by Gwenda Bond
It was true. The Nevada vital statistics office was far from mobile-friendly.
“Thurston has one in his office,” she said, picking up her tray. “I’ll show you.”
We got rid of our lunch remains, and she led me through the Florida sunshine right to the door of his giant office trailer. There was an American flag in the window. Dita tapped on the door.
Thurston opened it. “Hey, boss,” she said. “Can Moira borrow your computer?”
After a few moments passed, he waved for me to come in. “Of course. Help yourself,” he said. “Dita, about yesterday’s shows—”
“I’ll see you later,” she said. “Gotta get changed for the parade, and Mom scheduled a rehearsal first.” She didn’t look thrilled, and I couldn’t tell if it was about the rehearsal or whatever Thurston had been about to say.
I slipped into the door past him. He frowned after Dita.
The interior was luxurious for an RV, accented by faux wood paneling and outfitted to the maximum of deluxe. There was a living room, a full kitchen, and a desk with a flat-screen monitor on it.
I headed to the big desk. Thurston Meyer was the kind of famous that made the cover of Time. He’d revolutionized the tech world, and then decided to appoint a new CEO and pour his billions into his enthusiasm for the circus.
“You don’t miss tech?” I asked, tapping the computer to life.
“I was good at it,” he said. “But I don’t think I ever loved it. I love this, though—and I’m probably not nearly as good at it as I was at that. Some of us like a challenge more than what comes easy.”
“Tell me about it,” I said.
Which reminded me I should e-mail Dad, and I would. But first I Googled “Nevada birth records.” I couldn’t be sure that was my original place of birth, but Dad had been in the early days of the Menagerie gig back then. He wouldn’t have been on the road much. It was likely enough I’d been born there.
“You’re not intending to rummage through my desk for priceless artifacts or money or anything, are you?” Thurston asked, from where he lingered near the door.
I was startled enough to look away from the Office of Vital Records website I’d pulled up. “I wasn’t planning on it. Do you keep a lot of those around?”
“I’d never leave things like that in here,” he said mildly. “Lock the door on your way out.”
I read the requirements and then filled out the application to order a copy of my birth certificate. I could hardly believe how simple it might be to find my mom. Put in an application, wait for it to show up in my e-mail, then search for her name online. With a name, you could find anyone, even if they were part of a secret criminal society, right? Could it be this easy?
A girl could hope . . .
And pray that she didn’t give anyone else an unexplained cardiac event—including herself—first.
I put in my credit card details, checked the box to pay extra for digital rush delivery within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, and then let the little arrow hover over the Submit Request button.
I closed my eyes and clicked.
Later that night, I made my way to Raleigh’s tent. I’d been working nonstop on the midway for almost an hour and needed a break. Plus, I couldn’t resist the allure of seeing a magic act, and I knew his last show of the day was taking place now.
And I was a little homesick. This was the closest I could get to normal.
The tent was plain black, but the flaps that formed the entrance were painted to resemble skeletal jaws. Raleigh had grown up in New Orleans, and he’d decided to enthusiastically embrace the role of voodoo conjurer as his stage persona. Which made his acts more forgivable than the traditional cultural appropriation by magicians. Like the famous Chung Ling Soo, who was actually an American of Scottish ancestry named William Ellsworth Robinson.
I made my way in. Rows of chairs were set up inside, but all of them were occupied, so I stood in the back. Raleigh’s stage was flashy and even more familiar than I’d counted on. It was a smaller set of Dad’s, one he’d used on the road for a short stint on Broadway. No wonder Raleigh had come to call on him.
On the stage, Raleigh completed a slight bow, handsome in his tails and top hat, in command of this space. “No one enters the dark of the sorcerer’s tent unless they want to see the marvels that only darkness can create.”
He moved from where he’d been standing to block a cabinet, taller than him, painted with bones that hadn’t been there when it belonged to Dad. I recognized the gold on the edges, though, replicated on the sides to further distract the eye.
“Down in New Orleans, where I grew up, and out on the bayou, visiting a grandmother full of stories, darkness and its marvels were all the rage,” Raleigh said.
This was half truth, half lie, so far as I knew—he had grown up down there, but my impression was that it had been him and his mom and a rotating series of husband prospects. Raleigh had been dirt poor and dead set on becoming a magician when he’d turned up in Las Vegas.
“And a figure who frequently featured in those stories was Marie Laveau, the most famous voodoo queen of all time. No simple hedge witch.” He began to undo the three latches on the cabinet door as he spun a tale of the powerful Laveau, the terror of New Orleans in the 1820s, leading sacred dances in the public square and selling gris-gris and offerings to the spirits in exchange for the tawdry secrets of prominent men. “The most feared and respected woman who ever stepped foot in New Orleans.” He flung open the door, finally, and out stepped a facsimile of the queen herself.
His latest assistant’s dark skin was accentuated with glittery touches of makeup, and she wore a headdress and a gown. She played the part of voodoo queen well.
“This is Marie here.”
The audience laughed, a little.
Raleigh narrowed his gaze on us, still smiling in the audience.
