by Amanda Davis
“I’m…I’m driving you crazy?! You listen to me,” she said. “You wouldn’t even be here if it weren’t for me.”
“Right,” I said. “You’ve made that very clear. And you know what? You know what? I don’t care. I. Don’t. Care.”
“Oh, you don’t.”
“No.” I sighed. “I want you to leave me alone.”
“Well, wouldn’t that be convenient,” she said. “Wouldn’t that be easy. Then you could just drift along in your little dream world, right? And where would that get you?”
“I don’t care,” I said. “I’m serious. I don’t.”
“Well, you will, you ungrateful bitch,” she said. “And if you think I’m just going to prance off into the sunset after all I’ve done for you, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Oh, come on,” I said, but I had never seen her quite this angry. Her whole body swelled. I tried to take some of it back by reaching out to touch her, but she jerked her hand away. “How soon they forget,” she said, and disappeared.
I was way up in the nosebleed seats. I looked down and saw tiny groups of people clustered together on the sawdust floor talking and hugging. I rose to leave.
“I’m not leaving you,” she said from somewhere behind me.
“Okay already,” I said, and made my way down.
Later I found Charlie and we lay on the ground looking at the sky and passing a cigarette back and forth. We were quiet for a while and then I asked Charlie what I’d wanted to ask him for so long.
“Do you know why Starling wanted to die?”
He took a long drag and twirled the cigarette between his fingers. He exhaled in one long rush of filmy gray. It was quiet except for us and the occasional laugh from the trailers. There was a little wind and you could hear the tent creak every once in a while. He was silent so long that I thought he hadn’t heard me.
“Why did you want to die?” he said finally.
I thought about that and hunted for the real answer, my mind clean and organized. I took the cigarette from his twirling fingers and twirled it in my own, watching the smoke zig and zag, clouding the stars.
“Because there was no more light,” I said, and turned to see if he understood. “You know?”
He shook his head, stretched, and leaned back on his hands. I handed him the cigarette and he freed one arm to take it and rolled over on his side, facing me. “Not exactly,” he said. “But I’m sure she did.”
“But she knew how much you loved her,” I said. Something deep down and raw crossed his face quickly and was gone. “She knew that.”
He flopped onto his back and shrugged. “If there’s no light, can you feel that?” he said. “And if you can’t feel it, then how can you be sure?”
I considered that for a long time. I thought about the voice telling her over and over to end it all. And I thought about that darkness, its impenetrable density, and how Starling had let light in for me.
I closed my eyes and still I saw light. I was grateful for it. I told Charlie that.
He nodded. “Me too,” he said.
I thought about the fat girl then, but I didn’t say anything. I didn’t even know what I would have said, just that I knew she was watching from somewhere.
“Do you know why Native Americans prefer round structures?” Charlie asked. His hands were tucked under his head now and he stared at the sky above us.
“What?” I sat up on one elbow. “What did you say?”
“Do you know why Indians prefer round structures, round buildings?”
“Why?”
“There are no shadows in a round room. No corners for the spirits to hide in.”
I waited for something more, but it didn’t come. He just watched the sky and then closed his eyes and was quiet long enough that I thought he’d fallen asleep.
“Live a round life,” he said finally, softly, eyes closed. “Live a round life and you have no place to hide from yourself and nothing to run from.”
His voice was hopeful and I thought about that. A round life. “I have corners,” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “I know.” He opened his eyes and sighed. Then he sat up, so he was looking down at me. “Listen, there’s something you need to know.”
“What?”
Charlie didn’t answer. I sat up so that I faced him. He pulled his knees close and rested his chin on them. I saw the dark circles under his eyes.
He gave a long low whistle and smiled nervously. “I didn’t realize this was going to be so hard.”
“What is it?” I said, my voice barely a whisper. My heart had begun to pound.
“I suppose you know about what happened back in Georgia?”
“You mean with Yael and the fire?”
