Everything You Came to See

by Elizabeth Schulte Martin

  “Not at all,” he said.

  “By being sick.”

  He hadn’t known. He felt guilty now for eroticizing her size but not enough to stop finding it erotic. How this was a sickness, and not just a manifestation of the elegant variety of nature, was not clear to him then.

  “Listen,” he said. “I’m going to tell you right now before you say anything else that I want you to work for me. For Feely and Feinstein. If you’re sick, well, we don’t provide health insurance, but maybe I could talk to Mr. Feely about … I don’t know, maybe we could work something out. But, you can get away from your ex, and I’ll provide a moving stipend. And by moving stipend, I mean, me coming to your house with a truck and helping you move.”

  “You’re really selling this to me,” she said, half-smiling, toying with a plume she had pulled out of her hair.

  “You do have a skill set, Miss Lee. You’re very funny. You’re a good actress and a good singer.”

  She stopped fiddling with the feather then. Behind her, the big blue parrot with a man’s name stirred, opening its wings as if to shield its mistress.

  “That’s a very nice thing of you to say. I hear people laugh sometimes and I wonder if they’re laughing for me or at me. If that makes any sense.”

  “For you. I’m sure of it.”

  Adrienne agreed to come and work that season in exchange for a pitiful wage, and Caleb’s aid in moving her stuff out of Nancy’s garage.

  The two of them remembered their meeting at the steakhouse over and over, together. In every retelling, Adrienne would ask, “Was it my size, or my sense of humor that made me interesting?” And he would answer firmly that her sense of humor was what made her show special, not her size. Then she would ask, “And was it my size that made me sexy to you?”

  And he would answer, “No, it was your hair and your legs. And your talent.”

  She never quite believed him, and he was never quite being honest. If he were honest, he would say, “Yes, your height is shocking. You are shocking. People turn their heads to look at you not because you are beautiful, but because you are like nothing they have ever seen. And yes, the fact that you’re like nothing I’ve ever seen is sexy.” But this would hurt her, because she did not want to be a freak, did not want her height to be the factor that determined everyone’s impressions of her. So he pretended, for her sake, that he only saw her as beautiful.

  NOW, CALEB WENT INTO THE circus tent through the patron entrance and found an empty seat in time to watch Azi as the fire-god. Vroni and Jenifer climbed up on his arms. He balanced them there, and they twirled fiery poi balls as Azi rotated his body. The girls fed him fire, and all the while Azi supported them on his shoulders. He was astonishing. He could have been a world-class athlete with superhero strength. Instead, he preferred to eat fire. The girls, on the other hand, were made for the circus only, had come from a circus family, and would keep on starving themselves and hissing at outsiders until they broke their hips and had to stop. He would have to explain this to Henry, he thought, who obviously didn’t understand people like Jenifer and Vroni, people like Alastar Feely, who fed dogs to Igorots for a chance at a sideshow.

  He didn’t have a lot of emotional energy but Caleb still felt bad for the boy, who’d tried to change his act and gotten the mean stare down from Seamus. Henry couldn’t understand why he didn’t quite fit in with Feely and Feinstein. This inability to fit in was the whole idea. Caleb wanted him because he was exceptional and not like other clowns. He could have explained this to Henry, but instead, he tried to keep the boy at arm’s length, hadn’t spoken to him while he stayed in his house, didn’t offer him a ride to rehearsal. Every day, Caleb watched him walk bleary-eyed out the door to the bus stop while he sipped his coffee in the kitchen. Meanwhile, the boy set the table for Adrienne every night during his stay and put the toilet seat down after he used the bathroom. One evening, when she was waxy-skinned and distant, Henry had even put on his whole vaudeville act for her.

  In the middle of Azi’s act, the girl-clown appeared with a fire extinguisher, wearing a clown costume and a fireman’s hat. Vroni and Jenifer, the fire-god’s consorts, teased her. They blew fire at her and she jumped, fell back, tumbled, and staggered into a defensive stance. They set her foot on fire (achieved with a little lighter fluid and flame-retardant boots). When she noticed her flaming foot, she panicked and fretted over it theatrically before dousing it in a bucket of water. She had her revenge when she extinguished the German girls’ poi balls. It was normally Henry who came to the girl-clown’s defense and extinguished the flames, but Henry never came out.

