Balancing Acts

by Lynne Sharon Schwartz

  At the Garden the evening show was starting. Max. flashed a card—ancient souvenir—from his wallet and stated their business to a guard, who took them through a side door and up a flight of steep back stairs. As they were led through long corridors he could hear the audacious brass of the band from not far off. At last they came to a large open space crammed with people and animals, and his senses were assailed: sequin-costumed bodies whisked by, trailed by attendants carrying gleaming chrome equipment. Dogs in tiny cages yelped; parrots squawked. A juggler in a pink and yellow harlequin suit tossed pins before a cage of morose tigers, watching critically, while farther off, six ballerinas in green satin did warm-ups at a barre. On wooden benches against a wall, the clowns idled, smoking and drinking soda out of cans. Four men in white were leading a chain of elephants across the floor, the great backs heaving under glittery red tapestries. Dozens of painted faces, but nowhere her face, alive with that fragile look of expectation. Suddenly, not three yards away, a thin girl in blue appeared, riding bareback on a white horse; Max trembled and went rigid, till she turned and he saw her face. The same size and coloring, that was all the likeness.

  He closed his eyes: the scene pressed too hard. ‘One minute,’ he said to Markman. ‘I have to sit down for just one minute.’ But from a bench near the entrance he forced himself to look, since it was a rare thing happening, a voyage in a time machine. With a series of small bounces in his chest he had landed back in his own past, in a private warp of history. It was exaggerated tenfold, yet in essence the same. All those heady sights and sounds were dupes, concocted to keep the eye and ear so busy that the heart doesn’t grasp the passage of time.

  The unseen band rolled to a fine high finish and stopped. A burst of applause broke like a dam collapsing, and a troop of boys and girls in blue came running in, glistening with sweat and laughing. Fugitives from time, like himself; their craving was for the moment, and they learned to swoop after each moment in its flight. They had no idea, poor things, why they flew so high and so fast. It was not his old age that shivered through him suddenly with an aching poignancy, but their youth.

  He blinked. He had lost his tolerance for all this; his head hurt. Lettie touched his shoulder. ‘Are you all right, Max?’ He got up. ‘Well, what now?’ Markman asked bitterly. Max spoke to a lean black man checking the locks of the tigers’ cages. He had not seen or heard of Alison, but he sent them on to someone else. After the fourth try Markman grumbled, ‘This is useless. I don’t know why I ever listened to you.’

  ‘I’ve got to get out of here,’ Wanda said. ‘There’s too much moving around. I don’t feel well.’

  ‘Hang on. Where are the dressing rooms?’ Max asked a young blond fellow with a beard, who was leading an elephant. He pointed. ‘Out that door, to your left, and down the hall.’

  Halfway through the long corridor they met three girls in red tutus. ‘Hold it, please.’ Max blocked their path. The closest one was tiny and dark, scarcely more than a child herself. ‘We’re looking for a girl, around twelve or thirteen, thin...’ He could hardly describe her, she was so familiar. As if there were no other way for a child to look. ‘She was...probably trying to hide somewhere.’

  ‘Oh, yeah. That kid came in the dressing room for a minute. They got her out, though. I don’t know what happened to her. Ask Rick. That old guy there, at the end of the hall.’ She darted off with the others.

  Clutching Markman’s arm, Wanda gave a cry. Max ran, with Lettie behind him, calling to him to slow down. He couldn’t slow down. She was very close; he could feel it. Any moment, that fragile, eager face.

  ‘Why the hell don’t you people keep an eye on your kids?’ Rick grumbled. ‘That one led me some chase before I got her out. A few years older and I would have called the cops.’

  ‘But where did she go?’ Markman shouted.

  ‘How should I know, mister? Out the door! Shit, we ain’t running no babysitting service.’

  ‘Idiot!’ Markman yelled after the old man limping off. ‘You sent a kid like that out on the streets alone? Fucking idiot!’

  Max pulled him back. ‘Cut it out. It won’t get you anywhere. He’s just a bum.’

  Wanda was collapsed against the wall, sobbing and beating her fists on the concrete.

