The Stories of Richard Bausch

by Richard Bausch

  “I emit enzymes that prevent people like you from seeing that I’m a marriageable young man.”

  “I’m too relaxed to tell,” she said, and touched his shoulder. A plain affectionate moment that gave him tossing nights and fever.

  Because of the traffic, he’s late to the birthday party. He gets out of the car and two men come down to greet him. He keeps his face turned away, remembering too late the breath mints in his pocket.

  “Jesus,” one of the men says, “look at this. Hey, who ordered the cake? I’m not paying for the cake.”

  “The cake stays,” Tandolfo says.

  “What does he mean, it stays? Is that a trick?”

  They’re both looking at him. The one spoken to must be the birthday boy’s father—he’s wearing a party cap that says DAD. He has long, dirty-looking strands of brown hair jutting out from the cap, and there are streaks of sweaty grit on the sides of his face. “So you’re the Great Tandolfo,” he says, extending a meaty red hand. “Isn’t it hot in that makeup?”

  “No, sir.”

  “We’ve been playing volleyball.”

  “You’ve exerted yourselves.”

  They look at him. “What do you do with the cake?” the one in the DAD cap asks.

  “Cake’s not part of the show, actually.”

  “You just carry it around with you?”

  The other man laughs. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a smiley face on the chest. “This ought to be some show,” he says.

  They all make their way across the lawn, to the porch of the house. It’s a big party, bunting everywhere and children gathering quickly to see the clown.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” says the man in the DAD cap. “I give you Tandolfo the Great.”

  Tandolfo isn’t ready yet. He’s got his cases open, but he needs a table to put everything on. The first trick is where he releases the bird; he’ll finish with the best trick, in which the rabbit appears as if from a pan of flames. This always draws a gasp, even from the adults: the fire blooms in the pan, down goes the “lid”—it’s the rabbit’s tight container—the latch is tripped, and the skin of the lid lifts off. Voilà! Rabbit. The fire is put out by the fireproof cage bottom. He’s gotten pretty good at making the switch, and if the crowd isn’t too attentive—as children often are not—he can perform certain sleight-of-hand tricks with some style. But he needs a table, and be needs time to set up.

  The whole crowd of children is seated in front of their parents, on either side of the doorway into the house. Tandolfo is standing on the porch, his back to the stairs, and he’s been introduced.

  “Hello boys and girls,” he says, and bows. “Tandolfo needs a table.”

  “A table,” one of the women says. The adults simply regard him. He sees light sweaters, shapely hips, and wild hair; he sees beer cans in tight fists, heavy jowls, bright ice-blue eyes. A little row of faces, and one elderly face. He feels more inebriated than he likes, and tries to concentrate.

  “Mommy, I want to touch him,” one child says.

  “Look at the cake,” says another, who gets up and moves to the railing on Tandolfo’s right and trains a new pair of shiny binoculars on the car. “Do we get some cake?”

  “There’s cake,” says the man in the DAD cap. “But not that cake. Get down, Ethan.”

  “I want that cake.”

  “Get down. This is Teddy’s birthday.” “Mommy, I want to touch him.”

  “I need a table, folks. I told somebody that over the telephone.”

  “He did say he needed a table. I’m sorry,” says a woman who is probably the birthday boy’s mother. She’s quite pretty, leaning in the door frame with a sweater tied to her waist.

  “A table,” says still another woman. Tandolfo sees the birthmark on her mouth, which looks like a stain. He thinks of this woman as a child in school, with this difference from other children, and his heart goes out to her.

  “I need a table,” he says to her, his voice as gentle as he can make it.

  “What’s he going to do, perform an operation?” says DAD.

  It amazes Tandolfo how easily people fall into talking about him as though he were an inanimate object or something on a television screen. “The Great Tandolfo can do nothing until he gets a table,” he says with as much mysteriousness and drama as he can muster under the circumstances.

  “I want that cake out there,” says Ethan, still at the porch railing. The other children start talking about cake and ice cream, and the big cake Ethan has spotted; there’s a lot of confusion and restlessness. One of the smaller children, a girl in a blue dress, approaches Tandolfo. “What’s your name?” she says, swaying slightly, her hands behind her back.

