Everything You Came to See

by Elizabeth Schulte Martin

Adrienne realized then that he felt her life belonged to him. He felt he had saved her from being the lonely ogre-woman, maybe even felt he had saved her life by paying for her surgery. The way he saw it, they were even. But she had faced blindness and death alone, and there was no gift he could give her that would make things even between them.

  So she screamed at him, and though she intended to say words, the words only came out as noises. When she finished screaming, she picked up her suitcase again and left, because she had no other choice. She could not bear to touch him to force him out, and he refused to leave. After that, she stayed alternately in Nancy’s garage and a women’s shelter before she found her job at the Caribbean Steakhouse, and with her very first paycheck she bought her gun. She didn’t feel threatened by Curtis, not in the physical sense. But she felt robbed of power. Her body, big as it was, strong as it was, had failed her. At the thought of hurting Curtis, it wasn’t the violence she couldn’t bear, but the intimacy of doing it with her bare hands. And so she bought the gun, just to know she had it, just as a sort of talisman she could reach for to feel strong.

  This all happened twelve years ago, and of course it shouldn’t matter now, she told herself again, but when she thought about sitting in the hospital alone, it still made her angry. Worse than angry, really. Toxic, the boy in her guest room would say.

  She emptied the seasoning packet on two bowls of noodles and stirred. From her guest room, she heard the ricochet of a cartoon bullet and rapid string music coming from the little color television she had hefted into the room before Henry came to stay. She knocked lightly at the door, holding the hot bowl of noodles in one hand.

  “Come in!” he said. She pushed the door open with her elbow and saw him sitting on the floor at the foot of the bed.

  “Here’s some lunch,” she said. “Not very fancy, but it’ll fill you up.”

  He took the bowl from her and said thank you so quietly that it seemed like he hoped she wouldn’t hear. “You’re welcome,” she said.

  “You always have food with you,” he said, nearly as quietly. It was a sort of surprised observation, not a criticism.

  “Well, I eat a lot. Normally. And I don’t like to eat alone. Makes me feel like the giant girl who eats all the time. Which is exactly what I am, but I don’t like to feel that way.”

  She got her bowl from the kitchen, and he scooted over to make room for her, the blush in the tips of his ears returning. On television, a rabbit carried a stack of books, which he struggled to keep balanced in his arms. The tower of them kept bending from one side to the other, so the rabbit had to skitter from side to side to keep the weight even. Then the stack itself was shown, the frame following the books up and up and up, past the Empire State building and the top of Mount Everest, while a sound track of violas and cellos climbed the scales in the background. Finally, the top of the pile appeared, all the way up in space. An alien zoomed up in a spaceship, and took the top book. He read the title of the book, The Drapes of Wrath (the cover showed a picture of scowling curtains), and rejected the book, putting it back on the stack just a little off-center. Of course the pile fell and crushed the rabbit beneath a mountain of pages and spines.

  Adrienne laughed, inhaling one of her noodles. “Drapes of Wrath. That’s hilarious!”

  Henry was not laughing, but he did look at her and smile. “Yeah, it’s alright. I like the rabbit.”

  “I mean, I’m not a professional. But from a layman’s perspective, Drapes of Wrath is pretty much gold,” she said, trying to cough up the noodle stuck in the wrong pipe.

  “I guess,” he said. “It seems like a little bit of a stretch to me. But that’s a cartoon for you.”

  She couldn’t get enough of this kid, really. He was not watching the cartoon, so much as studying it.

  “How old are you, Henry? Be honest. I promise not to tell Caleb.”

  Henry raised his eyebrows. “Yeah, right.”

  “Cross my heart. He already knows you’re younger than you say you are. But I won’t tell him how much.”

  The cartoon rabbit show ended. A commercial advertising fruit snacks came on.

  “I’m twenty,” Henry said. “Almost.”

  “So you’re nineteen? You must’ve just graduated and come right here, huh?”

  “No. I didn’t lie about my experience. I was busking before this. In Indianapolis first, then in Chicago. I was good at street shows. But there ain’t any money in it.”