“Oh, but I wasn’t joking,” he said, lifting her hand to his lips and kissing it. She smiled, permissively, as if it were her queenly due. He released her hand and ranged across the stage. “You see, among the many stories about Marie Laveau was that she remained ageless and beautiful for a hundred and twenty-five years or more. That she was seen even after her death.”
While he’d been talking, “Marie” climbed back inside the cabinet, and now Raleigh came back to it and refastened the door. He gave each latch a deft turn, and said, “But in truth, it was only partly Marie who was so beautiful and long-lived and fearsome. She had a daughter.”
He opened the cabinet door, and Marie stepped out once more—followed by a second Marie, the spitting image of her.
“Marie the second!”
I knew it wasn’t truly another person, but some clever trick of light and smoke and mirrors—maybe even a twist on an old-school magic lantern—that made it appear there were two voodoo queens onstage now. They stood side by side, identical, unmoving. I couldn’t help wondering if my mother and I would look alike when I found her, and if our magic really was the same.
Raleigh flourished and waved his hands behind the door as if to check for anything else inside. Distracting us. Then he redid the latches as the two women stood still, before opening the cabinet again. “And a granddaughter, also filled with power.”
And out stepped a third voodoo queen to join the first two—my guess was that the original Marie had just stepped out of the cabinet, having reentered when Raleigh flourished, and the others were projections or reflections. An impressive illusion. The crowd applauded.
Raleigh silenced us with a look. “But we in this room know that voodoo queens, no matter how beautiful”—the women preened on cue, regally mirroring each other, with motions as identical as they were, which they would be, since only one was real—“no matter how powerful someone might be, they do not live forever. At least, not in their mortal flesh.” He opened the cabinet door and gestured, and as he talked, they appeared to reenter it, disappearing inside, one by one.
This was a clever illusion in
itself, but he was building to something. “So the story goes, Marie Laveau shared one spirit across three bodies, and when the last finally perished, it did not die, but transformed. And what form did she take? One that would allow her to watch over their city, of course. Her city. Would you like to know what form this transformation took?”
I was leaning forward, unsettled by the word transformation.
He spun the cabinet once, so we could get a look at how slender it was. The three women were inside so far as the audience knew, but only the one would really be pressed inside, probably behind a back compartment. Suspecting his methods didn’t take away from the wonder of it, though. He’d gotten better since the last time I saw his act.
This time Raleigh flung open the cabinet door, and even I gasped when a span of wings emerged and spread out in the air. A large black bird with a necklace of white feathers on its throat flew toward us. “She transformed into a crow, the messenger between this world and the next,” Raleigh said.
The crow swooped overhead with an almost balletic quality in its timing, and then back to Raleigh to perch on his extended forearm.
Raleigh bowed, and the bird stayed put.
The crowd was on its feet. Raleigh basked in the applause, as his due.
I couldn’t blame him. That. Now that was magic. For a second, I let myself envision my daring coffin escape taking place on this small spooky stage, and that the enthusiastic applause was for me.
Not that I coveted Raleigh’s success. One of the girls at the theater had told me a long time ago never to confuse jealousy and envy. Jealousy was for the mean-spirited, those who didn’t believe they would achieve something, and so didn’t want anyone else to have it either. Envy, on the other hand, could be useful, unless overindulged. Envy could make you stop for a moment and consider whether what you envied was something you truly wanted. Being honest about what you truly wanted was the beginning of achieving it.
I waited until Raleigh had taken one last bow, joined by his Marie. The bird hopped off his arm and took up residence at the top of the box. The audience began to file out. I should have gotten back to work, but I made my way over to him.
“Congratulations,” I said. “That was a truly great illusion.”
He glanced right and left, still glowing with the adrenaline of a good performance. “Don’t use the ‘i’ word in public.”
“I hardly qualify,” his assistant said, shrugging at us. She rolled the cabinet off the stage.
“What’s up, Pixie?” Raleigh said, and I realized we were alone now. Though “Marie” could have been eavesdropping. I waved him to the edge of the small stage.
The crow fluttered up to Raleigh’s shoulder. Dad had done a few things with doves, smallish and pale, easily trained. “Where’d you get the crow?”
The bird let out a croooooak.
“Oh, Caliban,” Raleigh said, eyes flicking affectionately in its direction. “I have a friend who’s into wildlife rescue and, um, Caliban was a pet, but he got turned out and she found him—he wasn’t really up to hanging out with regular crows, since he’s an African pied, and he, uh, he likes me.”
“Raleigh, are you embarrassed that you have a pet? Pets are supposed to like you.”
He didn’t answer.
Caliban was just as striking up close as when he was performing, like a small raven with a necklace of white feathers. I wanted to touch him, but Raleigh didn’t invite me to.
“Spit it out,” Raleigh said. “What do you want?”
I’d planned to ask him one thing, but something else spilled out first.
“If I do well for the next week or two and if I can get this illusion I’ve been working on perfect—the one I was planning to do for Dad back in Vegas—what are the odds you’d let me open for you? I need some stage time,” I said. “If this is my shot, I have to know I can do it.”
“Not until your performance is flawless.”
Flawless was a hard target. But . . . “Understood.”
