Threadbare- The Traveling Show

by Alexandra DeMers

  “Hold on just a moment!” He hopped inside. There was barely enough room to breathe with the three of them in there, and René’s sudden nearness made Amandine freeze. “We need to put on a show tomorrow night. Don’t you want to go shopping with Amandine and update your costume? Remember, it's the première—” He pronounced the word in French for effect. “—Of the new and improved Love-Knot!”

  Sangria scowled and tossed her magazine aside. “Damn it. You’re right. Give me a few minutes to freshen up for town.” She squeezed past them and sat at her vanity. Pushing him away by the seat of his pants, she shouted, “Begone!”

  While they waited for Sangria to get ready, René set up a pair of folding chairs just outside the door. He invited Amandine to sit before he climbed back onto the roof and assembled the retractable awning.

  “How lovely,” Amandine said when he jumped down beside her again. “You've made a shady porch for this little house on wheels.” She crossed her ankles and sat back with a deep breath. “All we need are some sweet-teas and rocking chairs, and this would be just like home before the war.”

  “Tell me about your home.” René replaced his tools in the pouch he kept slung across his chest.

  Amandine was bubbling with happy memories she wanted to share, but she stopped herself when she remembered something. “Hang on! I've told you plenty about me already. You know all about my family, where I'm from, and where I’m going. I realized this afternoon that I don't even know your name.”

  René didn't answer. Instead, he waited for her to ask a direct question.

  At that moment Sangria, who had been eavesdropping again, appeared at the door. “You’re kidding, right? It’s ‘René.’” She lingered on the top step so that she could look down her nose at Amandine. “Ruh-nay. It’s probably the most common, boring French name after ‘Jacques’ or ‘Pierre.’ He goes by the equally dull last name of ‘Personne.’”

  The two rolled their eyes and started off. Sangria scampered after them and opened her red paper parasol. “I mean, how can you not know his name? Are you deaf, forgetful, or really just that stupid?”

  René was about to snap back when Amandine touched his elbow. “Now, now,” she interrupted. “I may not speak much French, but I learned enough to know that 'René Personne' means ‘reborn’ and ‘nobody.’”

  Sangria's mouth opened in surprise, but she clamped it shut angrily. “Oh, it is, is it?”

  “It’s true,” René said, amused by being found out. “I am nobody. I was nobody in France, and now I am nobody here in America.”

  “Well, boo-hoo,” Sangria snarled. “‘Mister Nobody.’ How appropriate!”

  “I like it,” Amandine assured him. “It makes you sound mysterious. Like the Rogue Rider.”

  “Rogue Rider?”

  “Only the best western adventure to ever come from pulp-publishing,” she nodded, suddenly noting all of the similarities René shared with the dime-novel hero.

  Sangria wedged the two of them apart with her parasol, hitting René in the face. “Even that sounds better than your dumb made-up name.”

  “Your name is made-up, too,” René argued, rubbing his cheek.

  “Darling, nobody is who they say they are.” Sangria cast her eyes upwards helplessly. “Not even the people you think you know best, apparently. In any case, I like the name I’ve given myself very much. I have no more ties to my old life, so no reason to keep my old name.”

  “Parentless, too?” Amandine asked sympathetically. “We have that in common.”

  “We have nothing in common,” the contortionist growled, frustrated by Amandine’s constant attempts to bond with her. “You had a wealthy, all-American hero for a father and some French criminal for a mother. My parents were on the bottom side of middle-class pre-war, trying everything and anything to just to look like they were rich. Even before things got really bad, they had spent so much money on outward appearances, we would eat whatever mother could boil on our fine china. They were raising me up to be an artist, suited to entertain only the most elite audiences. Dance lessons, music lessons, gymnastic lessons... I had the very best education, but... no friends. No food.” She scoffed sadly. “I thought I was hungry then.”

  Amandine looked to René, who looked like he was hearing this story for the first time as well. “But then the war began?”

