A Corner of the Universe Read online

  I see Adam lunge to his left then, and I know exactly what he has done. He has done what I have wanted to do my whole life. He has stepped on Nana’s buzzer.

  “Adam!” says Nana.

  I see Adam lunge three more times, which explains why Ermaline comes flying into the dining room, looking alarmed. “Ma’am?” she says to Nana.

  “Ermaline, I’m sorry. That was an accident.”

  Ermaline hesitates. “Are you ready to be served?”

  Nana casts a glance at Adam. “I’m not sure Adam is. Adam, are you going to be able to eat with us in the dining room, or do you need to eat in the kitchen?”

  Adam’s face reddens. I think my face is reddening too. I know how tempting that buzzer is.

  Adam faces Nana. “Are you going to be able to eat with us in the dining room, or do you need to eat in the kitchen?” he says.

  “Adam,” says Nana.

  “Adam,” says Adam.

  “Not one more word.”

  “Not one more word.”

  Nana is old. And she is little. I bet I weigh more than she does. But she has a loud voice. Nana stands up now and uses it. She glares at Adam, then points at the door to the dining room. “Out!” she says, as if Adam is a dog. “Out!”

  “Mother —” says Mom, but I don’t find out what she was going to say, because Nana silences her with a single sidelong glance.

  Adam is out the door in two seconds, and I know better than to leave the table and go after him. I don’t see him again until lunch is over. Mom and Nana are chatting in the foyer, and I go looking for Adam and find him in the sitting room.

  At first he won’t talk to me.

  “Did you eat anything?” I ask him.

  Adam has turned one of the armchairs so that it faces outside, and he is staring into the garden.

  “Did Ermaline give you lunch?” I say.

  Nothing.

  “We can have the party another day,” I say finally.

  Adam is silent for so long that I think he is not going to answer me. I am pretty sure we won’t have the party after all, and I am starting to wonder if now I will have to go to the cotillion, when Adam says, “The party is still on, Hattie. Come back at three-fifteen.” The way he says this, it is the first time I have felt that Adam is actually older than I am, and I remember that he is my uncle, and not just my friend.

  “Okay,” I say.

  I don’t know what to expect when I go back to Nana’s at three-fifteen. For all I know, Adam is being punished, and Nana will grab me, send me home to change, and make me go to the cotillion with her.

  But Adam greets me at the door and, as Cookie would say, he looks fresh as a daisy. Fresh as a very strange daisy, though. He has taken a shower and washed his hair, which is now carefully parted along the middle, and all greased down. He is wearing plaid shorts, a tailored white shirt with every single button buttoned, and a red and green bow tie. Also, he is wearing loafers without socks.

  “Hattie, Hattie, Hattie, my old friend. Hattie, the birthday girl. Girl who can lift the corners of our universe, girl who is a sight for sore eyes, girl who is eleven almost twelve years old, girl who is about to have her first birthday party with friends, girl —”

  “Adam!” I hear Nana call.

  “Good-bye!” shouts Adam, and slams the door behind him. “We’re off,” he says to me.

  Adam is clutching a brown paper bag. He takes my hand and heads for the carnival at a pace so brisk, I have to run to keep up with him. I feel like a kid holding her father’s hand and trying to match the stride of his long legs. Adam whistles the theme from I Love Lucy as we hurry along. Eventually, he begins to sing. “I love Lucy and she loves me. We’re as happy as two can be!”

  I am out of breath by the time we reach Fred Carmel’s. I look at my watch. Right on time. And Leila is waiting for us at the main entrance.

  “Happy birthday, Hattie!” she calls.

  “It isn’t her birthday, not really, you know,” says Adam. “Not until tomorrow, the sixteenth, Saturday, the sixteenth of July, although Hattie was born on a Friday.”

  “Well, happy birthday a little early then,” says Leila.

  “Let the birthday fun begin!” cries Adam.

  “Yeah, it’s your special day, Hattie,” says Leila. “Anything you want all afternoon is free — rides, food, games, anything.”

  “Wow,” I say. I’ve gotten free stuff at the carnival before, but I try to keep it under control.

