A Corner of the Universe Read online

  “Let’s make spin-art paintings,” says Leila.

  So we do. When Adam has evened out, I say to him, “Now how about a ride?”

  “Any ride you want for free,” adds Leila.

  Adam drops his eyes. “Oh, no. No, thanks. Thank you very much, you are most kind, I am sure, but no rides, thank you.”

  “Really? How about the merry-go-round?” asks Leila. “Some of the horses don’t even move up and down. Or you can just sit on a plain bench.”

  Adam is still looking at the ground. “Fred it’s impossible to get seasick on a boat that is standing still tell that to my stomach.”

  For the first time, Leila looks confused. She glances at me.

  “It’s from I Love Lucy,” I say. “I think he memorized all the shows.”

  Leila frowns. Then she says, “Do you get seasick, Adam? I mean, do you get motion sick on rides?”

  “No.”

  Now we are stumped.

  “But you don’t want to go on any rides?” I ask.

  “I like to watch the Ferris wheel,” says Adam.

  “Just watch it?”

  “Yes.”

  So we stand outside the booth, where Lamar is taking tickets, and we watch the Ferris wheel turn slowly round and round above the carnival.

  Finally Adam says, “I’m a little hungry, you know. My stomach is talking to me.”

  “Then let’s get lunch,” says Leila.

  We sit at a table in the shade with our hot dogs and lemonade. Adam is still very quiet. He eats while Leila and I talk about books. Leila likes to read as much as I do, but she has never had a library card since her family never stays in one place for very long.

  “How do you get books, then?” I ask her.

  “We buy them at flea markets and rummage sales. And my aunt Dot always sends me books on my birthday.”

  “Hattie’s birthday is coming up,” says Adam.

  “Oh, really? When?”

  Adam comes to life. “On July sixteenth, Leila Cahn! July sixteenth. One week from tomorrow.”

  “Cool,” says Leila. “I’ll still be here. We can celebrate your birthday, Hattie.”

  Adam jumps up. “Leila, Leila! I have an idea. Come here.”

  Adam is not subtle.

  I grin as I watch him pull Leila a little distance away from our table. He talks excitedly to her. His hands flap, and he begins to bounce up and down. And when they return a few minutes later, Adam is saying, “It’s a mind trick, Leila, Leila, a mind trick, I tell you. A trick of the mind. Monday is the day you were born all right. Ask your parents. How about another date? Give me another date, a date of your choosing.”

  Leila obliges, smiling.

  Later that afternoon I drop Adam off at Nana and Papa’s.

  “We ate hot dogs,” Adam tells his mother, “and we watched the Ferris wheel but we didn’t go on it, and we played games but we didn’t win anything, and Leila is kind, kind, very kind. She goes to correspondence school. Oh, and a man didn’t guess my weight, so I got this.” Adam pulls a tiny jackknife out of his pocket.

  Nana’s smile fades. “Please give me that, Adam,” she says. Adam hands it to her. “This is going to be one of those things you may keep but not touch. We’ll put it in the case in the living room.”

  Adam stomps away from his mother.

  Nana shakes her head. “I guess I don’t expect you to know any better,” she says to me. “And the circus people don’t know Adam, of course, but still …”

  Behind her, Adam sticks his tongue out at Nana as he starts up the stairs. And I turn my back on her and leave.

  My days with Leila at the carnival are growing longer. One afternoon I am walking home so late that I see Angel Valentine coming home from work in the other direction. I look at my watch. Sure enough, it is after five o’clock.

  Angel waves to me, bangle bracelets jingling. She is wearing a white lacy blouse so clean, it is almost sparkling, a red and orange and yellow striped skirt that falls in soft folds from her waist to below her knees, and a wide black leather belt. I think she looks a little like a gypsy or maybe a Spanish dancer.

  I wave back, feeling very plain in my shorts and T-shirt and no jewelry of any kind. Even so, I run down the street to Angel so that we can walk back to our yard together. I don’t get to spend much time alone with her.

  “Where’ve you been?” Angel asks, dabbing at her damp temples with a hankie.

  “The carnival,” I reply.

  Angel smiles. “The carnival. Wasn’t that something?”

