“I see. How deep in are we?”
He popped the brass latches on his briefcase and handed Seamus a ledger bound in fake black leather. “Deep. No possible way to recover it. I haven’t even factored in this round of paychecks, not theirs or mine or even yours, which we have to pay, and I’ve got no idea where that money is coming from.”
“Well. Do we have to pay them just now? Could we pay them, perhaps, in a lump sum at the end of the summer?”
“What? No. Seamus, they have bills to pay, they have families, and you’re low-balling them already. And what makes you think we’re going to have the money to pay them at the end of summer? We don’t have it now. Where do you expect this money to materialize from?”
“Well, what are we doing to make it materialize?”
Caleb was sweating. He thought of Azi, who had hooped glowing necklaces around his forearms as big as bread loaves and offered them to children for two dollars apiece to supplement his paycheck. And Kylie, who had two sets of clothes that weren’t costumes; yellow tank top, sundress. He lost his temper a little.
“You’re not doing anything. You’re the artistic director. Did it ever occur to you that we might do better, or we might be more organized if you were ever around?”
Seamus waved his hand. “That’s what I have you for. You’re my eyes and ears. And anyway, the only newbies are the clowns. Everyone else knows the routine.”
“The routine changes. I can’t do everything.”
“Caleb,” said Seamus. “Why don’t you get a real drink?”
Caleb was about to protest, but it was not a suggestion. Seamus ordered a neat whiskey, and the bartender laid it square in front of Caleb on a little white napkin.
“There,” said Seamus, taking a gulp of his beer. “That should calm us down.”
“Don’t say ‘us.’ You sound like a dickhead when you say ‘us.’”
Seamus laughed. “I’m sorry, Caleb. I don’t mean it that way, you know that.” He pointed at the whiskey. “You don’t need to drink it straight if you don’t want. You can mix it with your Coke.”
Caleb shook his head and raised the drink to his lips. “This is fine.”
“Good,” said Seamus.
The bartender brought a basket of deep-fried mushrooms. Caleb sipped his drink.
“You probably remember how my old man loved the circus,” said Seamus after he had eaten two mushrooms, chewing them deliberately, chasing each one with a gulp of beer.
“Yes. I do. He talked about it a lot.”
“Yes. ‘A lot’ is an understatement—polite of you. It was the only thing he talked about more than soccer. And communism.”
He ate another mushroom and asked for a second moist towelette.
“Remember,” he said, “how he would have the freaks to dinner? The midgets and the fat lady? The albino?” Seamus shook his head and drew back the corners of his mouth. “Jesus. They scared me to death.”
Caleb did remember the albino. The first time Caleb saw him, he knew there was something unsettling about the man that he couldn’t put his finger on. His eyes had not been pink like a lab rat’s, but pale blue. And he remembered the man leaning in to greet the boys, trying to be friendly but too conscious of the boys’ repulsion to be really charming. Seamus hadn’t seemed afraid. He had refused to shake the man’s hand until Conall Feely pinched him, and then, during dinner, Seamus whispered to the man, too low for Conall to hear, “You’re disgusting.” The albino had ignored him and stammered through the dinner conversation while Seamus pecked at the man’s shins with the toes of his shoes.
“You weren’t very nice to them,” said Caleb.
“Because I was afraid of them. And because my father liked them so much,” said Seamus. Then his eyes wandered over the surface of the bar and he seemed lost in thought. “Thing is,” he said after a moment, “I learned to love the circus, but never as much as him. He put everything into Feely and Feinstein, and I have put things elsewhere.”
The setting sun was coming in bright through the windows. Seamus pulled his sunglasses down over his eyes, now watery from the sun. “I’ve diversified. And so if I lose the circus, it’ll be a sentimental loss, not a monetary one. I know you’d feel bad about it, because I know how you blame yourself for things, Caleb, but there’s really no need to feel guilty. You’ve been a wonderful manager. You’ve kept this going for much longer than you should have,” he said.
