Touch of the Clown

by Glen Huser

  “Edwin. Your blood pressure.”

  I am afraid to move. I can feel the rough sur-face of the rug against my stinging cheek, the smooth linoleum against my fingertips.

  “You get to your room now, and don’t come out.” Daddy is still shouting.

  “I want Barbara,” Livvy howls.

  “You leave her be,” Grandma calls up. “She’s been a deceitful, wicked girl.”

  “I want Barbara,” Livvy is chanting as I get up and make my way past Daddy, standing there, his open hand shaking. I ease the door closed and then crawl onto my bed and hide my face in a pillow. A pain shoots along the inside of my ear. I am crying like Livvy cries, as if every-thing inside me is broken and will never get fixed. I cry until it seems like there is no more moisture in my body. In the quiet time that follows, I keep my eyes closed so that I am in a kind of velvet blackness, a cocoon of darkness.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  It is dark when I wake up. The ache in my ear is still there and my face feels hot and puffy. I ease myself off the bed and pull the light cord. For a minute, I’m afraid to look at myself in the little oval mirror on the wall across from my bed. I run a comb through my hair first, let the night air brush against my face from the window. The street is quiet. An old man walks a scruffy little dog, white with black spots. Under a streetlight, a woman with rhinestones on her shoes shifts from foot to foot, smoking a cigarette.

  When I look at myself in the mirror, I see the sides of my face have begun to darken with bruises. In the movies, beaten women wear dark glasses. I will need to wear a sack over my head.

  I wonder where everyone is. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator from downstairs, adding a kind of throb to the rise and fall of television talk. Where is Livvy?

  She’s asleeep in her room, curled into a quilt on the floor, her thumb in her mouth, Bingo ball rolled off into a corner. She stirs as I watch her, and makes a little moan, like a kitten. I think of her trudging the fifteen blocks home from downtown, frightened, crying, her clothes soiled. In a way, my sore cheeks make it easier to think about this.

  Downstairs, Daddy has fallen asleep, spilling the sherry that was left in his glass down his shirt. His mouth is open. When I look at his hands, resting palms up on the couch, I feel something hot and acidy rising inside me. For a minute I think I am going to throw up, but I close my eyes and it goes away.

  Grandma is asleep in her chair, too. A cigarette on her ashtray has burned itself into a complete ash-ghost of itself. She snores softly, her head fallen to one side. On the TV, an old blackand-white movie flickers.

  It is the Barbara Stanwyck movie about the Titanic. We watched it a couple of nights ago. I sit down for a minute on the edge of the sofa, very carefully so as not to wake anyone. The ship has already hit the iceberg and the captain is telling Barbara Stanwyck’s husband, “I’m ordering all women and children into the boats.”

  “You look fat and funny in those lifejackets. Like Tweedledum and Tweedledee,” the father says to his children. The night is riddled with the sound of foghorns, sirens wailing, the creaking of the lifeboats being lowered. A cute college boy, trying to disentangle the ropes, plunges into the sea and is pulled into the lifeboat. The Titanic sits in the still, black ocean, nosing slowly into the ice floes, and I think of the people moving up the great staircase and along the deck looking for lifeboats when there are no lifeboats left.

  Maybe things could be worse than they are. I’ve lost Mama but children on the Titanic lost parents, and since then there have been wars, with children losing everything. I think of Jane Eyre, how things were so awful before she learned how to cope at the girls’ school. The thing is to be strong and do what you have to do, to know what you have to do.

  Right now I have to see Cosmo, no matter what Daddy has said about me leaving my room. And I should call Nathan. Maybe I will be able to call him from Cosmo’s apartment, but if Cosmo isn’t home I’ll have to use a pay phone.

  I ease Grandma’s purse away from where it rests on a TV tray by her ashtray. There’s not much in it: a couple of bills, some dead lighters and a few coins. I take the quarters.

  The clock on the funeral home shows that it s nearly ninethirty. The light is on in Cosmo s livingroom window, but when I tap on the door, there is no answer. I knock again and I’m almost ready to go back down the stairs when the door opens. Cosmo looks rumpled, as if he has just gotten out of bed. He is holding his sides and coughing, and he starts to smile at me but then he gasps.

