The School of Beauty and Charm (32 page)

To carnies, a wedding was a wedding, groom or not. They brought the cake to my door, shouting for me to cut it, but I told them to go away. Once I heard Eva at the door, calling out to me in drunken sympathy, “He's the son of a pig!” I wondered if anyone else would take this opportunity to get married, since the carousel had been painted and all. I passed out on the bed with my nose buried in Zane's smoky shirt.

When I came to, the party had quieted down; I heard only a faint strain of “Le Sabre” through the thin walls. Somewhere Sunny was arguing in a high-pitched, drunken voice.

I heard Lollibells laughing and then Zane. I was out the door like a nail flying to a magnet.

I ran barefoot across the gravel, to the sound of Zane's laugher. The bastard! But Madge caught me in her thick arms.

“Listen,” she said, shaking me. “Listen to me. Percy is gone.” I tried to focus on her face, a white blur of tears.

“Who?”

“I have looked everywhere. He ain't in the drain. Or on the fence. Or under the bed. He ain't at yous guys place?” I told her that I hadn't seen a python in our trailer, but she had to come over and look for herself. We checked the box where Zane kept his torches, and our suitcase, already packed for Gibson. The posters on the walls mocked me:
THE ARTHUR REESE TRAVELING SHOW! THE MAN WITH ELASTIC EYEBALLS, FIFI THE HEADLESS WOMAN, THE MOST BEAUTIFUL TEENAGER IN AMERICA, ZANE WILDER, THE HUMAN DRAGON
! I was Louise Peppers, the groomless bride. Percy wasn't in the shower or
beneath the refrigerator, where he sometimes went to get warm. He wasn't on the windowsill. We called the police, but they hung up on us.

“You and me kid,” said Madge, throwing her arm over my shoulder. “We lost ‘em. Losing Larry was just like this. Awful.” She picked up one of Zane's socks and mopped her eyes with it. “I called and called. Dreamed about him every night. Still do, but it was easier with Percy wrapped around me. Took my mind off things. But I ain't never forgot ole Larry. You don't forget a cat like that. Him with his tail on fire, going on with the show.” When she moaned, I stepped back, thinking she might puke on me, but she only cried, “Oh God! Oh Jesus fucking Christ I loved that little snake!”

To get rid of her, I suggested that Percy might be on one of the rides.

“He gets carsick,” she said hesitantly, but her eyes grew bright, and she began walking rapidly toward the carousel calling out in a thin, raspy voice, “Percy! Percy, come to Mama!” Staggering behind her, I kept a lookout for Zane. What do you say to the man who has just stood you up at your wedding? It needed to be memorable. Maybe he'd ask me again. Then I could say no. With painful clarity I saw that the engagement ring was a down payment. Sunny didn't have one either. In my mind, I heard Henry saying, “Why, he's no good. Shiftless, lazy, irresponsible—you're better off without him.” Behind him, Florida said succinctly, “Trash.” But then I heard his voice, ringing out clear over “Le Sabre”—a smoky tenor touched with a fading drawl, and I was ready to negotiate. Maybe Sunny had kidnapped him. Maybe his car had
broken down. Possibly he had the dates mixed up. I strode forward.

In the faint light of a broken Japanese lantern, the carousel spun brief, grotesque shadows in the dirt. Around and around, grinding out that mad gypsy tune, horses with flashing white teeth shot into the light and dipped away. Zane was on a gray mare with a broken tail and a red mouth stretched into a silent scream. He was with Lollibells. They were spooned in the saddle.

“Go Blixen, go Vixen!” cried Lollibells, kicking the wooden horse. “Giddy up, reindeer!”

Rocking in his arms, Zane tossed his head and sang, “Rudolph with your nose so bright, won't you—” then he saw me standing there in my dirty wedding dress. “Aagh!” he cried, holding his hands over his eyes as the horse pumped out of sight. “The gorilla is here! Watch out!” When the horse circled back around, the men covered their eyes with their hands, screaming, “Go away, gorilla! Go away!”

Madge jogged beside them yelling, “Stop it! Get off that merry-go-round. Get off right now!”

“Oh lady, we are getting off!” said Lollibells.

“Can't stop,” slurred Zane. “Lost the stopper.”

When she came back to me, her face was red. “Don't cry over those fools,” she said with one hand on her hip, looking back at the carousel with an evil eye. “Goddamned children. Where's Tic Toc? Somebody needs to turn that thing off. Stop that crying now. Come on back to my place. I'll make us some coffee. Goddamned idiots. I ought to spank both of them. They sure do know how to spoil a party.”

