Wonder Show (16 page)

Portia, though, had gotten used to the privileges of living in Mister’s house (dubious as they were). And she did not appreciate having to wait around for the seemingly endless trail of circus performers to finish eating or bathing or washing their clothes before she could do the same.

She and Violet were sitting in the ancient lawn chairs, watching the sun climb the sky and waiting for their chance to clean up. Portia felt especially filthy—it had been almost two weeks since her escape from Mister, and she’d had only one real bath. Most days she had to be satisfied with a bowl of lukewarm water and one of Jackal’s handkerchiefs. The trailer she was sharing with Violet was, to put it kindly, a classic model. No running water, no electricity, and no bathroom. Some of the better-known circus performers had new Airstream trailers with all sorts of modern luxuries (or so Violet said), and Portia glared at their gleaming steel skins with all the envy she could muster. But it was too hot even for that.

“This is ridiculous,” Violet said irritably. “I swear it takes longer and longer every week for them to get finished. What are they, showering the horses, too?”

“At least we get to go first after they’re done. It’s nice of Mosco to set it up that way.”

“Nice, nothing. If the men went first, Mrs. Murphy and Mrs. Collington’d likely string him up by his belt loops and leave him for dead.”

The rest of the women paced nearby—Mrs. Murphy, Mrs. Collington, Mrs. Lucasie, Anna, Marie . . .

“Where’s Doula?” Portia asked. “And the twins?”

Violet shrugged. “They usually go to a hotel in town. The twins make enough money from the blowoff to get a room for a few hours, and Doula goes with them. To help them, I guess.”

“What’s the blowoff?”

Violet lowered her sunglasses. “Jackal hasn’t told you?”

Portia shook her head, and Violet sat up in her chair and leaned forward. She was suddenly crackling with energy.

“Remember what I said about the ten-in-one? How this used to be a real show?”

Portia noticed Mrs. Murphy squinting in her direction and hoped she couldn’t hear what Violet was saying. It felt a little rude to be gossiping with everyone so nearby. Violet, however, wasn’t bothered.

“Well, without The Human Torso, the two big draws are Marie and the twins. So Pippa decided she and Polly should do something different, something more interesting, to draw the crowds. She got Mosco to let her and Polly start a new act on the back stage.”

Behind the curtain Jackal had refused to let her pass through.

“What kind of act?”

Violet leaned closer. “They dance.”

“So?”

“Naked.”

Portia’s face blushed hot, and for some reason she thought of Caroline.
She would have been horrified,
Portia told herself.
And I would have told her she was silly for it.

“Are you all right?” Violet asked.

Portia fanned herself with one of Violet’s movie magazines. “I’m fine,” she said.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have told you.”

“I was bound to find out sometime,” said Portia. “Anyway, there are worse things in the world than dancing girls.”

Men without remorse. Families who leave their little girls behind in dark places.

“I suppose there are,” said Violet. “Anyway, you should see it. The act. Especially if you’re supposed to be the inside talker.”

“Jackal won’t let me in.”

“I’ll get you in,” said Violet, determination in her voice. “Done it before.”

Then it was their turn for the shower, and suddenly Portia felt self-conscious, as if talking about Polly and Pippa’s being naked had changed what being naked meant. She tried to imagine the feeling of it, on stage, with an audience looking at her. Men, looking at her.

She finished her shower and dressed quickly, wanting to be covered, not caring if her clothes stuck to her still-damp skin.

Mosco

Look, I’ve been on this circuit a long time. My whole life, maybe. I can’t remember anything other than this, so it might be my whole life or it might just be I can’t remember anything else.

I always knew I’d have my own show and it would be a respectable operation. No pickled punks or monkeys turned into mermaids. No pinheads. No naked girls.

But sometimes a man has to make concessions. There’s certain things the rubes want to see, and the twins, they wore me down. I love those girls like they were my own, and I never wanted ’em jiggling around in front of a crowd full of perverts, but they wore me down. They know the game. They’re either on the regular stage getting the same pay as everybody else, or they’re the blowoff. Hell of a lot more money in the blowoff. And you can’t have a blowoff that’s tame. They know that.

