“Greetings,” he said, tipping his hat. “Your hair wants cutting.”
Phoebe stared at him, jarred by the familiar phrase. Then she remembered: the Mad Hatter’s first words to Alice in Wonderland, a scene she’d read only that morning.
“It’s rude to make personal remarks,” Phoebe said, reaching for Alice’s response. “Don’t you know that?”
The man’s face went still with surprise. Then he threw back his head and laughed, mouth open, his round tongue the same pink as his sunburned legs. Everyone turned. “Who is this groovy kid?” said the sunburned Hatter.
Faith went to Phoebe and knelt beside her. As Phoebe clung to her sister, she felt the rapid pulse of her heart. “Is it morning?” she asked.
“Almost,” Faith said, breathless. Her cheeks were flushed. A tiny painted rainbow began above her left eye and curved around her cheekbone. “We’re making breakfast to eat on the roof and watch the sunrise.”
“What about Mrs. M.?” Phoebe said.
“She’s sleeping,” Faith whispered, crossing her fingers. “I told her I was staying overnight at Abby’s house.”
The strangers watched Phoebe very kindly, as if the mere sight of her standing there in her nightgown were somehow pleasing. Finding herself at the center of attention gave Phoebe a jittery pleasure. One man wore a magician’s crimson velvet cape and held in his palm two silver balls, which made dense clicking noises as he rolled them together. Another man looked like Jesus, in his thick beard and sandals. He’d been rolling skinny yellow cigarettes; now he lit one so the tobacco sputtered and crackled, took a puff, then offered it to his neighbor. “What a beautiful kid,” said Jesus, breathing odd, sweet-smelling smoke. Phoebe blushed to the neck.
“C’mere, beautiful,” Wolf said, pulling a chair to the stove. “Come help the chef.”
Shyly Phoebe approached him. In the candlelight Wolf looked like a warrior chief, deeply tanned even to his hands. His skin had a wonderful smell, like her father’s leather boots when he’d left them out in the sun. Wolf lifted Phoebe onto the chair, his warm hands on her ribs. Phoebe noticed a tiny gold hoop in his earlobe.
The eggs were warm, as if they’d just been laid. Phoebe cracked a luminous shell, letting the yolk and white slide into a glass bowl. Wolf added vegetables to the buttered pan, and the blend of smells became intoxicating: sweet cigarette smoke, buttery vegetables, a rich, oily scent of the candles. The White Witch rose from her chair and began to dance, floating in the music as if it were liquid. The sunburned Hatter snored gently, his top hat upright beside his head on the kitchen table. The Queen of Spades perched on the lap of a man in a harlequin shirt, a Joker from the same pack of cards she was queen of.
“Who are they?” Phoebe whispered to Faith.
Faith shook her head, gazing into the room. “I don’t know,” she said.
“But where did they come from? How did you find them?”
“They found us,” Faith said. “Or we found each other, I guess. At the Invisible Circus. We were all at the Invisible Circus.”
It made perfect sense—these costumes, the crazy good humor of everyone. Phoebe loved the circus, and was crestfallen that her sister would go to one and not bring her. “A three-ring circus?” she asked.
Faith smiled, turning to Wolf. “Was it?”
“Bigger,” Wolf said. “Four-ring, I’d say. Maybe five.”
“Five rings!” Phoebe turned away in fury.
“Oh no,” Faith said. “She thinks—no, Phoebe, it wasn’t—they called it a circus, but it was just a party, a big party in a church. Then it got closed down.”
“No animals?” Phoebe said warily.
“No, nothing like that at all,” Faith said. “More like a grownups’ funhouse.”
Phoebe thought of Playland, an old funhouse out by the ruined Sutro Baths where their father used to take them: a revolving tunnel you couldn’t walk through without falling and bruising your knees, the blasts of air that shot up through tiny holes in the floor. There were long, perilous slides of polished wood that you descended on potato sacks, getting raw white welts where your skin touched the wood. Faith and their father had loved going to Playland, but beneath its smiling good cheer Phoebe sensed a grimacing, sinister core.
Faith took Phoebe’s hands in her own. “Something is happening,” she said softly. “Can you feel it?”
“What?”