Caleb had not rehearsed for the hollow feeling that was spreading inside him, the cold open area that was broadening just under his sternum. Seamus was not disappointed in Caleb, but as the conversation veered toward its predictable conclusion, Caleb discovered that Seamus’s feeling about this was irrelevant to him. He also found that, even though he told himself that the loss of Feely and Feinstein was a blessing in disguise that would allow him to go home to his wife, he couldn’t bring himself to give it up without an argument.
“It doesn’t have to be a loss. I can save this for you if you’ll just approve some changes in the way we run the show.”
That’s right, keep fighting, you idiot, so your wife can completely give up on you. Seamus was about to say something else, but he paused, raising his eyebrows. “Alright. How should we run the show?”
“Few things. Phase out the animals, except maybe Sue’s dogs. We can’t afford to feed them. I’d find something else for Lorne to do. And stop touring in the summer—stop showing up places whether they want us there or not. Let them invite us. Get rid of the tent. Then we would be more mobile and more accessible. More marketable with lower production costs. For the show itself, we should get some better lighting design. Some musicians. A story that ties things together, maybe.”
Seamus considered this a moment, then shook his head and took the last swallow of his beer. He didn’t purse his lips over the edge of the glass but opened his mouth wide and dumped the beer in. “You’re right. But that would not be a circus, Caleb. What you are describing is a theatre company. I don’t have any sentimental attachment to theatre, and I’ve told you already, I have been holding on to this for sentimental reasons. If you change all the things that make it a circus, then it’s still a loss from my perspective. You haven’t saved anything,” he said.
“It would still be a circus.”
“No. It would not be. My father’s albinos and midgets were circus, and that poor elephant is circus, and those scary German girls are circus. Circus can’t just be beautiful. It has to be weird. It has to be frightening. You of all people understand that aesthetic, your wife is circus, for Chrissakes. If people want to be awed and inspired and not thrilled and uncomfortable, then the market has spoken. Let them have their live musicians and storylines. But don’t call it a circus. And don’t ask me to produce it.”
Caleb didn’t know what to say. It felt like he had just been fired.
“Listen, you’ll get your paycheck. And so will they. I’ll be sure of that. But after this tour, Caleb …” He shook his head. “I think it’s obvious that this is no good for anyone anymore. Not profitable. And unhealthy, really.”
“Unhealthy?”
“Clinging to the dead. Very unhealthy.”
“Circus isn’t dead.”
“No, not circus. My father.” Then he added, “I’ll sell it piecemeal. That should pay our debts. And if there’s any money left over, Caleb, you’ll have a part of it. I knew when I hired you that you would be the only real professional of all of us, and you were.”
“Thank you,” said Caleb, and he found himself tugging at the knot at his throat, trying to loosen the tie with his fingers. “Speaking of which. It doesn’t seem to matter much now, but …” Caleb pulled from his briefcase the disciplinary measures form he had filled out for Henry. Seamus skimmed it and handed it back to him.
“Whose property was misused?” he asked.
“He stole Sue’s car. Or, borrowed it without asking, I suppose,” said Caleb.
“Well, yeah, it doesn’t matter much, now
. You can let him go if you want.”
“That’s a pain in my ass.”
“Figured. Then keep him on until the end of the season. I imagine you’re not surprised by this from him.”
“I didn’t expect this.”
“Really? You told me he was freakishly talented. Seems like a given.”
“He’s worse than most.”
“Not so. Take Bonds, for example,” he said, wagging his finger in the direction of the television. “Like I said, talent is just a fire. It needs something to burn. And if your clown isn’t on drugs, then he’s burning something else.”
Caleb shrugged. He did not want to continue a conversation about the boy. He’d done his job and now he preferred to pretend Henry did not exist.
“Maybe you should suggest drugs,” said Seamus. “He’s such a scrawny little bastard. Maybe steroids are the ticket.”
