The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,153
get ready.”
She starts to walk back to the bathroom, but then stops and turns around. “Listen, Evelyn. I’d like to take the lessons if I can. If you’re really serious, I’d appreciate it. It would be nice.”
“I said I’d do it. Jeez.” I try to look annoyed, but really, I like how I have surprised her. I have startled her, just by being nice.
“Thank you,” she says. She looks out the window, tugging on her earring. “But don’t say anything to Eileen, okay? I just don’t want to hear that Tribe of Ham bullshit just yet.”
“Okay.”
She smiles, twisting one of her toes on the linoleum. “I like him a lot, if you want to know the truth, and I’ll let her know pretty soon, when I’m up to it. Because I can tell you right now, there’ll be a fight.” She turns around and throws little punches up in the air, walking back into the hallway. “Buy your tickets now.”
When I go to move Samuel, he pulls away from me, pointing vaguely up at the television. I can’t tell what he wants. I start to change the channel and then stop. “Can I try a different channel?” I ask. “See what else is on?”
I wait for him to point to the YES or the NO, but he doesn’t do either. I scan the channels. There is Billy Graham on one station, the weather report on another. On the weather report, a man points to a map of the Midwest, Kansas outlined in black underneath the animated clouds. There are tiny cartoon lightning bolts in the upper corner of the screen, and SEVERE THUNDERSTORM WARNING blinks across the bottom. The weatherman talks about pockets of low pressure, barometer readings, low fronts and cool fronts. Radar blips in the background make things seem urgent, exciting.
But Samuel doesn’t care about the weather report. He’s pointing over my shoulder now, at something behind me. I don’t know what he wants, and I can see he’s getting angry. I try various objects from the counter, placing each on my head, one at a time: the phone book, a mug, a bottle opener, a box of matches. I try one of the cats. He shakes his head and keeps pointing, getting agitated, groaning now, red in the face.
“I don’t know what you want, Sam. I’m sorry.”
He bangs his head on the side of his wheelchair and points again. I look into his glassy blue eyes, hoping for hint, a flicker, something, but I see only blue, and my own reflection.
“Do you want to go outside with me and watch the storm?”
He rocks back and forth a few times before his hand slides to the green circle.
It isn’t raining yet when I wheel him outside. The wind is strong though, and even over the sound of the highway, I can hear it rustling through the corn. The sky is interesting, cut in half. There is a deep, dark thunderhead in the distant west, but directly over our heads the sun is still shining, surrounded by a cloudless blue. The line in the middle of the sky between storm and clear is almost perfectly straight, as if someone drew it along the edge of a ruler.
I know from Mr. Torvik’s class that this is called a wall cloud, and that wall clouds can turn into tornados, warm and cool air pushed sharply together on each side. But not always. Sometimes the two sides just sort of melt into each other, and they don’t turn into anything at all.
A jet flies over our heads, high up in the blue part of the sky, leaving a thick white trail. Samuel points up at it, his eyes wide. I wonder if he thinks I can reach up and place the jet on my head for him, like a tiny toy just out of his reach.
Verranna Hinckle has been telling my mother more stories, filling her head with more distant miracles. She brought over a VCR and a videotape of a little girl with autism in Korea who didn’t speak and didn’t seem to know her own mother was sitting beside her, but she could hear Beethoven once and then play it on the piano. My mother got excited and bought Samuel a toy keyboard. She got it out of the box and placed it in front of him, pressing his hands against the keys. He just sat there, not even looking at it, his hand in his mouth, and then finally