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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Begin Reading

  Copyright

  For my parents

  Me

  I AM SEVENTEEN YEARS OLD and my mother who might be dying always says I am the center of the universe. She says that everything in the world revolves around me, but I disagree. Lately I feel like an astronaut out on a space walk—constantly praying the tube attaching me to the ship doesn’t snap and send me flying into outer darkness.

  The Fight

  THIS SPACE-WALK FEELING started intensifying in March, about a month after my seventeenth birthday. I’d been looking forward to my birthday for at least a year because on that day I would finally get my driver’s license. But good things usually have a downside, and as it turned out, getting my license meant my mother and I were fighting even more than usual. After she got my most recent report card in the mail, she refused to let me drive at all unless it was absolutely necessary. She’s right about my grades. They aren’t all that hot. It’s my junior year, and according to my mother, the grades I get this year will determine my entire future as it relates to college. On this particular night, my mother was trying to force me to miss what I thought was going to be an extremely fun party. Word was that there was going to be live music and that college kids were going to be there. My mother wanted to call the parents, for God’s sake. I knew the parents were going away for the weekend, so I kept accusing her of not trusting me, trying to guilt-trip her into letting me go. Though I don’t know a lot about her teenage years, my sense is my mother was a bit of a Goody Two-shoes and that she doesn’t really get how much times have changed. She told me I wasn’t going to run around with what she called “the jet set,” which was an old-fashioned way of saying I wasn’t going to hang out with cool people. In my defense, it did feel like she was trying to ruin any chance I had for a normal social life.

  Just as we were arriving at the most heated part of the fight, the phone rang. My mother glared at me, put down her dishcloth, and answered. She listened and then laughed a weird laugh, not her normal laugh. She laughed her spooky laugh and said a few more words I couldn’t quite follow.

  “Fights are postponed,” she said as she hung up.

  Why? I was too scared to ask.

  Before she answered that phone, I had said something almost unforgivable to her. She was riding me pretty hard about getting out of control and I came back with a nasty comment. I was waiting for her to say something equally mean or even slap me, but all I got was “Fights are postponed.” This was worse than a slap because you can’t postpone a fight. Postponing a fight means that it ends without ever being over. And if it ends at the worst possible moment, that’s it. No more fighting. I was winning, but then I lost. My mother was just about to let me have it, and then she didn’t. The next thing I knew, she was in the hospital being operated on for cancer that had spread through her lymph nodes.

  The truth is we’d been fighting quite a bit since September. For one thing, it felt like she was exhausted and cranky all the time. One day around Thanksgiving I came home from school and she was asleep on the couch with her full-length down coat and shoes on. She woke up, but she didn’t explain why she would do something so strange. At the same time, I was being even more elusive about my life than I usually am.

  I study other families whenever I get the chance to see if mine fits the mold. My parents are certainly correct about the fact that I don’t like filling them in on how I feel or what I’m doing, but isn’t that normal? The trouble is I started clamming up earlier than most kids. I don’t know why I stopped telling them about my life. Even when you think you understand the reasons you are doing something, I’ve discovered you can be dead wrong about your own motives. Somewhere along the way, I got the impression my parents didn’t necessarily want or need to know about the bad parts of my life. Most of the really weird stuff, like the misinformation I got about sex (i.e., thinking in fourth grade you could get pregnant by rubbing your rear end against the rear end of a boy), I’ve worked through on my own. Still, I was definitely a spooky kid. How many preschoolers are afraid of the birds on the wallpaper in the hallway? How many second-graders still have an invisible friend and are consumed with the fear of death? I’m not sure elementary school children are supposed to be complete hypochondriacs. But there it is.

  My father is pissed because I haven’t been to the hospital since the day we took my mother in, which was March 13, an unlucky day if you ask me. I’ve even begun to go so far as to get into the shower when the phone rings so I can’t talk to my mother when she calls. If no one is home, I stand there pretending to be invisible. I will admit my behavior is not exactly normal, but I have reasons for not wanting to see her, reasons that go beyond the lousy thing I said to her, but those reasons would be tough to explain. If it weren’t for Mr. Howland, I don’t know how I’d get through any of this.

