The Electric Woman_A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts

by Tessa Fontaine

  I turn as much of the audience as I can and my parents line up, too, getting closer and closer with each dollar I take until, finally, they are right in front of me, alive, completely alive, the strangest thing of all. The most beautiful, tender, impossible thing of all.

  I dive down to my mom, throwing both arms around her shoulders, pressing my cheek up against her cheek. The softest skin of any person in the world. I feel the ledge of her skull, and inside, know that her brain contains universes. Travels between them, even.

  Davy has tears in the corners of his eyes, more gray in his hair, but he is smiling. I stand to hug him, a huge, deep, grateful hug. I hadn’t given him a lot of those, even though he’d been around almost my entire life. Even though he has stuck around, and stuck around, and stuck around.

  He looks exhausted but also brilliantly, brilliantly alive.

  Not knowing what to say, and needing to begin the next act, I direct them behind the blade box so they can see Sunshine contorted inside. Davy pushes my mom across the uneven grass, the big wheels on Bubbles bumping over the knots and clumps, and we go on with the show.

  * * *

  I sneak into the tent to stand beside them in the audience once I have a few minutes between acts, pull them into the far corner.

  How could a person believe that a thing like this was happening?

  A miracle, right inside this very tent.

  Turns out, their ship had arrived in Orlando, Florida, which was just a few hours from the fair, and the train they were supposed to immediately board had been delayed a few days for repairs. They’d rented a car and driven over and would stay a night before they went back to board the train and head across the country to California. To home.

  “After all, what is adventure but inconvenience, properly regarded?” Davy quotes. It’s his favorite new phrase, one that now accompanies every e-mail he sends. My mom agrees with a hum.

  They stay for two rounds of the show, see me as the headless woman, see me talk the bed of nails act, and see me, best of all, as the electric woman.

  I sit on the metal plate, connect myself to the grid. The bulb is in my mouth. Davy is snapping photos on his phone, and behind that, I can see his wide smile. My mom is watching, too. Carefully. Tracking me exactly, even when Red is talking and gesturing beside me. She is watching a moment of this adventure in the glowing mouth-light, and I am watching an afterglow of her adventure emanating off every part of her body, a body I did not think would ever recover, did not think was recovered when they left for the trip, and am seeing here, finally, finally seeing here, and knowing that really, recovery is beside the point.

  Her body right now is alive, full of light.

  An hour later, they tell me they are pretty worn-out, ready to get a little sleep. I can’t even imagine what has happened to their understanding of fatigue, their sense of what is possible, to their relationship in the months they’ve been away, or, really, what it means to them to be back on this continent.

  My mom hums, holding her palm against my cheek. I don’t know if this has happened during their trip, or if I’m just noticing it for the first time, but her eyes are back to green. A shade of pear, and bright, with flecks of orange, the same as they were before she had the stroke. It seems impossible, but there they are.

  She presses the side of her face into mine. The sound of her song gets softer and softer until it is just a quiet sort of whisper for a child. The kind you make to reassure her that everything’s all right.

  OUT OF THE MIST

  Day 146 of 150

  World of Wonders

  November 2013

  It is lightly raining and very gray. Up and down the midway rows, carnies in their bright blue polyester shirts are hanging new tigers and martians from their games and stacking milk bottles and sweeping broken glass and blowing up flaccid balloons to tack on the board.

  My mom and Davy come to the fair early the next morning, before it officially opens. There is only a little bit of time before they have to get back into their rental car and drive to Orlando, to rest a bit before getting on the train that will complete their journey to where they began, though I wonder if it will look or feel like the same place.

  I see them approaching from the end of one of the rows, two people appearing from the mist. They might have looked like this on a street in Florence, discussing what they’d see that day or which café to visit for espresso.

  Something dumb strikes me. They are in this mist, getting closer to me, but I see them more clearly than I have in a long, long time.