  “What do you want to do first, Hattie Owen?” asks Adam, who is jumping up and down.

  “Rides,” I say. “Rides first.”

  Adam lands on the ground and stays there. “Rides,” he repeats, and he lets out his breath. “All right.”

  I know rides are not Adam’s favorite thing, but I just have to go on a few this afternoon. This is too good to miss.

  Leila and I start with the merry-go-round. Adam sits on a bench and watches us. Then we head for the Tilt-A-Whirl, which nearly makes me sick but is still exciting. Adam sits on another bench. When Leila and I climb into a car on the Ferris wheel, Adam stands below us, just behind the ticket booth, and watches. From high above him I can see his head slowly following our progress, around and around.

  “Now what?” says Leila when we step out of our car a few minutes later.

  “Could we get ice cream?” I ask her. I don’t want to take advantage.

  “Sure, sure,” Adam answers. “Ice cream all around, I scream you scream, we all scream for ice cream! … Leila, Leila, come here.”

  Adam whispers something in Leila’s ear, and Leila nods her head. “Okay,” she says. “Get the ice cream and go sit over there. I’ll be right back.”

  When Adam and I have gotten three cups of vanilla ice cream, we sit at a picnic table.

  “What are we waiting for?” I ask Adam.

  “You’ll see,” he says. And the next thing I know, he is singing, “Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to you!”

  His voice is joined by Leila’s, and she appears carrying a small cake with four candles, their flames trailing to the side in the hot breeze.

  “Happy birthday, dear Hattie!” sing Adam and Leila. “Happy birthday to you!”

  Leila has made the cake herself. She says it is her birthday present to me. Then Adam hands me the paper bag. “And this is mine,” he says.

  I open the bag and pull out a tiny wooden box.

  “I made that myself,” says Adam.

  “Really?” The box is exquisite. On the lid is a round knob. I lift it and look inside. Polished wood. Smooth.

  “You can put it in your pocket and keep your loose change in it,” says Adam. “I made it at my school, my old school, I won’t be going back there, you know.”

  “Adam, it’s beautiful,” I say. I want to hug him, but Adam is in a state of high excitement, jiggling and bouncing in his seat. So I reach across the table and hold his hand.

  The rest of the party is perfect. We eat candy apples and then play games, and Adam finally wins a stuffed animal prize. He chooses a small blue tiger, and it makes him so happy that he jumps up and down in ecstasy, wringing his hands and singing, “I am Lily of the Valley! I am Lily of the Valley!” which I suspect is from a Lucy show. Later, he loses the tiger but doesn’t care at all. He just wanted to win it in the first place.

  When we are walking home, I tell Adam this was the best birthday party I ever had.

  “I love Lucy and she loves me!” sings Adam.

  The wooden box is in my pocket, and I think how nice it will be always to have a reminder of Adam with me.

  On my birthday, my real birthday, the day I turn twelve at 2:22 in the afternoon, Mom and Dad give me another party. It is the same one we have every year. The guests are always Mom, Dad, Nana, Papa, Cookie, and our boarders. This year Adam is a guest too.

  “Do you have the box, the little wooden box, your birthday present, Hattie?” Adam is pushing through our front door ahead of Nana and Papa, who are each car
rying a shopping bag full of presents. “Everyone else is giving you their presents today,” he says, “but I already gave you yours. You liked it, didn’t you, Hattie, you liked your present? Ethel didn’t like Lucy’s at all. Well Ethel I — I think they’re kinda cute what are they well they’re hostess pants you wear ’em when you give smart dinner parties oh I was wondering what to wear to all those smart dinner parties I give.”

  “I love the box,” I assure Adam. “It’s right here in my pocket, see?” I pull it out and show him, shake it so he can hear that it really is full of my loose change.

  Dad films the party, of course. Films me opening my presents, films everyone seated around the dining room table wearing goofy hats, films me cutting the cake, films Adam sticking his finger in the icing and swiping off the largest pink rose for himself. Luckily there is no sound to go with Dad’s movies or we would be able to hear Nana’s cry of displeasure as Adam slurps up the rose and reaches out for another one with the same sticky finger he just licked. The camera stops then, and Papa tells Adam he will have to go sit in the car.