  Adrienne was careful about the next question she asked. “So … how long did you do that, total?”

  “Three years,” he said, wedging his chin between his knees. He didn’t elaborate beyond that. He lowered his eyelids halfway, as if meditating, and a silence fell between them that allowed Adrienne to see how her husband might find Henry a little unnerving.

  Adrienne sighed and stood up to stretch her legs. “Well, I guess I’ll leave you to it,” she said. She must’ve hit a touchy subject, and figured she’d let him be.

  She walked toward the door, but Henry asked, “What do you do?” She turned and saw that he was looking up at her. He didn’t want her to leave.

  “What do you mean?”

  He nodded at the picture of her, in costume, that was displayed on top of the dresser. “Are you in the circus, or what?”

  “I used to be. But I retired. Usually I make some extra money for us by selling makeup.”

  “Like an Avon lady?’

  “Yes. Sort of. I set up parties and women go to them and try the makeup and buy it from me. Not Avon. A smaller company.”

  “That sounds like fun,” he said.

  “Are you being sarcastic?”

  “No, I wasn’t, I swear. It sounds nice. Going to parties sounds like a job to be jealous of.”

  “Oh, jobs only sound fun until you’re actually doing them,” she said, waving her hand to dismiss the idea. “You should know that. Mr. Circus Clown.”

  “I love clowning,” he said.

  “Do you? Is it fun, though?”

  He shook his head. “Not exactly fun. Sometimes, I guess. But usually not. Usually it’s something else.”

  “I see. Something else. Something more deeply gratifying than fun, right? Oh!” she said, remembering. “Speaking of Southern Blue, I have something for you!”

  She went to fetch his present. It was a lime-green makeup bag, a gift-with-purchase if a customer ordered twenty dollars’ worth of Southern Blue merchandise. She’d noticed that he stored his makeup the same way he stored everything, in grocery bags, and thought it might make him happy to have a bit of an upgrade.

  “Here. I have a million of them. In fact, I use one myself. They’re great! Lots of pockets to put stuff in and little elastic rings for brushes. I figured, it’s green, so it’s not too girly.”

  Henry took the bag. He unzipped it, looked inside and felt around. It had a green floral lining that she’d forgotten about.

  “Oh, I guess it is a little girly on the inside. You don’t have to take it if you don’t want, I won’t feel bad,” she said.

  “I love it,” he mumbled. “There are like five different compartments here.”

  Adrienne smiled. Her head was starting to hurt again, and her energy was waning. Still, she felt heartened and resisted the urge to curl up on the couch and mope.

  “Thank you,” he said. He sounded so earnestly grateful that it embarrassed her a bit.

  “It’s nothing, just a freebie,” she said, waving off the compliment.

  “Still,” he said, “it’s really nice of you. When is your next makeup party thing?”

  Adrienne opened her mouth to answer and found that tears were forming in her eyes. How stupid, she thought. She held up her finger to tell him to wait a moment. She turned to get a cigarette from the case in her back pocket and blinked the tears out of her eyes so he wouldn’t see them.

  “I’m sort of sick,” she said, lighting the cigarette, “so I probably won’t have one for a while.”

  Henry star
ed at her. She could tell he understood that this sickness was serious, but his face did not take on the same pitying scowl that Caleb’s did when she talked about it.

  “What do you have?” he asked.

  “A tumor on my pituitary gland.”

  He nodded. “I would help you throw a party, if you wanted. Before we leave. Caleb would help, too.”

  “I know you would. That’s nice of you. But that’s not exactly how it works. I need a hostess. So, unless you know a ton of girls and want to invite them to your trailer and bake sugar cookies for them, that probably wouldn’t work.”

  Henry looked like he was considering this for a moment. “I’ve never baked sugar cookies.”

  “I’m kidding. Really, you’re nice to offer but I’m just not up to it. I’ll see the results of my MRI on Thursday. Maybe the thing will be a nice normal shape this time and they’ll take it out lickety-split. If that’s the case maybe I’ll feel better, but right now, I’m just a bundle of nerves.”

