Sideshow

by Amy Stilgenbauer

  The bar was definitely a dive, not even clean, but it seemed comfortable. She saw a few familiar faces from the carnival, but in general, it looked like the diner. The booths were the same mint-colored vinyl. The people wore the same circle skirts and brown slacks. It even had a large glass window at the front that captured the reflections of the patrons and made the room its own world, just like the diner at night. For the first time in two days, she felt safe and at ease with herself.

  “Girls,” Della began, leading the other three behind her like a chorus. “I want you to properly meet Abby Amaro.”

  “Amaro?” The brunette, her hair now tied up in a high ponytail with a yellow ribbon, asked. “That sounds really familiar.”

  Della sighed. “Yes, Celia, this is Natale’s little sister.”

  The three girls all squealed. “Natale’s so dreamy,” said a voice from the group. It didn’t belong to Celia, but Abby couldn’t determine which one of them it came from. The girls seemed to have morphed into a single entity, and that was unsettling.

  “I tried to hook him,” Celia said conspiratorially, separating herself and dropping into the booth next to Abby. “But once his pretty brown eyes saw Della here spinning around like a madwoman, well, I didn’t stand a chance.”

  The whole line of conversation made Abby uncomfortable. Natale was her brother. She knew that many girls found him attractive, but she had only twice seen him go on a date. “Maybe I should just go get another—”

  “No!” cried Vivian, sliding into the seat across from Abby. “Stay. It’s just us girls, and Celia’s only trying to get a rise out of you.”

  “Am not.”

  Abby glanced at Della. A cloud seemed to have fallen over her face.

  “Give us the real dish,” demanded Trixie Rose. “When are we losing our Della? When are they tying the knot?”

  Once again, Abby glanced at Della, searching for an answer. The cloud had turned to a full blown storm. Her jaw was clenched, and the look in her eyes was absolutely livid. Though Abby couldn’t tell where it had come from, it seemed best to bow to it. She shook her head. “I don’t … I’d never even heard of Della until yesterday.”

  “No?”

  “No. Natale never—”

  “That’s it!” Della shouted. Her voice sounded strained, as if she were trying to be cheerful but wanted to rip the booth out of the wall at the same time. “Enough talk about me. Let’s talk about Abby. She’s got her own precious little love story, doesn’t she?”

  The trio leaned closer, and Abby wrapped her arms around herself as if trying to produce a protective barrier. “I’d really rather not talk about it.”

  “Oh, do,” begged Celia.

  “Yes, do,” Della said, with a smirk.

  “It doesn’t actually have a happy ending.”

  “Well, that’s a given,” said Trixie Rose. “You wouldn’t be here if it were a happy ending.”

  “You never know, Trix,” said Della. “She could be in love with pin-faced Boleslaw.”

  “Della, don’t be so mean,” Vivian chastised.

  “Viv is right,” Celia said with a look of false reprimand. “If it’s anyone, it’s Marty, the human giant. They’d be cute! He’s so tall. She’s so short. They could do a double act!”

  Opera rehearsals came rushing back to her: the soubrettes snickering behind their hands at her frizzy hair; the mutterings of “What does he see in her?” “Well, you know what they say about Italian girls.” Abby shook her head. This was not the same. These girls were different. “We just don’t get on anymore. It’s no one here.”

  For a split second, the girls seemed saddened, until Trixie looked around with a conspiratorial smile and suggested, “We should set you up with someone, then.”

  “Yes, take your mind off all this sadness and woe,” added Celia, wrapping her arm around Abby’s shoulders and pulling her in. Her perfume was an acrid chemical approximation of oranges and roses.

  Abby pulled back a little and looked over the girls, unsure of what to say. She had already met so many people in one day that any more would have completely overwhelmed her. “I’m not sure that I’m interested or ready yet.”

  The girls frowned once again.

  “Well, then you need to get the emotions out. Tell us all about it,” Vivian suggested. “Maybe I could turn it into a poem for you.”

  “No work at drinks!” Celia scolded.