Caleb tried to smile.
“At any rate … cheers,” Seamus said and raised his mug. “To doing all that you can.”
The circus was dead then, just like that, along with Mr. Feely and probably that poor old albino that Seamus had kicked under the table as a boy, and the tired old elephants that stood on their haunches and raised their trunks night after night for Conall Feely, goaded along by the hook.
FEELY AND FEINSTEIN’S INTERNATIONAL CIRCUS went on to Fort Wayne, Toledo, Detroit, and Toronto, but Caleb did not. He went home to his wife after Indianapolis, telling Seamus that if Seamus wanted to stay and act as manager, he could. Otherwise, he would leave his on-site duties to Azi and take care of checks and supply orders from a distance. Seamus didn’t want to stay with the circus either, so he bought a cellular phone for Azi so that Caleb could give him instructions whenever he needed. If things fell apart, well, that’s the way the old cookie crumbles, Seamus had told Caleb. It was their last season anyway.
Caleb thought the whole train ride home about how he would confront Adrienne and ask her what exactly Henry meant to her and what exactly had transpired between them. Who said what. Who touched who first. He wanted all these details. They seemed necessary to know if he was ever going to discover whether or not it was possible to love only one person forever. Because that was what was at stake here. The possibility of love. The reality of love. If she had done something that Caleb felt showed that she could, under the right circumstances, have loved Henry in the exact same way, to the exact same degree that she loved Caleb, then it was certain that love was not a creation between two people, as he always thought of it, but a random wash of emotion that could take hold of a person’s senses for any reason, at any time.
When Caleb arrived at his house in Dogtown, his wife did not come to the door to undo the chain after he undid the lower lock. Their car was in the driveway, so he knocked, thinking she was probably sleeping. He didn’t want to wake her up but he did want to get inside.
After he knocked, she still did not come to the door, so he pushed the door open as far as he could and slipped his hand in the opening to try and undo the chain.
Then he remembered the gun. He slowly retracted his fingers and decided it would be safest to announce himself.
“Adie,” he said in a low voice. “It’s me. I’m home. Let me in.”
He heard Richard inside whistle and say “Poppa! Who’s a sweet bird? Poppa!”
Still nothing. The smell of sour milk wafted out from the house. For a moment the stink of it was strong enough to make him gag. He had to take a step back. His heart fluttered, then flew, like a hysterical bird, up into his throat, flapping and stopping his breath.
The last time he’d felt this hysteria was when Henry locked himself in the unconditioned trailer and covered himself in blankets. Caleb took a deep breath and stopped himself from throwing a shoulder into the door to smash it open. He forced himself to reason: Henry was here just four days ago. She was fine then. And she was fine now. Just resting. Sick people need a lot of rest.
“Adie,” he said again. “Let me in already. I’m sweating bullets out here.”
He heard the parrot’s feathers brushing against walls, his claws clicking against the floor, but he did not hear her heavy footsteps, the sound of her walking to the door to let him in. Still, he could smell, faintly, beneath the odor of sour milk, the magnolias and talc. Was she standing on the other side? Was she just refusing to open the door?
“Let me in, please. I came back to take care of you.”
A car went by, and beneath the noise of the motor, he thought he heard her take a breath on the other side of the door.
“Please. Let me in. I won’t leave again. I get it. I won’t leave again.”
He heard the scrape of the chain being undone and the brass latch falling limp against the door frame. Clink.
He waited for the doorknob to turn and the door to open for him but it didn’t, so he pushed the door open himself to find that Richard had undone the chain and now perched on the highest rung of the hat rack, looking at Caleb with his lizard eyes.
Caleb called to Adrienne, finding in the kitchen the source of the rotten smell: a melted carton of ice cream on the counter. Dead flies were floating in a swirl of Neopolitan, and a cluster of living ones were settled on the sticky scoop left next to it. Caleb shooed them away.