  I know she is talking about the night the carnival opened.

  “Did you have fun?” I ask. I am desperately hoping she will tell me something about the Frankie Avalon guy.

  “We had a fine time.”

  “Did you go with …” I think I am blushing, but I have to ask anyway. “Is he your boyfriend?”

  “Henry?”

  “The guy with the convertible.”

  Angel smiles again, but this time the smile is more for herself. “Well, we haven’t known each other long. But I suppose Henry is my boyfriend. We like each other very much.”

  “Is that what makes a boyfriend and a girlfriend? Liking each other very much?” I ask as we turn onto our walk.

  “There’s a little more to it than that, Hattie,” says Angel, and then we both jump a mile when from behind a lilac bush a voice bellows, “Hattie! Hattie Owen! And the lovely Miss Angel Valentine! A great good evening to you both!”

  “Adam!” I let out a gasp.

  Where did he come from? I think he has been waiting for us, and this sudden appearance has made my heart pound.

  Adam stands just a little too close to Angel and me as he says, “The gods are smiling down upon us on this heavenly summer’s eve, smiling down like great Cheshire cats, Cheshire cats in the sky. Hattie and Angel, Cheshire cats in the sky.”

  I take a step back and notice that Angel is backing up too. There is something about Adam’s grin, something about the way he has narrowed his eyes just slightly, that looks all wrong. Then Adam turns, runs to the porch, crashes down into a chair, and sits, leaning forward, rubbing his hands together. Angel and I follow him. Gingerly we sit on the porch swing. In seconds Adam transforms himself. He melts into the back of the chair, his breath coming more evenly, and says, “Angel Valentine, you look like a summer garden this evening.”

  “Why, thank you,” Angel replies. “This is a new skirt.”

  “It’s very becoming,” says Adam primly.

  I see that his eyes have slipped down from Angel’s face and have landed on her chest again.

  Maybe it’s because of this, maybe not, but Angel stands up suddenly, which joggles the swing, and says, “I’d love to sit out here and chat with you, but I have a date tonight.”

  I almost say, “With Henry?” but I do not think Adam is going to want to hear about Angel’s boyfriend. I cringe, waiting for an explosion, for Adam to stomp off the porch, to shout, for the tears to come. Instead, he looks interested and says, “A date! A date on a Monday night. Very cosmopolitan, Angel Valentine. Very chic!”

  Which is exactly what I am thinking.

  Angel smiles charmingly. “We’re going to a French restaurant,” she adds.

  The nearest French restaurant is all the way over in Sargentsville. This must be some date.

  Adam says, “Lucy ate snails in a French restaurant and she didn’t like them one bit. Don’t eat any snails at the French restaurant, Angel Valentine.”

  Angel smiles and promises not to. Then she glides inside.

  I watch Adam. For once he is not watching Angel. The moment she has disappeared up the stairs, Adam jumps to his feet, stands stiffly in front of me with his hands behind his back.

  “Hattie Owen, my old friend,” he says, and he sounds as if he is going to give a speech he has memorized. “As you know, your birthday is coming up.” He pauses.

  I guess I am supposed to say something. I nod. “On Saturday.”

&nb
sp; “And Leila Cahn and I would like to do something special for you. You must have a birthday party. You absotively must. Everyone has enough friends for a birthday party. Because, you see, you only need one friend for a party. One is enough. Two is enough. Anything is enough.” Adam pulls a folded piece of paper out of his pocket and hands it to me.

  I open it. Big crawly handwriting swims across the page.

  “Read it, Hattie!” cries Adam. “Read it out loud.”

  I clear my throat. “ ‘You are invited to a party,’ ” I begin. “ ‘Date: Friday, July fifteenth. Place: Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnival. Time: starting at three-thirty P.M. in the afternoon on the dot. Occasion: Hattie Owen’s twelfth birthday. Given by: her friends Adam and Leila.’ ”

  I lower the paper. “Wow, Adam. This is great.”

  “You can come, can’t you?” says Adam. He is wringing his hands, and his eyes are begging me to say yes.