“I don’t know, but I feel it. Like this vibration underground.” Her voice trembled, as if the vibration were running through her body.
“What are you talking about?” Phoebe said.
“Everything’s changing,” Faith said. “Everything’s going to be different.”
Things had already changed—too much. “I like how it is,” Phoebe said.
“No, this is better,” Faith said. “This is history. You can’t stop it.”
“What? What is it?” Phoebe asked, frightened now.
Faith ran shaking fingers through her hair. “I don’t know,” she said. “But it’s going to be huge.”
“Don’t try and tell it,” Wolf said gendy, stirring the vegetables. “She’ll know when she knows.”
“It’s here,” Faith said, shutting her eyes and holding both hands suspended near her breasts. “Phoebe. Can you feel it?”
Phoebe turned to look at the room. The White Witch, the Queen of Spades and the Joker were all dancing now, moving their arms like swimmers. Phoebe tried to imagine what they felt, suspended in the warm, silky music—it seemed a pleasure she’d known herself, once, a long time ago. The music came faster, cymbals, voices, laughter. Candles dashed their light against the walls.
“Something happened,” Faith said. “I don’t know what it was.”
Phoebe found herself smiling. She was happy, a delicious warmth beginning in her stomach and seeping out through her limbs like the taste of a candy. “In the court of the Crimson King …” chanted the radio singers, the scene like something from an old book, Sir Lancelot and Queen Guinevere, Aladdin. The dancers’ bodies rippled like flames. Where am I? Phoebe thought, remembering nights at the amusement park in Mirasol, bathed in colored light, riding her father’s shoulders so high she could touch the paper Chinese lanterns with her fingers. Where am I? Wondering felt so much better than knowing the answer.
“I can,” Phoebe said, extending her arms as if to cross a tightrope. She was Alice, downing the potion, waiting to see what would happen. “I feel it.”
“Daddy would love this, wouldn’t he, Pheeb? He’d love it,” Faith said, and Phoebe knew instantly that Faith was right; whatever this was, their father would approve wholeheartedly. She pictured him leaning back against a counter, arms crossed, a look of hungry pleasure on his face. Phoebe stood on her toes, lifted from her chair by a swell of joy and comprehension: her sister knew the way, she always had.
There were footsteps on the back stairs. Barry appeared in the doorway, fully dressed. He stood a moment, taking in the candles, the strangers, the unrecognizable kitchen. Phoebe glimpsed the scene through her brother’s eyes and saw how strange and fragile it was, how it might whirl away as suddenly as those children stepping back through the wardrobe out of Narnia, into their real lives.
“Bear,” Faith said. “We’re making breakfast.”
Barry glanced at his watch. “Six-thirty A.M.,” he said, flicking on the overhead light. The bright, empty glare startled them, making everyone blink. Someone lowered the music, and the dancers fell still.
“All Mom’s Christmas candles,” Barry said. “All used up.”
“But we can buy more,” Faith said. “Christmas isn’t for almost a year.”
Barry eyed her grimly. “I think these people should leave.”
Wolf turned off the stove and went to him, slinging an arm around Barry’s slight shoulders. “Come on, man,” he said, “this is once in a blue moon.”
Phoebe watched the struggle in her brother’s face. Barry admired Wolf, wanted badly to be liked by him. But he ha
ted giving in to Faith. “It’s not my blue moon,” he said, pulling away from Wolf. “Or Phoebe’s. We were just sleeping.”
“But you can be part of it, Bear,” Faith said. “Look, Phoebe’s helping us cook—you can join in, too, why not?” It seemed less an invitation than a plea.
Wolf tried to touch him again, but Barry withdrew, glancing fearfully at the strangers. “What’s going on, Faith?” he said. “Did you take drugs?”
“Aw Christ,” said the Queen of Spades, hoisting herself on a counter and crossing her legs in disgust.
Barry flinched. Then he stuffed his hands in his pockets and looked at the floor. “I want everyone to leave,” he said. “Now. Or I’m calling the police.”
Wolf shook his head. “That’s not the way.”
“Barry, please,” Faith implored.
