Lorne watched her with his arms crossed over his chest, smiling. When the other children started groaning for her to hurry up, it was their turn, Lorne said, “Well, hold on, now. Let them finish their conversation.”
Not thirty yards from where the line of children ended, Jenifer and Vroni sat chain-smoking outside the blue-and-white trailers. They glared at Henry and Kylie as they passed, and Henry acknowledged this by smiling and waving at them. They continued to glare, sucking diligently at their cigarettes.
They were always together, known only as a unit. “The German girls,” they were called, though “girls” was not exactly the right word for them. Without their whiteface, they looked closer to Caleb’s age than Henry’s, older even, since their bodies were so tiny and shriveled. They each had a pair of designer jeans, which they wore every day, along with brightly colored button-up shirts that they tied just beneath their breasts. Henry could count their ribs. Their hip bones were sharp as weapons jutting out just above the waistline of their jeans.
“Better shake a leg, clowns,” said Vroni.
“Which one?” Henry said. “Right or left? What about middle?”
“You shake the middle one enough, Pierrot,” said Vroni, smiling. Henry had this special ability, he thought, to make people smile even while they actively hated him. He wasn’t sure why the German girls hated him, but they definitely did, and they hated Kylie even more. They thought Kylie, with her old Mercedes and new degree, needed to be taken down a peg. Behind Kylie’s back, he’d heard them call her fat and slow and other words in German that Henry assumed were even nastier.
Kylie stared straight ahead as they walked by, and Henry thought that maybe Kylie had already been taken down a peg. He remembered the little star below her hip bone. He had been complicit with these German girls in stripping her of the dignity that a little money and a loving family had given her. Realizing this made him all the more disgusted by them.
“Bitches,” said Henry, when they were out of earshot.
“Henry, you can’t call women bitches,” said Kylie.
“What about when they’re being bitches?” he said.
“No. It’s sexist. It shows disdain for all women, not just them,” she said. “You can only say ‘bitches’ if you’re another woman.”
“Then you should call them bitches,” he said.
Kylie grabbed his hand, and he realized he’d made a mistake. She’d interpreted his dislike of the German girls for a protectiveness of her. Or maybe she was reading him exactly right, that he did want to protect her. Still, he didn’t want to hold her hand.
“I will. Give me a minute. We’ve said ‘bitches’ too many times and now it doesn’t mean anything. Timing, you know?”
“Right.”
The silence dropped between them again.
HENRY CHANGED INTO HIS COSTUME and went to the tent to see if there was anything he could do to help set up. On the way, children waved at him shyly, and Henry waved back.
In the tent, Azi hollered orders at stagehands, and they ran around like spiders in their black clothes, arms everywhere, setting up the ring, running through the light changes.
“Henry! Come help me if you have the time!” said Sue, waving him over. He went to her quickly, glad to have anything to do that wasn’t figuring out what to say to Kylie. Sue looked like a lumpy rag doll sculpted into the shape of a woman by the force of a corset and hairspray. Henry knew Seamus’s philosophy about letting the prettiest woman start the show, though he hoped that Sue didn’t; she had never started the show, not once in the fifteen years she’d worked at Feely and Feinstein. Azi had told Henry this with a laugh in his voice. “She’s a virgin. Has to be. If the ugly doesn’t keep a guy away, those dogs will. They’ll bite at anything that gets near her snatch.” Henry thought Azi was wrong to say this in more than one way—for one, he didn’t think Sue was ugly at all. Of course, he had the somewhat problematic tendency to think that most women were attractive, in some way, but Sue was no exception. For another thing, Sue was nice, and her dogs didn’t bite.
“Anything that gets near her snatch, huh? How would you know that?” Henry had asked, and Azi laughed, too, but hadn’t said anymore.
Sue’s dogs were lined up obediently but barking diligently. Henry laid his hand on the head of one of the little gray poodles, careful not to disturb the sequin bows clipped near its ears.
“They’re barking at the swan’s patoot on her head,” Sue murmured to Henry, dabbing primly at the sweat along her hairline with a blossom of tissue.