  But I am thinking that Nana’s cotillion is on Friday afternoon, and I actually don’t know whether this is a problem. I don’t want to disappoint Adam. And I certainly don’t want to go to the cotillion. But Nana …

  Adam is staring at me intensely, the way you would stare in a staring game. He’s still standing, and he has placed his hands on his knees and is leaning into me, his face just inches from mine. Searching for my answer, I guess. How can I say no to him?

  How can I say no to Nana?

  I want to run inside and ask someone for advice. My parents are always busy with supper at this hour. But Miss Hagerty will be in her room.

  “Just a sec,” I say to Adam.

  I am halfway through the door when Adam grabs the back of my shirt and pulls. “What are you doing?” he says.

  I fall into him. “I’m —”

  “Don’t you want to come to our party?”

  I look at my watch, look through the screen door, look at Adam’s face. “Let me walk you home,” I say. “I want to show your invitation to Nana. It’s beautiful. And it’s the first invitation I ever received to my own birthday party.”

  This makes Adam smile.

  We set off down the street. Adam is all uneven today, and I am a little afraid. He makes a lot of noise as we walk along. He jingles the change in his pocket and he hums under his breath. Sometimes he stops humming in order to puff his cheeks full of air, then pop them with his index fingers. I begin to think that the best I can hope for when we reach Nancy’s and Janet’s will be humming and jingling without cheekpopping. But we walk by their houses without seeing them.

  Adam and I turn the corner onto his street, and I can see Nana standing on the front steps of the house. She waves to us, trying to look gay and pleased, but I know she has been feeling worried. She has probably called Mom and Dad, who have said they haven’t seen Adam or me all day long.

  “Hi, Nana!” I call. “Look at this.”

  I’m sure Nana wants to say something to Adam, but I am waving the invitation over my head. She frowns at him as she takes the piece of paper from me. “What is it?” she asks.

  “Adam just brought it over,” I tell her. “He and Leila are giving me a birthday party.”

  Nana reads the paper. Her frown is not going away. “Leila is the circus —?”

  “Leila is Leila Cahn, whose family owns Fred Carmel’s,” I say. “She’s my new friend.”

  “And Hattie is going to have a birthday party this year,” adds Adam. “We are going to give her one.”

  “Hattie has a birthday party every year,” says Nana.

  “With grown-ups,” says Adam. “Not with her friends.” I see a muscle move on the side of his face, and I think he is clenching his jaw.

  “Well, Adam, this is a very nice gesture,” Nana says finally. “But Friday is the cotillion and —”

  “But Hattie doesn’t —” Adam starts to say, and for one horrible instant I think that somehow he knows how I feel about the cotillion and is going to tell Nana I don’t want to go. “Hattie doesn’t want to miss her own birthday party,” he says.

  “Couldn’t you have the party on the weekend?” asks Nana sensibly. “After all, Hattie’s birthday is on Saturday.”

  “No, it has to be on Friday!” Adam is shouting suddenly. “Leila has to work on Saturday. It’s the busiest day.”

  Saturday may be the busiest day at Fred Carmel’s, but I doubt that Leila has to work.

  “Adam,” says Nana, and she has made her voice very quiet. She holds out her hand to him, and he swats it away. “How about Friday evening, then? Or sometime on Sunday?” She takes a step backward, bumps into one of the porch columns, and steadies herself.

  “No! I can’t just change our plans. Our plans are important, they’re important, I’m important. We made plans. Why aren’t my plans important?”

  “Adam, your plans are important,” I say. “I want to go to the party. I do.” I look at Nana. She is still holding on to the column.

  “But Adam, Friday —” says Nana.

  I see the red that is creeping up Adam’s face. Adam opens his mouth like he is yawning. No, like he is about to scream, to let out a bloodcurdling movie-monster scream. I put my hands over my ears, waiting. But then Adam closes his mouth, and his face crumples. He bursts into tears. He cries in the loud way a little child might. Betsy said to me once that she wished it were still okay for her to cry like that — to screw up her face, draw in a huge breath, and just let out a wail every time she felt frustrated. And that is what Adam is doing now.

  After a few moments his wails subside, and he sinks down on the porch steps and sobs quietly.

  “Nana?” I say.

