The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,121
she tells Eileen. “All the books I’m reading say that this is what’s really important.”
Verranna Hinckle has been giving my mother books to read: The Special Child, Communicating with Your Child, A Doctor’s Take on the Non-Verbal Child. Each time she finishes one, Verranna Hinckle brings her another.
We wait again, watching Samuel’s hand move slowly in the direction of the chocolate ice cream.
“Thank you for telling me you want chocolate, not vanilla,” my mother says, the words loud and slow, like someone is standing behind us, holding a cue card for her to read. She slides the bowl of chocolate toward him and clasps his hand around his spoon. Eileen says I should have the bowl of vanilla. But I don’t want it, and neither does my mother, so Eileen takes it for herself.
“Honestly, Tina,” she says, waving her spoon at my mother. “You’re doing such an amazing job with him. Really.”
“Thanks, Mom. I’m trying hard.” I see the ends of my mother’s mouth twitch, almost a smile. She is hearing things like this more and more. Last week, Verranna Hinckle brought two other women from the university over with her, and they watched Samuel feed himself and point at what he wanted. They used the same word—“amazing”—as if he and my mother had performed a magic trick, pulled a rabbit out of an empty hat. I don’t think my mother knows what to do with these compliments when she gets them, especially from Eileen. She’s like a person without any hands getting flowers.
“So you think you might come?” Eileen asks. “To the party?”
My mother sits down in the chair next to Samuel. “No. I’m sorry, Mom. But no.”
Eileen takes a small swallow of ice cream and sets the bowl back on the table. “It’s his birthday, Tina. Just a couple of hours. It wouldn’t kill you.”
“It might,” my mother says. She reaches over and dabs a napkin at Samuel’s mouth. “I wish you’d leave this alone. If he wants to come out here and try to talk to me, he can. He knows how to get here, and he’s a grown man.”
“But maybe it’s difficult for him to tell you how he feels, Tina!”
My mother laughs. “Actually, Mom, I think he’s always been pretty good at that.”
Eileen leans back in her chair, her arms crossed in front of her. She is finally starting to look older, like a real grandmother, the lines around her mouth growing deeper. My mother says it’s from the cigarettes. “You know, Tina, you are a real puzzle to me. I find it hard to believe that you can be so kind to your little boy and have absolutely no compassion whatsoever for your own father.” She points her spoon at my mother again. “He’s going to be sixty, you know. His heart is bad.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” my mother says. “Look, I’ll tell you how it is. I just can’t. Not with Samuel. Okay? I know how he’ll look at him.” She shakes her head, wincing as if she can actually see all of this in front of her, like a movie projected on the wall behind Eileen’s head.
Eileen sighs, reaching over and pulling her fingers through Samuel’s hair. “What about when he dies, Tina? How are you going to feel about you being so petty—”
“I’m not being petty. If he wants to call me and talk to me about it, he can. But it’s a little hard to make peace with someone who doesn’t actually think of you as a person. And you can’t forgive someone who isn’t even sorry in the first place.” She shrugs, looking back at Eileen. “If he dies, he dies. I’ll be okay.”
Eileen makes a face like the kind you might make if you accidentally drank soured milk, or found a dead mouse behind the refrigerator. “That’s a terrible thing to say, Tina. A terrible thing.”
“It’s the truth.”
“No. You’ll look back and you’ll be full of regret. And it’ll be too late.”
I try to imagine the scene in Eileen’s head, what she’s imagining—my mother, dressed in black, reaching for her father’s casket as they lower it into the ground, pounding her fists against the metal, crying, I’m so sorry. You were right. I’m not a person. I was a horse all along.
“You will, Tina,” Eileen says, reaching into her back pocket for the cigarettes that are no longer there. “You’ll feel awful. But when death comes, it comes. And then it’ll be too late.”