“I think we should remember that Adam was one of those people who lift the corners of our universe,” I say. I clear my throat. “Thank you.”
As I slide into our pew I realize I feel older. I think of Janet and Nancy and find that now I can brush them away. And I understand that Adam and I are not as alike as I had thought. I remember the tortured look on Adam’s face the night of the Ferris wheel and the look of happiness, happiness, and realize that Adam’s decision to take his life was not made easily. It took a certain kind of courage. Just not the kind of courage I choose.
I settle between Mom and Dad, and they take my hands and smile at me. No tears. I squeeze their hands.
There is a sort of party at Nana and Papa’s after the funeral. About a hundred people show up. They’ve come straight from the church and are still wearing their dark clothes. I am glowing in my yellow dress.
I walk around the house for a while, eating tiny hors d’oeuvres and drinking lemonade. If this were my house I’d retreat to the kitchen to help Cookie. But I don’t know Ermaline well enough to do that. Eventually I need to use the bathroom, but the powder room on the first floor is occupied. As I climb the stairs to the second floor, I realize I never saw Adam’s room.
I have to see it.
I trail along the hallway. I pass a guest room, a bathroom, another guest room, and then I come to a room with a partly closed door. I push the door open a few inches. The first thing I notice is that the walls and even the ceiling are almost entirely covered with pages that have been torn from magazines. Most of them are pictures of the moon and sun and stars, surely from National Geographic. Some of them are pictures of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. I take a step into the room and let out a gasp.
Nana is sitting on the bed, legs crossed primly, fingering the contents of a wooden box that she has set on her knees. She looks up, as startled as I am.
“Hattie!” she says.
“Nana! I’m — I’m sorry.” I start to back into the hall. “I was on my way to the bathroom.”
“That’s all right.” Nana pats the bed. “Come in, Hattie.”
I’m intruding, I know, but Nana has issued an invitation. I perch beside her on Adam’s bed, eye the box.
“What’s that?” I ask.
“It’s Adam’s treasure box.”
Inside are small items — a rock, a blue feather, an Indian head nickel, and photos. Mostly photos.
“Your mother sent him something every week,” she says. “Every single week for all those years he was at school. Little presents, pictures he might like for his room, photos of you. And Adam kept everything she sent.”
“Did she write him letters?” I ask.
Nana nods. “Adam kept those too.”
I think of Mom’s mirror, the border of photos, hear her say, “Don’t you ever ask me that question again.”
I reach for Nana’s hand. She sets the box aside, and we sit in Adam’s room for a long time.
The day before Uncle Hayden leaves, my family decides to visit Adam’s grave. Charles the chauffeur drives us there. We glide silently along the lane through the cemetery until Papa tells Charles to stop. Even though there was no burial service, everyone except me has seen the grave already. It looks fresher than the other graves, all clean and tidy, the grass neatly clipped, the flowers only a little wilted.
I tell Adam I’m sorry I called him a big baby. “I’m not mad at you, you know,” I add. “I don’t like what you did, but I think I understand why you did it.”
I find that I can’t go any closer to Adam’s headstone, so I sit down in the grass a few yards away. Mom and Dad are holding hands. Uncle Hayden puts his arm across Mom’s shoulders. I see Papa reach for Nana. And I see Nana’s quiet tears for Adam.
I replace the reel of film in its canister, lean back in the armchair, feel October around me. Two months ago, time was like an old tired dog creeping along until finally he can’t walk any further and he drops to his haunches on the sidewalk and just sits.
How is it that suddenly it’s autumn and we have moved ahead? When did time pick up again, push forward?
I remember that in those blurry days following Adam’s death, Angel moves out. Moves out quickly. One day she packs up her suitcases and two cardboard cartons from the supermarket, scribbles down a mailing address and gives it to my parents, then waits on our front porch for Henry to come by in his convertible. It occurs to me then that the convertible is part of the reason Adam is dead. I didn’t see the convertible on the day Adam showed up with his flowers for Angel. If I had, I wouldn’t have let Adam go upstairs. But Henry wasn’t supposed to be upstairs with Angel in the first place, since that would have been against our rules, which is probably why the car wasn’t parked nearby.