  He knew immediately something was wrong. Caleb left his seat and circled around outside.

  Backstage, it smelled like vomit. Lorne was nervous to the point of shuddering, as he was before every show, mounted atop Tex, and Tex, who was not nervous in the least, was taking copious, leisurely shits. The smell of them would have easily overpowered the scent of anything but human vomit.

  The trapeze artists stood with their hands on their hips, rolling their necks. Sue talked sweet gibberish to her dogs to keep them still. Kylie returned from the stage, sweating from exertion and the heat of the fire, the marabou that embellished her costume adhering to the sweat on her neck.

  “Where’s Henry?” he said to her.

  She wiped her neck with a towel and shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  “What do you mean you have no idea? Was he here for your act?”

  “Yeah, he was here for our act. He felt sick or something. Didn’t you see our act? He was completely off.”

  “What’s that awful smell?”

  “I told you, he felt sick. He ralphed in poor Tex’s pen.”

  Azi carried the buckets they had doused their flames with toward the rear opening of the tent.

  “Baratucci,” he said when he saw Caleb, nodding his bald head. “What do you need?”

  “I’ve lost a clown,” said Caleb. There was no doubt in his mind that Henry was more than a little sick, or he would have gone on.

  Azi set his buckets down, and Remy nearly tripped on one, then pivoted to avoid it, somehow finding a way to flip Azi off in the same motion. “Well, watch your step, man, goddamn!” said Azi before turning to Caleb again. “Yes. He looked bad. He said he would be out, but he didn’t come. No worries, though. The little girl made ’em laugh.”

  From the ring came a ripple of approving “aaahs” as Lorne and Tex began their show. Caleb felt uneasy, and Azi noticed this, clapping him on the shoulder before taking up his buckets again. “He’s alright. He seemed to want to be alone, and so he probably found a place to do that. A man has to disappear from time to time.”

  Outside, Caleb knocked on the door of Henry’s trailer and when he didn’t answer, he went in. It was stifling and the place was starting to take on the odor of urine and dirty socks. The boy’s street clothes were in a wad on the floor, but his black-and-white Converse shoes were not parked at the door where he normally left them. Henry was gone.

  CHAPTER 13

  Edgefield, Indiana

  1985–1988

  THE GYM IS LOUD AND hot and the whole high school is roaring, bellowing, completely out of control. Being let out of class stirs them up like nobody’s business, because they feel their strength when they’re all together like this, power in numbers. Henry sits on the third-closest bleacher bench and keeps his arms crossed in front of him—the crowd makes him nervous and his stomach lurches. There is a curtain with a sign mounted above it that says HOOSIER YOUTH CIRCUS in curly letters. Rings are suspended from scaffolding, and curious objects are scattered on the floor.

  A white-haired man wearing a tuxedo with tails and bright-green laces in his shoes steps to a microphone.

  “I am here on the unofficial business of getting people to like me,” he says softly into the microphone. The kids all shush each other to hear him better. “To get that business out of the way, everyone must clap for me. In fact, don’t just clap. Screa
m your approval, if you please. Make me believe it.” And of course, they do, because who could pass up that invitation? The man wears thick eyeliner, and something about the crisp, precise way he moves immediately causes the seventh graders around Henry to whisper, “He’s gay.” They don’t say this hatefully, the way they say it to Henry—they say it with awe and disbelief.

  “I am Instructor Christiakov, and I teach clowning arts at the Hoosier Youth Circus. Which means that I teach people to do things like this,” he says and pulls an umbrella from the sleeve of his jacket. He twirls it, then throws it high into the air. He catches it, then mimes being pulled by the umbrella, which is caught in a gust of imaginary wind. The illusion is so complete, Henry thinks he feels a breeze. The man tumbles, as if blown over, but then rolls back onto his feet and does a series of front flips, the open umbrella turning like a pinwheel as his body spins. Without even seeming out of breath, he tosses the umbrella into the air again and catches it back in his sleeve.