He held out his arm, and Caliban fluttered down to it. I could tell he was about to leave.
“Wait,” I said. “Did Dad ever talk about my mom to you?”
He frowned. “No, never,” he said. But he paused.
“What?”
“Why are you asking? Shouldn’t you talk about this with him?”
Honesty was the best policy here. “I don’t want to hurt him.”
He scrubbed his left hand against the back of his neck. “He told me she was the only woman he’d ever loved, and—” He must have seen some glimmer of hope reflected on my face, because he rushed on. “And the only one he’d ever hated.”
“Hated?” I blurted it out. His story about her had always been told in affectionate tones. “Why?”
“I don’t know,” Raleigh said. “Maybe he had every reason, maybe he had none.”
Which left me plenty of worst-case scenarios to imagine until I found her.
ten
After the midway went dark, my sleights over for the evening, I lingered to watch the Cirque’s last show of the day from the back of the big top in a section marked “Standing Room Only.” The show was sold out, something that seemed to have the admin staff already high-fiving each other. Several other midway performers were here too, all flush with the success of our hours of performing.
The finale was nearing when Dez turned up. I was trying to pretend I hadn’t been waiting for him. Hoping too. I shouldn’t have been doing either.
“Hey,” he said. He’d changed into an old black T-shirt gone gray and beat-up jeans, and it was like some sort of curse on me that he managed to look even better than he had earlier.
I gave him a small smile and focused on the performance in progress.
“These two legendary high-wire walkers insist on doing part of their act together these days, and I think we can all bask in our luck that this is the case,” Thurston announced. “My favorite father-and-daughter team.”
Jules and her father, of course. He’d begun with a still and solemn walk across the wire with no aid, simple but riveting. Then he turned back, breezing across the wire, and now Jules stalked out, idly twirling a parasol. They met at the middle of the wire to thunderous applause. There were a dozen or so girls dressed in Jules-esque red tutus in the tent, all cheering.
“You like this circus stuff?” Dez asked.
“Yeah, I do. It’s amazing,” I said.
The entire show had been great. The performers were top-caliber, and Thurston’s costume and styling department kept everything on the classic side. I approved, in the same way I vaguely disapproved of Dad and most magicians’ costuming. Far too many mullets and too much tacky leather; the girls at the theater frequently cackled about starting a makeover service for magicians. No one would ever argue that they didn’t need it.
“You’re right. It is amazing. Like you.”
I ignored the way the words shimmied up my spine and made me want to stretch into them like a cat. There was a slight hint of booze to his scent. He must have had a drink after his last performance.
“Magicians are supposed to be amazing.”
Jules and her father took another bow midwire and then, in a comic bit, bumbled around each other—and took another bow to show the bumbling was for effect only. The audience laughed.
“Who taught you how to get out of a straitjacket?”
I managed not to be too offended that he was asking again how I’d learned magic, like it would have been impossible that I’d taught myself. “No one. Everyone. I learned. Straitjackets were hard, but I managed.”
Dez nudged me with his shoulder. “You learned by yourself how to get out of a straitjacket.”
I shrugged, like it was no big deal, though it had been. “Obviously I had to wait until I was in front of people to do it with the straitjacket really on.”
That had been my most nerve-wracking day, not knowing if my prep would pay off or not.
“Did your family friend leave?” I asked.
“Did I say family friend? More of a family curse,” Dez said. “But yeah, he’s gone. Took all our money with him too.”
“Good.” Thinking about him made me want to shiver. “Not about the money, but the gone part.”
Jules’s father walked to the other end of the wire and stepped off onto the platform. Left in the spotlight, Jules twirled and danced across the wire to conclude the act, as wonderful as she had been earlier. And—also a humorous touch—the crewmen brought out a net and put it below when she finished. She closed her parasol, smiled, and jumped off, spinning down into it with a move she must’ve learned from Remy.
The crowd loved it. They loved that Remy was waiting there to give her a kiss on the cheek too.
The rest of the Garcias ran out, then, as Jules exited, the lights signaling that it was time to shift our attention to them. They gripped ladders that rose to their aerial platforms and swings. The trapeze act would close the show.
This was what I’d really been hanging around for. I wanted to see Dita’s performance. The way she’d seemed to dread rehearsal had me curious.
I couldn’t help feel a twinge, thinking about how tight these families were. Their situations seemed so simple compared to my own. My missing magic mother and non-abandoning but disapproving father. Then again, all family dynamics probably looked simpler than they were when viewed from afar.
I turned back to watch the Garcias.
Thurston pattered on about the Love Brothers and the Goddesses of Beauty. The older brother, Casanova, a.k.a. Novio, dominated one side. Romeo, a.k.a. Remy, dominated the other. In addition to the two Garcia boys and Aphrodite, a.k.a. Dita, there were two blonde performers, identical twin girls. They launched themselves out into tight spins first, Novio catching each of them on an arm, much to the audience’s delight. The act proceeded with more variations on this. I kept waiting for Dita to leave the platform.
And waiting.
There was a smile visible on her face from down here, but when it stayed and stayed, I suspected she was forcing it. Finally, once the blondes had careened—with grace—down into the net below, Dita grabbed the swing.