  Story goes: once there was a girl who kept her parents in a fog in her mind. There, it was easier to keep the sick safe and distant. And then one day, the girl saw that actually, while she thought they were napping in the fog, they’d been riding goddamned dragons in there.

  It is a ridiculous and obvious metaphor, but I feel it happen, these two clear whole people walking out of something, and I can see them as people who are not first and foremost my parents, who are adventurers. I try to imagine meeting them somewhere on their journey, in the audience of the opera, maybe. How much I’d like them. How incredible I’d think their trip was. How ballsy.

  We sit together at the same little table where I’d watched the mom sit and share her hot dog with her little girl. We try to ask each other questions about the last five months. It’s hard to know where to begin, or even the right kinds of questions to ask.

  I tell them about walking tacos.

  They tell me about fettuccini.

  I show them the lump on my hand from where the tent stake barreled down on me.

  My mom shows me the earrings and necklace she’s wearing, modeled after a pair Queen Mary once had, that she’d bought on the ship because of extra onboard credit. Then they show me some of her bruises.

  “But even that bad stuff was still good,” Davy says. My mom nods her head. She seems to understand everything he is saying, everything I am saying, which is not something I was ever sure of before she left. Does this mean that she’d understood when I’d told her I loved her as she was going into one of her brain surgeries, when I hugged her goodbye for this trip?

  “We found a closeness we never knew possible,” Davy says.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  I look over to my mom and she is looking at him. She pulls her hand up from the coffee she’d been holding and runs it through the back of his hair. She breathes out softly, a kind of breath I’m not sure I’ve noticed before, a calm release of air. Not a sigh exactly, there is more sweetness to it, and a sound in it, subtle, a faint tone with the breath. She is saying something.

  “I think your mom and I are pretty positive people,” Davy says. “We knew we would be able to work through whatever happened. At least we weren’t shrinking into a little dark hole someplace. So many people just stay in their home and start smelling like urine. Being old wasn’t something I wanted for us.”

  I laugh. My mom does, too. It sounds so simple like that—choosing not to accept the kind of life that’s expected of you.

  She understood. She understands. And she is still here.

  “We became so incredibly close along the way. I don’t know, it wasn’t something I was expecting, being able to communicate nonverbally. But we have no artifice between us now. No secrets. Everything that happened, happened to both of us. You kind of merge a little. In the hospital, everything is built around pain and progress. When you’re out and you’re trying to decide what to eat, do you like that painting, how about that statue of the David, that’s much more broad and unstructured, and it builds you together in a different way. It led to a kind of enrichment that the show me where your pain is on this scale just doesn’t have.”

  It is almost time for me to go, to get into costume and perform a few last days on the stage before it is all over. It is almost time for them to go catch their train.

  My mom reaches out her hand to my hand and pulls me close. She exhales slowly, letting out that same soft not
e. She runs her fingertips over the calluses on my hands, over my hangnails. I run mine over her necklace, through her hair. There is no hesitation in her movement. What is there left for her to fear?

  I give them both big hugs, and, just as I’m running back toward my tent, Davy yells for me to wait.

  “They got any fried ravioli here?” he asks. I point them in the right direction.

  And then they’re gone.

  * * *

  The last few days of performing are a blur as everyone makes their final travel plans and we start packing and fixing what needs to be packed and fixed backstage between acts. There is no time on the final day for tears or reflection, because, like every closing day, the work starts early and hard and never ceases, the day of performing sliding into the night of teardown, folding and unpinning and stacking and rolling and hauling and heaving, working on and on into the night and only occasionally remembering, as we load Queen Kong into the back of the truck, that this is the last time I’ll ever do that particular thing.

  Roelof runs to our truck after teardown, 9:00 a.m., morning light streaming in. His crew is leaving in fifteen minutes. Driving the trucks to Orlando, spending the night in a motel there and getting on a plane the next morning for South Africa. But he runs to our truck before he leaves, grabs my face in both his hands. He is panting, sweating. We’d spent eight days of this fair, when my parents weren’t here, together. He brings his face close to mine and looks at it up close, keeps his bright blue eyes on mine, and then kisses me.