  “Or,” Della said, raising her glass with a mocking smile, “Or you could sing about it. Didn’t you say you were a singer?”

  All color drained from Abby’s face. “No, I don’t …” But Della was already climbing on the table and the other three were applauding.

  “Everyone!” Della shouted, her voice carrying strongly over the din. As distracted as she was, Abby had to admit she was impressed. “Everyone, we’ve got a special treat for you. Straight from McClure’s Traveling Amusements. A human canary!”

  A few titters ran through the crowd as Della clambered down. Abby froze. She downed the rest of her cocktail, then began to sing the first aria that popped into her mind: the duke’s song from Rigoletto, La donna è mobile.

  Her voice cracked on the first notes and Della looked triumphant.

  “Stand up,” hissed Vivian from across the table. Abby obeyed. The sounds of the bar had died away. All faces were turned in Abby’s direction. Her gut twisted, and she focused hard on a crack in the plaster in the opposite wall and tried to pretend she was alone, all alone, so no one else could hear her.

  It didn’t work. Her voice was too high. The key was wrong. Panic set in, and her notes began to sound flat. Her heart raced. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them, she saw someone near the crack in the plaster. Abby averted her eyes, but they slowly drifted back to Suprema, who smiled and raised her glass. The gesture fortified Abby, and her heart slowed to its rightful pace.

  When she reached a good stopping point in the song, she sat down. The bar patrons returned to their normal conversation, and the chorus girls applauded, this time quite sincerely. Della scowled, however, looking at her fellow performers as if they had committed a mutiny.

  ~May, 1957~

  FRANK’S CLASS RING, WORN ON a silver chain around Abby’s neck, is cold and heavy on her skin. She lifts the ring lightly in her palm and examines it. The stone is a dark red garnet. Thinking about it makes Abby’s laugh sound hollow and bitter. She hates to hear such a sound. The stone should have told Abby everything she needed to know about the man who gave her this ring. Frank was born in March; his birthstone is an aquamarine. He chose the garnet because the light blue stone struck him as “too girly.” It was her birthday now, this still somewhat chilly-by-the-lake May day. Perhaps she should buy herself an emerald ring.

  Briefly, Abby considers throwing the ring into the lake, where it would sink and join the rest of the things lost from time immemorial, vanishing forever, but she stops herself. She can’t bear to part with it. Not yet. Not with the pain so fresh in her memory. She lets the ring drop from her palm and swing loosely on its chain as she walks.

  “Abby!” a voice calls from behind her.

  She doesn’t stop. She knows who’s following, though she’s actually quite surprised. She didn’t expect him to come after her. Not after what she saw.

  “Abigail! Wait!”

  Still, she keeps walking. The lakeshore is long. Of course, she knows the beach will end eventually, but by then, Frank will have long since stopped following.

  “You know what, fine! Keep walking! No one wants to date an Italian girl who’s been out in the sun anyway!”

  She knows he wants to get a rise out of her and more than anything she wants to stop him from having what he wants. But she can’t stop herself. She turns and faces him, trying hard to keep her eyes icy and hard though tears had been streaming from them just moments ago. She doesn’t say a word. She crosses her arms and waits.

  “You walk really fast when you’re mad, you know that?”


  Abby stares. His hair, a deep chestnut brown, is still in the same perfect ducktail he always wears. His eyes show no signs of tear tracks. He is not even out of breath. She regrets stopping. “What do you want, Frank?”

  “To stop you from walking off with the wrong impression.”

  “Are you going to tell me it wasn’t what it looked like? ‘Cause your tongue was down her throat. I’m pretty sure it was exactly what it looked like.”

  “No. I’m not going to say that.”

  She has no idea how to respond. She looks away from him, out over the lake. She lets herself feel the cold air. It helps to numb the stinging at the corners of her eyes.

  “You can still be my steady,” Frank continues. ‘This doesn’t have to mean anything.”

