We Walked the Sky

by Lisa Fiedler

  TEN

  New Jersey, 1965

  WHEN I TOLD SHARON I wanted to learn to walk the high wire, I meant the “high” part literally. I’d pictured myself strapped into an elaborate safety harness, traversing the Big Top at sixty feet, with my arms outstretched, and my feet slipping tentatively across the wire.

  But Sharon believes strongly in starting with the basics, and that makes the exercise a whole lot less exhilarating. We’re working at ground level with an ordinary hemp rope laid out on the grass; my assignment is to walk back and forth on it, barefoot.

  On the upside, the simplicity of the exercise will allow us to carry on a conversation, which I begin with this question: “What’s with James and Gideon? They don’t seem to get along very well.”

  “That’s putting it mildly,” says Sharon, lighting a cigarette.

  “But they’re brothers.”

  “Half brothers,” Sharon corrects.

  “Have they always been at each other’s throats?”

  “Nah. That nonsense didn’t start until a few years ago.” Sharon blows out a series of smoke rings. “I hate to say it, but I blame Cornelius. He’s a great man, truly, but he is only human. I know he doesn’t see it, but everyone else does.”

  “See what?”

  “That he’s got a favorite.”

  “James,” I say, and Sharon nods. He’d told me as much, but I assumed he was just kidding. “So Gideon’s jealous?”

  “To the very marrow of his bones.” Taking a long, fortifying puff, she launches into a tale that could only be true in the circus:

  “Gideon was born the winter I joined VanDrexel’s, but Cornelius divorced his mother about a year later. Trust me when I tell you, nobody was especially sorry to see her go. Bitch on wheels, that one was, and we all knew Gideon would be better off without her.” Sharon pauses to wag her cigarette in the direction of my toes. “You need to get familiar with the sensation of the wire underfoot. Feel your soles molding to it. Grip without gripping. Ankles strong, knees bent . . . heel to toe, heel to toe . . . that’s it.”

  I do as she says, but this is without a doubt the least challenging activity I have ever undertaken—and I spent a month learning how to curtsy for the coming-out ball. “What about James’s mother?”

  “Helen.” Sharon’s eyes mist up as she takes another drag. “Now, there was a gal who lived up to her name. As beautiful as Helen of Troy, and every bit as fickle. She showed up out of nowhere one morning with an Arabian stallion and no personal history to speak of—not one she was willing to share with any of us, at any rate. But the second Cornelius laid eyes on her he was over the moon.”

  “So they got married?”

  “Oh no. Marriage was much too conventional for the likes of Helen. She called herself a free spirit.”

  “So you didn’t like her?”

  “Are you kidding? I adored her. We all did. She was like walking happiness, ya know? Gorgeous, charismatic, fun-loving, smart.”

  “Like James,” I say, then wish I hadn’t.

  “Yeah.” Sharon grins. “Just like James.”

  I turn abruptly and walk the rope back in the opposite direction. “What happened to her?” I ask over my shoulder.

  “Well, when James was born the Ringmaster was beside himself with joy. The only one happier than Cornelius was Gideon. God, he was crazy about that baby. Proudest big brother you’ve ever seen. And James of course worshipped the ground Gideon walked on.”

  I try to picture it—the two young men who were just on the verge of killing each other, playing together as children.

  “But then, one day, Helen just . . . ran off. Gone. Just like her mythological namesake.”

  “She left?” I stop walking and jerk back around to face her. “She abandoned her child? Just like that?”

  “Just like that. Cornelius was devastated. Would have drunk himself to death if it hadn’t been for Duncan. Dunc saved his life, saved him from himself. At first we were afraid that little James looking so much like Helen would make it harder for Cornelius to forget her. But instead of it breaking his heart, Cornelius actually took comfort in the resemblance. James was the one precious bit of magic she left behind. Which is why he’ll never let that boy out of his sight. I think he’s scared if he does, James’ll do the same thing his mother did—vanish.”