  Sangria nodded. A stopper had been pulled, and no matter how badly she wanted to replace it, she couldn’t control what spilled out. “Yes, then the war began. My parents were more desperate than ever to keep up their charade. They were always bragging to their rich friends about all of their food and important friends who got them special privileges. It was all a lie. Soon their rich friends started going hungry like everybody else. One day while I was at my lessons, I learned that the neighbors came to our house and demanded to meet my parents’ contacts. My parents were forced to come clean about their lie. They had no important friends. They had nothing. All we had to eat was a handful of dandelions my mother had gathered in secret that day.”

  Amandine remembered how glad she had once been to eat weeds. “I’m so sorry. Were your parents killed?”

  “No, nothing so dramatic as that,” Sangria grumbled. “They were laughed at. Humiliated. They were gone by the time I came home. When I got back, some very dangerous-looking vagrants had already moved into my house. They, uh... they tried to get me to stay, but I ran away. All I had were the clothes on my back and my violin.”

  Sangria sniffed once and stopped talking. It was impossible for Amandine to read her roommate’s face from beneath her parasol, so she looked to René again.

  “The Russians sometimes come with me on these errands,” he said quietly. “Sasha happened to spot Sangria in an alley. Marmi and Antonio cared for her until she was better.”

  “I suppose all of my parents' play-acting turned out to be good for something,” Sangria spoke up again. “Although sitting on my head in a dirty little traveling show is hardly the future they had in mind for me.”

  “It will turn around,” René said, trying to comfort her. “Aside from the searches, we are doing much better than we ever had. We eat three times a day now, we get little improvements to our equipment here and there. Don't forget, if we win the competition at the festival, we will be rich.”

  “There's a competition?” Amandine asked just as they came upon the town. René paused, pulled a hammer from his toolkit with a flourish, and tacked a poster to a telephone pole.

  “What did you think all this fuss over the show was for?” Sangria replied, becoming herself again. “What did you think we were headed for Nieuwestad for? The Freedom Festival is in three months, and we have to somehow compose, design, and rehearse an incredible act while scraping together a living along the way!”

  “I am confident that Coronado is onto something,” René said, passing the extra tacks and posters to Amandine while he put up another. “He's the only one of us who has ever had his own show in a real theater. He knows what we need. We just have to get creative and find a way to make it happen.”

  “It's going to be a failure,” Sangria groaned.

  “We have an advantage over many of the performing groups,” he went on. “We stuck together throughout the Depression and the war. Many other groups disbanded or shut down. All we need is... an edge.” He tilted his head in Amandine’s direction.

  Amandine took all of this in while she chewed her bottom lip. There was so much more at stake than just a couple of tutus and tuxedos. She had never been entrusted with a project like this, so before that pervasive, destructive feeling called doubt crept into her mind, she imagined the grandest, most incredible costumes she could. She tried to think about unusual colors and exotic styles that would require a whole new means of dressmaking.

  “Hurry up, bonehead!” Sangria shouted at her. The others had gone ahead of her a little ways, but Amandine could still hear her mumbling. “You see her freeze just now? It's like her brain shorted out.”


  “Mon Dieu, Sangria, shut up,” René muttered.

  René went into the various stores and bought what they needed, while Amandine continued to put up posters and Sangria supervised. People slowed as they passed by to stare at the dark and beautiful performer. As soon as someone’s attention was snared, Amandine would wave and point to the posters she was hanging.

  “MARMI'S MARVELS,” it read, beneath a stylized print of Marmi in a gypsy costume. “SEE FREAKS THAT TERRIFY, EXOTIC DANCES THAT MYSTIFY, ILLUSIONS THAT STUPEFY. TOMORROW NIGHT. 25¢ for children, 35¢ for adults.”

  When they returned to camp, Amandine helped Sasha and Piotr unload the groceries. “What's for supper?”she asked.

  “It had better not be stroganoff.” Sangria elbowed past René to root around the paper bag for her new magazine.

  Piotr grinned mischievously. “For you, zanuda, it will be delightful steak—”

  “Pork shoulder.” René deposited the cheap cut onto the kitchen table.