The lights in the tent kept going up and down and on and off as the stagehands ran through the cues, and Henry was about to suggest that the dogs were barking because they were about to have seizures. But then he saw what Sue was referring to: the contortionist, a petite Mexican girl who was even younger than Henry, had a new headdress, a massive black-and-white fountain of feathers, spewing from her small head.
“She just got it, and she goes on right before us. If the dogs see her come outta the ring wearing that, they’re gonna get all nervous just before their act.” Sue turned to Henry. “Do me a favor. The next time she walks by and they bark, go to all the females and lift up their ears and whisper, ‘candy canes’ to them.”
“Are you … are you serious?”
“Of course,” she said, tightening the strings on the back of her frilly corset.
“Which ones are female? They’re all wearing bows.”
“The two on the left. Jo-jo and Cantaloupe. Just whisper it, and don’t be sarcastic about it, or it won’t help. I will whisper to the males. They have a different command word.”
They waited until the contortionist walked by again, and when the dogs barked, Henry kneeled in the sawdust and lifted their silky ears and said what Sue told him to say. The first dog, Jo-jo, whimpered for a moment and marched her front paws in place. Cantaloupe only blinked. The next time the contortionist went by, they were calm.
“You’re good at this,” he said to Sue. “Not like Lorne. I don’t even think he likes animals.”
“Well. Thank you. Though, you’re wrong, Lorne does like the animals.”
“He doesn’t act like it. I know he hooks Tex. You just whisper random words in their ears and they behave.”
“They’re dogs. Tex is a big girl, and she’s got a hide thicker than asphalt. She can handle it. Ask your friend Azi about Lorne if you want. You’ll change your mind about him.”
“Why don’t you tell me?”
“Because Azi will enjoy telling you more than I will. He likes his gossip. And we’ve got fifteen minutes before they let in the patrons.”
Henry left the ring thinking that Feely and Feinstein wasn’t so different than Edgefield, where everybody told stories about everybody else’s business, and the truth got buried.
WHEN HE GOT HOME TO the Baratuccis’, it was dark. He took the spare key from under the mat and opened the door on a silent living room. Adrienne had kept the chain on the door undone for him. Richard eyed him from his cage, shifting from one perch to the other to get a better look.
Henry hadn’t seen Caleb at the show. Light still came from under Caleb and Adrienne’s door, but he could not hear the sounds of them whispering, as he had on other nights. His footsteps seemed loud, and he took care to walk silently after he realized this. The ticks of the clock seemed as obtrusive as a snare drum.
He noticed something propped against the wall next to the television that had not been there when he left. Taking off his shoes, he studied the thing. It was a canvas. He could tell that Caleb liked paintings because his house was full of them, all girls with long necks, flowers rendered in sunset colors, dark-suited men outlined in thick black strokes. But this canvas made Henry suspect that Caleb was a painter himself and this made him wish Caleb would like him more.
Henry pulled the canvas from its position leaning against the television and found that it had a hole in it, a big one. The painting was unfinished, colored in light shades all over. He could stil
l see the pencil sketch in some places beneath the paint. It was a woman in a red robe, one breast exposed, her long hair obscuring the other. Perched beside her was a large hook-beaked bird.
Henry felt his face begin to burn. The painting didn’t exactly look like Adrienne, but it was her, and she was nearly naked. It wasn’t her semi-nudity that embarrassed him, though. It was that he’d stumbled upon something that must have been a secret between them. The hole in the canvas made him think that this secret was not entirely about the two of them making doe-eyes at each other and saying, “I love you, I love you. Get naked, my darling.”
He carefully replaced the painting and walked toward the guest room.
Halfway down the hall, he heard a mournful voice come from the living room. It was slightly robotic but definitely feminine. “Please don’t leave me,” it said. “Please, please, please.”
Henry went back into the living room and saw Richard, bobbing his head, blinking his lizard eyes. The bird opened its mouth just enough for Henry to see its tongue and begged him again: “Please don’t leave me. Please, please, please.”
TWO DAYS LATER, THE CIRCUS hit the road.
