Masters of Illusions (11 page)

He told them that the brigade passing the bodies from over the chute to the blankets laid out on the grass lasted just a minute
or so—just a dozen or so children were all that Hermes Wallenda could manage to pull up and over the chute before the heat
forced him back. Charlie would have given plenty for Hermes Wallenda’s testimony but Margie could well imagine why the youngest
Wallenda had refused. The last thing he must have seen before he jumped down off the chute would have been the choking mothers
holding their children up to him. All the witnesses from inside the tent said there was no smoke. They could see it all just
like they were watching a movie. The smoke didn’t come until everyone was either out or forsaken.

Captain Bart had stood on the ground on the other side of the chute and caught the children Hermes Wallenda dropped down to
him and then passed them on to an army private behind him. He said a big surge of heat suddenly came through the bars, pushing
at him like a great invisible burning hand. Then Hermes Wallenda jumped down and faced him, their eyes inches apart. Captain
Bart said that it was the same as looking into hell. “I saw hell in his eyes,” he said. The twang was almost entirely gone,
not quite, but his Bible-thumping roots lingered. Then they ran, Captain Bart off to see where he could be of more help, Hermes
Wallenda to his trailer.

Captain Bart paused for just a second before he said, “Thank God for that wall of heat, though. There is just no question
in my mind that those people up against the chute died in an instant.” He knew that was what must have happened because even
though no fire touched him, his uniform had been burned black, and the hair of his arms was singed off. He’d been leaning
against the chute, and when he took off his pants that night there were the beet red imprints of the vertical bars against
his thighs. Margie looked over at Chick. Little Miss 1565 had been barely touched by the hand of heat Captain Bart spoke of;
she had been protected from it by the crazed people climbing on top of her, fatally crushing her. Captain Bart looked at Margie
sitting next to him and said, “You were just a tiny baby. A piece of burning canvas must have fallen on your back. I remember.…”

Then he started crying again. Jack Potter from his wheelchair said to him, “Now, son, you just take it easy. Everything’s
fine now” Martha caught Margie’s eye.

Captain Bart, a career air force officer but still a farm boy from the Bible Belt, wiped his nose on his immaculate khaki
sleeve and said, “Thank you, sir. I thought… the baby…“ He raised his hands, palms up, and looked at them, and then at Margie.
He said, “I thought you were dead.”

Jack Potter said, “No, son, she was unconscious.”

Margie put down her coffee cup. “Well wouldn’t you know it wasn’t one of those famous Wallendas who’d left a thumbprint in
my back? Just some kid from Arkansas.” Margie smiled at him.

She saw Charlie roll his eyes.

Captain Bart managed a smile back at her. She said, “You know, Captain, the thing you have to tell yourself is that I don’t
remember any of it. It’s like you’re telling me a story of someone else.” What she always said.

Her father said, “That’s true, Captain.”

Then Jack Potter went back to sipping his coffee. He’d pulled himself out of wherever he was to keep an eye out for Margie,
the way he’d always done until she met Charlie. Jack Potter’s devotion to his daughter allowed him to be where he wanted to
be—nowhere—while he waited to get back to his wife. Before the war. At the party, his words, “That’s true, Captain,” were
the last he spoke for the rest of the day.

Martha said to her mother later, “I’m sorry, but I just can’t help but wonder what he was feeling when he dropped napalm on
all those other babies.”

Margie said, “God help him.”

Martha said, “Right.”

Sometimes, Margie just wanted to smack her, just the way kids her age wanted to smack the world.

The day after the party, Margie took a ride back to Charter Oak Terrace. Seeing her Aunt Jane and Big Pete and Little Pete
together with her father made her want to reach back to another time, when she was a little girl, before anything began to
seem terribly wrong. Just the way her father wanted to reach back to some time before the war but couldn’t. She knew the cherry
tree wouldn’t be there anymore after so many years, and it wasn’t. There was a washing machine under the window instead. A
new one. The Puerto Ricans put it outside because there was no room inside, same way they did back in San Juan. They didn’t
know about water lines freezing in the winter yet. Someone would tell them, and they’d make a place for it. She asked the
Puerto Rican family who lived in her old apartment if she could come in and see where she had been raised till she was six
years old. The Puerto Rican family agreed immediately because they had a strong empathy for homesickness.