  Mr. Howland

  THE ONLY THING that distinguishes Mr. Howland’s classroom from all others is the presence of Mr. Howland. He teaches Sculpture, Ceramics, and Art History, so the arrangement of the tables in the room can change depending on what class was just being taught. I’m in his fourth-period Ceramics class, having taken Sculpture in the fall. I won’t try to lie to you and say that I have any talent; in fact, I am very close to the bottom of the class in terms of artistic gifts. Our most recent project was to make a simple, functional mug. After spending what felt like hours working to get the clay centered on the wheel, I got sick of trying and let my mug be lopsided. Its functionality was further hindered by the fact that the handle broke off in the kiln. Mr. Howland teased me good-naturedly about it, but there was no way to disguise the fact that my mug was a disaster. It looked quite a bit like the one made by the mainstreamed student, Tyrone Love. Tyrone spent about two weeks rolling the clay into a ball and didn’t even try to give it a form (Tyrone doesn’t use the wheel) until right before the due date. So his mug was pretty dysfunctional as well.

  There are about nine kids in ceramics because the school could afford to purchase only one potter’s wheel. Of the six girls, I would have to say five of us are there strictly for Mr. Howland. He’s got sandy blond hair that always looks tousled in a cute just-got-out-of-bed way. Aside from his never-combed-yet-stylish hair, he wears horn-rimmed glasses that would most likely look stupid on someone else, but he makes them cool. Mr. Howland told us about the prep school in Virginia he attended where you had to wear a coat and tie every day, and it is very appealing that he still has a preppy style. He could easily star as Jay Gatsby in a movie of The Great Gatsby. Lest I forget, his khaki pants are always a bit too loose, leaving what my friend Patty and I call the “sweet sag” in the back. His butt is quite flat, and both Patty and I find that attractive. Mr. Howland can sculpt, paint, and make a perfectly shaped ceramic bowl any time he feels like it. He has a small office in the front of his classroom, and the girls joke about him being some kind of superhero who changes into a new identity when he shuts the door. In addition to all of his other gifts, he is an expert in art history, a film buff, and he lets us listen to music during class. Basically, we are all madly in love with him.

  The first time I ever saw him outside of school was when I was shopping in Foodtown with my mother during the summer. He passed us in the produce aisle, his
shopping cart filled with healthy-looking vegetables. I didn’t really know him, but I waved. There is a rumor he used to teach at a pretty swanky boarding school in Connecticut, but he left that job for reasons no one knows. Seems like downward mobility to me, but I’m glad he ended up here. We didn’t even have ceramics or art history until he showed up. As I said, we passed him and I waved. I knew he was a teacher, and I knew a lot of girls had crushes on him.

  “Who is that handsome man you waved to?” my mother asked.

  “A teacher in my school,” I told her.

  Though I don’t see eye to eye with her on many things, there was something about my mother finding Mr. Howland handsome that made me think he was the best-looking guy in the world. Despite my lack of artistic talent, I decided to pick up his Sculpture class in the fall. Now, like everyone else, I look forward to Mr. Howland’s class for most of the day and feel a sense of loss when the bell rings at the end of the period. Even other teachers are attracted to him. Patty, one of the best students in school, gets to have him over to her house sometimes. Her mother is chairman of the English Department, and though Patty’s mom is much older than Mr. Howland and his wife, she invites them over for dinner and is actually friends with them. Sad to admit it, but I found myself cultivating a closer friendship with Patty after I learned how close her mother was with the Howlands. Patty’s mom stops by Ceramics class occasionally, and it sometimes feels like she is trying to flirt and be sexy, but the combination of her age and a serious-sounding smoker’s cough makes me doubt Mr. Howland finds her overly desirable.

