by Ash Parsons
One night, the swivel snapped. The metal stressed and flexed to its breaking point. Leitzel fell. Her spotter had taken his eyes off her at that precise moment and wasn’t able to reach her in time.
She twisted as she fell and struck the ground with her shoulders and head.
Although Alfredo Codona was performing at a separate engagement in Berlin, when he heard about Leitzel’s fall he rushed to Copenhagen.
In spite of all their differences and the pain they’d caused each other, at the time of her fall their warring hearts had been trying to make peace. Each recognized the inescapable love they had.
I imagine Alfredo traveling across two countries, horror in his heart. Just the report that she had fallen. As an acrobat, he would know, better than most, the dangers. What could happen. It must have played out in his mind.
He must have determined to mend the breach, to fly through the yawning air to her side.
But perhaps her magic would extend to her fall, a miraculous healing. After all, she had stayed conscious initially, and even waved away the stretcher, saying she could continue the act.
The theater management had known better, insisting she go to the hospital.
As Alfredo’s train labored to Denmark, perhaps he told himself she would be all right. Perhaps he imagined comforting scenarios, imagined arriving to find her sitting up in the hospital bed, smiling, in a room awash with flowers. She might call to him, holding out her hand, her skin fair as peaches in milk, her infamous temper snapping out at the doctors who insisted she stay on bed rest.
“I’m fine, really,” she would say, flashing that perfect smile, sparking life out of every pore. “See?”
That’s not what he found. His Leitzel’s face was bruised, discolored. Alfredo didn’t kiss her for fear it would hurt.
She was in and out of consciousness, unable to speak, but seeming to recognize him.
Alfredo paced the floor, looking out the hospital window into the winter streets of Copenhagen. His heart was as foreign to him as this country, but with no neat rows of houses, no clean lines, his love instead a tangle of temperaments and childhood wounds, his love for her not a straight path, but a mass. Solid, snarled, clogged. It stoppered him.
He took her hand. So small and so strong. Their calluses matched, in palms and hearts. Tissues first broken and rubbed raw, then hardened. The numbing that protects from pain.
He waited by her bedside, filled with self-reproach. He should have been there. He should have caught her in his arms. He should have taught her how to fall.
Time passed. The doctors said the best thing for everyone was rest. There was no way to predict how long she would be asleep or if she would wake up, no way to know what would happen or when. It could be hours, days, weeks.
The Flying Codonas were under contract. Alfredo had to return. He boarded the train, wracked with fears and agonizing hope.
When he arrived in Berlin, he received the news.
Lillian Leitzel had died in the night, while he traveled away from her.
I think of his pain and her fears. She’d had a premonition, a nightmare of falling. But every night, her role was to defy death, to overcome terror and lift herself into the air.
Leitzel always risked. Always reached for what she wanted, fought for it with every breath, no matter how it hurt. No matter how her shoulder hurt, or how her wrist was cut, again and again, skin torn by the cuff that held her aloft.
It was the price she paid for everything she needed. She accepted the pain that was part of it. Of everything.
Was that her greatest strength?
Joshua sits next to me on the bench, the glider swaying slightly in the shade of the fig tree. He’s still waiting for a response. A reassurance.
He looks so healthy now. Here, away from the life that had wounded him, that dislocated him.
A mere hour ago, I thought Joshua was dead. That my hope he was alive was a delusion. And now I’ve heard him tell me that there were many times he wanted to be dead.
He had planned to kill himself. Not the night on the yacht, but before.
“Joshua,” I say, and wait for him to look at me, “I need to know if you’re going to be okay.”
He frowns, looking away from me, out to the water. His arms tighten again, the reflexive move he’s done since ninth grade whenever he’s uncertain. Arms squeeze, lock across his stomach or chest.
“I don’t know what you’re asking,” he says, one forearm angling up his chest as his hand works at the muscle between his shoulder and neck.
“Is this what you want? Where you want to be? You have to tell me, and it needs to be the truth. You owe me that much.”
I see it suddenly, the wellspring of every problem we had, that he’s ever had. Obligation like a contract of caring. Making himself fit. Finding his place in between everyone else’s needs. You wouldn’t think an international celebrity, someone who could crook a finger and get legions of people to fall over themselves to do his bidding, would have so much need. Or would have so much trouble taking what he needed.
But that’s what it is. Joshua needs approval. Needs to be what is wanted. Needs to be cared for. Meeting obligation translates to his need to be kept safe. An if/then sum. If he can be what is needed, then he won’t be left.
Even when I begged him to stop. My plea reduced by the sheer volume of obligation to everyone else.
Joshua pulls himself smaller, a frown pressing into his forehead as he looks at the packed-dirt ground.
“That’s a hard question, Rox. There’s a lot of things I’m still trying to understand. I barely know how I got here, much less what happens next. Being okay is . . . something you work for, I think.”
“Do you want to stay here?” I ask.
He looks at me, his eyes seeking, like he’s looking for me to cue him.
“I do, for now. I don’t know about later.” The words seem like a surprise to him. “I don’t remember wanting. I just remember doing.”
He slumps down in the glider, pressing his shoulders into the swing back, arms still clamped across himself. “I always loved the music,” he says. “Performing it, writing it. It’s what made everything else so confusing, because I love that part.”
Another truth, and something that held him in place—loving music, hating what it cost him to be famous for it.
