Masters of Illusions (3 page)

She wondered if he was asking her if she experienced orgasm so she said, “Nothing. But I bet it will happen next time.” His
expression told her she’d misinterpreted the question so she explained what she’d thought he meant. He just stared at her
for the longest time, and he said, “Oh, God.” Then he said, “Next time, I promise you. If it takes all day.” Margie started
to ask him what that meant—if
what
took all day?—but he was already explaining what he’d meant in the first place. “What I want to know is, what happened to
you the day of the fire?”

“Oh.” So Margie told him that she really didn’t know what happened to her. She was, after all, the youngest casualty. A baby.
She said, “I can only tell you what other people told me.” And he said, “Please tell me what they told you.”

So she told him in bits and pieces, starting with the bucket brigade and the lady with the potatoes. He said, “Emilia Pasqucci.”

He knew the Italian woman’s name. He said that was because his mother had been born and brought up in the once Italian stronghold
at the north end of the city. Everyone there knew everyone else. That was a half-truth. He knew the name of Emilia Pasqucci
not because of his mother, who undoubtedly did know the woman, but because of his obsession. He knew every single fact, every
name, every particular connected with the circus fire. Margie would come to find that out soon.

While they talked, Margie could see how happy he was to have found her—how happy not to have to relinquish his obsession,
even though there was this huge complication he’d have to face, relinquishing the beautiful Sylvia and calling off his wedding.
Margie went on with her story, still in bits and pieces because they kept breaking up the narrative with passionate kissing.
They were making love down by the creek at the end of the beach where there was privacy. Mosquitoes were why no one went to
the creek. Margie and Charlie never felt the mosquitoes feasting on them. All that week, Charlie kept running out of condoms
and finally thought to buy a bottle of insect repellent during his many trips to the drugstore.

After they finally reached the point where they could control themselves somewhat, Margie was able just to sit placidly in
Charlie’s arms and tell him her story without interruptions. She did it the same way she had described the plot of
To Kill a Mockingbird,
the way she described any good book she recommended to a friend. Dramatically. In fact, she blurted out the words, “My mother
died in the fire trying to save me,” knowing Charlie would take them very hard. In fact, his eyes became big love-crumbs,
Margie thought, as e.e. cummings put it so sublimely. Charlie said, “Your mother died? In the fire?”

“Yes.”

He was completely overcome, his face filled with dreadful grief. She went on, telling Charlie that the surge of the thousands
of hysterical people must have wrenched her from her mother’s arms. She told him that even though almost all of the dead were
crushed up against the animal chute, her mother wasn’t because she wasn’t trying to get out; she was trying to find her baby.

Charlie swallowed. She watched his Adam’s apple go up and down. “And your father?” he asked.

“He was overseas. Actually, he was in a prisoner-of-war camp. He didn’t find out my mother had died till he was liberated.”

“Jesus.” Charlie hugged her closer. “Where did they find her?”

“Under the grandstand. Under the Grandstand C seats is what I heard. What was left of the Grandstand C seats.”

Charlie crushed her to him and kissed her. He said, “Someone—whoever it was—saved you. Saved you for me. God bless him.”

Margie thought, Yeah. She decided it wasn’t the moment to mention that the blessed person left his thumbprint in her back.
Then Charlie pulled off Margie’s bathing suit and made love to her again. What he’d promised her earlier didn’t take all day.

When Margie emerged from the magical tunnel Charlie created that led to her having an orgasm, she lay in his arms thinking
how interesting it was that the one thing Charlie didn’t say, which everyone else said to her when they asked her about the
fire, was, “Well, at least the animal act was over. A merciful thing.” Margie couldn’t believe how morbid people were. As
if the fire alone hadn’t been bad enough, people liked to imagine the big cats eating people as the flames burned all around.
Charlie obviously understood that things were morbid enough without such black flights of fancy.

But Charlie did know it was a merciful thing, not because the animals would have eaten anyone—they were very well fed—but
because the circus was not just any circus, it was the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey’s, the Greatest Show on Earth,
and in those days, the wild animal act was not a tame Siberian tiger and a few tired-looking lions. The Ringlings had the
best. The Alfred Court Wild Animal Act had forty lions, thirty tigers, thirty leopards, twenty bears, and forty elephants.
It was some show.