  What I like best about Mr. Howland is the way he makes you believe your project is beautiful even when it is lopsided and missing the handle. He has a way of holding you in his sphere of attention that is really powerful. Throughout the fall, I was very quiet because I am not the kind of person who likes to talk unless I’m comfortable. I made some passable sculptures and was content to catch a smile or two from Mr. Howland. The first time I noticed he was paying attention to me was right before Christmas vacation when the head fell off my sculpture. I was quite upset, because I had really put in effort and even named my figure Uncle Benny, after my favorite uncle. Mr. Howland gave me a pep talk about how all artists suffer losses. He actually referred to me as an artist, which is a total laugh, but I felt like Georgia O’Keeffe or someone when he said it. He looked into my eyes in a way that made my knees go numb.

  This might sound completely crazy, but I am going to admit something pretty strange. I knew very early on that Mr. Howland would end up being an important person in my life. I know it sounds totally unbelievable and impossible given the fact that he is a married teacher and I am his student, but as far back as that day in Foodtown, I saw Mr. Howland as someone who was going to play a role in my fate—my destiny, even. This is not as strange as you might think: when we were kids, my best friend, Barbie, and I used to make up and record soap operas on a tape recorder, and my characters were always having affairs. When I was in elementary school, I was madly in love with Frank Ryan, a cop from the show Ryan’s Hope who must have been about thirty years old. Frank was married to a mentally unstable woman named Delia, but his true love was Jillian Coleridge. Even then there was something I loved about older men, something about how they look cute in a sad way. I’ve had a few boyfriends, none of them really serious, but I’ve never felt about any of them the way I do about Mr. Howland.

  I’m not saying he noticed me right away, because he did not. It was well after Thanksgiving before he started laughing at my jokes and listening when I told stories. But back in December, right after Uncle Benny’s head fell off, I knew that my instincts had been correct. The look Mr. Howland gave me while he consoled me led me to believe that something more could follow. In Latin class, Ms. Clewell makes us write the phrase Alea jacta est at the top of the page when we take a test. Those words, “The die is cast,” are the words, she told us, that Caesar said in 49 B.C. right after making the momentous decision to cross the Rubicon and forever change the history of Rome. When Mr. Howland stared into my eyes and held my gaze, the words alea jacta est popped into my mind. I knew he was making a decision. At the time, I couldn’t have told you with certainty what would come or how we would change the future, but the die was definitely cast.

  Mr. Howland is the only person I’ve talked to about my mother’s sickness. I probably wouldn’t even have told him, but my emotions forced my hand. It was the day after we took her to the hospital. I was massacring another lump of clay on the wheel. Mr. Howland was being patient but, at the same time, getting frustrated with me. One second I was sitting at the wheel laughing and the next I had tears streaming down my face. Mr. Howland didn’t say a word; he pretended I was fine. But after class, he let me sit in his office and I blurted out how my mother was sick. He listened to the entire story, even the part where we were fighting, and he hugged me and told me everything was going to be all right. Whether or not he was telling the truth didn’t matter; it was a nice thing to hear. Better still, Mr. Howland’s hug gave me a substitute for the scary space-walk feelings about my mother being gone. Since then, we eat lunch together in his office most days and he checks in with me about how I’m feeling. While I’m admitting things, I’ll tell you something else. When Mr. Howland held me and told me things were going to be okay, for a split second, I was glad my mother was sick. If she hadn’t gotten sick, I never would have cried and he never would have hugged me.

  Mr. Howland’s Birthday

  MR. HOWLAND’S BIRTHDAY IS TODAY, April 3, and he says that what he wants for his birthday is a hickey. He knows that the girls in the class are all gaga over him, and the thought of giving him a hickey is driving me nuts. He doesn’t say he wants the hickey from one of us, but he never mentions wanting it from his wife either. Patty is getting quite irritated because she doesn’t like it when Mr. Howland jokes around and flirts. Patty and I can get pretty competitive about things. She wins in all areas academic; however, she is almost six feet tall, extremely thin, and in my opinion, she dresses like an old lady. She tends to wear long denim skirts and gauze hippie shirts that no one wears anymore, making her resemble an elongated version of Janis Joplin. Still, she cannot understand why Mr. Howland prefers me and not her; she has gotten an A+ on every single project, she sucks up to him, and she works harder than anyone else in the class. Unfortunately for her, those seemingly impressive facts are not what interest Mr. Howland. In fact, he seemed more interested in my cruddy mug than he did in Patty’s fully functional tea bowl.