CHAPTER 10
Edgefield, Indiana
1983–1985
IT’S FRIGID IN THEIR HOUSE the night Andre runs; the heat’s gone out and it’s the middle of winter. Henry stands in the doorway of their bedroom and watches his brother fill a big bright-yellow duffel bag full of clothes and bars of soap and razors and socks. It is the middle of the night, and their father is dead asleep, but Henry woke up when he heard his brother unzip the bag to pack. Andre moves swiftly and quietly, as if he is stealing his own things. When he finishes, he slings the bag over his shoulder and walks to where Henry is standing, at the bedroom door. Andre hasn’t told him what he’s doing, but Henry knows, and he doesn’t move.
“Move, little brother,” he says. Henry knows Andre has been waiting to do this for five years, waiting to be tall enough and whiskered enough to be mistaken for a man. Counting the days since their mother died, planning his flight.
At twelve Henry can’t pass for a man. His head comes barely to the middle of Andre’s chest when his brother stands square with him. Move, little brother.
“I’m going to Chicago, I’m going to stay with Aunt Jenny,” he says. “Don’t tell Dad. If he shows up, I’ll know who told him, and I’ll beat your ass.”
“When will you come back?” Henry asks, stupidly, full of stone-heavy dread.
“I don’t know. You’ve got to be cool about this. I promise I’ll catch up with you later.” He touches his face to the top of Henry’s head, and Henry feels his brother’s warm, fast breath on his scalp.
This is against the rules, Henry thinks. Like wasting food, like staying out too long, like getting in trouble at school, and all the subtler rules that Andre broke to keep himself alive, and that Henry kept diligently, for the same purpose.
Andre pushes past Henry into the hallway, where the only light comes from under the door of the bathroom. The soft yellow glow and the hum of the refrigerator make it seem like Andre is leaving a peaceful place, and Henry can see him hesitating, drawn into the illusion.
Andre grabs the fabric of Henry’s pajamas then and pulls him closer. He whispers, “Hey. Keep treading light, huh? Don’t fight him but don’t let him know you need him, either. He’ll get you if you do.”
Then he goes. The front door doesn’t squeak. Andre must’ve gotten to it with WD-40. His brother is smart.
Henry doesn’t know what to do. If he tells on Andre, the consequences of that betrayal would be terrible. If he does not tell, Andre might get kidnapped or murdered or thrown in jail. These thoughts keep him awake, tossing around. His pajama pants feel too hot, so he takes them off. Then, he feels like the top of his pajamas are choking him, so he takes that off, too. His long underwear ride up and strangle his balls. By morning, he is naked. He goes to the bathroom and sees in the mirror that his lips are blue, and his skin is white as a bone. He still feels uncomfortable. Shaking, he dresses himself in the loosest clothes in his drawers, pinches Frankie awake and makes him dress himself and brush his teeth. Then, he wakes up his father and tells him that Andre has gone.
AT FOURTEEN, HENRY IS AWAKENED by the thudding of his heart every morning and a keen feeling of dread. He shakes it off as best he can, gets dressed, and walks Frankie to the elementary school before going on to the junior high. Frankie sits by himself on a curb, waiting for the bell to ring. He and Frankie are in the same boat, and Henry can’t exactly figure out what made them so unpopular. It might be their generic tennis shoes and sloppy haircuts, but Henry suspects it’s something more. Their classmates know all about their mother, and now, all about Andre, who never showed up at their Aunt Jenny’s (according to her, anyway). He never turned up anywhere else, either. He has seen it happen to other kids before; people got to know too much private, unspeakable stuff about those kids, and it ruined their reputations. Sometimes that private, unspeakable stuff isn’t their fault, and sometimes it is. It doesn’t seem to make a difference.
“Why don’t they like me, Henry?” Frankie asks sometimes. And Henry can’t explain what he barely understands himself, so he jokes: “They’re jealous of your long eyelashes. They can’t stand the effect you have on older women.” Or: “They’re afraid of you. They know you are learning the Bell Brothers’ Ultimate Kung Fu.”
Like Frankie, Henry would be totally invisible if it weren’t for Cassie Littrell and her loud mouth drawing attention to him. He’s still playing the kinds of games with her that he feels guilty about in the morning. Her laugh is still like rusty nails dumped in a bathtub, but her hair smells like lilacs, and she doesn’t fight with boys anymore. She drinks rum and Cokes, easy on the Coke, out of a plastic travel mug. Henry likes the way she doesn’t wear makeup, and the way she doesn’t seem to notice that she’s his only friend.