The line, “The animals had just cleared the chute,” came up over and over in stories about the circus fire. No one could quite
visualize the animals clearing the chute, even people who had been to the circus several times, but Charlie could. He’d studied
the catastrophe from beginning- to end. He knew that the reason the people couldn’t picture the scene was because it happened
so swiftly. The illusion was that it didn’t happen at all. At the Hartford circus, the chute ran from the enormous cage in
the ring nearest the main entrance and on out of a slit in the tent a few feet from the main entrance where it met up with
the circus-train cages. The chute was an arch of metal bars. As soon as the animal act ended, the lights would go out and
a spot would come on, aimed at the saddest of all sad clowns, Emmett Kelly, who would wring such poignant feelings out of
the hearts of the crowd that all eyes would remain riveted on him. And then, after his act of diversion, he’d slip out of
the spot and the beam of light would swing up to the peak of the tent. And there, as if by a miracle, perched on a tiny wood
platform, were the Flying Wallendas about to walk the tightrope. In the moment before the first Wallenda stepped out onto
the rope, the circus hands would have already dismantled the cage and chute. But not on the day of the fire.

Emmett Kelly had missed his cue. The Ringmaster counted to three, and when the clown still hadn’t appeared, signaled for the
spot to go out. So the audience, that afternoon, watched the animals trot through the chute, the roustabouts take down the
cage, and the Wallendas climb their ladder. The roustabouts were just turning their attention to the chute when they saw the
beginnings of the fire. The men scrambled off to safety, leaving the chute where it stood. Consequently, anyone who tried
to get to the main entrance from Grandstand A in the southwest corner of the tent had to climb over the chute in order to
escape. Hundreds of people did try, but only the Wallendas were able to do it, and, of course, do it with ease, as they were
acrobats.

But Margie’s mother was found under the ashes of the wooden seats in Grandstand C. She had died of smoke inhalation while
she searched, was what Margie’s father told her and what she told Charlie. People would say to her father—nasty, stupid people—why
would anyone take an infant to a circus? Her father would tell them in his beaten voice, “The baby was her closest friend.”
He never got over the ridiculous irony that he survived a prisoner-of-war camp while his wife couldn’t make it through a circus.

When Margie told Charlie about the nasty, stupid people, he said, “Stop, stop,” and hugged her and petted her and told her
he adored her. His face reflected the pain she insisted she didn’t feel. It was just a story. “Charlie, I have no memory of
any of this!”

During their conspiratorial meetings at the creek, it finally came to be Margie’s turn to ask Charlie what happened to him
at the circus. What with the obsession, she’d assumed he’d been there. He told her he hadn’t been, but that he’d had a ticket.
She smiled, of course, and then he smiled, too. The circus fire had become such a legend in Hartford that anyone in the city
who wasn’t at the circus claimed they’d had a ticket but were saved because they missed the last bus, or because they chose
not to go as it was just too hot that day, or whatever. As if people throw away a ticket to the circus because it’s hot.

Charlie asked, “So what’d you get?”

He meant her settlement. They hadn’t had class-action suits back then. They hardly had any lawsuits at all. But the Ringlings
wanted to do right by the victims. They paid the families, and the injured survivors, an amount deemed appropriate by a volunteer
panel of Connecticut probate judges who determined each casualty’s level of loss or injury. They awarded a cash amount to
the next of kin of the dead and more complicated settlements to the physically injured. Uninjured survivors didn’t expect
to be recompensed for their emotional trauma—that you escaped the fire untouched was recompense enough. To complain about
the damage to your psyche was to trivialize those who were really hurt. There wasn’t such a thing as post-traumatic stress
syndrome till Vietnam. Margie’s father’s condition would, today, have been considered post-traumatic stress. In World War
II, people who had nervous breakdowns were pretty much thought of as cowards.

