The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,36

sink. “Don’t worry,” I say. “I won’t tell her.”

“Aw Jesus,” he whispers, his hand over his eyes. He grabs a paper towel and wraps it tightly around his thumb, so it looks like a little finger puppet, a tiny mummy. “Evelyn, I…” His eyes move around the kitchen, like it is someplace new to him, a place he doesn’t know. “Okay,” he says. “I better go. Shit. I need to leave. I need to just leave right now. I’m sorry, honey. I’m so sorry.”

He kisses me on the forehead, picks up his keys, and walks out, gently closing the door behind him.

“Where’d he go?” my mother asks. She is wearing a tight flowered dress with no sleeves, her hair wet, slicked back, water dripping down on her sunburned shoulders. She is wearing red lipstick and perfume that smells like strawberries.

“He’s gone.” I pick at a piece of melted cheese on the side of the pizza box. “He left the pizza.”

She looks at the pizza and then at me. “What do you mean gone? Where did he go?”

“I guess he had to go home.”

She sits down on the couch, looking around the room like she thinks maybe I am lying and actually he is still here, only hiding. “Did he use the telephone?”

“No.”

“Did he say he’d forgotten something?” “No.”

She crosses her arms, looking at me. “That doesn’t make any sense, Evelyn.”

“Do you want some pizza?”

She stands up, her hands on her hips. Her hair has already started to dry in the warm breeze coming in through the screen door, red curlicues springing up around her forehead. “Evelyn, did you say something to him?”

“No.” I pick up a piece of pizza. I won’t tell her about the roses. It will just make her sad. He shouldn’t have been coming over here anyway.

“That just makes no sense to me. No sense at all.” She rubs her lips together. “What did you say to him?”

“Nothing.”

We hear a car. My mother runs to the window, but it’s only Mr. Platt from Unit D, his El Dorado slinking onto the highway. “Well that’s great,” she says. “Just great.”

“Have some pizza, Mom.”

She watches me, saying nothing. “I’m not hungry, Evelyn.” She goes back to her room and closes the door.

I am sitting on the front step when she comes out from her room an hour later, her cheeks tear-stained, her sunburn worse. She sits down next to me, holding a slice of pizza, the pepperoni picked off. “Hey there, you,” she says.

I nod, squinting into the Rowleys’ front window. They are sitting at a table, all four of them, the glow of a television flickering in the corner of the room. Mrs. Rowley turns and sees me looking in, my mother sitting next to me. She gets up and closes the curtains.

My mother is no longer crying, but she looks bad, the skin on her nose starting to peel. Her hair has dried funny, one side flat against her face, the other side still curly. She looks at my burned arms and face, frowning. She goes inside and comes back out with a jar of cold cream.

“You’re really burned, Evelyn,” she says, rubbing the cream onto my shoulders. This is what smelled like strawberries, the cream. It feels good on my skin, taking away the sting. “If you would have told me they were taking you to the park, I would have made you wear sunscreen.”

“You’re burned too,” I remind her. “I’m sorry Mr. Mitchell left.”

She stops rubbing, her fingers still on my back. “Well, if you don’t know why he left, you’ve got nothing to be sorry for.”

I don’t say anything. She rubs some cream on her own throat and the backs of her hands. “So what’s my surprise?”

“What?”

“My surprise. You said I was going to get a big surprise tonight. And now I could use one.”

I look back at the Rowleys’ window, the closed curtain. “Later,” I say, trying to think.

She gives my leg a poke. She’s trying hard to smile. “Tell me now. I want my surprise now.”

I think of the roses in Mrs. Mitchell’s vase. He is at home with his wife now, maybe sitting with her at a table. He maybe sings for her. Maybe he tells her the same jokes.

“Later,” I say. “You’ll get it later.”

My mother goes inside to watch television, but I stay out on the step, trying to figure out what to do. I consider giving her Traci Carmichael’s heart-shaped locket, but then I think about what would