Her friends are like her—they smoke cigarettes and pierce their ears with safety pins. They call him queer because he’s got a mouth like a girl (Cassie told him this when he was little, and he finally accepts it as true). It doesn’t bother him too much. If they say it too loud for him to pretend to ignore it, he’ll make it a joke, bat his eyelashes, and say, “So you’ve noticed?”
But Cassie’s friend Lee is the worst. He’s a Miller, a cousin to their old neighbor, Will. He has a high-and-tight haircut and wears fatigues, as if he’s already a marine, whiskerless and acne-sprinkled.
They play cards at lunch—blackjack, with no bets, of course, because none of them have any money. When Henry is dealing, Lee accuses him of cheating because Henry’s dealt himself an ace and a jack three out of seven games.
“Dude, I couldn’t cheat if I wanted to. If I could cheat, I’d be out hustling people at cards, not sitting in a junior high cafeteria.”
“There’s no way you’re that lucky. You’re stacking the deck,” says Lee, throwing his cards at Henry. They fall on the floor, and Henry twists in his seat to pick them up.
Other kids are walking to their tables with their orange plastic lunch trays in hand. Cassie picks at a peanut butter sandwich she brought from home and passes her cards back to Henry.
“I’m not lucky, usually,” says Henry, shuffling the deck.
“It’s true, he’s not,” says Cassie.
“Then how come he’s had three perfect hands? That’s what I’m saying, it’s not luck, it’s cheating,” says Lee.
“You wanna deal?” says Henry, offering him the cards.
Lee squints at him. “No, I don’t wanna deal. You deal. I’m going to watch you and see how you cheat.”
Cassie rolls her eyes. “You’re a retard, Lee.”
Henry deals the cards. He does it nice and slow and lets Lee cut the deck. Cassie finishes her sandwich and pulls her travel mug out of her backpack and takes a drink. When the cards are dealt, Lee stares over the tops of his cards at Henry.
“Hit me,” he says.
Henry slide
s a card across the table to him. Lee picks it up and looks at it, looks at Henry, lays the whole hand on the table. “I bust. This is bullshit,” he says, loud this time, so that some people turn in their chairs to see what’s going on.
“You watched me. Did I cheat?” Henry says.
“I know you did,” he says and throws the cards at him again.
Henry picks them up. “Fine. I won’t deal anymore,” he says. He really, really doesn’t want to fight. If he does, his father may or may not be angry, and Henry doesn’t want to risk it. It doesn’t occur to him to stop cheating—he’s not stacking the deck, but he has four high cards literally up his sleeve, which he plucks from the deck in between each hand. How could he resist? With fingers that are so quick, so precise, and an opponent like Lee, who’s such a prick all the time, how can he be expected not to cheat?
“I’ll deal,” says Cassie, holding out her hand. Lee swats it away.
“No, let him deal. I’m going to catch him. He’s got cards up his ass or something, don’tcha, fag?”
“Yep, a whole deck. Plenty of room in there,” says Henry, reshuffling. A girl sitting behind him laughs. He can’t tell if she is laughing at Lee’s comment or at his, or if she’s just laughing because they make her nervous and she doesn’t know what else to do. Cassie’s usual line here is to announce to Lee what Henry did to her last night, to protect his manliness, but Lee interrupts her.
“Yeah, I bet. Plenty of room. Bet you could fit a few decks in there. Or a football team. Take after your mom.”
Henry stops shuffling. “What are you talking about?”
Now everyone on this side of the cafeteria is watching them, and they are not giggling anymore.
Lee leans forward and Henry can see blue veins reaching up from his temple to the edges of his haircut. “I mean, you take after your mom,” he says. “She’s the one that taught you how to take a train, right? One dick right after the other.”
He isn’t afraid of Lee. Henry knows he can whip this kid for the same reason he knows he can cheat at cards and not get caught—because his body is smarter than his brain. All he needs to do is watch someone else do something and then picture himself doing it. This is how he learned to become a wheel for his mother and how to play basketball for Andre and how to juggle apples for Frankie. He learned these things fast, without much practice, because his body knows the urgency of things.
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