  Sharon is about to say more but something in the distance catches her eye and she begins to bark out orders instead: “Balance and concentration, Victoria! Control your center of gravity! Open yourself up to the deeper philosophy of wire walking.”

  “And what would that be exactly?” comes an amused voice from behind me. “Try not to fall to your death?”

  “Says the guy who pals around with full-grown tigers,” Sharon teases back, flicking her cigarette butt into the dirt.

  I swivel my head around to see who’s addressing us and immediately lose my balance (Center of Gravity: 1, Victoria: 0) because Gideon VanDrexel has just sauntered up. He stands there with his arms folded and his feet apart, looking like an old-time matinee idol. Or a lion tamer. Which he is.

  No wonder Sharon changed the subject so quickly.

  “What can we do for you, Gid?” she asks.

  “First of May is wanted in the wardrobe car. Something about a missing-button epidemic.” He throws me a friendly smile. “You sew, right?”

  “I, um . . .” Brooksvale Junior High School, seventh-grade home ec: I made a quilted tea cozy and embroidered half a handkerchief. “A little.”

  “Perfect.” He jerks his head in an invitation to follow him. I brush the dry grass off my feet, slip them into my new sandals, and do exactly that.

  “To be continued,” Sharon calls after me, lighting another cigarette. “In the meantime, think posture.”

  I fall into step beside Gideon, who’s taller than James and slimmer. He must have his mother’s eyes because I’m not seeing the twinkle that James and Cornelius share.

  “We haven’t been properly introduced,” he says, shaking my hand. “Victoria, is it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good to meet you. How’s it going so far?”

  “Going great!” I say with more gusto than I intended. “Well, except for that bit with the elephant trailer.”

  “Elephant trailer?’ Gideon frowns. “James?”

  I nod.

  “Damn it. I’ve told him to quit hazing the new people. It’s childish.”

  “Maybe he thinks it builds character,” I offer, though why I feel the need to defend him I don’t know. “And I did enjoy meeting Rabelais.”

  Gideon laughs. “Well, who wouldn’t?”

  We’re delayed briefly by Vince, who has a few questions for Gideon. Tonight we close in Jersey, which means we’re “on the jump,” and he wants to be sure the animals will be ready for the “all out.” Gideon assures him they will, but Vince stalls, stroking his chin. A shadow of concern darkens his weathered face.

  “Listen, Gid . . . I’m not sure if James told ya, but Boo-boo didn’t eat this morning.”

  Gideon’s mouth twists. “I was afraid of that.”

  “James is actin’ like it’s no big deal,” Vince goes on, taking off his slouchy fedora to mop his brow. “‘Boo-boo’s cool,’ he says to me. But I can see it in his eyes. Somethin’s off.”

  “And ‘off’ is just another word for ‘unpredictable,’” Gideon murmurs glumly.

  “And ‘unpredictable’ is just another word for ‘deadly.’ I hate to say it, Gid, but we might need to start thinkin’ about positioning a sni—”

  Gideon cuts him off with a meaningful look. “Not yet, Vince. And please, don’t even suggest that to James.”

  “What am I, crazy?” Vince drops his hat back onto his head. “I’d sooner suggest it to Boo-boo.”

  He waddles off and we walk on. Gideon is quiet until
we reach the wardrobe car. When he opens the door for me, I notice a long, jagged scar on his forearm, but I don’t dare ask how he got it. The boy is a lion tamer after all.

  “Hey, Myrtle,” he calls inside, gesturing for me to enter. “First of May, reporting for button duty.”

  I suppose I’m not really qualified for much else, but that doesn’t stop me from cringing. Gideon reads my expression and smiles for the first time since we left Vince. “Just see how it goes,” he says softly. “If you don’t like it, we’ll try something else.”

  His tone is so genuine that I’m suddenly committed to becoming the best damned button-sewer this, or any other circus, has ever seen. Even if it is just for a couple of weeks.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “No problem. Good luck.” And he’s gone.

  Inside, the wardrobe car is a jungle of tulle skirts, feather boas, and oversize silk jumpsuits in colorful, clownish stripes. A woman with a brassy beehive hairdo kneels beside a worse-for-wear dressmaker’s dummy, repairing the fringe on a satin romper.