It takes me a long time to shake the feeling that Angel and her sneaking around are what killed Adam.
I don’t look at the piece of paper Angel gives Mom and Dad, but I know Angel moves somewhere nearby — maybe with Henry — because twice now I have seen her going to her job at the bank. I haven’t spoken to her yet, but someday I will.
The week after Uncle Hayden returns to California is the beginning of a long, bad time for Nana and Papa. I had thought they would put Adam behind them and get on with their lives as though nothing had happened, would erase Adam as easily as he had been erased while he was at school. And so I expect Papa to go back to work on Monday.
But he doesn’t. Nana calls Mom late that morning to say that Papa is all dressed in his office clothes and is sitting upstairs in Adam’s room staring at the walls and ceiling. He has been there since they finished breakfast. Mom and Dad hurry over to Nana and Papa’s, but there doesn’t seem to be anything for them to do. Eventually, Papa closes the door to Adam’s room and fixes himself a martini, which he drinks alone, in the back garden.
Papa does this every day that week until Nana loses her patience with him and says it’s time to clean out Adam’s room, in particular to try to unstick everything from the walls and ceiling. Probably they will need to have the room repainted when this has been done.
Papa doesn’t answer her, but he goes back to his office the next Monday and stops drinking martinis in the garden unless it’s after 5:00 P.M.
The day Papa returns to work, Nana rejoices, calls to tell us the good news, and asks me if I will come over to give her a hand with Adam’s room. I wonder why Nana doesn’t ask one of the maids to help her, but I decide she doesn’t want anyone except family taking a close look at Adam’s things. An hour later I am once again in Adam’s room with Nana.
“I guess we should start with the walls,” I say. “We’ll need a ladder to get the pictures off of the ceiling.” I reach for a photo of Lucy Ricardo. She is looking at Ricky, who is stepping through the door to their apartment, and you can tell by her face that she has just done something sneaky that she doesn’t want Ricky to find out about. The picture makes me smile, and I know why Adam liked Lucy. She is completely imperfect.
I pull at a corner of the photo and it tears and Nana lets out a cry. “No! Don’t touch that.”
“But I thought —”
“Never mind. Go home, Hattie.”
So I do. It is another month before Nana decides Adam’s room can be touched, and after all that, she borrows Toby diAngeli from us and lets her clean it out, and then hires Nassau Interiors to redecorate the room, and by early October not a trace of Adam is left in the house. But if Adam’s name is mentioned, Nana will burst into tears. And Papa is likely to reach for the bottle of vermouth.
In August, three days after Papa finally goes back to work, my parents announce that we are going to take a family trip. I am stunned.
“How can we do that?” I ask. We have never left our boarders.
“We are going to leave Cookie in charge. Everything will be fine,” Mom says firmly.
And so we go to the beach town of Avalon, New Jersey, for three days. We rent a small cottage, one of a row of four small cottages a block from the beach, and we spend the
days eating fried clams and baking in the sun. Each of us seems to need time alone. Dad leaves Mom and me early every morning to eat breakfast by himself at the counter at Hoy’s. Mom finds the movie theater and goes to the same movie three days in a row. I am given money to rent a bicycle, and I ride all over town, just ride and ride.
But we play miniature golf together. And every night we eat dinner in a restaurant together. And when dinner is over we walk to the beach in the dark and hold hands and look at the stars. On the first night I say, as we’re sitting in the damp sand, “Now each of us has to say one thing we want to remember about Adam.”
Mom bursts into tears. Then I start to cry, and eventually I realize Dad is crying too.
So we don’t talk about Adam that night. But the next night, Mom says, “Adam was brave.” And Dad says, “Adam could see right into your soul.” And I say, “Adam was different.” And my parents look at me but don’t ask what I mean.
