and Papa took him to lots of doctors when he was young,” adds Dad. “Some of them thought he was schizophrenic or autistic.”

  Schizophrenic. Autistic. I don’t know these words.

  “But why doesn’t he come home on school vacations?” I want to know.

  “Adam’s school isn’t like yours, Hattie,” says Dad. “He lives there. His teachers know how to manage him.”

  “But,” Mom continues, “his school is about to close. For good. And Adam is coming home to live with Nana and Papa this summer while they look for another school for him. Papa is leaving for Ohio tomorrow. He’ll bring Adam back here on Friday.”

  About eight questions spring to mind. I choose one. It seems to me to be more important than my questions about Adam’s illness. “Why didn’t anyone ever tell me about Adam? I mean, before now.” I am certain I have never heard his name.

  Mom, twisting, twisting. Dad, looking like he wishes his hands cupped a glass of Jack Daniel’s.

  “I guess we just didn’t think it was necessary,” says Mom.

  “We didn’t want to worry you,” says Dad.

  Worry me about what?

  They are leaping around the subject as if it were a fire and they were barefoot.

  Don’t they know how hard it is to be their daughter, to stand by and watch?

  Well. I will have to figure things out for myself. I suppose I will meet Adam very soon.

  That night I turn out my light at ten o’clock. I lie in bed forever, staring out the window. Sleep will not come.

  I am thinking about my new uncle. Adam. I try to picture him.

  I hear Mr. Penny’s clocks strike eleven, then twelve.

  I am still wide-awake.

  Finally, I tiptoe downstairs and into the dark parlor. I turn on a lamp, cross the room to the shelf where we keep our photo albums. I flip through my favorites — the ones with pictures of me when I was little.

  But tonight I need different albums, older ones. They haven’t interested me before, and so I haven’t bothered much with them. Now I open one that is losing its black binding. In it I see Nana and Papa on their wedding day, then Mom and Uncle Hayden as babies. This one is too old. I put it back and locate one in which I find Mom posing for the camera in a cap and gown. Her high school graduation. That’s better. I turn a few pages, and there is a photo of Mom and Uncle Hayden, side by side, a small boy standing between them. He is about four years old, and wears perfectly round tortoiseshell glasses. He is leaning forward slightly and giving the camera an enormous grin.

  He doesn’t look like he has problems.

  I pull the photo out of its plastic case and turn it over. In Mom’s handwriting I see: Me, Adam, Hayden — 1942.

  In the next few pages of photos, Adam grows up quickly. And becomes more and more solemn. I see Adam at five, the round glasses blurring his eyes, standing by a fancy car with Nana and Papa. A year later, a family portrait. Adam is the only one not smiling. He’s not looking at the camera either. Mom, standing behind him, is resting a hand on his shoulder. She looks stiff.

  What was Adam like when he was a baby? I wonder. What was he like when he was four, six, ten?

  And then I wonder for the nine thousandth time that evening why I was never told about Adam. If he didn’t have to come home now, would I ever have been told about him?

  If a person is kept secret, is he real?

  I imagine Nana and Papa and their immaculate home. I try to picture Adam in it. Maybe Nana and Papa think he doesn’t fit there. Certainly, he is not part of the perfect world Nana has worked so hard to create.

  I’m not perfect either, but luckily I don’t live with Nana and Papa.

  And then it occurs to me that Mom did. She grew up in that house.

  Now that is really something to think about.

  Today I am going to meet Adam. Adam Mercer. My new uncle. On Thursday morning Charles the chauffeur drove Papa to the train station in New Liberty so Papa could catch the 6:43 to Cincinnati. Today, which is Saturday, Charles returned to New Liberty to meet the noon train from Cincinnati and brought Papa and Adam (I am having trouble thinking of him as Uncle Adam) home to Nana.

  And now Mom and Dad and I are about to leave for dinner at Nana and Papa’s. We have already served dinner to Angel Valentine and Mr. Penny and Miss Hagerty, who will be on their own tonight.

  It is a warm evening with crickets and birdsongs, so I ask Mom and Dad if we can walk to Nana and Papa’s. Then I say, “Mom, when was the last time you saw Adam?”

  Mom is at her dressing table, dabbing Chanel Number Five behind her ears. In the mirror her eyes look at me sharply, then soften. “Why?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know.”

