by Lisa Fiedler
Magic.
And suddenly, I’m no longer afraid.
* * *
• • •
I follow him at a short distance, like some deranged fan creeping in his wake past the sideshow tent and into the writhing shadows thrown by the glow of the post-performance midway—an area bustling with carnival games, snack stands, and souvenir booths. Behind us, the grounds continue to bustle; clearly I’m not the only one who can’t bring herself to go home.
When he reaches the circus train, he places one black-booted foot on the vestibule’s bottom step, then whirls around, startling me.
He doesn’t seem annoyed, just curious when he asks, “May I help you, young lady?”
The short answer of course is I sure as hell hope so. But even up close, he is so imposing, so debonair and mysterious, that my voice fails me. So I just stand there, gulping and fidgeting. Not exactly the best way to start a job interview. Or a stowaway interview. Or whatever this is.
“If it’s a refund you’re wanting, you’ll be required to take that up with the manager,” he informs me, each syllable measured, musical. “I’m so sorry you didn’t enjoy the show.”
“Oh, I loved the show,” I blurt out, meaning it more than he could possibly know.
“Then you’re not looking for a refund?”
I shake my head, remembering the girl on the wire. “I’m looking for a job.”
The Ringmaster—Cornelius VanDrexel, according to the program I’m clutching in my clammy hand—regards me with eyes that twinkle.
“Ah! Well then, please, my dear, do come in.” He makes a sweeping gesture with his arm, and I, like a marionette, leap onto the metal step beside him. A quick left turn puts us in his office . . . an office in a train car.
What’s even more surreal is the fact that I am thrilled by it, as if I were in an episode of The Twilight Zone. It’s like I’ve crossed over into another dimension—and surely I have, because in reality, Catherine Hastings would know better than to place herself alone in a train car with a strange man, well out of earshot of anyone who might come to her rescue should she find herself screaming for help. I’m slightly comforted by the fact that Cornelius is older than he looked in the spotlight—close to sixty. I could probably outrun him if it came to that.
I spy an open ledger on his desk, an oversize book filled with numbers and notations. He closes it and says, “So you want to join the circus.” A grin spreads across his face. “What is it you do?” I hesitate, and he thinks I’ve misunderstood the question. “What sort of act do you perform? Are you a tumbler?”
Three years on the pep squad have provided me with a pretty good cartwheel, but based on what I saw tonight, that hardly qualifies me to be a circus acrobat. I shake my head.
“Dancer?”
“I’m looking for something more in the area of . . . odd jobs.”
“Odd jobs?” Cornelius allows himself a laugh. “This is the circus, young lady. Some would argue that all our jobs are odd.”
He removes his hat and places it on the desk. His hair is lush, mahogany with brushstrokes of gray at the temples. Have I dreamed him?
“Perhaps you do an act with snakes?” he prompts.
Another head shake.
“Do you hang from your hair and spin?”
First of all: ouch. And second: “I’m not actually a performer,” I explain, my cheeks flushing. “I’d very much like to be . . .” (Where did that come from?) “But for now, I’m not looking to ride a tiny motorcycle through a flaming hoop or anything like that.”
“Well, that’s fortuitous, since we already have someone who does that.”
“I know. I mean, I saw.” I squirm in my chair. “Ideally, I’d like to do something behind the scenes.” Way behind the scenes.
The Ringmaster sighs thoughtfully, and I am almost surprised when his breath does not come out in a cloud of glitter. “How old are you, miss?”
He asks this casually, but I know it’s a trick question. So I give him a trick answer. “Eighteen.”
“Eighteen,” he echoes, his right eyebrow rising ever so slightly. He’s deciding whether or not to believe me. I’ve only rounded up two years, so I think he might. “What’s your name?”
Another loaded question.
Because I know that tomorrow morning, at the stroke of ten exactly, my father will phone the Davenports’ house to ask—jovially, politely—if Dr. Davenport will be driving me home or if he should “come round to collect me.”