  “Barbara Stanwyck! Are you okay?”

  All of the things I want to say stick in my throat, allowing only a great sob to get by, and I feel tears streaming down my face.

  “Hey,” Cosmo says, wrapping his arms around me. I can feel how thin he is, all the bones of his body, and his coughing begins again. Great racking coughs making a duet with my own sobs.

  “Come in,” he says. “We make quite a pair. Tell me what happened.” He runs water into his little green tea kettle and puts it on the stove to heat.

  My voice stops every few minutes for a sob break as I tell him. I feel his thin, long hand against my shoulder, massaging the tightness. He removes it to stifle a cough.

  “I stopped by your house,” he says, “but your dad didn’t want to talk to me, and he got quite angry when Livvy wanted to invite me in. Sent her upstairs and that made her cry again. I thought I was making matters worse so I left.”

  “It was all my fault,” I say.

  Cosmo has finished making tea. It smells like apples and cinnamon. He is very quiet as he swirls the brew in his cup, and his eyes are angry.

  “Never think that,” he says. “Unlucky things happen sometimes. It was unlucky that we were gone when Livvy came to find us.” Some of the anger has left his eyes and he slumps in his chair as if he is very tired.

  I sip the tea, the warmth seeping into me like a gentle wave.

  “Barbara, I want to report what’s happened here to the police. Do you know what I’m saying? You are a child. You and Livvy are children, and you’re being robbed of something that’s rightfully yours.”

  “Robbed?”

  “Robbed of your chance to be a child. And physically abused. No one has the right to hit you like that.”

  “But what will happen?”

  “They’ll likely take you and Livvy away and put you in a home where you won’t have to worry about the things you’ve had to worry about. And Livvy will get some medical attention.”

  “Leave Daddy and Grandma?”

  “It will be better.”

  “What if it isn’t?”

  “It has to be.” A cough seizes him, dry and rattling something inside.

  “The police for you; a doctor for me.”

  “A doctor?”

  “I think my pneumonia’s come back. Damn,” he says. “And I was feeling so good earlier today. Must have overdone it. So, what do you say? I can pick up the phone right now.”

  “It’s the first time he’s hit me.”

  “He didn’t hit you, Barbara. He beat you. I think the police might call it aggravated assault or something like that. They have big words for the bigger crimes. But we’re also talking about neglect.”

  The tears stream off my face into the tea.

  “I don’t know what to do. What if Livvy and I are put in different places? I don’t think Livvy could get along without me.”

  “I think they’d try to keep you together.”

  Cosmo is coughing again. “I’m going to have to get to the hospital,” he says. “It’s getting worse.” He has come around behind me and I feel both of his hands on my shoulders. “I’m going to ask you to do something very brave. I’m going to ask you to see the police and tell them everything you’ve told me. Sometimes it’s easier not to face things, and you’ve made it easy for your dad and your grandma not to face things. It’s harder and braver to stare our demons in the eyes and say I’m not going to let you get me. I know, Barbara.”

  “Okay.” My vo
ice doesn’t sound brave. It is hardly more than a whisper.

  It doesn’t take the police long to come. There are two of them. One for Grandma and one for Daddy, I wonder, or one for Livvy and one for me. Cosmo does most of the talking between bouts of coughing. But the older policeman asks me some questions and gets me to turn my face full toward Cosmo’s kitchen light.

  “I think we’ll get both of you to the hospital. I want a doctor’s report on Barbara here, and you might as well come along if you need to get down there anyway.”

  It is a long night filled with questions and forms, and someone taking pictures of my face. “Here, kid, grab yourself a pop,” the younger policeman says to me in the hospital waiting room. He gives me a dollar coin and gestures to a pop machine in the hall. Beside the machine there is a row of pay telephones. I fish one of Grandma’s quarters out of my pocket along with the flap from Nathan’s cigarette package, and dial the number.

  “Yeah?” It’s a woman’s voice.

  “Is Nathan there?”

  “Na-than.” I can hear party noise in the back-ground. “Nathan, one of your girlfriends. You don’t mind me sayin’ that, do you? We jes like to tease little Nathan a bit.”