He was staring at his lap. He gave a short laugh and plucked a few blades of grass. “There are no secrets on a back lot,” he said, opening his fingers so that the grass tumbled out. “Yeah.”
“Well, only some of it.” I was confused now. “I mean I heard a little bit.”
“Well, we’re clean now, you should know that. I should have told you right off. I meant to. I came to see you that day, to do it, but then I didn’t.” He paused. “I don’t know…I couldn’t. But. Well, after today…I mean, you have taken care of yourself. You seem to be in with people. So I figured maybe you could tell them, okay? That neither of us is using and we haven’t in months.”
I blinked. “Using what?”
He looked up. His face was more fragile than I’d noticed before. It felt like the first time he’d looked me in the eye since Gleryton.
He took a deep breath. “Smack,” he said, after a minute. “Heroin. I’d gotten into it again in Gleryton, but I’m clean now. We’re clean. New leaves all around, you know. No more stealing, no more lies. I’m a new man and so is Marco.”
“Oh,” I said. It was the only thing in my head. I stared at the tattoos on his hands, at the one that said PRINCE and the one that said FLAME.
“Was that why Yael burned down Marco’s trailer?”
Charlie’s face sprang into a tight, unhappy smile. “You know,” he said. “I didn’t really think about how hard it was going to be to come back here. It’s the only place I’ve ever wanted to be, but somehow I forgot completely what it was like, you know? I mean how people talk and all the bullshit—” He was ripping out clumps of grass now, tossing them in a pile beside him.
He stopped himself, and sighed. “Sorry,” he said, not looking at me. “I’m not mad at you, it’s just—nothing is ever as easy as it should be, you know? I mean even the simplest things end up so complicated.”
He seemed to deflate then. He pulled his knees to his chest again. He looked scared. I thought of the first time I’d visited Fartlesworth, of Charlie’s electric, infectious joy in the big top. How grown-up I’d thought he was then. And how at Clark’s I’d believed he was the only person in the world who could see me. How I’d listened to his every word, tried to smoke like him, to move like him. How I’d thought he had all the answers.
And then I remembered him nodding off by the Dumpster.
When I looked at him now, I saw what was left: a haggard, skinny shell of a guy. A broken kid not that much older than me.
“I told you,” the fat girl said.
“You told me what?” I walked slowly towards the costume trailer, my head aching with so many things. I was calm. The world had turned over and I was still standing and each day was going to follow the next. It was as simple as that.
“I told you all along you couldn’t trust him and now you understand how I was trying to protect you.”
I didn’t answer her. I didn’t look at her.
“He’s a loser. He always has been.”
When I reached the trailer I stopped. “Go away and leave me alone,” I said, and she turned and left.
I paused at the door and listened to the laughter coming from within. I thought about walking farther. Just walking and walking and never stopping. Instead I wen
t in.
Wilma was sitting at the table with Grouper, a bottle of whiskey between them. Jim leaned against a stack of trunks, giggling. “Hi,” I said, and they all stopped as though they hadn’t noticed me come in.
A look passed from Wilma to Grouper to Jim and back to Grouper. “What?” I said. “Do you want me to go?”
“No,” Grouper said, as Wilma nodded.
Jim smiled and reached for the whiskey. “Here, luv,” he said. “I believe my ace groom deserves a drink!”
I took the bottle and sipped from it. The taste was fire but the warmth was nice.
“Can we trust her?” Grouper asked Wilma, who gave me an assessing look, then winked at me.
“Sure.”
Jim made a grand sweeping gesture with his glass. “The distinguished Mr. Grouper, here, begs the hand of a certain lady.”
I must have looked confused because Wilma laughed and used her elbow to turn Grouper towards me. “Grouper’s going to ask Gerry to marry him!” she said. “And it’s about damn time!”
“I was going to do it after she sang,” Grouper confessed, all drunken smile. “But then she didn’t sing. And after today…” He ran his hand through his thinning hair. “I don’t want to wait, really.” Then he fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a ring box and shook it as if to make some point. “I think I’m ready.”