  The hickey situation is making me insanely nervous. No doubt, Mr. Howland should not be joking with his students about having his neck sucked for his birthday, but on the other hand, it’s exciting and fun to see Patty getting so pissed. All the girls are laughing, but no one except me is taking it seriously. We are supposed to be working on creating designs for our next project, my paper blank because I can’t concentrate.

  After Ceramics class, I spend the entire period in History imagining myself kissing Mr. Howland’s neck. As I listen to Mr. Sikorsky drone on about the New Deal, I make a decision. It is time to test the waters. After classes end I have about twenty minutes before we have to leave for a tennis match. The next thing I know, I am standing in the hallway looking into Mr. Howland’s empty classroom. The door to his small office in the back corner is open and the light is on. Out in the parking lot, a steady stream of faculty cars is bolting away from school as quickly as possible.

  When Mr. Howland notices me, he doesn’t say hello or what are you doing here or anything that indicates he is surprised to see me. His white shirt is untucked from his jeans, and he has clay stuck to his clothes. He glances around the room once. I am there and not there as he takes my hand and pulls me into his office. He kisses me and pushes his tongue down my throat and puts his hands into my back pockets and pulls my hips toward him. There are two of me at that moment, and both of us are important. One of me is inside my jeans and the other is invisibly patrolling the halls wo
ndering who is going to come and catch us. I decide to stay with my body and feel his hands and his tongue for as long as possible. Anyone could walk in—our principal, Mr. Wright, or even Patty’s mother coming by to senselessly flirt. Luckily, no one comes by, and we stay there kissing until I really have to go because I am going to be late for tennis.

  That night I stay awake for half the night trying to convince myself that Mr. Howland actually kissed me. I go over every second of the kiss about a billion times, from the moment I walked into the room until I told him I had to go. I can barely sleep. My body is vibrating; each time I wake up (about every ten minutes), I feel like I am levitating and I have to grab the sheets to make sure I am not about to fly away. I’m happy thinking about the kiss, but at the same time I’m worried that Mr. Howland will change his mind and pretend it didn’t happen. I flash back to a night last fall at Patty’s house—Patty and I were upstairs getting ready to go out to a Halloween party. The Howlands were downstairs with Patty’s mom. I was trying to say impressive things loud enough for Mr. Howland to hear while pretending to be focused on curling my hair into a sexy witch style. Then, as we were about to leave, Mr. Howland brought his guitar in from the car and sat down on the couch. He played and sang “Maggie May” by Rod Stewart, a song I love, and another song, a folk song about a woman living alone in a lighthouse. I watched Mr. Howland’s wife as he played, and I thought that she had heard him too many times to appreciate how amazing he was. His blond, shaggy hair fell in his eyes as he strummed. I would never claim to like folk music, but Mr. Howland made me love it. Patty wanted to get to the party, but I wanted to stay. I wanted to skip that party and stay there in my costume listening to Mr. Howland play that guitar for as long as I could.

  My Job

  FOR ALMOST A YEAR NOW, two or three nights a week and sometimes on Saturday I’ve worked in a pharmacy in Farmington, a swanky little town a few miles from where I live. My boss is a guy who thinks he looks exactly like Elvis Presley did before he got all fat and beady-eyed and swollen-looking. His name is Emory McDevitt. A funny thing about him is that, despite his obvious obsession with the fact that he resembles Elvis, he calls Elvis “that Presley fellow.” His voice even sounds a tiny bit like Elvis’s because he is from Tennessee.