Everything Else in the Universe Read online

  ALSO BY TRACY HOLCZER

  The Secret Hum of a Daisy

  G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street

  New York, NY 10014

  Copyright © 2018 by Tracy Holczer.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  G. P. Putnam’s Sons is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.

  Ebook ISBN 9780698173859

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Jacket art © 2018 by Stephanie Dalton Cowan

  Cover design by Jaclyn Reyes

  Version_1

  For my Italian family, who let me in

  Mal comune, mezzo gaudio.

  A shared trouble is half joy.

  contents

  Also by Tracy Holczer

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  1: Stuck Like a Fish

  2: Back on the Horse

  3: Life Is a Meatball

  4: Starfish

  5: Introducing Gardenia Boy

  6: Losing the Moon

  7: The Thick of Things

  8: Serendipity Is Not a Hair Product

  9: Mac and Cheese

  10: Possibility

  11: A Flight of Dragonflies

  12: Cans and String

  13: Everything Else in the Universe

  14: The American Legion

  15: Ten Thousand Things

  16: A Monsoon Carp

  17: Even in the Stars

  18: Into the Wolf’s Mouth

  19: Al Fine!

  20: American Legion, Part Two

  21: A Wishing Stone

  22: The Seventh Dwarf

  23: Life Is a Lottery

  24: One Shining Moment

  25: An Unexpected Dragonfly

  26: Pieces of Forever

  27: Strong and True

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  stuck like a fish

  A pale green balloon shaped like a fish was trapped in the branches of the willow tree down by the creek. A trout, maybe. From her bedroom window, Lucy watched it flutter there, caught by its string, wondering if it might break free and go for a swim. She took an inventory of her garden around the tree, California fuchsia and morning glory, plants she’d carefully chosen over the course of the year for their hardiness and survival skills, a practical reminder that she would survive, too.

  If she were a superstitious person, like the rest of her irrational family, maybe she would have seen that fish as a sign of good luck, or a gift from the heavens meant to bring her hope. It was a fish, after all, and her family was especially irrational about fish stories, the way most people were irrational about four-leaf clovers or wishing on dandelion fluff.

  But Lucia Mercedes Evangeline Rossi was, most definitely, not a superstitious person. She never threw salt over her shoulder, like Great-Aunt Lilliana, causing a slip hazard, nor did she believe that bird feathers in the house brought the evil eye. She didn’t believe it was good luck to hear a cat sneeze, nor bad luck to trim her toenails on a Thursday.

  Lucy had recently had the misfortune of watching the aunts chant over the youngest of her three cousins, all named Joe, who had the flu. They lit candles and put a tomato on his belly button.

  A to-ma-to on his bel-ly but-ton.

  And then he threw up all over them anyway.

  It was proof that Reason should govern all things. Just like Dad always said.

  Maybe if Lucy had grown up in San Jose with the rest of the Rossis, she’d happily wear amulets made of rue to protect her from falling pianos or unlucky eyebrows and she’d believe things “deep down in her Rossi bones.” But she and Mom had been saved from all that, having only moved to San Jose when Dad was sent to Vietnam. Living first in Boston, then Chicago while Dad went to medical school and finished his residencies made them “resilient, well-rounded women” who were “not given to hysterics.”

  Although Lucy was a practical person, an orderly person, a thinker of thoughts just like her father, she had done three things repeatedly while Dad was in Vietnam. She did not see this as a ritual or superstition as much as she believed it to be a recipe of sorts, meant to make her feel better. Like Papo Angelo’s square noodle soup.

  Lucy had written it all down in an essay for Mrs. Peacock in sixth grade last year, arguing the importance of what she called her behavioral comfort routine—perfect for anyone who might be in need of a plan—which Lucy valued just as much as her poster of Mohs’ Mineral Table of Hardness for her rock collection, or her entire set of gold-embossed Encyclopaedia Britannica, a gift from her father on her sixth birthday.

  When Linda McCollam—with her flaming mustard argyle socks and plaid miniskirt—read Lucy’s essay on the Open House board and asked, “Why can’t you just be normal?” Lucy stared at her, dumbfounded by both the question and how anyone with flaming mustard argyle socks and a plaid miniskirt might be the one to ask it.

  In trying to understand why self-important Linda McCollam, who was the actual granddaughter of Millard McCollam of Millard McCollam Elementary fame, would say such a thing, Lucy turned to her essay on the board and tried to see it from a different perspective. It simply detailed how:

  1) Each morning, Lucy put a dab of Aqua Velva on her wrist to keep her nasal passages from forgetting the smell of her father.

  2) Each afternoon, Lucy went to her windowsill and counted the small stones Dad had sent in each of his letters. He’d asked her to look up what sorts of rocks he was finding on the other side of the world, categorize them against Mohs’ Mineral Table of Hardness and report her findings. Discovery: both sides of the world had the same rocks.