  “Before we start, let me take a little poll: What is the first thing you think of when you think of the circus?” he asks. There is a slight accent in his voice—he is a foreigner in every way.

  Henry’s classmates yell out their answers: elephants, ponies, clowns, high-wire walkers, weed, queers, bitches with beards.

  Christiakov smiles at their answers, acknowledges them with a flourish of his hand. “Yes. Elephants and ponies and unexpected facial hair. This is all perfectly accurate, my friends. But I will tell you,” he says, “I will tell you that a circus is really all about blood. The first circuses were in ancient Rome, and, I think you must have studied this by now, the Romans thought there was no such thing as a show without blood. So to be a performer means that you must really love other people, even bloodthirsty ones.”

  The gym is silent.

  He leans in close to the microphone. “I very much hope that you enjoy the show.”

  The students of the youth circus perform. They’re impressive, in their hot-pinks and electric greens and blues, doing half-turns on the trapeze, wrapping their bodies like Christmas presents in the ribbons of the Spanish fly. The clowns, made up like glam rockers, rush out and climb on planks balanced on rolling tubes. They stay balanced on them, all the while brandishing toy electric guitars and their tongues. None of the kids performing look afraid. Henry thinks he would be scared to screw up, scared of how this roomful of his mean-spirited peers might react to him. But these kids are baldly confident. They know they are talented, and Henry’s classmates are caught up in the act. He sees the faces around him soften with curiosity and laughter, even the eighth graders, who think that everything that isn’t death metal or firecrackers is for chumps.

  He watches them closely, all their moves, their tricks, and it occurs to him: There is nothing they are doing that I can’t do. Not a single thing.

  After the performance, when Christiakov asks for volunteers to try out the unicycles, the rola bolas, and the low wire, Henry’s hand shoots into the air. He wishes he could reach out and grab Christiakov’s suit jacket and say, “It’s me! It’s me you want.” He’s not certain he won’t be laughed at but he is willing to take the risk. If he can do all the things these circus kids can do, then why shouldn’t he be able to blast into a room like they did, hypnotizing everyone into thinking they are happy? Why shouldn’t he be able to make people look at him and see something good?

  Christiakov picks four people, then another set of four, and, finally, he hears Henry’s psychic message and points to him.

  Nobody seems to want to try the rola bola—they all dash for the low wire. Henry runs to the rola bola and sets the plank on the pipe. One of the clown students spots him. He holds the board on the pipe with a hand on each side and puts his left foot on the board, barely touching it. He remembers how the other clowns did it. As the other kids slide off the low wire like silk off a clothesline, Henry’s generic tennis shoes plant squarely on the rola bola. He looks up at the bleachers full of students and grins.

  Beneath his feet, the piece of pipe is a wild thing trying to run off. He has to crush it with the weight of his right foot, then crush it with the weight of his left foot, until it is equally crushed beneath both feet and steady. After balancing for awhile, he asks the student spotting him if he can stack them.

  “You can if you want,” he says, sounding a little irritated. “Just don’t fall and sue us.”

  He helps Henry stack the pipes three high, and stands close, arms on either side of him. Henry doesn’t gauge the hop right this time, and the board flips out from underneath him. The pipes roll across the gym floor. His classmates point at the rolling pipe and laugh at Henry but in a way that makes him think they are on his side. He feels a surge of closeness with them.

  Then, he tries the unicycle. A student tries to help him get on, but Henry shakes his head. He’s already seen someone ride in the program, and he gets it. Once he’s up on the seat, he is off like a shot, pedaling around the gymnasium, arms out like wings. Like the rola bola, it is all about pressure in the right place at the right time. It’s fun. And it’s more maneuverable than an actual bike, so he can ride figure eights around the equipment, making sharp turns that tilt the bike and make it feel like he is defying gravity. It’s so fun, in fact, that he forgets for a moment that he has an audience to show off for, a fact he remembers abruptly when he sees Christiakov gaping at him. The circus students are staring, too, and he dismounts quickly, afraid that he has broken some rule by riding too fast.