  Henry stood up and brushed the hair from his face. “Well. If you change your mind, you know where I’ll be.” He became Henry-the-character, then, bringing the back of his hand to his face to shield his stage whisper: “Here. In your house. Eating your food.”

  She swiped her finger under each eye. “You are welcome here, Henry. Life goes on. People have to eat and shit and work. I don’t feel sorry for myself.”

  “I don’t feel sorry for you either. I just want to pull my weight, and, you know, I’m pretty good at distractions. You may have heard: I’m a classically trained dumbass.”

  Adrienne smiled. “I had heard.”

  “I can show you some tricks. I can do what that rabbit did, if you want.”

  “I don’t think I have enough books.”

  He put up his index finger. “It only takes one encyclopedia to give me a concussion. Don’t worry, I can make it work. Come on. I’ll even put my face on for you. For my hostess!” he said, with a flourish.

  He charged out of the room, in full performance mode, and as he did he brushed against her. Now it was Adrienne who blushed. She could feel his strength and smell his Noxzema and musky deodorant. But really, what made her blush was his warmth. When he performed, he was all heat and light, like he saved every ounce of energy up for the moment he would be in front of an audience and then let it all burn at once.

  CHAPTER 9

  A FEW DAYS LATER, CALEB and Adrienne were at the doctor’s getting the results from Adrienne’s MRI, and Henry was looking for a way to get out of their house. He did not want to be there when they got home, did not want to see the two of them cry, or worse, try to act like nothing was wrong when they all knew there was something wrong.

  What he felt for Adrienne was both new and familiar. When he was with her, there were butterflies in his stomach, but it didn’t take long before the butterflies turned into something more like crows, beating their wings, scratching with their hooked nails. There was sex in this feeling, but also tenderness and dread. If he saw Adrienne crushed by some horrible news, he would not be able to keep himself from touching her, and if he touched her, Caleb would know something was up. Something was up. So to escape, he told Kylie that he would meet her at the music store before the show tonight.

  For the most part, he liked staying at the Baratuccis’. It was an old house, like the one in Edgefield. He liked the doorknobs that looked like big crystals, the windows above each bedroom door. It settled into its foundation every night with comforting creaks. On the dresser in his room was a picture of Adrienne onstage with Richard, wearing a blue-green costume. The picture was bad, a ghostly pale Polaroid, but he could still tell it was her, her big Wonder Woman form, her bright smile. He picked the picture up and adjusted the direction it was facing, so it would be more symmetrical with the other picture, one of a younger, lankier Caleb standing in front of a beautiful mountain range, looking utterly bored.

  In spite of the fact that Henry had actually been a perfect gentleman with Adrienne, Caleb barely spoke to him. Henry couldn’t blame him. If Henry had ended up cooking himself in that trailer, Caleb would have been screwed trying to find a new clown at the last minute. If anyone in the media had found out, there would’ve been accusations of hazardous working conditions, and that would’ve been a mess for him. Worst of all, it would have been Caleb to find his body if he had died. No one wants to find a carcass already rotting beneath a sheet of plastic and a mound of blankets, even if that carcass, in life, was not particularly likeable.

  He was sorry for doing it, that thing in the trailer, but he had needed to be in hell for a while. It wasn’t fair for Andre and Frankie to be out there, suffering, while he went about his life, ignoring them.

  He’d tried to pull it together. Caleb and Adrienne gave him a room and a job, and he wanted to keep them. He still meant to write Andre back, but he tried not to think about the fact that he wouldn’t reply in time to see him when he came to the US. His brother had probably already come and gone.

  THE MUSIC STORE HAD A homemade sign on the door that asked patrons to check their backpacks at the front, but it looked like everyone ignored it. People were meandering around in various stages of undress, all with backpacks slung over one shoulder. The guy at the counter wore Ray-Bans and a teal button-up shirt and saluted Henry as he walked through the door. Henry checked his backpack with him.