Not only did the judges consider the condition of each claimant, they also took into account the age of the claimant. Margie’s
settlement would be a new Cadillac every year for the rest of her life, to be received on her birthday rather than on the
anniversary of the fire, which was initially suggested before the judges suddenly looked at one another, chagrined. One of
them said, “We’re going off the deep end, here, fellas.” The youngest victims all got cars. That way, the judges felt, the
children’s guardians wouldn’t be able to abscond with large lump sums of money. The Ringlings made deals with several automobile
companies. Margie’s getting Cadillacs instead of Fords was the luck of the draw.

As Margie grew up, and came to understand all that had happened, her executor, her father, told her she could have the cars
once she graduated from high school and got a job. So at the beach, in the summer of ’61, she was driving her first one, dazzling
the boys with a pink-and-black Eldorado convertible. But Charlie was dazzled by her scars.

When he made love to her in her bed at Aunt Jane’s one night when her aunt and uncle had gone to the movies, Charlie felt
the thumbprint.

She was lying on top of him, looking down into his eyes while his fingers were tracing the ridges of scars on her back.

Then he felt the oval thumbprint in the small of her back, and stopped what he was doing even though he was inside her. His
erection went away and he slid out from under her, kept her on her stomach under the lamplight, and from behind her he said,
“Margie, you’ve got a fingerprint down here.”

Margie said, “Thumbprint.”

He rolled her over. She felt embarrassed lying on her back, naked in the light because her breasts fell into her armpits,
not like the centerfolds in
Playboy
theirs stayed straight up, pointed.

Charlie got all concerned. He said, “Margie, I’m sorry! Please don’t be ashamed.”

So she told him the thumbprint scar wasn’t the problem. She told him she was embarrassed by suddenly being flat-chested and
made reference to the magazine. He rolled his eyes. He said, “Silly girl. Centerfold breasts are taped to stay upright and
then the tape gets airbrushed out.” Firemen had determined that because they were surrounded by centerfolds adorning their
walls. Back then, at least. So he kissed her flat chest where her breasts would have come together if she was standing, and
he said, “This is a nice place when you’re on your back, Margie. I get closer to your heart.” Then he laid his head on the
middle of her chest, listening to her heartbeat, and said, “Lub-dub, lub-dub, lub-dub.” Then, trusting that it wouldn’t take
any more effort to get Margie by that bit of insecurity, he asked, “Whose thumbprint is it?”

Margie said, “Everyone’s told me it was probably one of the soldiers,” and she described the people-brigade, which was nothing
new to him.

“I’ve met some of those fellas,” he said. “Jesus Christ, Margie.”

Margie said, “Could you get back inside me?”

Charlie said, “I’d better get on the phone is where I’d better get. I’ve decided I’m not going to wait till I get home to
tell Sylvia. She doesn’t deserve this.”

Yeah, Margie thought. It was true. She didn’t.

M
argie and Charlie went out on the fishing boat again on Charlie’s last day at the beach. Usually, in the summer, the horizon
was obscured by a humid haze, but now the air had been dried out by a Canadian front. Margie said, “When it’s this clear,
Long Island seems so close that I feel like I could swim there in ten minutes.”

Charlie said, “The guys cornered me last night.”

“They did?”

“Yeah. They wanted to know what the hell was going on.”

So did Margie. “What did you tell them?”

“I told them that Sylvia and I had broken up.”

“Then what happened?”

“They just sat around wondering what they should say, but then my brother Michael—he’s kind of a comedian—he said, ‘Is it
too late to change the cake?’”

“What cake?”

“The cake that says ’Charlie and Sylvia on it. For the party. Half the department’s coming down from Hartford tonight.”

“Oh.” She waited, but he didn’t say any more. “Charlie?”

“Yeah?”

“What did Sylvia say?”

He leaned back into the wood bench, put his head back, and looked up at the drifting clouds. “She just started crying. She
tried to say something but she was crying too hard to talk. Then her father got on the phone so I told him, too.”

“Pretty hard, I guess.”

“Not really. I mean, well, it was. He kept saying, ‘These things happen.’ But then he started crying, too.”

“I’m sorry, Charlie.”

“I know.”