  And finally: 3) Each evening, right before bed, Lucy stared at her favorite picture, the one of her sitting on Dad’s lap, five years old with a rather serious expression, pressing a stethoscope to his chest while looking up into his face. She stared intently at this picture so she would remember Dad’s clean-shaven face, the loud-slow thump of his heart.

  After Linda McCollam had flounced away, Mrs. Peacock had come up behind Lucy and reminded her of the unit they’d studied on homeostasis in biology a few months before. Homeostasis was from the Greek word for “same” or “steady.” It was the process by which living things maintained a stable condition necessary for survival. Lucy understood the process to mean physical survival, like the body constantly working to remain steady at 98.6 degrees, no matter the weather or hotheaded encounters with Linda McCollam, and so she hadn’t thought of it any other way. Until then.

  “Homeostasis isn’t just about your physical condition, but your feeling, and
thinking as well. Sometimes we need to do things that make us feel better, even if they don’t make sense to anyone else.”

  Lucy was comforted by this and so began referring to her behavioral comfort routine as her Homeostasis Extravaganza.

  All perfectly normal. Even Mrs. Peacock said so.

  Lucy watched the creek bubble silently, the balloon still stuck, and turned on the small stereo next to the window, where she pushed a Beethoven eight-track into its slot. The Piano Sonata No. 14 in C minor was especially relaxing as she counted her windowsill stones for the last time, placing them one by one into the empty cigar box she’d snatched from Papo’s house. She then placed the bottle of Aqua Velva beside the stones, along with her essay and stethoscope picture, and closed the sweet-smelling lid, she hoped, forever. She wouldn’t have to partake in her Extravaganza anymore because the waiting was over. Even though Dad was coming home changed, in exactly two hours and seven minutes, he was finally coming home, and everything would go back to normal.

  But as soon as she slid the box under her bed, she went all jangly on the inside, as though her bones had come loose from their tethers.

  Even though there was absolutely, positively no reason for it, she couldn’t talk herself out of the jangles until she’d taken every single stone out of the box and put them back on the windowsill, in order of hardness, sprayed Aqua Velva on her wrist, and set the stethoscope picture back on her nightstand table.

  All where they belonged.

  For the first time, she wondered if there was such a thing as too much homeostasis, and if perhaps Linda McCollam had been right after all.

  2

  back on the horse

  Before Dad left for Vietnam, he and Mom ran a tight ship, and Lucy was a good soldier. Even though they hadn’t been a military family yet, Mom and Dad believed that a proper schedule and good hygiene were the answer to a happy and well-adjusted life. Dad had been working since Lucy had been born toward being a heart surgeon, which meant school, more school and then more school after that. Because he wasn’t home in the mornings and evenings like a regular dad, every precious minute of family time was accounted for.

  On the few mornings he was home, he’d read Scientific American or the Wall Street Journal out loud at the breakfast table. When he’d finished, he’d start almost every sentence with “Lucy, did you know . . . ?” or “Come here, Janey. Look what they’ve discovered about transplantation.”

  Lucy loved that he started his sentences with Lucy, did you know . . . ? as though she might already know about the stock market or business trends or new technologies in science. She loved listening to his deep voice saying things like aortic valve stenosis and hard capital rationing, and loved even more that he believed she was smart enough to talk to about it.

  When he’d been home on those rare mornings, he’d brought Lucy into his smart doctor world just as though she belonged there. Because they were a team. And not just because Dad talked to her about aortic valve stenosis, but because she had her own part to play in his becoming a doctor. A silent part, but no less important.

  Lucy’s part was that she had valiantly, if a little sadly, sacrificed her time with him. All the time she could have spent with her father reading books, riding bikes in the park or just eating dinners together at home. Instead, she and Mom would get on the number 4 bus that would take them across town so they could deliver Dad his dinner at the hospital. Sometimes they’d get to eat together in the cafeteria with all the other residents, who would play games with Lucy and always had pockets full of peppermints because they were her favorite. Sometimes Dad would be so tired, he’d barely wake up from a nap to eat the Tupperware of pasta Bolognese, and so they’d just kiss his stubbled cheek and leave it there under his cot.

  It wasn’t as though Lucy was entirely deprived, however. Mom made sure she spent time with friends’ dads, who threw her in the pool and watched Saturday morning cartoons and showed her how to roast the perfect marshmallow. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t terrible, either.

  Lucy didn’t mind these sacrifices; they were her contribution to their team. Together, they were helping Dad become a doctor. When graduation finally came and it was time for Dad to walk down the aisle to accept that little certificate with the MD after his name, he took Lucy by the hand and brought her with him.

  Dad said she’d earned it, too.