When she put her arm around me, I sobbed into her chest, “I thought it was Sunny.”

“Aw baby, that was over a long time ago, him and Sunny. That damn Warren has been chasing his tail for—well, it don't matter. I'm sorry you had to see it this way, dressed up and all. But we're carnies, see? Around here, the saying goes, I love you baby, but the season's over.”

S
OMETIMES
I
IMAGINED
Roderick watching us. He'd be stretched out on a cloud or something, looking at Pepperses the way he used to lie in the grass and study lizards. He'd scrunch up his nose, slit his eyes, and freeze—just like the lizard. When a chameleon turned green, to hide from him, I half expected Roderick to change color, too. If the dead can see the living, Roderick was watching.

I
T IRKED
F
LORIDA
that Louise was worshiping a light-bulb. She'd been carrying her to church since the day she was born. Glued a ribbon to her head when she was a baby, and after that she curled her hair every Saturday night even if it was straight as a stick in the morning. Henry polished the children's shoes and set them on a piece of newspaper by the door to dry overnight. She had her own Bible, white gloves, and a dime for the tithe. Every single Sunday. She could have stayed home if all Louise needed was a lightbulb.

“I have found a power greater than myself,” Louise told her after she'd been gotten out of the drunk tank in a wedding dress.

“His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God,” said Florida.

“Not necessarily,” said Louise. “But yes. It's big, bigger than we can imagine, so big it can be anything. God can be Jesus or Buddha or a lightbulb, or a chair—”

“Shoot,” said Florida. “Is that what they taught you at the circus?” and they went at it.

None of those lightbulbs kept her out of jail. Arrested for drunken driving. Where had they gone wrong? Henry spoiled her. Couldn't say no to her. She told him, but he didn't listen. And now she was going to have to go back and serve a ninety-day sentence. Her little girl in a cage.

“I wash my hands of her,” Florida said aloud, wiping her tears. She switched on the light in her studio and strode over to the easel. For a week, the canvas had remained blank. Mary MacDermott said to look at a white canvas like a cloud. Try to see something in it. Florida looked hard. She saw a lightbulb. Who wanted to paint a lightbulb? She didn't want to paint Jesus—that had been done so much. Everybody else was so original. She was saying
Dumb, dumb, dumb
to herself when the phone rang.

It was Agnes, trying to change her appointment on her. Said she had to take her granddaughter to tap dancing. Last week it was something else. That was how Agnes did—tried to see what she could get away with.

“No,” she said crisply in the receiver. “I believe I'll find someone else to do my hair. I need to have it done by Saturday because
Southern Board is giving Henry a retirement party. He's worked for them for thirty years.”

Agnes gushed over that awhile, and then she said, “I hope Louise will be able to go. Will she still be in . . . town?” Florida knew that was coming. Blabbermouth.

“We expect so,” she said.

There was a silence. Finally, Agnes said sweetly, “Well, I didn't know what your situation would be. Can you swing by tomorrow morning? I think I can work you in.”

“I think I'll just have someone else do my hair. I don't want it to go flat before Henry's party. He's worked for them for thirty years. It's very important.”

“Shoot, then. Let's keep the appointment the way we had it.”

“That would suit me better. I'm right in the middle of something, Agnes. I have to go.”

Louise would have been proud of her. You need to define your boundaries, she said. Good Lord. She'd get her fill of boundaries in jail.

She couldn't stand to look at that empty canvas another minute, so she squeezed a tube of sienna paint onto her pallet, mixed it with soleil, and picked up a brush. Nothing happened. In her Special Art class, Helen Olfinger picked up a paintbrush like it was a fork and went to town. Those paintings were selling for a thousand dollars apiece now. Florida looked at the white space in front of her: nothing to spring off of, no boundaries. Glaring at the canvas, she remembered her daddy's words: “You're Brack Deleuth's daughter; you won't amount to nothing.”

Then Florida did something unthinkable. She hurled the pallet of paints against the wall. For a moment it stuck to the new wallpaper. Then, slowly, it slid down to the floor leaving a trail of rusty blood.

That's when she saw the bird. Stepping closer, she looked at the giant claw: thick and ropey, covered with bumps and scales, the way it would be if you were a rabbit in its grip searing with pain as you soared over the pines. With a few dabs of her brush, she pulled out the wing.

All day, Florida painted. When Henry got home from work, he stood in the studio doorway watching her until he determined that she had lost her mind.

“How's the artist?” he asked in a cheerful voice.