At this Jim and Wilma cracked up. It was all a little much for me; my mood of equanimity had ruptured into sleepiness and confusion. I hadn’t even known Grouper was dating Gerry.
I must have said it aloud, because that made Wilma and Jim laugh even harder.
“Twelve years,” Grouper said softly. “I haven’t always been true, I admit it. But off and on it’s been twelve years.”
“Drink to that!” Jim said. And the bottle was passed around again.
Later, after I’d had enough whiskey to make me tipsy, Grouper stumbled home, and Jim and Wilma stumbled off to Jim’s trailer. I lay awake in the dark and listened to my thoughts running this way and that, smashing into each other. Charlie with a needle in his arm. Starling listening to God. Me on the pay phone next to one of those guys. Who had no corners? I wondered.
The fat girl stood by the foot of my bed staring at me. She looked sad and furious. I turned over and faced the wall.
Charlie hadn’t really seen me, I knew now. He’d been looking elsewhere.
And then I slept. In my sleep, I walked to my old house, walked up the driveway and onto the porch, paused to touch the stone wall of the place, then tried the front door.
It was locked.
SEVENTEEN
SUMMER came. The crowds were bigger, the nut was good, and Elaine was in a generous mood, smiling at anyone who passed her. Rod had stopped coming by since the day he’d wanted me to stay and talk to him and I had chosen to go find Charlie instead. Ever since then, he’d hung back, kept to himself, hadn’t sought me out.
And even though part of me wanted nothing more in the whole world than to go find him and take his hands and look into his eyes and figure this whole thing out together, I hadn’t. I’d left him alone. I don’t know whether I was more afraid that he liked me or that he didn’t. But I didn’t know what to do about either of those things, so, like the brave soul that I was, I avoided him.
The fat girl and I were all angles with each other. We were on speaking terms, but just barely. She didn’t understand why I wanted to be left alone. Why I wanted to pretend I had no past.
But, of course, if I had no past, then there was no fat girl. And she didn’t like that one bit. Gleryton was close. One day the Fartlesworth Circus would pull into town and if I wasn’t with the show, where would I be? I just wasn’t quite able to let myself think about it, and it was all the fat girl had on her mind.
In West Virginia, we learned there might be a hole in the schedule, and everyone started talking about driving to the Delaware shore. Even though it was a few hours away, the beach seemed worth the trip, and the excitement was contagious. I heard Stanley and the other cooks talking about it in the pie car. I heard the canvas crew talking about it. Even Wilma, who’d been strange and dreamy since reuniting with Jim, seemed to buzz with energy at the idea of lying on a sandy beach.
“Do you tan?” she asked me.
I was sitting at the table of our trailer with my morning coffee. I nodded.
“I don’t,” she said. “But I have a wonderful hat. Look.”
I turned and she posed in a gigantic straw sombrero. I gave her the thumbs-up sign, but in reality all the talk made me homesick for something I’d lost long ago.
I hadn’t been to the ocean since the summer before my dad died, when we’d rented a cottage right on the shore. My mother spent the whole vacation lying on a towel in the sand reading thick paperbacks, her body carefully lathered and lotioned. My dad ran into the waves with me, swimming out far enough that my feet couldn’t touch the sandy floor. We bodysurfed, letting the waves break just over our heads and carry us in. We tried racing this way, riding them over and over until my lips were blue with cold even though the day and the water were so warm.
And then we ran up for lunch, me and my dad, our appetites enormous from all the activity, and, still in our wet sandy suits, we made huge sandwiches with every crazy thing we could find: peanut butter and tomato and hot sauce and sprouts and carrot slices and potato chips. Monster sandwiches, we called them: each one a towering monster of disgusting combinations, a joke just between us. And we sat out on the deck overlooking the sea and ate them, comparing notes on the strange incompatible mixture of flavors. It was my father’s favorite ritual, these crazy sandwiches, and it drove my mother insane.