  “No, please, let him stay,” I say. “I don’t mind about the cake.”

  “Well, I do,” says Nana. “Adam knows better.”

  “But I want him to stay. It’s my party.”

  Adam doesn’t hear this, though. He has already slammed out the front door and is stomping toward home.

  Dad sets the camera down. The dining room is silent. Miss Hagerty and Mr. Penny are looking at their plates. Cookie examines a crumb on her fork. Angel Valentine jumps up and says she has an errand to run downtown. So the party ends.

  Nana and Papa head for home. Most likely, they will find Adam along the way. I’m worried about his mood, but no one else mentions him. Mom says, “Hattie, it’s your birthday. No chores, no cleaning up, and you don’t need to help with dinner tonight. Go do whatever you want to do for the rest of the afternoon.”

  What I want to do is read, so I take the pile of new books I have been given and sit on the front porch with them until Cookie calls me in to dinner.

  The invitations to Nana and Papa’s dinner party are printed on cream-colored cards edged in gold, each protected by a small sheet of tissue paper. I have traced my finger over the raised letters many times since Mom and Dad’s invitation arrived. The party is to be held in one week, on the Saturday after my birthday. The invitation has been tacked to the bulletin board in the kitchen for days now, and I can’t help feeling that Nana probably didn’t intend for something so fancy to wind up with a hole in it, stuck next to a batch of Green Stamps and supermarket coupons.

  Nana and Papa give a very fancy dinner party twice each year, once at Christmas and once during the summer. I have wondered if this summer’s might be postponed until a new school is found for Adam and he is out of the house. But I guess not. I’m pretty sure, though, that Adam will not be attending the dinner. For one thing, children are never invited to the summer party. I know Adam is not exactly a child, but he is sort of a child. And anyway, Nana likes her parties to be perfect. She will not want someone walking around sticking his fingers in the hors d’oeuvres and reciting lines from I Love Lucy.

  What this means is that Adam and I will be on our own on Saturday night. Adam will probably have to spend the evening in his room. And I could spend it in mine, reading my new books. Or I could visit with Miss Hagerty, but she wants to teach me to needlepoint, and I’m not interested. I could also, I think, go to the carnival. I haven’t been to the carnival at night since I went with Mom and Dad. Leila and I could ride the lit-up rides together, and sit at a darkened picnic table eating ice cream while the moon rises.

  I wonder if I would be allowed to go.

  One night when we are watching the news on TV, I say, “On Saturday when you go to Nana and Papa’s party, could I go to the carnival?”

  “At night without us?” says Mom. “I don’t know …”

  “I would be with Leila,” I say. “I would spend the whole evening with her.”

  Mom and Dad look at each other.

  “Leila’s parents are always around,” I add.

  “I guess it would be all right,” says Mom.

  “As long as you wait for me to pick you up after the party,” says Dad. “I don’t want you walking home by yourself in the dark.”

  “I’ll wait for you,” I say.

  The next day I tell Leila about my plan, and she says, “What about Adam? Can he come too?”

  It’s true that Adam will be stuck in his room, but I’m pretty sure he will not be allowed to go to the carnival at night without Nana and Papa.

  “I don’t think so,” I tell Leila.

  Later, after all that happens with Adam that night and in the days following, I am never quite sure what made me suggest to Adam that he sneak out of his house and go to the carnival with me. Maybe it doesn’t matter. Somehow the idea comes up, and Leila and I talk and talk about it, knowing it is wrong but lured by its daring.

  “It doesn’t seem right that Nana and Papa should make him stay in his room during the party,” I say.

  “Like they’re hiding him away,” says Leila.

  “He’d have a lot more fun at the carnival,” I add. “And he’s never seen it at night.”

  “Maybe you could tell him to sneak out of his house after the party starts.”

  “Maybe.”

  “But then what would you do with Adam when your father comes to pick you up?”

  This is a good question. “I could tell him that Adam came to the carnival on his own, that we just ran into him after I got here.”