  Max grabbed Lettie’s arm. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ he said to Markman. ‘I think I know where she went.’

  ‘Another wild-goose chase? Where this time?’ Markman’s face was creased with exhaustion; his plaid shirt was wet and pasted to his chest. He was twisting the skin around his wrist.

  ‘Penn Station. We talked about it once. I told her about the trains going west.’

  ‘Holy shit! What didn’t you tell her, I’d like to know. You better be right this time.’ He scowled at Max, a puerile resentment at the corners of his lips. It made him look like Alison. So he expected wonders of him too. That like a magician, he should produce her. Well, he would produce her, dammit! He would conjure her up on a bench, reading a newspaper and eating a chocolate bar. Hershey’s with almonds.

  He tried to speak gently to them. ‘Look, it’s worth a try. It’s two minutes from here. After that, you’re on your own.’

  He hustled Lettie through another door, into the public corridor and on to an escalator. Tripping on the top stair, he grabbed at her again. ‘Max, please, take it easy!’ she cried. ‘You’ll kill us both.’ As he steadied himself he had a swift vision of his body sprawled out and carried, brittle and bent, down the moving stairs. Old age was such a bitch. Behind him he could hear Wanda moaning.

  The station was huge and cluttered too, but its colors were dull, its music piped in and synthetic. Weary weekend travelers hauling golf clubs and tennis rackets streamed from the Long Island Rail Road. Interrupting the Muzak, a booming male voice delivered a litany of arrivals and departures.

  ‘We’ll never find her here,’ Wanda wailed. ‘It’s a madhouse!’ Markman was supporting her with an arm around her waist.

  ‘Not here,’ Max said impatiently. ‘This is only local.’ He pulled Lettie by the hand and up the stairs.

  ‘Go ahead, Max,’ she said. ‘I’ll catch up. I can’t run so fast. Neither can she.’

  There was brighter light in the main waiting room, and less clamor. The space was inhuman in scale, dwarfing the porters pushing heaped-up suitcases on dollies. Around a newsstand, a crowd of kids in jeans, a class outing, played a shrieking game of tag; their cries trailed off in the vast upper reaches. The wail of an infant slung on its mother’s back had a thin, spectral echo, while over everything a deep voice intoned: Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis, Denver, Los Angeles. Max’s heart thudded. She might be gone. Leaving Markman and the women far behind, he walked swiftly towards the banks of plastic chairs, where travelers and derelicts, appearing equally enervated, slouched and smoked. He spied the knapsack first, on the floor. Her legs were stretched out in the aisle, crossed at the ankles, and in her lap lay an open newspaper and the candy wrapper. Strands of hair had escaped from her ponytail to drift about her neck and cheeks. Her head was erect and she stared straight ahead, at nothing. His blood seemed to pause in its rush as he stopped to breathe. The others could wait—he needed this sight to himself. He had envisioned, suspended like a portrait within him, streaky sneakers and jeans and the T-shirt. But there she sat in a skin and blouse—of course, this morning; he had not noticed—a real girl, with shoes like Lettie’s, only smaller. His knees weakened; he felt his head begin to nod aimlessly, like an aged man’s.

  He went towards her. ‘Alison!’ Meant it to be loud, but it came out like nothing. No voice. He called again. She looked up and came running. Behind him, too, they were shouting and running. But she was aiming for him, and she hit with the force of a bullet, a blimp, catapulting against his chest. As he locked his arms around her she leaped off her feet, to hang from his neck like an immense medallion. The weight drained the air from his body, but that was all right. By will alone, she had staked out this claim, and he ceded; she c
ould have him now. In a kinder world, a longing so great would be a valid claim.

  He sat in the middle of the back seat going home, Alison on his left and Lettie on his right. Surrounded, and how very tired. Please, let her not keep chattering. There would be time enough tomorrow to hear it all. Behind the curtains of questions and explanations, he lapsed into a half sleep, half dream.