  “Go sit down,” he says to her. “We have to sit down or Tandolfo can’t do his magic.”

  In the doorway, two of the men are struggling with a folding card table. It’s one of those rickety ones with the skinny legs, and it probably won’t do. “That’s kind of shaky, isn’t it?” says the woman with the birthmark.

  “I said, Tandolfo needs a sturdy table, boys and girls.”

  There’s more confusion. The little girl has come forward and taken hold of his pant leg. She’s just standing there holding it, looking up at him. “We have to go sit down,” he says, bending to her, speaking sweetly, clownlike. “We have to do what Tandolfo wants.”

  Her small mouth opens wide, as if she’s trying to yawn, and with pale eyes quite calm and staring she emits a screech, an ear-piercing, non-human shriek that brings everything to a stop. Tandolfo/Rodney steps back, with his amazement and his inebriate heart. Everyone gathers around the girl, who continues to scream, less piercing now, her hands fisted at her sides, those pale eyes closed tight.

  “What happened?” the man in the DAD cap wants to know. “Where the hell’s the magic tricks?”

  “I told you, all I needed is a table.”

  “What’d you say to her to make her cry?” DAD indicates the little girl, who is giving forth a series of broken, grief-stricken howls.

  “I want magic tricks,” the birthday boy says, loud. “Where’s the magic tricks?”

  “Perhaps if we moved the whole thing inside,” the woman with the birthmark says, fingering her left ear and making a face.

  The card table has somehow made its way to Tandolfo, through the confusion and grief. The man in the DAD cap sets it down and opens it.

  “There,” he says, as if his point has been made.

  In the next moment, Tandolfo realizes that someone’s removed the little girl. Everything’s relatively quiet again, though her cries are coming through the walls of one of the rooms inside the house. There are perhaps fifteen children, mostly seated before him, and five or six men and women behind them, or kneeling with them. “Okay, now,” DAD says. “Tandolfo the Great.”

  “Hello, little boys and girls,” Tandolfo says, deciding that the table will have to suffice. “I’m happy to be here. Are you glad to see me?” A general uproar commences. “Well, good,” he says. “Because just look what I have in my magic bag.” And with a flourish he brings out the hat that he will release Witch from. The bird is encased in a fold of shiny cloth, pulsing there. He can feel it. He rambles on, talking fast, or trying to, and when the time comes to reveal the bird, he almost flubs it. But Witch flaps his wings and makes enough of a commotion to distract even the adults, who applaud and urge the stunned children to follow suit. “Isn’t that wonderful,” Tandolfo hears. “Out of nowhere.”

  “He had it hidden away,” says the birthday boy, managing to temper his astonishment. He’s clearly the type who heaps scorn on those things he can’t understand, or own.

  “Now,” Tandolfo says, “for my next spell, I need a helper from the audience.” He looks right at the birthday boy—round face, short nose, freckles. Bright red hair. Little green eyes. The whole countenance speaks of glutted appetites and sloth. This kid could be on Roman coins, an emperor. He’s not used to being compelled to do anything, but he seems eager
for a chance to get into the act. “How about you,” Tandolfo says to him.

  The others, led by their parents, cheer.

  The birthday boy gets to his feet and makes his way over the bodies of the other children to stand with Tandolfo. In order for the trick to work, Tandolfo must get everyone watching the birthday boy, and there’s a funny hat he keeps in the bag for this purpose. “Now,” he says to the boy, “since you’re part of the show, you have to wear a costume.” He produces the hat as if from behind the boy’s ear. Another cheer goes up. He puts the hat on the boy’s head and adjusts it, crouching down. The green eyes stare impassively at him; there’s no hint of awe or fascination in them. “There we are,” he says. “What a handsome fellow.”

  But the birthday boy takes the hat off.

  “We have to wear the hat to be onstage.”

  “Ain’t a stage,” the boy says.