  Piotr snorted. “A delightful pork shoulder gently cooked to tender perfection in a gourmet mushroom sauce topping a bed of pasta.”

  “In Russia, we call it... stroganoff!” Sasha kissed his fingers dramatically. Everyone within earshot cackled and Sangria stormed off to her trailer in a huff.

  The night went on much as it had the night before, only this time René headed off to scavenge the junkyard while Amandine stayed behind with Coronado to have a look at his suit. He was so particular about the fit of his tuxedo that she must have measured him a dozen times. It had to accommodate certain tricks he wasn't willing to explain to her and even after all of his bellyaching, he wouldn’t relinquish the suit so that she could actually work on it.

  Amandine remembered how her father dealt with picky customers. He would nod, smile, show the client some detailed notes he'd taken, then do whatever he wanted in the end. It always seemed to work for him, she recalled fondly.

  In the morning there was no rush to leave, and Amandine was free to begin her work. When she returned from washing up, breakfast had been cleaned from the kitchen table, and all of the women were using it to sort through piles of clothes. Ludmilla beckoned her over.

  “Can you use any of this?” she asked, guiding her to the table's edge. “These are all of the old clothes we don't need. Some of these have nice lace, buttons or material that can be salvaged. What do you think?”

  Amandine passed her hand over the fabric. The majority of it was horribly worn and stained. However, Ludmilla was right. A gleaming button here or a length of sturdy lace there stood out from the rest of the rags. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, but most of this is no good. I’m going to need something stronger. Something newer.”

  Ludmilla sighed. “We were afraid of that. Ah, well.”

  “We will come up with something,” Chitra said helpfully, returning the clothes to a large laundry basket.

  Amandine took the basket to her shaded folding chair outside of her trailer. She spent most of the morning ripping seams, pulling buttons, adding scraps of colorful fabric to her sewing kit while the others rehearsed for the performance that night.

  Sangria rolled out of bed shortly before lunch time wearing a leotard, dance shoes, and a striped scarf over her hair. Stretching fluidly with her violin in hand, she sulked off into the trees to practice alone. She didn't acknowledge Amandine at all.

  René didn't speak to Amandine all morning either like she had hoped he would. She spotted him crossing the camp several times with a troubled look on his face and black grease all over his hands. She figured that as the only handyman, he must have been extremely busy, so she left him to his work. That didn’t keep her from watching his comings and goings, however, hoping each time he passed that he would stop and talk to her.

  By noontime, Amandine had salvaged all she could from the basket. She was just picking up her workspace when René reappeared, still as filthy as he was before. He hesitated before wordlessly presenting her with some lumpy objects wrapped in his bandana.

  “What's this?” Curious, she lifted the corner of the red paisley cloth.

  “I made you some dishes,” he said quickly and a little too loudly. “Well, that is, I found some dishes in the dump. That is, I found the broken pieces and I...”

  Amandine saw a little white china cup with a rosebud on the side. It had been broken, but then reattached to a completely different blue porcelain cup with the small brass handle from a candlestick fixed to the side. She turned it over in her hands, marveling at how smoothly the pieces fit together.

  René was still fumbling. “I couldn't find any dishes nice enough, so I thought I'd make you a set from the nice pieces I could find...”

  “They’re so beautiful.” She took up the small plate and bowl assembled like a colorful mosaic. “I absolutely love them.”

  “You do?” His shoulders dropped with relief. “That is, I thought I could make it look nice, but as I walked over here, I realized that you are a girl from a wealthy family who wouldn't— shouldn’t eat off of broken dishes... from the dump.”

  On an impulse, she wanted to run into his arms. She didn't care that he was covered in grease and smelled like gasoline. No one had ever made her a gift like this before, and she wanted René to know that she would have chosen his broken dishes over her family’s whole closet of silver. She looked around to see if anyone was watching and found Sasha and Piotr standing side by side, pointing at them. For once they were not arguing, but giggling suspiciously with each other.

  Amandine sighed and set her unique dishes on top of her laundry basket. “Have you been working on those all morning?”