Margie was absolutely appalled at the thought that a father and a child, let alone a huge Puerto Rican family could live in
such a small space. Downstairs, a minuscule kitchen butted up against a tiny living room, and upstairs there were two bedrooms
with barely enough space for a bed and a bureau each, and a bathroom. The rooms were filled with furniture—mostly cots—and
kids. There were curtains dividing the bedrooms and the living room, too, so that there were three extra bedrooms. But the
clearest memory Margie had brought with her was of the coal furnace in a little alcove by the back door. She remembered watching
her father shovel coal into the red insides. And Margie remembered what she’d been thinking then; she’d watch her father and
try to imagine what the circus fire had been like. When she was little—when no one would speak to her of it. But she’d heard
the whispers and began to put it together with why she had no mother.

Now there was an oil burner, and next to it, an oval basket lined with a pink-checked blanket holding a sleeping baby. Things
began to melt down for Margie when she saw the little baby so close to the oil burner with fire hidden somewhere inside it
in the same place where that big black coal furnace used to be. Margie heard herself mumbling something to the Puerto Ricans,
saying good-bye and thanking them, and then getting out of there so she could breathe again. And once outside in her car,
she heard the question she’d heard over and over again that would turn her father to steel: “How could she have taken such
a tiny baby to the circus?”

Puerto Ricans take their babies everywhere, even to circuses. They put them to sleep next to the oil burner. How can you put
a baby to sleep next to an oil burner? Because it’s warm there, and the motor has a nice hum and besides, there isn’t any
room for her anywhere else. Margie hadn’t asked them the question she hoped no one else would ever ask, and they didn’t ask
her about her mother. In the car, later, she smelled a sweet fragrance. She was holding a half-empty plastic cup of
tamarinda
juice the Puerto Ricans must have given her. The juice helped her to gain control so that she wouldn’t crack up her new Seville.
Also, to help herself gain control, she thought about the complicated plot of a book she’d read recently,
The Tamarind Seed.
She thought: They don’t make thrillers like that one anymore. With irony. She would go home and recommend it to Martha.

But the image of Martha that came to her just then was of Martha in her crib. An infant like the baby in the basket, maybe
six months old. Margie saw herself lifting a hungry, squalling Martha from her crib. She watched herself go downstairs to
the living room and sit on the sofa to breast-feed the baby while she got back to the book she was almost finished with. But
Martha distracted her from the book. Six months is a comical age. Since babies begin sitting up at that stage, they gain a
new perspective on life. Margie would prop her in a high chair and Martha would eat cubes of bananas or pieces of ziti. She
especially loved to pick up a big steak bone and chew on it. Margie thought that all her chewing probably soothed her aching
gums. But mostly, Martha loved Cheerios. She had such long, fine fingers, and Margie loved watching her pick up a single Cheerios
between finger and thumb and bring it slowly to her mouth, watching it the whole time until her eyes crossed. Then she’d push
it into her mouth and while she gummed it around she’d stare at her empty finger and thumb and Margie would say, “Martha,
you ate it.” Her voice would distract the baby, and Martha would give her a big smile and move on to the next Cheerios. Eating
as a concept, Margie could see, was yet to be fathomed.

The day Margie was remembering became clearer. Martha was sucking away at her mother’s breast, and once the initial hunger
pangs were assuaged, she then peeked up at Margie. She smiled and Margie’s nipple slipped out of her mouth. Martha pulled
her head back and looked at it, and then her gaze drifted back up to Margie, and then back to the nipple. Up came Martha’s
hand and she caught Margie’s nipple between her thumb and finger and pulled it into her mouth, looking into her mother’s eyes
all the while. She repeated this procedure several times, and then Margie couldn’t help but smile; one of her body parts was
being treated like Cheerios. She said, “Martha, you silly goose.” But Martha was serious. There was an expression of wonder
that had come over her as she realized that not only did her mother always hold her and keep her cozy when she ate, it was
her mother she was eating.