“Disgusting,” she muttered under her breath, her mouth pressed in a thin angry line. She’d never approved of such ruckus, such extremes. It bothered her in some deep and exhausting way.
So it was our secret, our ritual, to do when we’d played hard and she still slept in the sun, on the sand. To enjoy before she caught us and was annoyed.
“You don’t have to go.”
Wilma’s voice yanked me back to the morning. “Huh?” I said.
“If it’s going to make you so moody, you don’t have to go. Jim and I will go without you.”
“No.” I tucked it all away. “No, I think it will be fun.”
Later that morning, I was sitting out in the open air with Bluebell and Olivia. Jim had gone into town to run errands, and I was taking a break from my duties and spending it tossing peanuts and watching the bulls try to catch them. Olivia swatted the nuts down, then flung her trunk out to retrieve them. Bluebell sometimes caught one or two, but only when Olivia batted a nut in her direction.
Someone approached from behind. I must have heard footsteps, but they didn’t register, so when I was tapped on the shoulder I jumped, sending peanuts tumbling to the ground.
“Jesus fucking Christ,” I said. My heart was pounding. The bulls began to scoop the nuts and I turned to find a startled, very toothy Rod. “You scared the hell out of me.”
“Sorry.” Rod’s hand shot up to cover his mouth, then fluttered down to rest awkwardly on his hip. He was wearing a new pair of shorts, a new blue T-shirt—I could still see the creases. He smiled at me with a full set of teeth, but his expression was less one of joy than of pain, or great humiliation.
“Wow,” I said. And it was surprising. With teeth, Rod looked more like Hugo, rugged and handsome, his features evened out and normalized by the addition of what had been missing. “When did you go get teeth? They look so great. Did they hurt?”
At this, his expression relaxed somewhat, though his smile still had a stressed-out quality, as though if his mouth were eyes, they’d be weeping from trying not to blink.
“Do you like them?” I said. “Do they feel strange?”
Rod’s hand shot up and fluttered down again. His tongue ran itself along the surface of his new teeth and then he looked at the ground and began kicking it with his left sneaker. “Yeah,” he said to hi
s feet.
I took a deep breath. I was nervous. Part of me wanted to tell him I’d missed him. “How’ve you been?” I said.
He sighed and both hands came up to gesture in air circles, but he was still staring at the ground. He shifted his weight from one leg to the other. I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, but I knew I’d said the wrong thing.
Just then Bluebell let loose a huge steamy load, which tumbled to the ground with a plop. I was grateful for something to do. I walked a few feet, patted Bluebell on the belly, then picked up my shovel.
“Aw Christ,” Rod said, but it was more under his breath than to me. “Annabelle?”
“What is up with you?” I didn’t stop filling the wheelbarrow. I knew what was up. All the things I’d been afraid of. And now, in a secret part of my stomach, I knew which one was right.
“I thought it would be different.”
“What would be?”
“I thought you might…I thought I would…I thought everything would…” he trailed off in silence and I stopped scooping, put my shovel down, and improvised.
“Whatever you want to tell me,” I said, “maybe it should wait. Or maybe you don’t need to. It’s okay. Or it will be. Everything works itself out, you know? Everything works itself out and what will be will be and you shouldn’t worry about it.” I was reaching now, I could feel it, but I didn’t know what else to do. Instinctively I felt that if he finished any one of his sentences, I might take off running.
“Your new teeth look really terrific. You look terrific. I need to wheel this stuff down to the gully before it makes me pass out. Okay?”
He nodded, one slow, shameful jerk of the neck. Then he slowly raised his head and met my gaze. I was unprepared for what I saw then, for the seriousness, the intensity of what I saw, of what he wanted, and felt.
Me. He wanted me.
I swallowed and left him there, wheeling the poo away as fast as I could. All the time mouthing it: Oh shit, oh man, oh shit. Those words a mantra for the near hysteria bubbling up in me.