The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,13

to see you again, dear, so grown up.” His voice is very low. I can hear the ticking of my mother’s watch, her wrist just below my ear, her hands still on my shoulders.

He starts to pull on his tie, loosening it, unbuttoning his sleeves and rolling them up. Eileen bulges her eyes at him.

“I’m glad you’ve come here today, Tina,” he says, very slowly. “Your mother has missed you.”

My mother nods, rolling her lips between her teeth. If the whole night goes like this, people speaking so slowly and with such long spaces in between, it will seem like forever. I wish my mother and I were already back at home right now, sitting in front of the television, eating grilled cheese.

He clears his throat. “You’ve been missed.”

“Thanks, Dad.” She’s still standing behind me, her hands heavy on my shoulders. Eileen catches my eye and winks.

Beth and Stephanie appear in the doorway. “Table’s set,” Stephanie says. Neither of them looks at me. They are both watching my grandfather’s face.

“You girls get a chance to talk to your sister?” he asks. “And little Evelyn here?”

They nod, and then it’s quiet again. We are all just standing around. If I could think of anything to say, anything at all, I would say it. I can tell by looking at Beth and Stephanie that they are trying to think of something to say too.

Beth looks at my mother. “Where’s the horse?”

“What?” my mother asks.

My grandfather laughs, then stops quickly. “What are you talking about?”

Beth squints up at him. “You said the horse was coming tonight. The little horse.”

Eileen begins to move toward the kitchen, waving for us to follow. But my mother stays still, her fingers drumming on my shoulders. “The little horse?” she asks. “A little horse was coming?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Beth. But that’s enough of that.”

My mother turns her head out the window so she is no longer looking at her father or Eileen, and now I can’t see her face.

“Okay, okay,” Eileen says, clapping her hands, a teacher at the end of recess. “No more talking about horses. Let’s go eat.”

We go into the other room and sit down around the table. It’s a table for six people, but someone has pulled the piano bench up to the table to make room for two more people, and my mother and I sit there.

Nobody talks. Eileen uses silver tongs to give everyone some salad, and there is sound only when they tap against a plate.

But then my grandfather starts laughing about something. When I look up, he winks at me and wrinkles his nose. “Well aren’t you just a little pumpkin?” he asks.

I am not certain how to answer this. Am I a little pumpkin? I turn to my mother, but her head is bent down as if she were praying with her eyes open, staring at her reflection on her shiny white plate.

After a while, he answers for me, still grinning. “You are. You’re just a little pumpkin.”

Eileen leaves and comes back with the ham. My grandfather smiles at my mother, but she’s still looking down at her plate, so she doesn’t see. Eileen puts two thick pieces of ham on everyone’s plate, so there is ham on one side, salad on the other. I pick up my fork, but my mother pokes my knee under the table, shaking her head no.

“I’d like to say the grace tonight,” my grandfather says. He waits until we have all closed our eyes and bowed our heads, just like Ronald Reagan. But instead of a moment of silence, he talks. He thanks God for getting me and my mother to Wichita safely, and for putting food on the table, and for the roof over our heads, and he says thank you for blessed reunions, and blessed returns. When he says amen, Eileen looks up at us, her crooked mouth in a wide smile, and she says amen too.

Everyone else starts to eat, but my mother is still just looking at her plate, her hands pressed against the piano bench. She taps her foot against one of the legs of the table, hard enough so the ice cubes in my glass clink together.

My grandfather’s temples move as he chews, his eyes wide. He looks at my mother, then glances at Eileen. “Well I saw that German car out there,” he says. “We can look into fixing it, but it might be better to try to