  “Goodbye,” he says. He turns around and runs, quickly, away from the truck.

  There are some romances that last until death. Some that start in childhood. David and Teresa. For Roelof and me, it was just for the time the carnival was in town. It was finding a kindred spirit who was trying to find his way through the arc of grief while still living, and it was bright, and sweet, and sexy, and funny, and I was smacked in the face with the simple, obvious idea that the world isn’t all about what has been lost. There is so much still here, to be found.

  I imagined my mom out in that field again, the one where the author of that book on strokes, and all the other people who’d recovered, had left her. And she was still there, partially, and there were little blue and yellow and white flowers everywhere, but she wasn’t alone. There were animals out there, talking to each other. There were all the other people from all over the world who had to figure out new ways of communicating with each other. And Davy was out there, too, somehow he’d found a way to her. He was whittling a stick and sitting beside my mom as she arranged the bright petals into some complicated, beautiful pattern on the dirt. I didn’t need to shoot everyone who tried to enter in case they might hurt her. I didn’t need to be skulking on the edges or gnashing my teeth for violence. I needed to go into the goddamned field myself. To sit beside her.

  * * *

  The crew drops me off with all my bags at a discount car rental office in a strip mall in the Florida suburbs. Most of the other performers are flying home the same night or the next day. One is heading to the bus station. They’re dropping me off first, quickly, on the way.

  Before we’d left the carnival fairgrounds, I’d walked over to Red, who was sitting on the ground and had just been delivered a Styrofoam container of Chinese food by some old-time carnie friend, and waved goodbye.

  “Thank you,” I said, giving him a bit of a bow. He set the food down and, in a few stiff maneuvers, got to his feet. He wrapped his arms around me.

  “I wasn’t sure about you at first, Tess,” he said. He let go and kept his face close to mine. I could see all his human pincushion divots. “But I want to know about all the things you do next,” he said. He had never asked if I’d be back for another season, but he knew. “You’ve got it, girl,” he said. I had no idea what it was for Red, but I wanted to tell him that I’d do everything I could, really, forever, to try to keep having it.

  Instead, I squeezed his forearm. “It has been a great, great honor to work with you, sir,” I said. He made a fart noise and sat back down to his Chinese food.

  * * *

  There’s a rush as I get out of the van, haul out my bags, and give quick hugs. I was hoping for some sort of wrap-up conversation, or parting words of wisdom, something, anything, but all the goodbyes happen fast and then everyone is back in the van, ready for the next destination.

  I hug Tommy last, and as I do, he whispers, “MVP,” into my ear. I laugh. It’s something he’s taken to calling me, and even though it’s probably a lie, I feel a glow at even the suggestion that what I did out here was useful, and maybe even, dare I dream it, significant. “Keep in touch, Tex,” he says.

  * * *

  It’s hard to believe that this van is about to drive away and permanently separate me from the crew. Their lives will carry on, maybe back in this van in seven months, maybe not, but I won’t be here. It’s hard to believe that I’m headed to see dear friends in Tallahassee for a few days, and then home to California to meet my parents—I’ll arrive the day before Thanksgiving, two days after they get back, and we’ve decided we’ll eat together—probably something Chinese, my mom, Davy, Sam, and I. It’s hard to believe that time even exists past this moment, because the last five months have felt like five years, so packed full, so many days inside days inside days. Maybe time is starting over again.

  I don’t cry. I’ve wondered about this last moment of the season so many times, about what I’d do first once I had control over where I could go and what I could do, whether I’d weep. But I don’t do anything except stand there in the rental car parking lot, struck still.