Collect me. Like a stamp, or a baseball card.
With any luck, Dr. Davenport will report that, according to Emily, “the girls were up late, and Cathy is still asleep on the rumpus room sofa, so why don’t you just let her sleep in a little and join us for lunch?” (Emily’s parents never visit the rumpus room when I visit, and for whatever reason, they believe everything she tells them.) At Emily’s behest, I’ve told that same lie in reverse to Dr. Davenport more times than I can count, enabling Emily to stay out until all hours with Cliff Parker, doing who-knows-what in the back seat of his GTO.
I’m hoping my failure to arrive at her house earlier this evening will have been enough of a clue for Emily to set the rest of my plan in motion. I don’t have a Cliff Parker, of course, but Emily’s not the sort to worry about details. Plus, she’s seen the bruises. I’m counting on her instincts and her compassion to give me a head start.
So if both Emily and my father behave true to form, I have until about noon tomorrow before my father actually understands that I am missing—before he officially reports the disappearance of Catherine Hastings to the proper authorities, or (more likely) comes gunning for me himself.
Cornelius is still waiting for my name. My exodus being entirely unplanned, I haven’t had time to come up with a proper alias.
A name comes to me; it’s the name of a housemaid I used to pretend was not a maid at all, rather my doting older sister. She was young and giggly and taught me to jitterbug to Bill Haley’s “Rock Around the Clock” when I was six. A year later, she fled the house in tears after witnessing one of my father’s particularly violent outbursts.
“Victoria,” I christen myself. I pick the name partly because I adored her, but mostly because it sounds like Victory. And I need a win.
Cornelius smooths his jodhpurs and doesn’t meet my eyes. “Victoria what?”
I am on the verge of choking out my mother’s maiden name—Quinn—but I catch myself in time. Such sentimentality will only make it that much easier for my father to hunt me down. Instead, I choose a name that nearly burns my tongue, the one name that will never allow me to forget, even for a moment, exactly what I am running from.
I take a deep breath and stammer myself into a false identity: “My last name . . . is . . . um . . . it’s Davis. Victoria Davis.”
Cornelius VanDrexel strums his manicured fingertips against the handle of his whip. “So one Victoria Davis, eighteen years of age, presently absent of any ostensible circus skills, wishes to join my spectacular little mud show,” he summarizes.
“Yes, I do.” For the next few weeks, at least.
“Very well, then.” He slides off the desk, struts two steps to a file cabinet, and withdraws an official-looking form, which I assume is some manner of employment paperwork. I might actually vomit.
I take the form with trembling hands. Not surprisingly, the job application wants to know who I am, where I live, when I was born. My social security number, my next of kin. The most basic, innocuous facts of my existence, which have suddenly become terrifying and unspeakable.
“Have you any identification currently upon your person, Miss Davis? A driver’s license perhaps?”
For the first time since I stepped into his office I can answer him honestly. “I don’t drive,” I explain. My father would have never allowed such freedom.
Cornelius sighs, cl
oses the drawer, and returns to the edge of his desk, seeing me, not seeing me . . . I can’t be sure. There’s something ethereal about him with his tall boots and velvet lapels and his worldly wisdom. And here I am, ordinary—or whatever comes before ordinary—asking him for a favor, a future, a chance.
He knows I’m lying to him. He knows. So why should he do me this kindness, grant me this wish? Why should he risk anything just to help me?
The answer is, he shouldn’t.
But then his eyes meet mine, not just with a twinkle, but with a deeper, more portentous sort of spark. When he speaks—slowly, meaningfully—his words resonate, filling the space of the train car: “The best kind of charity is to help those who are willing to help themselves.”
I immediately recognize the quote. “P. T. Barnum said that.”
His eyebrows lift in surprise. Incredibly, this is not just a lucky guess on my part. My father worships anyone with a knack for earning money, and Phineas Taylor Barnum amassed fortunes in his day.