  “You pushed me into a wall when Jimmy Correlli asked me to dance last week.” She says the words matter-of-factly, as if it hadn’t been one of the most terrifying nights she could remember. She had wanted to end it then, but Frank had seemed so contrite.

  “That was different.”

  “Yes, Frank. Very different.” She unclasps the silver chain, letting it and the garnet ring that should be aquamarine fall to the sand.

  “Don’t be such a wet rag,” Frank calls after her as she turns to walk away again, slower this time, prouder, with fewer tears. “Who are you fooling, Amaro? No one else is ever going to want you.”

  He’s said those words so many times. Too many parts of Abby believe them, but today she does not care if they are true. That is a problem for tomorrow. She walks toward the parking lot. She can catch a bus home from there.

  “I loved you first!” Frank is still yelling, his voice harsh and aggressive, like tires on asphalt. “Remember that!”

  She closes her eyes tight and tells herself to forget.

  Chapter Eight

  Nonna,

  I don’t know what Natale told you or the rest of the family, but I want you, out of everyone, to know my secret, especially because I am sure that the worst possibilities must be running through your mind. Nonna, I am traveling with a group of performers. Tonight we are leaving Toledo and heading into Michigan. I am so excited to see Detroit. I hear the opera there is first rate, as is most everything, or so they say.

  I wish that you could see. Every night, they throw roses at my feet and call out for encores. It’s everything you ever said it would be. Why just last night, we were performing a scene from Tosca, and I was asked to sing main soprano. As you know, this has never happened to me before, but you always said it would. Now it has!

  Abby crumpled the letter, crushing it until her fingernails dug into her palm. Every word she had written was a lie, and she knew that Nonna Gaetana would see right through them. Still, she couldn’t think of any way tell her how she was truly spending her days. She didn’t know the words, in Italian or English, to write that for the past week, she had climbed onto a raised platform outside a tent and, in as commanding a voice as she could muster—which was unfortunately not all that commanding—cried out such nonsense as “Beyond this curtain you will find wonders that will never cease” and “Don’t pass us by, you don’t want to miss your one and only chance to see what lies in store” until her throat was hoarse. Instead of roses, people mostly threw contemptuous eye-rolls in her direction.

  Some would be tempted enough to pay their quarter and pass into the tent, but even the nicest performers gave her sad, pitying expressions as if to say, “I don’t want to complain, but you really aren’t very good at this.” No matter how many times Ruth and Constance said, “Don’t worry. It’s only your first week. You’ll get the hang of it,” Abby knew everyone was blaming her for their sudden drop in payouts. It had only taken two days before Boleslaw moved her from a platform in front of the sideshow to one in front of an exhibit tent full of rubber aliens and other fake “scientific artifacts.”

  “It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he had said at the time, “it’s just, these guys can sell themselves until you feel more comfortable.”

  With a sigh, she tossed the crumpled letter across the table.

  They hadn’t gone to Detroit, either, much to Abby’s chagrin. She remembered her family discussing it a few years after her father came home from the war, just after Leon was born and they were still trying to figure out how to be a family again. Her mother had called it “The Paris of the West,” and Abby had thought it would be paradise. Instead, though, the carnival had made camp outside a little town called Adrian, which was the furthest thing from Paris that Abby could imagine.

  Della picked the crumpled letter up from the floor and squinted at its contents. “The only word I can read of this is Detroit. We never go to Detroit.” She continued to stare hard at the words as if intense enough concentration could magically turn them into English. “I don’t know why. Maybe their carnival market is too locked up at this time in the season. Adrian’s not so bad, though. There’s a real cute movie theater. Maybe we should check it out.”

  Eyebrows raised, Abby glanced at her. She seemed friendlier and more talkative than she had since their night out at the bar. “You seem cheery.”

  “Do I?” Della flattened Abby’s letter on the edge of the table and handed it back to her. “Maybe it’s because I just arranged a lovely dinner for two—”

  “For your Adrian sweetheart?” Abby wasn’t quite sure how to take this. Della had referred to Natale as her “Cleveland sweetheart” to his face; he had to know what was going on, and yet it felt like betraying her brother to encourage Della to spend time with other sweethearts.