  * * *

  —

  Because Dad had also trained Lucy to be a thinker of positive thoughts, she forced several of his favorites through her mind as she went into her parents’ bedroom:

  Progress is never a straight line.

  Nothing worth doing is ever easy.

  We should always seek to be an instrument in this life.

  And he didn’t mean a tuba or a violin. He meant, Be useful.

  “Can I help?” Lucy said to her mother.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” Mom said, even though that wasn’t the question Lucy had asked.

  Mom was dressing for the airport, walking from closet to dresser and back to closet, gathering electricity through her rubber-soled slippers, flinging nylons and shoes and all sorts of unmentionables all over the place.

  If Lucy hadn’t known any better, she’d have thought Mom was worried. But that was impossible. Mom didn’t allow words like worry, nervous or try into their vocabulary. They were Chin-Up Women. Stiff-Upper-Lip Women. Just like Grandma Miller and everyone else on Mom’s side of the family.

  Lucy went around and picked up, trying to stay out of reach as she didn’t want to get zapped with slipper-conducted static electricity. Dad deserved to come home to a clean room and to a daughter who was static free.

  “Everything is going to be fine,” Mom said again, exactly like a worried person.

  Which was not good. Because worried people were unpredictable, and it was important to be able to predict behavior in the wild so that if you’re watching a chimp, say, like Jane Goodall does, you can tell when they might want to bite your face off. Mom was always saying how Lucy was far too concerned with watching things and should behave more like a twelve-year-old, talking on the phone, wearing lip gloss and listening to David Cassidy records. Mom especially liked to remind her that Gia, her teenage cousin, had gone to a record-breaking seventeen birthday parties when she’d been twelve, and didn’t Lucy think that a fabulous goal to set for herself?

  Of course, Lucy would say, and show Mom all her teeth.

  Like a chimp.

  Once every last strand of Mom’s beach-sand hair was safely pulled into a French twist, and her clip-on pearl earrings snapped evenly to her earlobes, she sat beside Lucy at the foot of the bed and pressed her shoulders back, lifted her chin.

  “Things will be different when Dad gets home.”

  Lucy nodded. She’d been putting together a reference collection of books with the help of Ms. Lula, the Millard McCollam Elementary librarian. At the beginning of the school year, when Lucy started spending her lunch period in the library, Ms. Lula had fed Lucy books like she was feeding a fire in the middle of an Antarctic freeze. When Lucy finally managed to squeak out that her dad was in Vietnam, and preferred nonfiction so that she might prepare herself for all possible outcomes, Ms. Lula brought in all sorts of reference items from her Giant Reception of Knowledge, or so she called it. Every once in a while, she tried to slip in something like The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, but Lucy figured she didn’t have time to lose herself in a fictional world when she had so much to learn about the real one.

  Lucy had books on the Vietnam War, psychology and every copy of Life magazine going back three years to 1968. Ms. Lula worked part-time in the school library and part-time for the city library, so she had access to everything. More than President Nixon, according to Ms. Lula.

  “Remember. Bad things don’t happen. Only learning opportunities,” Mom said, getting Lucy’s attention. But for
the first time ever, Lucy wasn’t sure Mom believed her own words.

  “Get back on the horse or you’ll forget how to ride,” Lucy said. It was Dad’s favorite saying. Never give up.

  Mom smiled. Corrected Lucy’s posture, tilted her chin.

  “Your dad will need some space . . . and time to figure things out. What he thinks is best, and what I think is best, may not seem best to you for a while.”

  “Of course,” Lucy said. “I set up the walkie-talkies in case Dad wants to be alone periodically. Plus, there’s the schedule I created in order to help him settle back into our daily routines. I gathered some things I thought might help with his physical therapy. I’ve read what I could on amputation, even though there wasn’t as much information as I would have liked.”

  Mom flinched at the word amputation, while Lucy pretended the word didn’t bother her. Mom took a deep breath, and then her hand was on Lucy’s cheek. Lucy closed her eyes and tried to absorb every bit of warmth from her mother’s hand.

  When she opened them again, Mom looked right into Lucy’s eyes.

  “We’re a team, Lucy. Always remember that.”

  Lucy hugged her stiff mom fiercely. Because even though the Millers found affection slightly troubling, or so it seemed, that was the only way the Rossis ever did anything.

  And today, maybe the Rossis had the right idea. At least about that.

  3

  life is a meatball

  Finally, Papo Angelo’s shiny black Fleetwood pulled into the driveway beside their new-used Pontiac, his older sister, Great-Aunt Lilliana, in the passenger seat. Papo honked and then jumped out of the car with a wave, a breeze blowing the seventeen hairs of his shellacked comb-over onto the left side of his head like a wispy sort of apostrophe. He quickly smoothed it over.

  Mom walked into the front room. “Ready?”