On the third night, our last night in Avalon, I say as we gaze at the stars, “Tonight we have to think of something we learned from Adam.”
Mom says slowly, “Adam taught me that we should take time to enjoy life. And that it’s okay to go against the grain. That’s why we’re here.”
Here in this little place Nana wouldn’t approve of, I think.
Dad just says, “Ditto.”
And I say, “Adam taught me that we have to talk about things.”
There is silence. Come on, come on, ask me what I meant when I said Adam was different. And if I have any other secret uncles, please tell me about them now.
But Mom just says, “Okay,” and Dad says, “We’ll try,” and that is all I can hope for.
We are back in Millerton for the tail end of August. One afternoon Mrs. Strowsky comes home jubilant from job-hunting.
“I am going to be the head saleswoman in the children’s department at Bamberger’s!” she announces. “Imagine me, head anything.”
She is all grinning and gay, and that night she takes Catherine and Sam to dinner at Renwick’s and they get to eat hamburgers at the soda fountain counter. A week later they move to the tiny house Mrs. Strowsky is able to rent for them. When they leave, Catherine and I hug each other, and Catherine gives me her new phone number. “Come by tomorrow,” she tells me. “I have my own room in the new house. You can help me fix it up.”
So I do.
Just before Labor Day, Betsy comes home and I introduce her to Catherine, whom she has heard about from my letters, and before I know it we are a group of three. School starts, and Betsy and Catherine and I wind up in the same classroom. Nancy and Janet are in our class too, but I couldn’t care less. They are not part of my universe.
On the first day of school we are not given any homework, so that night I write a letter to Leila. This is Catherine’s idea.
“Just address it to Leila Cahn at Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnival in Bethesda. It might reach her,” says Catherine.
“But the carnival wasn’t going to be in Bethesda,” I tell her. “It was going to be somewhere outside of it.”
“How many Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnivals could there be anywhere near Bethesda?” asks Betsy, who has been listening to us.
She has a point.
So I write a letter to Leila that night and try to explain what happened, tell her about Adam, about Angel Valentine, about the funeral, and Nancy and Janet. I tell her she was a good friend.
I address the letter to Leila Cahn, c/o Fred Carmel’s Funtime Carnival, Bethesda, MD. I put my return address in the upper-left corner of the envelope. The letter has not been returned to me, so maybe Leila has received it. Or maybe it will catch up with the carnival somehow.
I turn on the light, blink my eyes. Mom and Dad will be home soon. I slide the reel of film back into its space in the metal box, close the lid with a small clank. On the outside of the lid is a list of the reels stored inside. I scan the list, which I have not noticed before, since this is the first time I have been in complete charge of the movie projector. I notice that the last item on the list reads simply MERCER.
Mercer. Nana and Papa and Mom and Uncle Hayden and Adam. Not Owen. Not Dad and me.
I open the box again and find the reel labeled MERCER. I thread the film in the projector, turn out the light, and sit in the chair holding my breath. The image that flickers on the screen is old and grainy, but not as old and grainy as I had thought it might be.
A young woman in her cap and gown steps before the camera, holds up her diploma, smiles and waves. Mom. I remember the photo in the album, Mom graduating from high school. Is this the same graduation? Then Uncle Hayden appears behind her, dapper in his suit, and he looks so serious and grown up, so very much like Papa, that I know this must be Mom’s college graduation. I smile. This is Mount Holyoke, then. This is South Hadley, Massachusetts, and the year must be 1943.
Adam would have been five then, I am thinking, and suddenly he bursts into the picture. He’s wearing a suit and tie and the perfectly round glasses, and he runs to Mom and throws his arms around her waist. Mom takes off her cap and puts it on his head, and Adam turns to the camera and crosses his eyes and sticks out his tongue. Then he does a silly dance before he takes off the hat and hands it back to Mom.
I am smiling and tears are running down my cheeks and I don’t think I can watch any more of the film. I don’t know how to stop it in the middle, though, so I let it play out silently in the parlor while I sit in the kitchen.