  “Well, but hey,” Tandolfo says for the benefit of the adults. “Didn’t you know that all the world’s a stage?” He tries to put the hat on him again, but the boy moves from under his reach and slaps his hand away. “We have to wear the hat,” Tandolfo says, trying to control his anger. “We can’t do the magic without our magic hats.” He tries once more, and the boy waits until the hat is on, then simply removes it and holds it behind him, shying away when Tandolfo tries to retrieve it. The noise of the others now sounds like the crowd at a prizefight; there’s a contest going on, and they’re enjoying it. “Give Tandolfo the hat. We want magic, don’t we?”

  “Do the magic,” the boy demands.

  “I’ll do the magic if you give me the hat.”

  “I won’t.”

  Nothing. No support from the adults. Perhaps if he weren’t a little tipsy; perhaps if he didn’t feel ridiculous and sick at heart and forlorn, with his wedding cake and his odd mistaken romance, his loneliness, which he has always borne gracefully and with humor, and his general dismay; perhaps if he were to find it in himself to deny the sudden, overwhelming sense of the unearned affection given this lumpish, slovenly version of stupid complacent spoiled satiation standing before him—he might’ve simply gone on to the next trick.

  Instead, at precisely that moment when everyone seems to pause, he leans down and says, “Give me the hat, you little prick.”

  The green eyes widen.

  The quiet is heavy with disbelief. Even the small children can tell that something’s happened to change everything.

  “Tandolfo has another trick,” Rodney says, loud, “where he makes the birthday boy pop like a balloon. Especially if he’s a fat birthday boy.”

  A stirring among the adults.

  “Especially if he’s an ugly slab of gross flesh like this one here.”

  “Now just a minute,” says DAD.

  “Pop,” Rodney says to the birthday boy, who drops the hat and then, seeming to remember that defiance is expected, makes a face. Sticks out his tongue. Rodney/Tandolfo is quick with his hands by training, and he grabs the tongue.

  “Awk,” the boy says. “Aw-aw-aw.”

  “Abracadabra!” Rodney lets go and the boy falls backward onto the lap of one of the other children. More cries. “Whoops, time to sit down,” says Rodney. “Sorry you had to leave so soon.”

  Very quickly, he’s being forcibly removed. They’re rougher than gangsters. They lift him, punch him, tear at his costume—even the women. Someone hits him with a spoon. The whole scene boils over onto the lawn, where someone has released Chi-Chi from her case. Chi-Chi moves about wide-eyed, hopping between running children, evading them, as Tandolfo the Great cannot evade the adults. He’s being pummeled, because he keeps trying to return for his rabbit. And the adults won’t let him off the curb. “Okay,” he says finally, collecting himself. He wants to let them know he’s not like this all the time; wants to say it’s circumstances, grief, personal pain hidden inside seeming brightness and cleverness. He’s a man in love, humiliated, wrong about everything. He wants to tell them, but he can’t speak for a moment, can’t even quite catch his breath. He stands in the middle of the street, his funny clothes torn, his face bleeding, all his magic strewn everywhere. “I would at least like to collect my rabbit,” he says, and is appalled at the absurd sound of it—its huge difference from what he intended to say. He straightens, pushes the grime from his face, adjusts the clown nose, and looks at them. “I would say that even though I wasn’t as patient as I could’ve been, the adults have not comported themselves well here,” he says.

  “Drunk,” one of the women says.

  Almost everyone’s chasing Chi-Chi now. One of the older boys approaches, carrying Witch’s case. Witch looks out the air hole, impervious, quiet as an idea. And now one of the men, someone Rodney hasn’t noticed before, an older man clearly wearing a hairpiece, brings Chi-Chi to him. “Bless you,” Rodney says, staring into the man’s sleepy, deploring eyes.

  “I don’t think we’ll pay you,” the man says. The others are filing back into the house, herding the children before them.

  Rodney speaks to the man. “The rabbit appears out of fire.”

  The man nods. “Go home and sleep it off, kid.”

  “Right. Thank you.”

  He puts Chi-Chi in his compartment, stuffs everything in its place in the trunk. Then he gets in the car and drives away. Around the corner he stops, wipes off what he can of the makeup; it’s as if he’s trying to remove the stain of bad opinion and disapproval. Nothing feels any different. He drives to the suburban street where she lives with her parents, and by the time he gets there it’s almost dark.