  Henry moved through the aisles not knowing what to do with his hands. The walls were papered with promotional posters, long, glossy shrines to M. C. Hammer, The Black Crowes, Public Enemy—smaller, squarer advertisements for Soundgarden, The Flaming Lips. He wanted to flip studiously through the tapes like the other people there but he wasn’t sure where to start. He didn’t know a thing about music. Not a single thing. And he didn’t seem to know anything about fashion, either, because he was dressed too plain, and his jeans were torn to hell in a way that didn’t look strategic, his Chucks held together with duct tape. He peered over the rim of a box of records so it would seem he was searching for something like everyone else.

  He wandered a little more until he nearly tripped over Kylie, who he found crouching down next to a box of records with her eyes closed, a pair of headphones held flush to her ears with both hands. She bobbed her head like the guy at the counter but she furrowed her eyebrows as if she was reading something difficult, or praying. He tapped her on the shoulder. She looked up at him and smiled like she was surprised to see him.

  “Hi.”

  “Hi,” she said, too loudly, and bounced up. She took the headphones off. “You came.”

  “Why wouldn’t I?” he said.

  She didn’t answer. He knew why—everything between them was awkward, and yet here they were, because it seemed neither of them had anywhere else to be.

  Kylie slipped the headphones over Henry’s ears and filled their silence with a jangle of minor chords and a voice that was all jagged around the edges, a man’s voice saying that he did, he did, he did. At first, this man’s voice annoyed Henry because here he was on an album, released into the world for everyone to listen to, and it didn’t even sound like he was trying to hit the right notes. Henry didn’t know a thing about music, but he knew about performing, and as the song went on, it became clear that the flat, angry notes were intentional. What he couldn’t figure out was whether these sour notes offended him—whether they were meant as a big middle finger extended toward the rock star’s audience, or something more vulnerable, an expression of grief that stretched a sympathetic hand to other grievers. It could have been both, but there was that jangling guitar assuring him it was neither—it’s just a song, the guitar said. Tap your foot.

  Kylie watched him listen out of the corner of her eye, while she sifted through a box of second-hand records. Occasionally she would pull the shiny vinyl out and examine it for scratches, her fingers holding it gently by its curved edge, while the man sang on.

  When Henry took the headphones off, she replaced them on the hook for him and said, “It�
�s awesome, isn’t it? I mean, it’s just devastating.”

  He thought then that this green girl might know some things he didn’t. Not about staying alive, but about what she liked and what she wanted.

  Henry picked up his backpack, and they left the store without buying anything. He and Kylie got a hot dog and waited for the bus. She asked him if she had mustard on her face, and he said no. Then she fished something out of her own backpack and handed it to him. It was a recordable cassette. A white note card was folded into the plastic case, on which was written a numbered list of songs in neat cursive.

  “What’s that?” he said.

  “It’s a tape, dummy.”

  “Of what?”

  “Of something special. I had my mother get this album for me from a store in San Francisco because a friend of mine told me they were good. I made a copy for you at the library after I listened to it. I think you’ll like it.”

  “Yeah?” he said, turning it over in his hand. “I don’t have a tape player. It’ll be a while before I can give it back.”

  “You don’t have to give it back. I made a copy for you. And we can find a tape deck somewhere at Feely and Feinstein. They play that God-awful music over the loud speakers somehow. I guess that’s a tape player. Or maybe the stagehands sit back there and turn a fuckin’ crank.” She mimed this, scowling, puffing at an imaginary cigarette with one side of her mouth, and Henry couldn’t help but smile, couldn’t help but want what she seemed to keep offering.

  By the time Henry and Kylie arrived at the circus, children were already lined up to ride Tex. Some of them were too afraid to ride but let her eat peanuts out of their hands. A little girl with long black braids had just finished giving Tex her peanut. She was supposed to move along for the next child to have a turn, but she stood there openmouthed, staring at her own hands. She looked stunned at how the elephant’s nose worked just like her own fingers, clumsy, small, greedy when presented with a treat. It seemed to Henry that the girl was astounded to have anything in common with an animal so large.