  “Myrtle?” I venture.

  Without looking up from the fringe, she explains that there are currently eight shirts, four pairs of overalls, and three tailcoats requiring new buttons. She talks me through the clutter until I have located scissors, a needle, and several spools of thread. Then she points me to an old coffee can filled with buttons.

  I poke around until I find a few copper ones and start on the overalls. After several attempts and a great deal of squinting I manage to thread the needle.

  By now, Myrtle has finished mending the romper’s fringe and is struggling to outfit the dress dummy with a gorgeous little full-skirted dress—canary yellow, very short, with a fitted bodice and a deep sweetheart neckline trimmed in turquoise sequins. Judging by the number of pins, it is still very much a work in progress. But the dress is too small for the dummy and Myrtle is getting annoyed.

  “You,” she says. “Try this on.”

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. You’re about her size.”

  “Whose size?”

  “Evangeline, the flaming baton twirler.” At my look of disbelief, she clarifies, “The batons are on fire, not the girl.” Then she tosses the dress in my direction. “Put it on. Quickly, please.”

  “But—” I blush just thinking about that neckline. “I’m on button duty.”

  “Consider yourself promoted. Evangeline needs this tonight!”

  I look around the wardrobe car. There does not appear to be a fitting room.

  “Quickly,” Myrtle repeats, turning her back.

  I guess this is the closest thing to privacy I’m going to get, so I hurry out of my clothes and wriggle cautiously into the dress. The skirt barely skims the tops of my thighs.

  When Myrtle zips me up, my breasts react by plumping into the plunging V of the neckline and swelling up over the scalloped edge.

  “You’re bustier than Evangeline,” she observes.

  Thanks?

  Myrtle spins me around a couple of times, as if we’re embarking on an extremely serious game of pin the tail on the donkey. After she’s checked me from all sides, she positions me in front of the mirror.

  “D’ya think a drop waistline would’ve looked better?” she asks.

  Since my expertise lies solely in the area of tea cozies, I shrug. This gives my breasts an excuse to peek even higher over the sequined edge of the bodice. Myrtle notices and her reflection smirks at mine. “Maybe you should think about learning to twirl batons.”

  Before I can respond to that peculiar compliment, the door opens and James VanDrexel comes breezing into the car. And judging from the way his eyes widen at the sight of me in Evangeline’s dress, I’m thinking he wouldn’t mind seeing me take up baton twirling either.

  ELEVEN

  CALLIE DIDN’T SEE JENNA again all day.

  But Kip showed up at her locker after the final bell.

  “Sorry about lunch,” he said, leaning one shoulder against the lockers, a pose Callie suspected he didn’t even realize qualified as a pose, but packed a whole lot of adorable nonetheless—a fact she really wished she hadn’t noticed.

  “Guess I should have given you more of a heads-up about Kristi, huh?”

  “Gee, ya think?”

  “You’re mad.”

  “Actually, I really don’t care enough to be mad, and I’m not going to be living here long enough for Queen Is-a-bully to even matter. But if I were planning to stick around, then yeah, I’d be furious. They were basically interrogating me, and you just sat there eating tater tots.”

  “Only because you seem like a girl who can take care of herself, and I didn’t think you’d want me to come charging to your rescue, like some cocky, self-important knight in shining armor.”

  “Don’t you mean conquistador in shining armor?” Callie snapped.

  “Whatever. I didn’t want to come off as some big strong macho dude who thought he had to stand up for you. I figured you had it under control.”

  “Not sure I’d classify you as a ‘big strong macho dude.’”

  Kip cocked an eyebrow.

  “And when exactly did it appear to you that I ‘had it under control’? Was it when Kristi was making fun of where I live? Or maybe when Jake was calling me the-hot-girl-on-a . . . insert exotic animal name here?”