  The houses are set back in the trees. He sees lighted windows, hears music, the sound of children playing in the yards. He parks the car and gets out. A breezy April dusk. “I am Tandolfo the soft-hearted,” he says. “Hearken to me.” Then he sobs. He can’t believe it. “Jeez,” he says. “Lord.” He opens the back door of the car, leans in to get the cake. He’d forgot how heavy it is. Staggering with it, making his way along the sidewalk, intending to leave it on her doorstep, he has an inspiration. Hesitating only for the moment it takes to make sure there are no cars coming, he goes out and sets it down in the middle of the street. Part of the top sags from having bumped his shoulder as he pulled it off the back seat. The bride and groom are almost supine, one on top of the other. He straightens them, steps back and looks at it. In the dusky light it looks blue. It sags just right, with just the right angle expressing disappointment and sorrow. Yes, he thinks. This is the place for it. The aptness of it, sitting out like this, where anyone might come by and splatter it all over creation, makes him feel a faint sense of release, as if he were at the end of a story. Everything will be all right if he can think of it that way. He’s wiping his eyes, thinking of moving to another town. Failures are beginning to catch up to him, and he’s still aching in love. He thinks how he has suffered the pangs of failure and misadventure, but in this painful instance there’s symmetry, and he will make the one eloquent gesture—leaving a wedding cake in the middle of the road, like a sugar-icinged pylon. Yes.

  He walks back to the car, gets in, pulls around, and backs into the driveway of the house across the street from hers. Leaving the engine idling, he rolls the window down and rests his arm on the sill, gazing at the incongruous shape of the cake there in the falling dark. He feels almost glad, almost, in some strange inexpressible way, vindicated. He imagines what she might do if she saw him here, imagines that she comes running from her house, calling his name, looking at the cake and admiring it. He conjures a picture of her, attacking the tiers of pink sugar, and the muscles of his abdomen tighten. But then this all gives way to something else: images of destruction, of flying dollops of icing. He’s surprised to find that he wants her to stay where she is, doing whatever she’s doing. He realizes that what he wants—and for the moment all he really wants—is what he now has: a perfect vantage point from which to watch oncoming cars. Turning the engine off, he waits, concentrating on the one thing. He’s a man imbued with interest, alm
ost peaceful with it—almost, in fact, happy with it—sitting there in the quiet car and patiently awaiting the results of his labor.

  EVENING

  He was up high, reaching with the brush, painting the eaves of the house, thinking about how it would be to let go, simply fall, a man losing his life in an accident—no humiliation in that. He paused, considering this, feeling the wobbly lightness of the aluminum ladder, and then he heard the car pull in. His daughter Susan’s red Yugo. Susan got out, pushed the hair back from her brow. She looked at him, then waved peremptorily and set about getting Elaine out of the car seat. It took a few moments. Elaine was four, very precocious, feisty, and lately quite a lot of trouble.

  “I want my doll.”

  “You left it at home.”

  “Well, I want it.”

  “Elaine, please.”

  Their voices came to him, sounds from the world; they brought him back. “Hello,” he called.

  “Tell Granddaddy hello.”

  “Don’t want to.”

  Elaine followed her mother along the sidewalk, pouting, her thumb in her mouth. Even the sight of Granddaddy on a ladder in the sky failed to break the dark mood. Her mother knelt down and ran a handkerchief over the tears and smudges of her face.

  “I’ll be right down,” he said.

  “Stay,” said his daughter in a tired voice.

  He could see that she looked disheveled and overworked, someone not terribly careful about her appearance: a young woman with a child, going through the turmoil following a divorce. He had read somewhere that if you put all the world’s troubles in a great pile and gave everyone a choice, each would probably walk away with his own.

  “Mom inside?” his daughter asked.

  “She went into town. I don’t think she’ll be gone long.”

  “What’re you doing up there?”

  “Little touch-up,” he said.

  “When did she leave?”

  He dipped the brush into the can of paint. “Maybe ten minutes ago. She went to get something for us to eat.”