The Center of Everything by Jamie Harrison
Author:Jamie Harrison
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781640092358
Publisher: Catapult
Published: 2020-03-28T00:00:00+00:00
Borderlands: the banister, the fringe of grapes on the porch, the tideâs limit on the Sound, the edge of the woods, bedroom doors. When Jane and Merle came back from visiting Rita, the children could hear most of their story through the grates: Rita was mad, mad, mad as a hatter. She wouldnât draw, for the first time in her life, and she sat on an iron-barred balcony and yelled at anything that passed belowâsquirrels, nurses, other loonies. When her mood shifted, she went to bed with her eyes screwed shut. The hospital could keep her for another two weeks, at most. She certainly couldnât go back to her in-lawsâ house.
âSheâs burned her bridges,â said Merle.
âReally only the garage,â snarked Jane. She sat at the dining room table and wrote many drafts of a note to Ritaâs estranged family. Estranged, thought Polly, while Jane struggled with her wording. They watched her address the envelope, seal it, stamp it.
No one mentioned what the letter meant for Edmund, and he went to his room. Papa had given him an old record player, and now he played his two albums, over and over, right through lunch: Camelot and Sgt. Pepper. Pollyâs open bedroom window was next to his, above the crab apple, and she became dizzy with fixing a hole where the rain gets in, and stops my mind from wandering. Or was it wondering? She got things wrong, often. Sheâd looked for isles at the movie theater before she saw the word aisles one day. You couldnât ask about everything. Now she made her way outside to the grape-covered porch and watched Papa teach Lemon to sit, stay, lie down. He finally walked into the house, and a few minutes later new music floated down from Edmundâs bedroom window: Vivaldi.
When Papa brought Edmund downstairs for a sandwich, they all walked out to help Dee in the greenhouse. Papa moved Ritaâs paintings to one side and Polly and Edmund arranged Deeâs bowls and water and supplies before they lost track and started poking around. They found a wood wine box that held pieces of broken stained-glass windows Papa brought back from Europe after the war, the first war. Most of the ancient lead solder was gone, and the crate was filled with ragged jewels, a red wedge that might have been a lip or puddle of blood; a gold sliver born as a dagger or an angelâs halo or the tail of Saint Georgeâs dragon.
Dee lifted a piece and showed them an air bubble. Polly put her face close and saw small cities, dark woods, and wild animals.
âIf you break it, youâll let the old air out,â said Papa. âMaybe thereâs a plague germ in there. Maybe thereâs a last breath from someone shot by a longbow.â
âYouâre so full of garbage,â said Jane, who was sweeping.
âI am, I am replete. And I am splitting my shrinking seams with things they need to know.â Maybe he was a little drunk; maybe the world was already sliding toward ruin.
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