  “I threw a tater tot at him, didn’t I?” Kip dragged a hand through his hair. “Look, they aren’t usually that bad . . . well, except for Kristi, who’s pretty much always that bad, and occasionally worse.” He spun around so that his upper back was now pressing against the gray metal of the lockers, and the rest of his lean surfer’s body sloped away at an angle; unfortunately, this stance managed to be even cuter than the first one. “But Emma-Kate’s actually okay, and Jake and Zach are just suffering from a really bad case of teenage-boy humor, which, I know, is pretty much a public service announcement waiting to happen, but I swear, they honestly weren’t trying to embarrass you. And if they did, I’m sorry.”

  He actually sounded like he meant it. Callie stuffed some books into her backpack, shut her locker, and started walking. Annoyingly, Kip fell into step beside her. She was about to politely ask him to go away, but her mother had decreed she make friends in the non-circus world, and so far he seemed like the only person here who might actually be tolerable.

  Okay, slightly more than tolerable. And he did have a name her grandmother would have approved of. She was also fairly certain that K-Bay would absolutely hate it if Callie and Kip became friendly. So there was that.

  “I didn’t realize the Sanctuary issue was that much of a hornet’s nest,” Kip was saying. “Sounds like there’s a good chance the place’ll be shut down.”

  Callie was about to invoke the “not my monkeys” proverb, but didn’t when she realized she’d probably have to explain it. So instead, she simply said, “I’ll be gone long before that happens.”

  “Gone?”

  “I’m going to be joining my father’s circus in Italy pretty soon, so I’m really not all that invested in whether it closes or not.”

  “What about the animals? Don’t you care about them?”

  Callie sighed. “You know how in every family, there’s always this one needy sibling who gets fussed over and hogs all the attention?”

  Kip nodded.

  “In my family, that sibling was the tiger. And the black bear. And the poodle-beagle mix who could never quite remember his routine on the balance beam. So yeah, I care about them, but I’m not going to be overly sad to move on. And Marston’s animals will be fine. He’ll just place them in other rescue facilities around the country. And my mother’s good at what she does, so she shouldn’t have any trouble finding a less controversial place to work.” An image of Quinn grooming golden retrievers at some overpriced pet salon flashed in Callie’s mind. She pushed i
t out.

  “So when are you moving to Italy?” Kip looked genuinely disappointed. “Because you can’t leave before I have a chance to perfect my juggling skills. Unless you’d be willing to coach me over FaceTime. Which reminds me . . .” He took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to her.

  “What’s this for?”

  “So you can call your phone?”

  “Why would I call my phone?”

  “So I’ll have your number and you’ll have mine.” Kip laughed; he seemed to find her obliviousness charming. “Looks like you know less about cellular devices than I do about juggling. No worries, I’ll show you what to do.”

  Mortified, Callie handed over her phone and let Kip walk her through the process. When he noticed she didn’t have Jenna’s number, he tapped the screen a few times and said, “There ya go. You have just experienced your first ‘Share Contact.’ Wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  “Painless,” said Callie, feeling overwhelmed. It had already been a ridiculously long day, and what she’d hoped would be a stress-free walk to the parking lot was turning out to be the most exhausting part of it. All she wanted to do was go home and get on the tightrope.

  Through the exit’s glass doors, she could see Brad’s Range Rover pulling up to the curb with Quinn in the passenger seat and Brad behind the wheel. Callie reached for the door handle, but Kip stopped her.

  “Before you go . . . I was sort of hoping you might be willing to help me out with an experiment. I’ve been formulating this theory,” he explained, grinning, “since, oh, just about seven o’clock this morning—and you happen to be uniquely qualified to help me prove my hypothesis.”

  “Why me?”

  His grin broadened. “Because you’re not like everyone else around here.”

  Callie stiffened. Everything her mother had said to her that morning came back in a cold rush. She didn’t want Quinn to be right. And she didn’t want Kip to be . . . well, she didn’t know what she wanted Kip to be. She was in unfamiliar territory—at the circus they’d have said she couldn’t read the crowd. Her feet arched in her shoes, wishing for the safety of a wire beneath them. “What does that mean?” she asked, bristling. “‘I’m not like everybody else.’”