She mumbled a reply and kept working.

He watched her paint on the new wallpaper for a few more minutes; then he went into the kitchen to open a can of soup. If that was oil paint, it would not come off, but she probably knew that. It took all of his strength not to go in there right now with a damp sponge, but he had a feeling that this was it. One word and she would crack. He didn't need a wife in the nuthouse and a daughter in jail. Not with a son in the grave. When he finished his soup, he washed the pan, his bowl, and the spoon. He put the paper napkin in the drawer because he hadn't needed it. He glanced into the studio one more time, but she was still going at it, so he went downstairs to watch the news. After he had listened to the same report on several stations, he switched to the Weather Channel. When he was current on the wind patterns moving across all fifty states, he watched the late night news. At three o'clock
in the morning, he said good night to Louise, who was doubled up like a pretzel on her bedroom floor in meditation, and checked the locks on all the doors and windows. Finally, he knocked on the studio door. When she opened it, light flooded over them.

F
OR THE LIFE
of him, Henry couldn't remember his retirement speech. He looked around the civic center, which was filled to capacity with Southern Board employees and their families. Along the back wall, on a long table covered with a white cloth, sat a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. The apple was Florida's idea. She sat up straight in the folding chair beside him; her hair was perfect.

“You're as nervous as a cat,” she said. “Did you forget your speech?”

“No,” he said, frowning at her.

“Most people in here are deaf anyway. Maybe it won't matter.”

He nodded as if he hadn't heard her and looked over at Louise. He had asked her not to close her eyes in public, but she said she couldn't meditate with them open.

“What are you meditating on?” he'd asked when she first started.

“God.”

“Well. That's important, but do you have to do it all the time?”

“Without ceasing,” she said.

He wouldn't let her walk on the street for fear she'd be hit by a car. She had trouble paying attention even when she was
trying. She was wearing a sleeveless linen dress, and her hair was cut in a pixie. He couldn't imagine her in jail.

At the podium, Raymond Patch said a few words of introduction through his voice box. He'd had a laryngectomy last year, paid for in full by Southern Board insurance, but the doctors couldn't get him to quit smoking. Briefly closing his eyes, Henry prayed that Louise wouldn't pick up cigarettes again in jail. She'd quit smoking and drinking. Jail was no place for a lady.

Florida poked him in the arm. “Get up there. He wants to give you a present.”

Smiling, Henry walked up to the podium where he and Raymond shook hands and patted each other on the back. He was presented with a stiff new pair of overalls —“the working man's tuxedo,” Raymond called them —an electronic mosquito zapper, an ice chest filled with venison steaks from the deer Polecat had shot that morning, and a gold watch. Then they shook hands and patted backs again, and Henry was left alone to face the crowd. He hadn't been this nervous since his wedding. Although he strictly avoided looking at his family, he felt Florida's presence as always, tugging at him. His awareness of Louise was different; he was pulling her. He felt the pull move back and forth, Florida to him, him to Louise, all around the gap of Roderick.

Henry's speech was entitled “Service and Dedication.” He remembered that part clearly. “Service and Dedication,” by Henry Peppers. The rest was a blank. To calm his nerves, he tried to imagine the audience in their underwear, but this made him more uncomfortable. He drank some water from the glass on the podium. Finally, he took a deep breath and began to make something up.

“The first word I spoke was light. My first memory is watching a man hang on the square in Perrytown, Kentucky, where I was born. His head was covered with a black cloth sack. I guess I was four years old. Later on, when I was eight or nine, there was a big flood. I remember the water sloshing in my shoes as I ran down the street calling after a family stranded on the roof of their house —the house was floating down the Okawhalla River. The river rose over the banks and kept rising on the street. People were trying to run, but they kept falling in the water. It was up to my knees by then. A block of ice fell off a car and came at us like an iceberg, knocking people over. A dead chicken floated by, legs straight up in the air. I kept watching the people up on the roof of that house. The whole family was there, the mother and father and son and even the dog, waving their arms and yelling, ‘Help! Help! Help!' The house went around the bend. By then the water was up to my chest, so I swam over to the Baptist church. My father was the preacher, and I knew how to climb up into the bell tower. You wouldn't believe what all I saw from that bell tower. I saw horses and cows—the cows were all upside down— and fences and wheels and a lady's parasol streaming with ribbons. I saw an uprooted tree, a bag of basketballs from the high school gym, and a baby carriage. The water just kept rising. A piano bobbed around the bend in the river. Maybe it belonged to the house. I never saw that house again.”