  “H-Hello.”

  “It’s Barbara.”

  “Hey. Where are you?”

  He listens while I go over, once again, the events of the afternoon and evening. I manage to do it without crying, although I have to pause and catch my breath a couple of times.

  “I’m coming down,” he says. “I’ll bring your

  “I don’t know how long I’ll be here.”

  “See you in a few minutes.”

  I wonder how he’ll get to the downtown emergency ward. The young policeman is watching me as I hang up the phone and get my can of pop.

  “Calling home?”

  “No. Just a friend.”

  “Constable Beauchamps and I’ll be heading over to your house to talk to your dad, so it’s probably a good idea not to call him.”

  “I won’t.”

  When I am through seeing the doctor, Nathan is sitting in one of the mustard-colored vinyl chairs in the waiting room, with my survival bag beside him.

  “I b-borrowed my friend’s bike,” he says.

  Cosmo comes back into the waiting room and leaves some papers at one of the desks. “Hey, guy–good to see you,” he says to Nathan, giving his shoulder a squeeze. “Looks like they’re going to keep me here for awhile. Means I’m going to have to track down a friend of mine to take over the workshop for a few days. Maybe you can get back in, Barbara, once things settle down.” The coughing seems to grab Cosmo and bend him in two. An orderly comes along with a wheelchair and Cosmo lowers himself into it.

  “Keep an eye on this girl, Nathan,” he says. He turns to me. “And you–just keep being as strong as you have been tonight, and do what’s right for you and Livvy. I’ll be thinking about you.

  “I will, and you–” But the orderly is wheeling Cosmo away before I can finish.

  It is close to one o’clock when Constable Beauchamps says we are finished. Nathan and I have practically fallen asleep over word-search puzzles, and the police offer to put his bike in the trunk of the cruiser and drop him off on our way. I am to be placed, at least temporarily, with a family on the south side.

  “Will Livvy be coming, too?”

  “If your dad and your gram are still passed out, most likely tonight. If they’re… functional… we’ll wait until tomorrow to sort it all out.”

  Nathan whispers to me, “Give me a call tomorrow,” and squeezes my hand when the cruiser stops to let him out.

  A full moon floats over the latticed steelwork of the bridge spanning the river as we head to the south side. Somehow I feel as far away from myself as the moon.

  Maybe this is what it is like to go beyond your death. I look down from the night sky and see a police car moving along the pavement rib-boned with the yellow glow of streetlights, pulling into the driveway of a big, modern house in a subdivision. It is the only building in the crescent with its lights on.

  My throat is dry and I feel an ache across my chest as we get out of the car. Someone is waiting at the door. We are halfway up the walk when I turn and dart back to the cruiser.

  “Just a minute,” I say. “I forgot my survival bag.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I am in a basement room with little windows high up in the wall. It is a room of white wicker and frilly, flowered cloth–the same cloth on the curtains and the bedspread and the cushions on the wicker chairs. On the walls there are pictures with wicker frames, and a mirror framed to match. There’s a little wicker shelf crowded with tiny glass animals.

  For a minute I think I must be dreaming. Then I remember. My face, when I look at it in the mirror, has puffed up even more, and one of my eyes is almost swollen shut. The other is red from crying, I guess, and reading late into the night. My survival bag is by the night table, where Jane Eyre lies turned over at the spot I left off.

  Someone is hovering at the door.

  “Are you awake, dear?”

  It’s Mrs. Hetherington. “Call me Auntie Sophie,” she said last night.

  “You were sleeping so soundly I didn’t want to wake you after all you went through yesterday. But I thought you’d like to know that Olivia is on her way over. She’ll be here in a few minutes.”

  “Livvy?”

  “Of course it may be just temporary, but Harold and I would be thrilled to have two little girls again. Our own, Luanne and Laverne, are grown up and moved away. This here was Luanne’s room. Mind you, I’ve fixed it up a bit since Luanne left. She had pictures of that—who was it now?–Donny Osmond, I think, all over the walls. If you look you’ll still see pinpricks where she tacked them, but you don’t notice them too much with that small pattern on the wallpaper. That’s her glass collection.”