  Nana can’t answer me at first. She is about to cry herself, I can tell. She takes a step toward Adam’s back as if she might touch his shoulder. Then she draws away, says, “Of course you can go to Adam’s party on Friday, Hattie,” turns, and walks into the house.

  I watch Adam. “Thank you for the party,” I say. “I can’t wait.”

  Adam doesn’t answer.

  I sit down next to him. I don’t know if it’s okay to put my arm around him, so instead I inch closer and closer until our shoulders are touching. Adam buries his head in his hands, then turns and leans in to me. At last I know it is okay to touch him, and I wrap both of my arms around him.

  “No one knows,” says Adam, “what it is like.”

  “No,” I reply, although I think I might know more than most people.

  “You are not an alien, Hattie. I am the only true alien.”

  But Adam is wrong. I am a true alien too.

  Today is Friday, and it is the last day I will be eleven years old.

  Mom and I have been invited to lunch with Nana. We do this sometimes, have Girls’ Lunches. Only today Adam will be there too. I don’t mind going to Nana’s for a Girls’ Lunch nearly as much as I mind having Nana to lunch at our house. When Nana gives a Girls’ Lunch she is in control, and when Nana is in control, she’s happy.

  At a Girls’ Lunch we eat in Nana’s dining room, and Ermaline serves us teeny sandwiches with no crust on the bread, and little individual plates of fruit and cheese, and then we have tea and cookies for dessert. Ermaline stays in the kitchen unless Nana calls her by stepping on the hidden buzzer. I would dearly love to press that buzzer, but it is strictly forbidden for anyone except Nana to press it. Mom says it has always been that way. Nana is the queen.

  Mom fusses and fumes before every single Girls’ Lunch. She says what a pain it is to have to take off her work clothes in the middle of the day, but I notice that she spends practically forever in front of the mirror, adjusting her clothes and jewelry, dabbing perfume behind her ears. She is not doing this just to please Nana. I think that secretly she loves an excuse, any excuse, to be Nana’s princess.

  Later, as Mom and I walk along Grant Street, Mom says, “You look lovely, Hattie.” Her earlier grumbling about the Girls’ Lunch is over. “I can’t believe you’re almost twelve years old. Just think. This time twelve years ago, nineteen forty-
eight, they said a hurricane was coming, but instead you arrived.”

  I smile. Then I say, “Mom? How come you and Dad never had any other kids?”

  “My goodness,” says Mom. “Where did that question come from?”

  I shrug.

  “Well …” Mom’s smile has faded. She clears her throat. “I don’t know. I guess it was just that you came along and you were perfect. So we decided to quit while we were ahead.”

  It is on the tip of my tongue to say, “You mean to quit before you had a kid like Adam?” but the words will not come.

  I think I have ruined something, because Mom and I walk the rest of the way in absolute silence. I hope that Ermaline and the no-crust sandwiches and tea and cookies will restore Mom’s mood.

  Adam greets us at Nana’s, wearing a suit and tie.

  “Welcome, welcome, Hattie and Dorothy!” he exclaims. “Dorothy, go right on in.” He gives Mom a little shove through the front door, then grabs my wrist and whispers to me, “It’s a good thing your party is this afternoon, Hattie. Ermaline fixed ladies’ food, which wouldn’t fill a canary, wouldn’t fill half a canary, wouldn’t fill a full canary. But don’t worry because we can eat at Fred Carmel’s. Leila and I have everything planned, don’t you worry, don’t you worry for one second.”

  I am not worried, but I whisper thank you to Adam, and we head inside. My stomach flutters when I see Nana. She is wearing a much fancier outfit than she would ordinarily wear to a Girls’ Lunch, which means that she is already dressed to be a chaperone at the cotillion. She eyes my own nice but definitely not cotilliony dress, but says nothing. Instead, she ushers us into the dining room. The enormous table is set for four — Nana at the end, Adam to her right, Mom to her left, and me next to Mom. More than half the table is empty.

  We have no sooner sat down than Nana says, “Well, Hattie, I hope you are going to enjoy your birthday party this afternoon.” Adam and I glance at each other. “It sounds like fun,” she continues. No part of her is smiling. “All right. If we’re ready to eat, I’ll ring Ermaline.”