  He is lying on a bed with Susie, not on any bed they ever lay in together, but the one at home, the wide bed at Pleasure Knolls. He has been so worried for weeks now, about losing her. Ever since he woke in the hospital to the deceiving face of the red-haired nurse, he has been losing her, and he cannot bear to lose her again. Of course she is gone, dead, he is not deluding himself. But now he has her back. He can feel every inch of her skin through the silky white nightgown. The lights in the room are bright so he can see her clearly too. Though he is next to her, holding her, through the generous magic of the dream he can see all of her, at the same time: she rests in his arms and in his eyes. She sleeps. He knows the dead cannot speak or see. But she feels. She knows he is there. She lies on her side, breathing quietly and steadily, as she always did, with her back to him. He lies with an arm and a leg flung over her, pinning her down, though there is no need to pin her down, she is not going anywhere any more, ever. He does not even wish to rouse her to make love; that is not necessary. He could not have her any more completely. And he is far too tired for that. It suffices, more than suffices, to hold her with an arm and a leg. Her red curls glint copper in the sunlight on her white neck. The top of her nightgown has slipped off one shoulder and the white curve is exposed. He puts his lips there. Her knees are drawn up: the long, bent line of the legs is an L. He can see the contour of her hip bone, under the light nightgown. She is still slim. She has one hand between her knees and one near her face. Her fingers splay out so he can read her palm. But the lines in her palm are all gone. It is a flat unmarked surface. Her mouth is open and the corners of her lips are wet. He pulls her closer.

  He hears the car pushing through the night. Somewhere, he knows he is in a car but has forgotten why, a hurrying car in which a weary peace has settled. Twice, when he opens his eyes briefly to narrow slits, he sees darkness punctuated by quick shots of light. Flesh moves around him, but inside are only the two of them, he dreaming, she sleeping. Outside, voices are querulous, questioning; whines and relief.

  Alison says: ‘Max, when they go up the tightrope with a table and chair, how do they—’

  Lettie says: ‘Shh, he’s sleeping.’ She squeezes his hand. Absently, out of habit, he squeezes back. That hand, that body, an easy, warm place. His. How do they what? He will never know.

  Inside, Susie stirs. She turns towards him in her sleep. She will always be there now. He has everyone, gathered round him, and he is grateful.

  When he was a boy, he remembers, and learned to swim, he dove underwater and fingered the floor of the river, picking at stones and roots. He liked to see how long he could stay under. Once he stayed too long. He fought his way back up, dreading that he wouldn’t make it in time, filled with astonishment and fear and a brilliant excitement like cold fire inside. What would it feel like...? His eyes and chest were bulging, he saw green all around, then hit the surface. His mouth burst open for air.

  And when he was a smaller boy, he remembers, his mother would sit by his bed and hold him till he was almost asleep, he was so afraid of the dark. When she left him he heard strange creakings and felt he was not alone; something invisible was in the room. He was afraid, and fell asleep in fear, and had bad dreams of falling off high places.

  Now the car stops. A door clicks open.

  Lettie says: ‘Come on, Max. We’re back. Wake up.’

  Voices: ‘Thank you, Mr Fried.’ ‘We can’t thank you enough.’

  His left cheek is kissed softly by chocolate lips. He blinks his eyes open to the night.

  Lettie says: ‘Come on, Max. Get up. Get out of the car.’

  He does as he is told, gets up and gets out of the car. He leans on her and steps forward in deep darkness. Inside himself, he holds Susie, over on her stomach now, and he is on top of her, covering her. He steps forward again and hits the pavement. Soft under him, still covering her.

  He does not hear Lettie’s screech: ‘Alison! Wait!’ yelled against the starting whir of the engine. He does not hear the brakes, the car stopping short, the doors opening, the child running to kneel beside him.

  CHAPTER 13

  WITH ENOUGH WILL POWER you could control your thoughts and not get carried away. And if you were completely logical you would have to see that dead meant...dead. Finished; nothing even to think about. Dead bodies got sealed up in a box; they couldn’t feel or know anything or, as in some silly books, send their spirits floating around invisibly, sort of keeping an eye on people. If that were true there would have to be God also, and God was even more illogical—she had figured that out a long time ago. If there were a God who was really good, why would he have made a world with so much wrong in it? And if he made it that way on purpose, to watch people suffer, then he wasn’t good, so how could he be God? Either way, he didn’t deserve to have anyone believe in him.