“I have a YouTube channel,” Joshua confesses, suddenly shy. “It’s just music. Instrumental, sometimes lyrics on the screen, but no voice. Stuff I write that no one would care about. And no me. It’s not about me anymore.”
It feels like landing safely on the ground and standing there with room all around. It’s perfect. The fact that Joshua has this space for his music is beautiful and feels safe.
“That’s wonderful, Shu,” I say. “I would like to hear it sometime.”
“Yeah, maybe,” Joshua says, and the lack of confidence is new.
I smile at his uncertainty, at learning more about this new person I’ve known forever.
His arms uncross as he leans toward me, intent.
“Did I do the right thing?” Joshua asks. “Sending the clues? Paying for your school, writing those lyrics? Or would it have been better if . . .”
He trails off, gaze reaching for me, hoping to catch, to save.
Lillian Leitzel accepted the pain that was a part of it. Accepted risk, accepted injury. Accepted all the mistakes and hurt between people who truly love each other.
I smile at him, and it’s a clear spotlight of forgiveness, shining in the dark.
“I’ll never be ready to say good-bye to you, Shu.” I touch the back of his hand, longing transmitted through fingers and sun-warmed skin.
Joshua smiles at me, openhearted relief, and something more. Joy.
An answering warmth glows and grows brighter in my chest.
I rem
ember how I felt when I thought Joshua was dead. I could rake him over the coals about how we mourned for him. How we all fell apart.
But I can’t fully blame him. And I can’t hold on to an injury when I can let it heal.
Our shared histories lie alongside each other like threads in a rope. Twining and pulling into a single thing. It may be frayed in some parts, stronger in others, but it’s continuous. Fibers pulling into a strand that connects us. That holds us, lifts us aloft.
Except it’s not a rope. It’s stronger than that. Stronger even than a single snapping fitting, friction heated and cooled, stressed and breaking, leaving us plummeting, unable to recover.
Our shared histories and our love are a net. Separate, intertwining ropes woven into a safeguard. More than me, more than him, both of us with room to fail. Grace to fall.
It can be made stronger.
It can be mended.
Joshua reaches for my hand. Our fingers entwine, pressing together.
Forgiveness feels like flying.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Lillian Leitzel (1892–1931) was the undisputed Queen of the Circus from 1915, during the Roaring Twenties, and beyond. Born Leopoldina Alitza Pelikan in what is now Poland, she, like the love of her life, Alfredo Codona, was part of a family of circus performers. However, she alone from her family had the grit, moxie, and charisma to make it all the way to becoming a featured solo performer in “The Greatest Show on Earth”: the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. More than that, she became its central star. The first performer to demand and receive a private carriage on the circus train, she also demanded that she have absolutely no competition. No other acts went on in any other ring, and even more remarkable, all the butchers had to stop their calls selling concessions and souvenirs. She had the entire undivided attention of every eye, and she commanded it, a singular diamond shining in the dark. Leitzel had the innate ability to make the entire audience under the big top fall in love with her, from the sheer force of her presence and charm, before she ever took to the air. Like Roxy in the story, I fell in love with Leitzel’s fire, her confidence, and her strength. If you search her name on YouTube, you will find several brief clips of her performances, including her famous planges. Similarly, you can also find footage of Alfredo and the Flying Codonas, some including Vera Bruce. His grace in the air is astonishing.
Stories about Leitzel are rich and varied, and oftentimes conflict factually. I attribute the differences to the innate romanticism of both her character and the circus. For the most detailed and comprehensive story of Lillian Leitzel, read Dean Jensen’s excellent book The Queen of the Air. For further information on the history of the circus in America, read The American Circus by John Culhane, which is a treasure trove of performers, triumphs, tragedies, and all the vibrancy under the big top. Many other wonderful sources are available, both in print and online. Any liberties or errors with the histories of Leitzel and Codona in this book are my own and are perhaps caused by the combination of stardust and sawdust in my eyes.
I first heard about Lillian Leitzel and fell in love with the sprawling, glittering history of the American circus when I attended Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College. LaVahn Hoh (professor emeritus at the University of Virginia) taught the circus history class at clown college, and it was one of the most fascinating classes I have ever had the great fortune to take. I am grateful for his introduction to the subject.
Friday I tasted life.
It was a vast morsel.
A circus passed the house.
—EMILY DICKINSON
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
To my editor, Michael Green, for story genesis and all the insights that came after, many thanks. To associate editor Brian Geffen and to the team at Philomel, thank you for your contributions and support.
I’m thankful to my agent, Jodi Reamer, for her guidance, wit, and encouragement.
My family’s wellspring of love and patience is a treasure for which I am forever grateful.
For assistance with legal questions, I must thank my friend Tara Mann, Esq. Any legal errors or liberties in the story are entirely of my own making and in spite of her wise counsel.
Thanks also to Amy Heidish for LA landmark help, writerly commiserations, and friendship (again, any errors are all mine).
Thanks for the gifts of your friendship, inspiration, and help: Chantel Acevedo, Kara Bietz, Rachel Hawkins, and Vicky Alvear Schecter.
Lastly, a profound thanks to my readers.
Attending Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown College deeply enriched my life. I will forever be grateful to the circus and will carry “The Greatest Show on Earth” in my heart all my days.
Wellness can be a battle. If you’re struggling, please do not do so alone. Resources may be found online at crisiscallcenter.org or suicidepreventionlifeline.org (1-800-273-8255—free call, open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week). There are also many other national and state agencies available—check online or ask your local librarian for assistance.
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