I protect them. That’s all I can do. I’m next to the stage at every performance, and those guys in the crowd have already seen me outside. They’ve seen me bend a steel pipe in half. They won’t mess with the twins while I’m there.

That’s all I can do.

Still.

I don’t ever look.

Polly

Sometimes me and Pippa get to meet other twins when we go to new places. Never twins like us, y’know, attached like us, but still it’s nice to talk to them. These girls from Biloxi said sometimes they have the exact same dreams, just like me and Pippa. And they had a secret language, too, like we used to have. I guess we grew out of it, though.

People think we must be just alike, me and Pippa, but we’re not. She’s smarter than me, and she reads more books than me. I learned how to knit so I’d have something to do when she’s reading. I’m pretty good at it now, but I still get bored. I guess I’m lucky I’m on the left, because I can do all the driving and Pippa can read while we’re on the road. I think I’d go crazy if I couldn’t drive.

I know we’re real lucky, too, because we each have two arms we can use and two legs, too. We heard about some twin boys from Italy who only had two legs between them but they had separate top halves and they couldn’t even walk. They had to crawl around on the floor like babies. That would be awful. I think Pippa would hate me even more if we were like that.

She says she doesn’t hate me at all, but she’s the one who always talks about if we were different. I don’t even like to imagine if we were different. I would miss her so much. And if we were born like this, doesn’t that mean God made us this way for a reason? I don’t even say that to Pippa anymore, though, because she says she doesn’t believe in God, and that makes me upset. The preacher said those who don’t believe will go straight to hell.

I would rather go to hell with Pippa than be in heaven without her. I wonder if we could go in two different directions when we’re dead.

Pippa was the one who got us started dancing for the blowoff. Before that we were on the stage with everybody else, and I liked that fine, but Pippa wanted to make more money so we could save up for a house someday. She talks a lot about our house and how it’ll have a huge room full of books so she can read all the time.

I don’t know what I’ll do then.

Lots more knitting, I guess.

Pippa

I don’t know if Polly and I would be friends in other circumstances. I don’t know if we’re friends now. I take care of her and I take care of myself, and that would probably be true if we were just regular sisters. Maybe it seems funny to talk about it that way when we’re up on stage, dancing like loose women do, but that is how I see it. One does what is necessary to survive.

Mr. Charles Darwin wrote about survival and the ways in which creatures evolve to keep their places in the world. I certainly do not think Polly and I are a good example of evolution—if every person was born with another person attached to them, many scientific and technical advances would be rendered useless. The airplane, for example, would have to be completely redesigned. Think if the Wright brothers had been like us. Or Cain and Abel. Human history could have changed direction at so many crossroads.

As an example of survival, however, Polly and I have done admirably. And we have been in good company here. What is a man with alligator skin going to do besides make a performer of himself? For most of us, it is this life or one spent hiding in a dark corner somewhere. An institution or an alley, it makes no difference.

But I am not content to settle for mere survival. I require a greater measure of success. I believe I have made this clear to Polly (as clear as I am able) and, in another way, to Mosco. He was reluctant to allow us to dance, but I promised him that we would have no trouble finding another home and reminded him that his previous exhibit of Siamese twins was lacking in authenticity, being merely two girls who looked alike wearing a pair of dresses that had been sewn together. Mosco is a savvy businessman. He came around to my way of thinking.

Polly does not enjoy the dancing and neither do I, but I talk the both of us onto the stage every night. I talk about the money we are saving from our ticket sales, about the house we will buy, about the bookshelves that will line the walls and the fireplace that will keep us warm on winter nights. And I promise Polly as much yarn as she could ever want.

The Blowoff

Extra canvas was layered over the gaps in this part of the tent, to help the rubes forget the midway and the eyes that would judge them silently for paying the extra dollar, for what they were about to watch. A single spotlight exhaled a dim beam onto the stage. The rows of chairs sat in almost total darkness, and the men stumbled as they walked in. Mosco liked this arrangement, liked how it made the rubes less confident, less likely to put on a show of their own by jumping the stage or shouting lewd suggestions. Just the same, he took his place at the stage corner, set his stance, and crossed his arms. The men were silent.