  “Ah, no,” he said. “I made those last night. I wanted to make sure the glue was dry before I gave them to you. Let me show you what I’ve been working on this morning.”

  He led her around the back of Coronado's truck where the Illusionist was sitting on an overturned crate, surrounded by a half-circle of candle stubs. He glanced up at the pair.

  “I think I’ve got it,” Coronado said proudly. With a flourish of his hand, he touched a wick, and a tiny yellow flame popped from his fingertip.

  René nodded, impressed. “Now you just have to throw it.” He wiped his black hands together, and they unexpectedly burst into two fireballs. He yelped and beat the flames out on his pants.

  Coronado smirked. “That's what you get for trying to show off.” He took René's hands and determined that he wasn't seriously hurt. Shooing him away, he said, “Fireballs give me an idea, though. Leave the magic to me and show the little lady what you’ve been working on.”

  He pointed at a giant mess of tools, wood, and scrap metal. In the midst of this chaos stood a junk-contraption that Amandine was very familiar with.

  It was a treadle sewing machine, but it was unlike one she had ever seen before. The legs were mismatched and the treadle itself was fashioned from an overturned serving tray. The polished machine was set snugly into the table which had been rebuilt using wood from an orange crate.

  “It's not finished,” René explained, going to a bucket of water to wash his hands. “The table was split and completely rotted, so I replaced it. I replaced the old bent and broken legs, too. The machine itself was rusted solid, and that's what I was working on all morning. Just a lot of scrubbing and oiling. It's still missing several parts... like the belt that turns the wheel and... a little piece that goes inside the bottom there.” He chuckled. “I don't even know what it's called in French, let alone English. I pulled it out and it crumbled to dust.”

  Amandine gave the stop motion a turn, and the machine moved flawlessly, making a familiar soft cha-cha-cha-cha sound that reminded her of happier times. She pressed the treadle with her foot, watching the wheel make several smooth rotations.

  The combined joy she felt over the dishes and the sewing machine was so strong she thought she would burst, so she took a deep breath to calm herself. Even after five measured breaths, she was still quivering with elation, and her silence was be
ginning to make René nervous.

  “Thank you, René,” she finally said. “I’m sorry for not saying so right away, but I’m speechless.” She touched the table top which had been sanded and oiled, yet still bore the name of a fruit farm and a blossoming orange tree. “It’s incredible. I bet nobody else in the whole world has a machine like this.”

  “I can make a belt easily enough.” René rubbed his neck. “But I don't know where I can find the right... thing for the machine. If I knew what it looked like, I might be able to make the part...”

  She examined the throat plate and determined what was missing. “You don't need to worry. It's a little metal spool for the thread called a bobbin. I have a bunch in my sewing kit.”

  She could hardly wait to use her new machine, but she wanted to spend time with René even more. “Why don't you take a break?” She pointed to the lawn chairs by Sangria's trailer. “I’ll get your lunch for you. Go and sit in the shade.”

  Amandine picked up his dented tin dishes and bounced away before he could protest. He wasn’t used to resting while a project still lay unfinished, but he did as she said. He tilted his chair against her trailer and pulled his hat down over his eyes. He had just begun to drift off when a shadow passed over him.

  Sangria glowered with her fists on her hips. “Just what do you think you're doing, lazing around by my trailer?”

  René dropped his hat over his eyes again. “Waiting for Amandine to bring me my lunch.”

  “The way you two have practically married after two days makes me sick.” Sangria tipped him out of his seat with her bow. “I can't wait until we get to Nieuwestad, and we’re rid of her.”

  Amandine spent the rest of the afternoon making small repairs and alterations to the group's costumes by hand. She was appalled to see that Chitra’s costume was held shut with safety pins, so she made an emergency trip to the five and dime for a zipper. On her way back, she passed a crate of tattered, used books in front of the booksellers. The bright yellow spine of a solitary Rogue Rider volume stood out to her like a beacon, stuffed between a cookbook and a repair manual. Half of the cover was missing, and she recalled that this particular tale ended in a cliffhanger, but she paid the cashier a penny for it and left the book inside René’s tent for him to find later.