  Tommy drives the van away. I watch it go, the big white beast. Those fuzzy dice still dangling from the rearview mirror. Our lost comrade’s teeth still rattling in that cup. All their sounds traveling farther and farther from me.

  * * *

  “Last time I’ll sign this thing,” Sunshine said right before we began teardown on closing night. It was the final moment the back end of our truck—our home, our backstage area, our living room for twelve fairs and a week of TV filming, the epicenter of five months of our lives—would be empty. In just a few moments, we’d begin the careful stacking and strapping, stuffing it full again for another winter.

  “Still think it’s the last time you’ll come out?” I asked.

  “Yes, if I can help it,” Sunshine said. She handed me the Sharpie. “But who knows,” she said. “I mean, if they’re desperate, I’ll come help.”

  I looked at the semi’s wall, where she’d written 2013, the seventh year recorded beneath her name. It was hard to picture the show without her.

  Spread across the wall were other names I recognized, Red and Rash the Clown and Short E and Cassie and Tommy and Big, Big Ben and Spif and Lola Ambrosia and Pipscy, and interspersed between the names I knew, there was a whole world of names I didn’t know, people who had come before me for a season, maybe two, maybe ten. Names that stretched back the full twenty years that the show had had this semi container, and then, of course, names that stretched across other walls before that, on older trucks and trains, people who knew what fire felt like in their mouths and swords in their throats, who knew how to transcend the limits of their fragile human bodies twenty-five, thirty times a day.

  I opened the pen. Found a spot on the wall, and signed my name. Signed the year.

  There was nothing to write below it. I had hacked it.

  My name was indistinguishable from the rest as I walked out of the truck and looked back once more, just one smear on the wall among many who’d said yes, I am alive, and I am not afraid to show you how.

  EPILOGUE: WHERE YOU WILL FLOAT ELECTRIC

  July 2016

  My mom and Davy leave for another trip two and a half years later. This time, a few months into their adventure, my brother and I fly to Greece, to the island of Rhodes, to meet them. We spend five days there all together under that bright sun.

  On the last day, we help my mom into Bubbles. We
search for a beach with the most gentle slope into the ocean, and, through the crowds tanning outside their resort, wheel her to the water’s edge. We inch the chair in. Slide her off the side. Her body lies across Davy’s arms, my brother’s arms, my arms. She is swimming. This is her first time in the ocean since her stroke. We wade farther out, the three of us with our feet on the ocean floor, her body floating between us. Then she is just in Davy’s arms. She is beaming. She is looking up at the sky and then her eyes close and her skin glows and she is just singing and singing and singing. The sun is on her face and the ocean is very blue and we all watch her there, smiling at her, at each other.

  A few days later, after my brother and I say goodbye, she has another stroke on board a ship in the Mediterranean. She dies a few hours later. Out in the blue, blue water, under that bright hot sun, singing.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  There are so many people who helped make this book possible.

  Thank you to my agent, Ellen Levine, for believing this story was worth telling, and to my brilliant, patient editor at FSG, Jenna Johnson, who pointed out enough bad sentences to make the story worth reading. FSG was my dream press, and the whole team there has been wonderful.

  I am lucky, lucky, lucky to have a network of amazing writers and friends in my life who have been invaluable readers. My deep gratitude to my writer crews in Salt Lake City and Tuscaloosa who helped train me toward precision and beauty: Susannah Nevison, Cori Winrock, Noam Dorr, Alex Distler, Catie Crabtree, Laura Bylenok, Sarah Eliza Johnson, Adam Weinstein, Danilo Thomas, Betsy Seymour, Dara Ewing, Jess Richardson, Tom Cotsonas, Kevin Weidner, Annie Agnone, and my sister-friend and bright anchor, AB Gorham. Katie Robertson, Alexis Hyatt, Cricket Kovatch, you loves. Nadja Durbach for reading an early draft. To my dear friend, my first reader, the brilliant rogue cowboy Devin Gribbons: thanks for calling me on my shit.