I hold Cornelius’s gaze without flinching. My unspoken answer to his unspoken question is, Yes, Mr. VanDrexel, I will help myself. I am already helping myself by hitching a ride with your circus, the world’s most boisterous getaway car.
Now Cornelius’s mouth twitches at the corners, as though he’s trying not to smile. “You know, some believe that Barnum also said, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ If he did, I sincerely hope that our association will in no way serve to prove Mr. Barnum right about that.”
“It won’t, sir.”
Because somewhere, miles from here, I will slip out of this caravan as soundlessly as I slipped in, and Cornelius’s promise of sanctuary—because we both know that is exactly what this is—will have been fulfilled. Perhaps it would be fun to stay, but I don’t belong in the circus any more than Cornelius belongs in a brick mansion in Brooksvale.
He stands gracefully, then crosses the narrow car toward the door, pausing to contemplate a framed handbill on the wall. Its artwork is a dreamy ink-and-watercolor rendering, and there are words written in fussy Old English letters across the top:
VanDrexel’s Family Circus:
Three Rings of Fantastical Fun
“Early days,” he explains. “You see, our show was the waking dream of two young Polish immigrants, my father, Oskar Vanovich, and his cousin Lukasz Drecki. They quickly discovered that a name is a kind of enchantment, and there is little to no charm in a moniker like ‘Drecki,’ so while folks were flocking to see the Coles, and the Coopers, and the Baileys, we poor Vanoviches were all but starving to death. So the resourceful cousins concocted the pretty portmanteau of ‘VanDrexel,’ and it has been magic ever since.”
“VanDrexel’s a lovely name,” I agree, smiling. “It must have been a wonderful way to grow up.”
“Oh, it was,” he assures me. “When I was quite young, it was my task to set up the ring curbs. They were like tremendous puzzles, incomplete until the first piece met the last, and a perfect circle was formed. Such a paradox—by ending, they became infinite. And from this I learned a simple, but lasting truth.”
Tell me.
“‘Everything will eventually come full circle.’ As a boy, I could not decide if that constituted an assurance or a warning, but I learned, as I grew to be a man, that like most things, it contains a bit of both.”
* * *
• • •
The next thing I know, I’m being whisked through the train—like a mouse being digested by a gleaming metal boa constrictor—to what the Ringmaster calls the pie car. There I am introduced to a smallish man named Duncan, who is finishing up a late-night slice of lemon meringue pie like a diminutive king. He is freshly scrubbed of his clown makeup, but still sporting a colorful plaid suit with an oversize plastic flower in his lapel. Clearly, he is someone Cornelius trusts.
“Find her something to be good at,” the Ringmaster decrees, then takes his leave of me, calling over his shoulder as if it were an afterthought, “Observation is where understanding begins.”
Folding the job application, I slip it into the pocket of my pedal pushers and sit down in the booth across from Duncan, who polishes off his pie and smiles. “Welcome to the circus, Miss Victoria Davis.”
Somehow, that makes it all real.
I am now and forever Victoria Davis.
And for the time being at least, I belong to this circus.
THREE
CAUTION:
DO NOT STRAY FROM DESIGNATED PATHWAYS.
WANDER AT YOUR OWN RISK.
THANK YOU.
THE SANCTUARY MANAGEMENT TEAM
CALLIE AND QUINN PICKED their way along the twisting maze of walkways that led from the garage to the main house. Already, Callie had seen four such warnings posted. Seemed like a waste of signage to her, since one of the few things she knew about the Sanctuary was that it was unequivocally and emphatically not open to the public. This was the primary reason why, a year ago, Quinn had chosen to relocate her beloved animal retirees here. It was important to her that it did not bill itself as a “zoo” or an “attraction.” The owner, millionaire (possibly billionaire) philanthropist Bradford Marston, had made it his mission to create the most authentic environment possible for the elephants, big cats, and various other species of out-of-work quadrupeds he took in . . . and an authentic environment did not include toddlers gobbling Cracker Jack or teenagers toting selfie sticks.