  When the show is over and they are all released, Henry walks toward his last-period class with his hands in his pockets, wishing Cassie hadn’t skipped that day. He might be in trouble now, but she would have been impressed by how fast he rode the unicycle.

  Before he gets through the doorway of his classroom, he feels a hand on his shoulder.

  It belongs to the clown teacher, Christiakov. Up close, he’s much taller. His face is carved with soft lines extending from the corners of his eyes and mouth. Henry can’t decide how old he is—he has white hair, but his face looks much younger than his father’s.

  “Sorry to startle you. I hear your name is Henry,” he says.

  “Yessir.”

  “A pleasure to meet you,” he says and extends his hand. His palm is warm and dry, calloused like his father’s, but clean, with no black in the creases of his knuckles.

  Christiakov pulls a white card from his breast pocket and hands it to Henry.

  “You should consider taking classes,” he says. “You would certainly make a good acrobat. And you might make a good clown.”

  Henry cradles the card in his palm. Luka Christiakov, it says. Master Clown. Hoosier Youth Circus.

  “I hope I hear from you. And if I don’t, I’m still glad I got to meet such a talent. I’m sure you’ll do something astonishing with it.”

  He leaves him, standing in the hall with the little white card between his fingers. When he is gone, Henry bends the card by flexing it between his thumb and forefinger, and then lets it spring into the air: pop! He catches it, slips it into his back pocket. The air in his lungs feels light, lifting him, so that when he walks to class, it’s nearly a strut.

  Finally, he has done something right, and someone was there to see it.

  AS SOON AS HE GETS his learner’s permit, Henry calls Christiakov and drives his father’s car to the Hoosier Youth Circus center in the adjacent county, alone. Driving by himself is against the rules, but it’s a rule no boy his age follows in Edgefield. Who hasn’t been driving tractors and four-wheelers for ages? His father doesn’t think twice about it. He tells him to pick up some coffee while he’s out and to get home by ten.

  Henry hasn’t seen Christiakov since the Hoosier Youth Circus did their show in his high school gymnasium several months ago, and he is nervous that the man won’t recognize him. But when Henry sees Christiakov, standing outside the studio in a pair of vertical-striped pants, the clown smiles and says, “Phenom!”

  Henry h
as arrived after classes have been dismissed, but Christiakov takes him into a small rehearsal space with inspirational posters on the walls and blue mats on the floors. It smells acrid, like sweat and rubber. Three other students are drilling an acrobatic routine with an instructor. They wave to Christiakov when he comes in but then return to tumbling.

  That day, without a word about fees or scholarships, Christiakov teaches him to breathe and to stretch. This is how to get the poison out.

  “If you expect to take a decent fall, or move particularly fast, or hold a pose, or anything out of the ordinary, really, you have to have your muscles in good working order. And you can’t have your muscles working well if they’re full of little toxic knots. Make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Of course it does.”

  He does as Christiakov tells him, though some of the stretches make him look ridiculous and some of them downright hurt. He is a bit disappointed that Christiakov doesn’t seem to think he’s talented enough to jump right into the interesting stuff. He thinks that perhaps he was wrong, that this is not a good idea after all.

  After he leaves that evening, Henry gases up the car and stops by the grocery store and picks up a quart of milk, a bag of spaghetti noodles, a box of doughnuts for Frankie, and coffee for his father.

  The next morning, for the first time in memory, Henry awakens to the sound of his brother’s breath and the twittering of birds, instead of being jolted awake by the explosive flutter of his heart. He lies there, unwilling to open his eyes yet. His body is sore, but he feels so much lighter. Calmer. He feels good enough to recognize just how shitty he felt the day before and the day before that, how shitty he’s felt for so, so long. There is no churning in his stomach, no feeling of dread. He thinks it must be the stretching. So simple, he thinks. Nothing to it. All this time. His eyes well with tears.

  His father seems to assume that Henry spent the evening on a date with Cassie Littrell, because at the breakfast table he asks, “Did you two have fun?” Henry says yes. Frankie eats his doughnuts and Henry and his father sip coffee together. His father thanks him for picking up groceries.