  Leila looks doubtful.

  In the end, I decide that probably there is no way to do this without getting into some sort of trouble, and that is a risk I’m willing to take. I want Adam to have one wild, thrilling evening with no one around to tell him to use his party manners. One evening without Nana hovering around trying to make him perfect.

  Soon enough Leila will be gone and Adam will go off to a new school, and the three of us will never have this chance again.

  On Friday, the day before Nana and Papa’s party, I tell Adam about our idea.

  “Oh, oh, what an adventure, Hattie Owen! An adventure indeed. Better than when Lucy goes to Hollywood. Better than when she goes to Europe or Florida. More like her Martian adventure with Ethel! Count me in, count me in, Hattie, I will be there with bells on.”

  “But you have to remember not to mention this to Nana or Papa,” I say.

  “They are evil, evil people,” Adam replies darkly.

  “Meet me on the corner tomorrow night at seven-thirty,” I say. “And remember not to let anyone see you leave the house.”

  “Righto, bingo, over and out,” replies Adam.

  The next night Adam is waiting for me when I reach the corner. “Hattie! Hattie!” He is jumping up and down. “I did it, I escaped and no one saw me. I am out of the loony bin on a free pass! Let the fun begin!”

  I hurry us down the street, afraid someone will see us. Adam is boinging around, jumping, humming, singing. “I love Lucy and she loves me!”

  We arrive at Fred Carmel’s just as the lights are being turned on. From the parking lot we watch as darkened shapes come to life.

  “Magic,” whispers Adam as the Tilt-A-Whirl suddenly appears in the distance, then the Ferris wheel.

  We walk to the entrance, where Leila is waiting for us. Behind her is the merry-go-round, a golden glow that lights her hair. Adam is right. Leila looks magic, the merry-go-round looks magic, we are surrounded by magic on this forbidden adventure.

  Now Adam, overwhelmed, can barely speak. He watches the merry-go-round for two complete turns, then looks to his left and watches the Ferris wheel. Around and around goes his head.

  “It’s too good,” he whispers at last.

  “What? The Ferris wheel?” Leila says.

  “Yes.” Adam is still whispering. “Let’s ride it.”

  “Really? You want to go on the Ferris wheel?” I say
. “Are you sure?”

  Adam nods.

  “Okay,” reply Leila and I at the same time.

  Lamar is in the ticket booth, and he waves to us as we join the end of the line. Slowly we make our way forward and climb the four wooden steps up to the ride. Mr. Cahn is at the top of the steps and he helps us into one of the cars.

  “I’ll sit next to Adam,” I say.

  Mr. Cahn buckles us in, checks the buckles, then checks them again. “Okay,” he says, “you’re all set.”

  He lowers a bar over Adam and me, lowers the other one over Leila. Adam grips our bar tightly. His knuckles turn white.

  Leila looks at his hands, looks at me, looks back at Adam. “Are you sure you want to go?” she asks him. “My dad could let us out right now.”

  Adam shakes his head. I’m actually not sure what that means. He doesn’t want to go? He doesn’t want to be let out? But it doesn’t matter because suddenly our car jerks forward and we are lifted up. We rise above the carnival, the lights falling away beneath us.

  “Oh, ho, ho, ho!” cries Adam.

  Someone from the car just below us turns around to look up at Adam, and I stick my tongue out at her.

  We reach the very top of the ride, and spreading away from us wherever we look are the lights of Millerton. We are the sun and there is our universe, I am thinking, just as Adam says softly, “It’s Neverland, it’s Oz, it’s Nirvana. Oh, it’s the center of the universe.” He tips his head back to look up at the stars.

  Our car glides down toward the ground, then rises, glides to the ground, rises once more. We are at the top of the Ferris wheel for the third time when I hear a great screech of metal and we grind to a halt, our seats rocking.

  “What’s wrong?” I ask Leila.

  “It must be stuck. That happens sometimes. My dad always fixes it.”

  I glance at Adam.

  “We’re lucky!” Leila goes on. “We’re stuck at the very top. It’s the best place to be stuck. You can look at the view all you want.”