  It was easy not to think about such things in the daytime. There was school, with finals to study for and lunch with Franny in the cafeteria. During gym they played softball outside, so she didn’t have to see the ropes and bars in his corner, which Fats hadn’t taken down yet. After three o’clock, if it was hot enough, she went to the town pool and hung out with Hilary and Bobby and the others from Max’s group. Nick could do fancy jackknife diving and was teaching the rest of them. They seemed to form a clique, and she seemed to be part of it. It wasn’t too hard, once you caught on, to act the way the other girls did—making a lot of noise and splashing, half friendly and half teasing towards the boys, but careful not to go too far in either direction. It was just one more trick of balance, like Max walking nonchalantly across the tottering seesaw. And if that tricky balance made you normal, well, okay, she could learn to do it. Because the other way was too hard. The other way you had wild daydreams that couldn’t come true; you looked for work and were ignored and humiliated; you cared about someone and got left with...

  Become the image, he said. Maybe you could choose what image to become and wipe the old image off the mirror. Maybe everyone had crazy thoughts and feelings but kept them well hidden, and normal was only an act, not the way anyone really felt inside.

  In the dark, though, her thoughts ran wild. She woke in the middle of the night with weird ideas fluttering their hideous wings inside her head like bats; there was no stopping them. She saw him lying stiff on the cold ground, earth filling his mouth and nose, and felt the suffocation in her own mouth and nose. Then she would remember he was locked in a box, where each day the air grew more heavy and stale. The walls of her room drew close, and closer, and she stretched out her arms in terror, almost feeling their hard smoothness against her palms. Six feet of dirt above: how could you ever climb out? There was a weight on her chest and neck. It was hard to breathe. Her hands pressed upward against the lid of the box to force it open, and her fingers, curling and stretching like some tangled weed, made clawing motions through the earth. Her throat began to close.

  She leaped up to turn on the light, and the walls went back in their place. At the window she took deep breaths, her heart pounding, and gazing into the dark sky, she thought about that Sunday in the city. How it appeared first, from the train: networks of wire spread across the sky, winding over and around the city like string. Rows of dirty brick buildings pressing tight together, holding each other up, the whole thing looking as though it might collapse any minute, like the cities she used to build with blocks and Lego sets. Then it all disappeared, and when the train came out of the tunnel and left her in the huge station, people darting fast as insects sped by her as though she were invisible.

  All day she had been invisible. During the long walk across town and during the sho
w not a single soul spoke to her or took any notice. Only later, when she sneaked away from the crowd on the escalators and toward the doors that said ‘Menagerie,’ did someone notice. The guard in the gray uniform yelled and chased, but she got away. And for a minute, that was a good omen. But in that big room, no one would answer her questions. Even the blond boy with the elephant, who stopped to talk, would not take her seriously. Would not see her. He said she should go home and write a letter to the manager, but secretly he was laughing at her. And the fat man leaning against the wall! His black hat was squashed flat on his head and his face was a pasty moon with a thin cigar hanging from the flabby lips. The moon rotated from side to side surveying the room; he didn’t look at her except to wave her away with his fat yellowish hand, till at last, when she kept trying to explain, he bounded off the wall and leaned over close to her face, the smell of sweat and stale cigar enveloping her, and told her to get her little ass the hell out of there before he got really mad. So she ran. And at every door she tried, the same thing. Some of them acted nicer, but not one paid any real attention.

  When she finally found Penn Station she didn’t care about going west any more, or even about going home. It was a place to be, that was all. She wished she could disappear and not be anyplace. If she sat there long enough she would get weak from hunger and they would come and take her away somewhere, maybe to a hospital, or a home for runaway girls; it didn’t matter, as long as she didn’t have to work out any more plans. She was so tired of thinking.

  But underneath everything was a secret, impossible wish, too impossible even to admit. She had wished he would come and find her. Suddenly to appear, needing to find her: it would be a miracle. And it happened! Exactly that way, so that the whole terrible day wasn’t important any more. All that mattered was that he came for her. He was the net, and he caught her.