But at the mention of police the group roused itself, the White Witch pulling a macramé bag from under the table, the sunburned Hatter smoothing his hair and restoring his top hat. Faith smiled beseechingly at everyone. She looked frantic. Phoebe felt her sister’s desperation, her fear that the one good thing she’d found was about to be taken away. The Invisible Circus, Phoebe thought, the Invisible Circus, chanting the words to herself like a spell. But the group was standing now, ready to go.
“Phoebe,” Barry said from the doorway.
Her own name startled her; she’d forgotten that she herself was a presence in the room. She was standing barefoot on a kitchen chair. From the doorway Barry held out his hand. “Come on, Pheeb,” he said. “Let’s wait upstairs.”
Phoebe turned helplessly to Faith, but all expression had dropped from her sister’s face like a pillowcase sliding to the floor. She looked as she had for months, indifferent.
“Come on, Pheeb,” Barry said. “It’s okay now.”
He spoke as if they were alone, but Phoebe felt the eyes of everyone but Faith upon her and stood paralyzed, anxious to please all of them, to rid herself of this unfamiliar power. She pictured herself imprisoned among Barry’s locks and drawers and keys—that wretched sound machine, their father’s forgotten sketches—while the Invisible Circus sailed away without her.
Barry dropped his hand, uneasy. “Phoebe?”
“I’ll come up later, Bear.”
Something sagged in Barry’s face. He stepped backward through the doorway and hovered outside it. Phoebe stared at her bare feet, aware of having made an irreparable move. When Barry turned and bolted upstairs, she felt relief.
Now the group went hysterical, giddy. The light flashed off, someone turned up the music, and a frenzy of dancing overcame them. The candles had never gone out; now they flung their honey light with rebellious zeal. Clutching the Mad Hatter’s hot, sunburned fingers, Phoebe danced without shame, music rocking her limbs like the bubbles moving the plants in Barry’s fishtank. She felt a breathless, manic joy. “Hurry,” Faith cried as light streaked the sky. “Hurry, let’s get outside.”
They blew out the candles and scrambled upstairs with their plates of eggs, three flights, then a last narrow flight to the roof. Bursting into the open air, they threw themselves down on the pebbled tar and ate ravenously, tearing bread from two enormous loaves that Wolf had bought off a bakery truck. The roof was flat, and from its height a spectacular view arrayed itself, the scalloped shores of Sausalito and Tiburon, glassed-in houses flashing like ore. The Golden Gate Bridge was a slender red skeleton. The magician walked on his hands, cape dragging behind him. The sky seemed nearer than usual. Phoebe felt as if she could catch the gassy pink clouds with her hands.
The wind blew up through her nightgown, chilling her bare skin. Wolf set down his plate and lifted Phoebe into his lap, rubbing her arms to warm her. She felt very small, as if Wolf’s body were a hand, she a leaf or an acorn clutched within it. “Poor Phoebe,” Wolf said, holding her tightly. Phoebe didn’t know why he’d said that, but did not contradict him. If Wolf knew how happy she was, he might let go.
Faith darted around the roof, arranging piles of torn bread for the seagulls. Wind shook the jeans on her skinny legs, lifting her dark, tangled hair above her head. When the loaves were gone, she stood apart from the group and began jumping in place, facing the bay and just leaping, arms stretched to the sky, feet pounding the gravel. Everyone watched her at first, nodding, smiling at this overflow of spirits. Phoebe’s gaze remained on her sister long after the others’ had wandered. She couldn’t look away.
Eventually Faith stopped jumping. Flushed, she lowered herself to the roof beside Phoebe and Wolf, a calm over her like a veil. The others were drifting to sleep, tangled together like cats. The Queen of Spades sang “Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep.”
“Maybe Dad can see us,” Faith said softly, looking at the sky. “Maybe he’s watching.”
Phoebe looked up. And yes, the sky and sunlight seemed fuller than on the other days, alive with their father’s watchful, humorous gaze. Phoebe stared into the fresh white sun and offered herself. Not alone—alone she was nothing—but as part of Faith, a small shape included within her sister’s outline. It hurt. Her whole body ached as if it were dissolving. Phoebe kept her eyes open as long as she could, then shut them. The darkness relieved her. “Poor thing,” Wolf said, rocking her to sleep.
five
Phoebe’s mother had worked for Jack Lamont since 1965. He was a film producer, best known for White Angel, which won Best Picture in 1960. Phoebe had never seen the movie.