He found her curled up in the guest bedroom, naked beneath her black robe. She was awake, but dazed, her hair unbrushed, held back in what was probably a ponytail a day ago. Now it was only a handful of hair held back from the knots of blond encircling the rest of her head.
It had only been three weeks since Caleb had seen her, but he could see the difference in her face, especially around her mouth. Her lips were always large but now they looked thicker. Her chin looked larger, too. The changes were subtle and probably wouldn’t even be noticeable to someone who wasn’t Caleb, who hadn’t spent hours studying her face. For a moment, he could only stare at her. He knew immediately that this was at least part of what she had tried to avoid by not answering the door, and he could not help but linger on this new face. She had expected this, and he felt ashamed for having missed the opportunity to surprise her by being a better person than she’d assumed he would be.
“How did you get in?” she said. Her voice was hoarse and quiet.
“Richard undid the chain.”
“Good bird. I didn’t know he could do that. I was trying to come, Caleb. But the room is spinning right now.”
He sat down on the bed next to her and kissed her hand. “You’re dizzy?”
“Yes. And nauseous.”
“You’ve been taking your medicine?”
“Yeah. I’ve been doing okay. Today was just a bad day.”
“Have you checked your blood pressure?”
And just like that, they dove right into Adrienne’s blood, heart, brain, health, tumor. There was no room for petty things like a question of fidelity.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know. Should I? I’m not thinking straight.”
He dug through their night table drawer and found the home-test blood pressure cuff that the doctor had given them weeks ago, when Adrienne had gotten her tests results back. He wrapped it around her arm and affixed it with the Velcro.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“It’s alright,” he said. He pushed the button and the cuff inflated.
“I’m really sorry, Caleb.”
“No. Don’t be sorry. You’re sick. I shouldn’t have left. I shouldn’t have left you to figure this out on your own.”
“I told you to go.”
“I shouldn’t have listened to you,” he said. “Look, two-twenty over one-ten. We should get you to the doctor. I don’t know how accurate this is. Could be higher than that.”
“I have an appointment tomorrow for my surgical consultation. They’ll take care of me then.”
“We should go right now.”
He undid the Velcro on the blood pressure cuff, and Adrienne shifted so that her head lay in his
lap. Richard made his way into the room, scooting his beak along the floor. He flapped his clipped wings and hopped, which gave him just enough lift to reach the bed.
“Adie, we should go.”
“Wait. Let me just be still. I’ve missed you so much. Why are you home so early? Why did you come?”
“I came for you.”
“No. Why else?”
Caleb sighed. He began working the rubber band from her hair. Blond strands entangled it, and he untwisted each strand one by one to avoid hurting her. “The circus is going to fold,” he said.
“I knew it,” she said.
“Well, so did I. But I thought if we had a strong season, if I got some new talent in and kept things running smoothly it might, I don’t know, resurrect the thing. Change Seamus’s mind. I tried to keep it afloat.”
“I know you did. Why didn’t you just say that?”
“Because it wasn’t a good enough reason to leave you. I knew it.”
“And because I would’ve let the cat out of the bag.”
“Yeah.”
“You’re right. I would have. Your people … they could have been looking for other jobs.”
Caleb was quiet while he finished extracting the rubber band from her hair. “Would you like me to brush this before we leave?”
“You can if you want.”
“Let me get a brush.”
“Don’t move yet,” she said.
“Okay.”
“Do you have to let them all go? Or is Seamus going to grow a pair and do it himself?”
“What do you think?”
“I’m sorry. You poor thing.”
“Don’t feel bad for me, feel bad for them! I have management experience. They have … I don’t know what they have. I think some of them have the loony bin.”
“You mean Henry?”
“No,” he said. “You were right. Henry has nothing. And that’s his own fault.”
“Did you fire him, Caleb?”
“No.”
She turned her new face up toward him and smiled. Her face became familiar to him again, in spite of her swollen lips and the unhealthy blush caused by the too-fast rush of blood.
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