On the flight down from Providence—before Callie had pointedly popped in her earbuds—Quinn had gotten as far as explaining that in another lifetime the Sanctuary had been a lavish estate known as Casa del Santuario. It was built by Bradford’s great-grandfather Grover Marston in 1927—a mere two years before the Great Depression.
“He was a very successful bootlegger,” Quinn was revealing now, scandalously delighted by the provenance of her new home. “As a wedding gift for his young bride, Agnes, he bought two hundred thirteen acres outside Lake St. Julian and built her this house. Can you guess what Agnes’s wedding gift to Grover was?” Her expression was suddenly somber. “A Bengal tiger cub that she had to have smuggled into the United States.”
“A bootlegger and a smuggler. Sounds like Grover and Aggie were made for each other.”
“They named the tiger after the amendment that made Grover a millionaire—Prohibition. Hibby for short.” A little crease—a lion’s wrinkle—formed between Quinn’s brows as she frowned her distaste. “When he got too big to keep indoors, they turned him out to roam free on the property, but one of Grover’s henchmen happened upon the cat one night and shot the poor thing dead.”
Does she really think any of this is going to make me feel better about living here? She’s the animal freak, not me.
“Brad’s grandfather lost the house and the land in the seventies,” Quinn continued, “when he went broke from an excess of illegal gambling debts.”
“So I guess the gene for good criminal instincts skips a generation?”
“When Brad graduated from college, he used his trust fund to buy the place back, and it sat empty for decades, until the animal rights activists brought the plight of performing animals to the world’s attention. Brad remembered the story of Prohibition the tiger, and he knew what he had to do.”
Callie slid a glance at her mother’s giddy smile, realizing that every time Quinn referenced Bradford Marston her voice went all squeaky, as if she’d just inhaled the contents of a helium balloon.
Note to self: Mom wants to sleep with her new boss.
“Callie, listen—” Quinn began, but cut off abruptly as they came around a tall hedge into the wide-open front lawn of the main house.
Callie could only gape at the masterpiece of creamy white stucco and rippling red roof tiles that loomed before her—all curves and columns, angles and niches, verandas and stairways. She felt a little like Dorothy arriving at the
Emerald City.
“Mr. Marston lives here?”
“The second floor is the residence. Administrative offices and other workspaces are on the ground floor. One of the wings is a fully equipped veterinary hospital.”
Callie was reluctantly impressed. As they made their way toward the front terrace, she was momentarily distracted by a trickling fountain, the centerpiece of which was a massive bronze tiger, a monument to Hibby no doubt.
“What were you going to say?”
“Hmm?”
“Before you and the Scarecrow and the Tin Man and I were all struck dumb by the sight of the Wizard’s palace. You said, ‘Callie, listen.’ I’m listening.”
“Right. Well . . .” Quinn looked suddenly serious. “Mr. Marston might ask you about your plans for school.”
“Yeah? So?” A curl of concern formed in the pit of Callie’s stomach. “He’s not gonna offer to send me to some fancy academy or something, is he? Because you promised me I could be homeschooled.” The swirl of worry widened into a Kansas-sized tornado of panic. “He is, isn’t he? He wants to send me to private school!”
“No!” Quinn bit her lower lip, thoughtfully. “Not that I know of, anyway. He is very generous, so I suppose there’s always that poss—”
“Mom! I am not going to private school. I don’t care how generous your billionaire boss is. I’m not.”
“Callie, relax. You don’t have to go to private school. But . . . I don’t think homeschooling is going to work out either.”
“It’s homeschool, Mom. What is there to not work out? We have a home—sort of—and you already signed me up for the online courses.” Callie narrowed her eyes. “You did sign me up, didn’t you?”
“I did. But this morning . . . I canceled them.” Before Callie could challenge her, Quinn barreled on, her eyes filled with a mixture of resolve and regret. “I think you should go to the public high school in town. I think you need to.”