  Mom caps the perfume bottle. “It was a long time ago,” she says.

  That is the end of that discussion.

  Twenty minutes later I am wearing my pink and white summer dress, the one with the full skirt, and the rosebuds around the neck, made specially for me by Miss Hagerty. And I am wearing nylons with a garter belt, and my white flats. (Mom and Nana, in agreement for once, say I am not old enough for heels.) In my purse are gloves, in case Nana should look disapprovingly at my bare hands.

  Mom and Dad and I cross our lawn and turn left on Grant. I am only a little concerned that we will run into Nancy or Janet, who live nearby and surely are not walking around town in church clothes with their parents. (I’m glad the gloves are in my purse and not on my hands.)

  We pass Nancy’s house, then Janet’s, and no sign of anybody. I relax. But then we reach Nana and Papa’s, and suddenly my heart starts to pound.

  I am trying to decide whether I should mention this, when the front door flies open and someone cries, “Dorothy! Jonathan! And Hattie! Oh, ho, ho, ho!”

  A figure throws itself forward and runs down the walk. It nearly crashes into Mom before grabbing her in a bear hug. Somewhat to my surprise, I hear Mom say warmly, “Hi, Adam.”

  “Hi, Dorothy! Hi, Dorothy! Honey, I’m home!” I have never heard anyone speak as fast as Adam. On he goes, a tornado of words. “Jonathan, Jonathan, are you tired rundown listless? Maybe you need Vitameatavegamin, a fine commercial product.”

  Mom laughs. “Adam, slow down. Have you been watching I Love Lucy?”

  “Yes, oh yes, I Love Lucy, a very funny show. Lucy and Ricky and Fred and Ethel and all their mishaps and antics. Vitameatavegamin, oh, ho, ho, ho!”

  I am breathless from listening to Adam.

  My parents are smiling. “Adam, you remember Hattie, don’t you?” says Dad.

  I put my hand out, but Adam ignores it and gives me one of his bear hugs. “My old friend, my old old friend, Hattie Owen, how are you, how old are y
ou? Ethel what birthday is it oh it’s mine I meant how old are you going to be she knew what you meant Ricky Ricardo I’m surprised at you it’s not nice to ask a woman’s age.”

  Adam is absolutely the strangest person I have ever met, but he is grinning, and he is making Mom and Dad and me grin too. My heart has stopped pounding and I feel a little giddy. Christmas morning giddy.

  Adam turns and hurries back to the house, beckoning us to follow. We have to run to keep up with him.

  “Ermaline has prepared tender roast beef au jus with succulent green beans, herbed potatoes, and for dessert, crème caramel,” Adam says at high speed.

  I try to remember if this is a menu from I Love Lucy.

  “Adam, Adam, slow down.” Nana has hurried into the foyer, Papa just behind her. She puts her hand on Adam’s arm. “Slow,” she says again.

  Adam closes his mouth as if she had said, “Be quiet.”

  One second later he opens it. “Hattie, Hattie, I have been looking forward to seeing you again. It’s been such a long time, too long, far too long. The last time I saw you, you were two years old, no not even two yet, not two, just a baby, a baby really, Hattie.”

  Papa interrupts. “Let’s sit down, everybody. Sherman will bring us drinks in a moment.”

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho! Drinks! What a good idea!” exclaims Adam.

  Mine, I know, will be a Shirley Temple.

  Papa motions us into the grand sitting room. We all choose chairs, and I wind up next to Adam. I notice that we settle down rather gingerly, as if something might break. And I do not mean the chairs, but I don’t know what I do mean.

  Now that he is sitting, Adam has fallen silent. He opens a magazine and begins to read aloud very softly.

  I study him. He is small, only a little taller than me, and slight. But wiry. I can see the muscles in his forearms. And he is tense, intense, even when he smiles. His face is so tight that it might jump right off of his head. But apart from that he looks okay. He has two eyes, a nose, a mouth, all in the right spots. Actually, he looks quite a bit like Papa. Except that he leaves his mouth open while he reads and soon his lips glisten with saliva. And he keeps jabbing the round tortoiseshell glasses up the bridge of his nose, although they don’t seem to be slipping down.