I pick at what’s left of the popcorn and think about the summer, the summer that was both awful and wonderful. I thank Adam, as I have thanked him almost every night since August, for showing me that it’s possible to lift the corners of our universe. Adam told me about lifting the corners the second time I met him, but I had no idea what he meant. Now I think I do. It’s all about changing what’s handed to you, about poking around a little, lifting the corners, seeing what’s underneath, poking that. Sometimes things work out, sometimes they don’t, but at least you’re exploring. And life is always more interesting that way.
Like Hattie in A Corner of the Universe, I found out as a young girl that I had had another uncle, and that he had been mentally ill. Unlike Hattie, however, I never had a chance to meet him. My uncle, Stephen, died in 1950, five years before I was born and about a year before my parents met each other. Some of the details in this book are real. I used them to make the story come alive. But I know very little about Stephen, and so the portrayal of Adam in this book is not based on Stephen. Adam is an imaginary character. And while Adam’s family configuration — parents, older brother and sister — resembles Stephen’s, Nana and Papa do not represent my loving grandparents, and Hattie’s uncle and mother are not my uncle and mother. Nevertheless, Adam has had a great impact on me. He has given me the courage to lift the corners of my own universe. And I thank him for that.
Ann M. Martin was born August 12, 1955 in Princeton, New Jersey. Growing up, she never kept a regular diary or journal, but she loved to read and write. She especially enjoyed classics like The Secret Garden and The Wizard of Oz, as well as books by contemporary writers like Roald Dahl and Astrid Lingren, author of the Pippi Longstocking series.
Ann is a morning person. As a child, she usually got up before her parents, and now her day starts between 5 and 5:30 a.m.! When she wasn’t reading or writing, Ann played in her backyard tree house with the other kids in her neighborhood, or pursued arts and crafts projects, especially sewing. She often made her own Halloween costumes, and these days, she bestows her clothes-making talents on her nephew and godchildren.
Ann graduated from Smith College in 1977 and wrote her first book, Bummer Summer, about a girl adjusting to her father’s new wife, in 1980. Soon after, Scholastic’s editor-in-chief suggested that she write four books about a group of girls who form a baby-sitter’s club, and now The Baby-sitters Club series has sold over 150 million copies.
Ann has collaborated with some of the best authors and illustrators in child
ren’s literature. Her first published picture book, Leo the Magnificent, was illustrated by Emily Arnold McCully. She wrote two books with her good friend Paula Danziger, P.S. Longer Letter Later and Snail Mail No More. The two books she’s written with Laura Godwin, The Doll People and The Meanest Doll in the World, were illustrated by their friend Brian Selznick.
Ann’s novel Belle Teal was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year. A Corner of the Universe, her next novel, was a Newbery Honor Book, followed by Here Today. Her latest novel is A Dog’s Life.
Currently, Ann lives in upstate New York with three cats, Gussie, Woody, and Willie, and her first dog, a golden retriever-beagle mix named Sadie.
Q: What is your writing process? How did you get to know Hattie and Adam and the other characters?
A: I do a lot of outlining before I begin writing any book. First I usually write a few paragraphs about the story, just a general idea that I can discuss with my editor. Then I think about the characters and begin writing sketches of each of the main ones. After that I begin to flesh out the story, and eventually I write a long, detailed outline of what will happen in each chapter. I use this outline as a roadmap when I write. I don’t always stick to it, but it’s there to help me along, so I know what will happen and how I’ll get from the beginning to the end.
Hattie and the other characters are mostly made up, and I got to know them while I was sketching them out. I often use real-life details to make my characters come to life, but the characters are usually fictional. Adam, however, was loosely based on my own uncle Stephen, my mother’s younger brother, who like Adam was mentally ill. I never met Stephen, though, so even Adam is mostly fictional, although I did include some details about Stephen that I heard when I was growing up.
Q: Can you comment on any particular scenes in the book and how you created them?