Portia and Violet made their way to a pair of seats in the back and tried to stay out of sight. The shadowed heads in front of them were, Portia thought, like the shadows she saw filling the trucks at night when the show pulled up stakes and moved on to the next town. The comparison wouldn’t sit still in her brain, though she knew there was a difference. Her friends were not like these men. They were the spectacle, not the spectators. They had done nothing wrong. Only what they
had
to do, to survive.

But if that was the case, Polly and Pippa could have been on the stage with the others instead of singled out for the blowoff. Couldn’t they?

They danced to Fred Astaire singing “Cheek to Cheek,” touching their faces and then pivoting so their backs were to the audience. Then they each lifted a side of their skirt to reveal the band of flesh that joined them at their shapely hips. When Fred sang, “I want my arms about you,” the twins embraced and grinned lasciviously, hinting at other, less innocent embraces. And at the last chorus, they reached across each other’s bodies and tore away the tops of their costumes, and the men howled and barked, and Portia finally looked away.

Impressions

I’ll tell you a secret,” Violet said.

Portia wasn’t sure she wanted another secret to carry, but she nodded anyway.

“Doula’s not really a gypsy. Or a fortuneteller. She’s just some old woman from Greece.”

“How do you know she can’t tell fortunes?”

“I took her some tea leaves to read once, and she didn’t know how to do it. I showed her the cup and asked her what it meant, and she said”—Violet hunched herself over and spoke in Doula’s deep graveled voice—“‘Means you need more tea.’”

Portia laughed. “Well, she wasn’t exactly wrong.”

Violet hopped forward in a perfect imitation of Doula’s lurching walk and hollered, “I am Doula! I tell you the future if you give me the vodka!”

“Violet,” Portia hissed. “She’ll hear you.”

“I can imitate anyone here. Watch.” Violet made herself squat and bowlegged and waved an invisible hat around. “Goddammit!”

“Jimmy!”

“Right. I can do everyone, I’m telling you.”

“Do Gideon.”

Violet looked at her blankly. “Gideon?”

“You said you can imitate anyone.”

“I can. But Gideon’s not . . .”

“What?”

“He’s just normal.”

“I thought you liked normal.”

“I do. But normal doesn’t make for much of a show.” Violet sighed and climbed back into her lost-and-found chair. “Not around here, anyway.”

Trouble Inside

She was getting used to it, working on the inside. It wasn’t like Jackal had said it would be. The show he described had existed once, maybe, but now it was different. Rubes weren’t rubes anymore. They didn’t believe in what they saw, they all thought they knew the truth, and they weren’t shy about theorizing how the tricks were pulled. Loudly.

“No way that fella’s eight feet tall!”

“Beard’s fake. You can see the glue!”

“No such thing as albinos, everyone knows that. Buncha coloreds in white makeup, all that is.”

And so on. Portia did her best to preserve order in the tent, not wanting to get Jackal involved, not wanting to ask for a rescue. Mrs. Collington and the others did their best, too, to maintain their composure and their distance. But sometimes the temptation to shout back was too much to resist, and then Mosco would appear to silently escort the offending parties from the show. Refunds sometimes had to be provided, to avoid further trouble. None of it was good for business.

Today’s crowd, Portia was relieved to see, looked remarkably well behaved. It was brutally hot, which made people cranky but also meant they lacked the energy to get themselves really riled up. The air coated everyone like an extra skin. Portia’s white dress stuck to her legs when she walked into the tent, leading her small group of expectant spectators like ducklings across a road. There were a handful of folks from town, an older man in a suit who kept whispering to a group of five young men as they scribbled in small notebooks, and a quartet of soldiers, stiff and silent in their uniforms. One of them had his left cuff pinned up to his shoulder, the empty sleeve creased where his elbow had once resided. Portia had seen him watching Marie as she threw her knives, his face somber, his posture perfectly straight.