  “No, for you, silly.”

  Confusion growing with each passing moment, Abby stared at Della. “For me?”

  “For you.”

  “With you?”

  “Yes, a lovely romantic dinner with your brother’s girl. No, I’ve set up a little candlelit spread with Vinnie.” Her smile seemed almost mischievous. Warning bells went off in Abby’s head.

  “Vinnie who?”

  “Just Vinnie. He’s a sweetheart. Big personality. You’ll love him.”

  Playful joy on her face, Della grinned and wiggled her eyebrows, but Abby didn’t want to date anyone. She wanted to be left alone. “Do you really not even know his last name?”

  “I’ve already handled everything,” Della cooed, drifting behind Abby and twirling her dark brown curls between her fingers. Abby lifted her shoulders, trying to free her hair from Della’s sudden grip. “You just need to show up at eight tonight. And look pretty. I can help with that, too.”

  “You better. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me pack.”

  Della blushed, and if Abby hadn’t known it was an almost impossible thing to fake, she would have sworn it was for show. She was about to ask for more information about her blind date, but before she could get a word out, the loud slamming of trailer doors interrupted. Somewhere in the distance a great deal of shouting could be heard, but Abby couldn’t make out the words.

  Della froze like a rabbit that had heard a gunshot. “Get down,” she hissed.

  Abby stared. “What?”

  “I said, get down.”

  Her expression brooked no argument, so Abby obeyed, slipping from her chair and sliding under the table. Della did the same. Edging under the side window so she couldn’t be seen, she reached up and latched the door.

  “What’s going on?” Abby mouthed. The sounds of shouting and slamming doors were drawing closer.

  Della shook her head. “Could be any number of things,” she whispered.

  Abby’s head swam. It could be any number of things, and one of those things could be Frank. She hadn’t expected him to try to track her down; he was a low-effort guy, but when his pride got involved, he could be unpredictable. His pride had definitely been involved. A few weeks into their relationship, he had thought a diner customer was flirting with her and broke his arm. This was worse. This was her rejection of him. Twice. In front of large groups of people.

  It wasn’t until Della put a h
and on her arm to steady her that Abby realized she had been shaking the table. “Keep your head together,” Della whispered, eyebrows raised.

  Then came a knock on the trailer door. Abby stifled a scream. Della sucked in a breath, seeming to do the same.

  “Open up!” a man’s voice called, knocking again. “This is the police.”

  Della and Abby looked at each other, both silently deciding to stay quiet and not move.

  The pounding continued.

  “She’s probably out,” said the distinctly weighty voice of Boleslaw. There was a tone of authority in it that Abby hadn’t heard before.

  “Right,” the policeman said in response. Abby could almost hear the sneer in his words. “Whose trailer is this then? You got a fat lady? Or something even more grotesque?”

  In an instant, Della was on her feet and heading for the door. Abby dove to grab her by the ankle, but couldn’t reach it in time. “I beg your pardon?” she asked, hip cocked to one side. Abby curled up tighter under the table. Terrible memories flashed through her brain, images of the men at her door when was just a little girl. “Who are you calling a grotesque?”

  “And, what is your name, ma’am?”

  “There’s no shame in being a fat lady, you know,” Della went on instead of giving her name. “She gets paid a wage just like the rest of us.”

  “So this show does have a fat lady?”

  Boleslaw groaned.

  “No,” said Della. “But so what if we did? Is it a crime now to have put on a few pounds? Somebody better warn the candy butchers.”

  The officer hit the side of the trailer hard. The aluminum rattled, but Della didn’t waver. “I’m just here to see to it that everything is up to code. And, I’ll have you know, it is illegal in the state of Michigan for traveling shows to contain human monstrosities. It’s not decent.”

  “Do I look like a monstrosity to you?” The words sounded like knives.

  “I won’t bother to ask if there’s anyone else in there with you.”