  Auntie Sophie is not even as tall as I am. As she talks, she moves around the room, straightening the bottom of the bedspread, rearranging the little glass animals on the wicker shelf, adjusting the curtains, smoothing with her fingertips a couple of the pinpricks Luanne left in the wallpaper. Her smile is outlined in orange lipstick.

  “Now, here I’ve been yammering on and you must be starved to death. Harold made up a pile of pancakes and sausages and there’s still some in the oven. We ate hours ago. Harold–Uncle Hal–is an early riser even if he is semi-retired and only works afternoons now. Up at the crack of dawn. To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t mind having a wee sleep-in once in awhile. Gracious, I think I hear a car now. It’s either Harold back with the groceries, or else your sister. You get dressed and come right up, honey. Your little sister is going to want to see you’re here, I’m sure.”

  Livvy has been crying, but she has been won over for the moment with an Oreo-cookie blizzard from the Dairy Queen, which she clutches in both hands. An ordinary man in a suit is with her. He is carrying a large cardboard box.

  “You must be Barbara,” he says. “I’m Jim Beresford. I’ve gathered together some of your things–and Olivia’s.”

  “Barbara,” Livvy squeals when she sees me. “Daddy’s crying,” she tells me in a rush, “and he says he’s going to kill himself, and Grandma says they might as well kill her, too. Do you want some of my blizzard?”

  “No. It’s okay.”

  “Can we go home?”

  “Oh, no, honey!” Auntie Sophie has a hold on Uncle Hal who has shown up with a bag of groceries in one hand. “You’ve only just got here, and we’re going to have such a good time.”

  Uncle Hal says, “You come on in and see my model train set-up. Won a couple of prizes with it. If you’re real careful you can look after the switch that makes them stop and go. Would you like that, Olivia?” Uncle Hal is a tall man with comfortable-looking wrinkles. He ends every-thing he says with a little snort of a laugh. “If you stay for awhile, you could even help me set up another track.”

  Jim Beresford tells the Hetheringtons that he’d
like to have a word alone with me.

  “Why, sure thing.” Auntie Sophie ushers us into a den off the living room.

  “I want to stay with Barbara.” Livvy looks defiantly at the circle of grown-ups.

  “Now, what about that train switch?” says Uncle Hal. “I was really hoping you could figure out how to make it go. It’s tricky to keep an eye on everything and keep track of the switch, too.”

  “I can make it go.” Livvy slurps the last of her blizzard with noisy, sucking sounds through her straw. She dances from foot to foot.

  “You’d better go to the bathroom,” I remind her.

  “No, I don’t need to. I’m going to see the trains.”

  With the door to the den closed, Jim Beresford takes a file out of a briefcase.

  “Hows your face?”

  “Ugly.”

  “It’ll look a lot better in a few days.”

  “Hows Daddy?”

  “I won’t lie to you. He was pretty torn up. We’re going to give him a chance to turn things around. He’s agreed to go, for a month, to a treatment center for alcoholics. We tried to convince your grandma to go, too, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with it so we’ll have to put her into a nursing home for awhile. She’s pretty run down, doesn’t seem to have been eating properly for a long time. Won’t acknowledge she has a drinking problem.”

  “Will we ever be back with Daddy?”

  “It really depends on him. If the treatment program is successful…” As he talks, he writes things on forms from the folder. “I think he’s truly sorry for what he did to you, but that doesn’t make it okay, and there’s been a lot of neglect. You’ll find the Hetheringtons are very kind. They’ve taken in children before for the department.”

  “Do they know about…about Livvy’s problem?”

  Jim nods. “And, actually, Sophie worked as a registered nurse before she was married, so I think she can handle that. Olivia strikes me as the kind of youngster who has a lot of resilience. I think she’ll fit in fine with the Hetheringtons.

  “And me?”

  Jim looks up from his forms. “You’re more guarded,” he says. “But you’re used to accommodating people and I think that will help you through…this transition. I hope that, well, that you can quit being an adult for awhile and enjoy the Hetheringtons. They’re dying to look after both of you, but that may be hard for you to accept when you’ve been doing all of the looking after on your own. Give it a try?”