She found Jack impossible to like, handsome though he was with his deep tan and pale blue eyes. A terrible chill seeped from beneath his warm-looking skin. “Hiya, Pheebs,” he’d say when she came in the office, then the pale eyes flicked away and that was it, her moment had passed. She would always be his secretary’s daughter. “He’s shy, that’s all it is,” her mother said, but that wasn’t all. Jack was a man in complete control of his life.
Her mother had started as a part-time typist for Jack when their father was first diagnosed. Later she became his full-time assistant and now, thirteen years later, effectively ran his life. No decision he made was too sublime or mundane not to warrant her involvement: cutting partners from a deal, choosing restaurants on the Riviera (where she’d never been), Mexican golf resorts, birthday and Christmas gifts for his far-flung children. It filled Phoebe with pride that a man as cool and self-possessed as Jack could depend on her mother so heedlessly, as if her very touch ensured good fortune. Yet she resented the way his life loomed over theirs, his emergencies wiping out long-held plans in an instant. Barry claimed their mother had all the disadvantages of being Jack’s wife, without the benefits. “Benefits!” their mother snorted when he aired this theory. “There are no benefits to marrying Jack.” He was thrice-divorced, still engaged in legal skirmishes with his last ex-wife. “On the payroll” was his term for the fractured array of steps and exes and halves whom he still supported; if nothing else, their mother said, you had to admit the man was generous. (“Guilt” was Barry’s dour construction.) As for the wives, Phoebe’s mother still lunched with all but the third, who was keeping her distance until the legal matters were settled. Jack married interesting women, her mother said, although the throes of divorce sent him reeling into the soothing embraces of sweet, empty-headed starlets.
Phoebe’s mother complained about her boss, but Phoebe knew she loved the job. She was co-producing a film with Jack—her first—a documentary on the life of one of Faith’s heroes, Che Guevara.
Monday morning was drenched in fog, as if the city itself were still dreaming. Her mother drove, Phoebe sitting uselessly beside her, as always. She still hadn’t learned to drive. Her mother discouraged it, citing their solitary car, but Phoebe knew the true reason was fear for her safety. Not driving embarrassed her. Like all her mother’s restrictions it divided Phoebe from her peers, but she accepted it as she did not smoking, watching enviously as friends mouthed perfect silky rings, gulping down luscious French inhales like whipped cream.
“I’ve been thinking,” Phoeb
e said, “about maybe going somewhere.”
Her mother glanced at her. “Like where?”
“Europe.”
“What for?”
“Just, I don’t know. Just travel. Maybe start college a year late.”
There was a long pause. “This seems a little out of left field,” her mother said.
“I know it,” Phoebe said bitterly. “Because I never do anything.”
“Sweetheart, you’re about to start college,” her mother said, brushing Phoebe’s hair from her eyes. “That’s something.”
“Everyone does it.”
“So?”
“So I don’t want it,” Phoebe said, startled by her own vehemence. “I want something real to happen to me. I feel like a zombie, I swear to God. Like I can’t wake up.”
There was a long silence. “I’m relieved you’re saying this, Phoebe,” her mother finally said. “Frankly, I’ve been worried about you.”
Phoebe was caught off-guard. “Why?”
“Just, lately you seem so cut off,” her mother said, almost timidly. “Since school ended, you hardly seem to call anyone, even when they call you.”
“But I saw people last week—”
“What about Celeste? You used to see so much of her. Then not going to graduation—”
“You said you understood!”
“I know it,” her mother said, thoughtful. “I’ve been a big part of the problem, looking back.”
“What problem?” Phoebe cried.
“I was always afraid you’d run wild and something would happen …” her mother said in a thin, quiet voice. “I’ve held you back.”
Phoebe had lost her bearings. She sat in silence.
“You know, I hadn’t planned on telling you this quite yet,” her mother said, “but lately I’ve been giving some serious thought to selling the house.”
“Really?” Phoebe said, uncomprehending.
“Just, it’s so big, and soon I’ll be the only one living there. I’ve been dreading telling you, frankly,” she said with an odd laugh.
Phoebe jerked upright in her seat. “What do you mean?” she said. “You mean sell our house?”
The Invisible Circus Page 6