When she dozed off, Margie lay her on a blanket on the sofa beside her. And Margie knew that if she walked out of Martha’s
life right then, when she was six months old, Martha would suffer a horrible loss. Of course, she’d at least have a daddy
to hug and hold her. Margie hadn’t had that. Her daddy had been a prisoner of war. Whatever that meant. Margie didn’t know
as he would never speak of it.

Margie cried and cried. She was not the crying type. So she didn’t know how to stop. All she could think of was that poor,
poor baby, burned so badly, in such pain, and without her mother to help her. Deserted by her mother was what it must have
certainly felt like. To associate Martha with utter despair was impossible for Margie. But that was what it must have been.
The hard thing was not talking to Charlie about this. He’d get crazed, and he was crazed enough, bound and determined to figure
out who set that fire.

Now she steered the Seville into a U-turn, and Margie headed away from Charter Oak Terrace to her Aunt Jane’s house. She sped
along, thinking she had mourned her mother after all. She had grieved in some terrible baby way and she wanted to find out
about it. She thought: My Aunt Jane who had a baby of her own to take care of stepped in and raised me while I must have been
in one wretched state. Margie had always shown her aunt appreciation—buying her special presents and inviting her places—but
she had never really come out and thanked her. She’d never thought to. And not only that, she wanted to find out exactly what
else there was to thank her for.

She pulled into her aunt’s driveway, ran up the walk, and rang the bell. Her aunt opened the door and Margie said, “I came
to thank you for raising me and helping my father when he came home.” Her aunt got her into the house and said, “Now you just
calm yourself, Margie. You know your happiness has always been thanks enough.”

Over coffee, Margie did calm down. She asked, “What was I like, Aunt Jane, when I was a baby? After my mother died.”

Jane said, “Well, you were very, very sick.”

Margie didn’t let her stop there. She said, “Was I in a lot of physical pain?” hoping she was so that she wouldn’t picture
herself as a baby like Martha, wondering why her mother wouldn’t come to her. Aunt Jane told Margie that the doctors at Hartford
Hospital had seen to it that she had a lot morphine. She told her that the hospital had been just two years old and by some
miracle was chosen as the site of an experimental burn unit exclusively designed for a civilian disaster—in case the Jerries
bombed New York the way the Japs had Pearl Harbor. And since the doctors at Pearl Harbor had learned that there was no substitute
for blood plasma in treating burn patients, Hartford Hospital had had gallons of frozen blood plasma. Jane said, “You know,
Margie, it was a gift from God that Hartford Hospital was five minutes away from the circus. We’d have lost a thousand people,
if not. We’d have lost you.”

“How did I act?”

“What?”

“I mean, how was I? Besides the pain.”

At first, her aunt didn’t speak. But then she forced herself back because she could see Margie needed her to. “Even with the
morphine, you were constantly looking for your mother. When you started to get some of your strength back, you would search.
With just your eyes. You’d try not to fall asleep so you could find her. Every time the door to your hospital room opened,
you’d get all alert and at first, smile. Then when it wasn’t your mother, you’d cry. All over again.” Margie’s aunt picked
up her napkin and blew her nose. “It got so that the nurses would call out who they were before they’d come into your room.”

Jane went on to say that, fortunately for her, Little Pete was a very outgoing baby and loved to have other people take care
of him, so she’d leave him with different neighbors so she could spend a lot of time in the hospital with her best buddy’s
daughter.

Then she said, “It took about three months.”

Margie said, “Three months?”

“Before you stopped looking for your mother.” She sighed. “When your burns were finally healing, you still weren’t getting
better. I mean, you acted sick. So I asked the doctor to please let me take you home and he said it would be okay” Now she
smiled at Margie. She said, “You were so glad to see Little Pete again. The two of you recognized each other right away. He
kept piling all his little toys around you. Giving them to you so you’d stay. He loved you, Little Pete did. Loved you from
the first day he saw you. Guess that’s why I’m blessed with so many grandchildren.”

Margie asked, “How was I after that?”