Wonder Show (20 page)

Of course there were always a few hecklers in the crowd, nonbelievers, doubting Thomases. Arthur may have been numb, but he was prideful, too. Couldn’t pass up a challenge. He was a damned fool for a challenge.

We were playing our last show somewhere in Michigan—Houghton Lake, maybe—and some fella dared Arthur to put a sword through his front. We begged him not to, but he said he’d just weave it through under the skin, just like with the pins and needles. I suppose we wanted to see what would happen. Arthur’d never done anything so grand before. It would have changed his show forever.

If it’d worked.

It
looked
as if it worked. He got the blade clear through, in one side and out the other, and the crowd went wild, cheering and calling out like they’d just seen the Second Coming. Arthur up there on stage, strutting around like the king of the barnyard. He kept that thing in him as long as the cheering went on. Then the sound dipped a little, and everyone knows that’s when you’re done, when the tip turns back against you. Arthur decides to finish with a flourish, so he whips the sword back out, and before you can blink, there’s blood everywhere. Fountains of it. Sprayed the whole front row like a garden hose.

Doc said Arthur must have gone too deep, maybe nicked an organ somewhere along the way. Took hours for him to die.

But I tell you true: people are still talking about that show. Arthur Plumhoff, the man who felt no pain.

Jackal poured himself another drink and leaned back in his chair, regarding Portia with a satisfied grin. “There you have it,” he said. “A little bit of history. Your very own piece of the past.”

She looked at the things on the table—they didn’t have names, they weren’t even really unique. They could have come from anywhere. “Is it true?” she asked Doula. “Or is it just a story?”

“Only truth is what you can touch. Someone leaves and they are gone for a while, I might think I dreamed them. You might think so, too.” Doula tapped the lid of the tin box with a craggy finger. “That is why I keep things. To believe.”

She reached into her shawl and pulled out one of Violet’s lipsticks.

“To remember,” said Doula. She laid the lipstick next to the dragon, the straight pins, and the knife. She rolled them into the canvas, tied the twine, and dropped the bundle back into the box. The snap of the lid sounded like a gunshot.

Jackal fished another glass out of the cupboard behind him, poured an inch of vodka into it, and pushed it across the table to Portia. Then he raised his drink and said, “To Violet.”

Forever after, Portia would think of her friend when she heard the ring of glass meeting glass, or felt the burn of vodka in her throat.

The Size of an Empty Space

That night Portia wandered the lot. The circus talent and the roustabouts knew her by now, recognized her from the pie car, so she was not able to blend in as well as she once had. But amid the crowds of strangers, she felt cushioned, protected. These unsuspecting souls would never guess who she was or where she had come from. They were not looking at her, any of them. She was utterly anonymous.

As the lot purged itself of customers after the late show, Portia drew closer to the midway and the waiting colony of trucks and trailers. Most of the performers were already tucked into their dens, but a few were sitting outside, chatting across the narrow gaps between the metal bodies of their homes. They had booked an extra day here—Portia could not remember the name of the town—so there was none of the hushed buzzing of activity that preceded a move. The night was calm, and the air had cooled kindly.

Anna was sitting on the steps of the trailer she shared with Marie, the glossy painted image of her sister watching over her. She smiled when she saw Portia approaching. “Are you all right?” she asked. Her voice was so soft, it was almost lost as soon as it left her body.

“Fine, thank you,” Portia replied. She thought of Anna’s face, twisting at Pippa’s use of that forbidden word. “I’m sorry about that. About before.”

Anna’s smile wavered a bit but did not fade. “There is a lot that’s hard to understand here. A lot of rules. All of us had to learn them, and all of us made mistakes.”

It was the most Portia had heard Anna say since she’d arrived. Even more astonishingly, she went on.

“I’m sorry about Violet. You were friends.”

“I thought so,” Portia said, more bitterly than she meant to.

Anna bobbed her head. “She knew you’d be upset. She knew her family would be devastated. But she made herself leave anyway. She was afraid, if she didn’t, that she’d have to stay forever.”

“Did she tell you that? Did she talk to you before she left?”

“No.” Anna stood, running her hands up and down her arms. The night was cooling rapidly now. “I just know how she feels.”

Then she nodded once, stepped into her trailer, and closed the door.

Portia’s own trailer was empty. She had her own place to sleep, for the first time in years, and it felt like the biggest empty space in the world. Bigger than the Grand Canyon. Bigger than the craters on the moon. Bigger than the ocean’s bed without the ocean in it.

She avoided going to sleep as long as she could. Her nightly ritual of remembering Max and the family stories had lost its power and did not comfort her anymore. Instead, she invented tasks to keep herself awake. She explored every corner of the trailer (which took about fifteen minutes). She put on her lipstick and made movie star faces in the mirror until she got embarrassed and wiped it off. She imagined she was on a train to California. She turned the train around and headed for New York. She made it into a boat and departed for Italy.

She stood in the hallway and put her hands out to touch the sides, to remind herself that this was, in fact, quite a small space and not empty at all.

But when she finally lay down, alone, the trailer walls seemed to breathe and swell outward, away from her, threatening to split themselves apart and drop her into the earth where she was sure a cavernous hole had formed so that she would fall into it and keep falling and fall straight down to hell, where Mister was waiting to roast her like a pig on a spit.

Portia launched herself out of bed and down the hallway to the trailer door, which she flung open and jumped through as if the flames were already licking at her nightgown. Which she imagined they were. Which made her start to run.

She didn’t look at the ground, didn’t see what tripped her. So she screamed, and she kept screaming until a rough, warm hand wrapped itself over her mouth.

“Shh,” Gideon said. “Shh. It’s just me.”

She felt her heart kicking in her chest, heard her own rapid breath. She let Gideon hold her still until her body began to calm. Neither one of them moved for what seemed like a long time. Finally, Portia broke the spell.

“Mmph.”

“What?” Gideon pulled his hand away.

“What are you doing out here?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s the middle of the night.”

His face was barely visible in the darkness. She could only just make out the line of his nose, his chin like a rock breaking the surface of water.

“I thought . . . you might be lonely,” said Gideon.

Portia felt around with her bare foot and found the blanket on the ground, still warm from where Gideon had been sleeping.

“Oh,” she said.

“So,” he said.

They stood silent for an excruciating moment, until Gideon cleared his throat and said, “Good night, then.”

“Good night,” Portia answered. She stepped backwards and turned to go inside, then paused in the doorway and whispered over her shoulder: “Thank you.”

She did not wait for a response. She trusted he had heard.

Gideon

I know she’s in trouble. I’ve seen people in trouble before. But I don’t know if I can help her. I’ve never been able to save anyone before. I said I’d give up trying to save anyone else. I promised myself.

I know. It’s stupid. You can change, but not that much.

I want to erase whatever happened to her.

She keeps telling me she’s happy here. I don’t think she’s lying. But I’m not sure happiness is what matters. It’s a luxury, happiness. It’s something like a falling leaf or a certain shape in a cloud. It lands. It changes. It can’t last.

It’s a gift, sure. But it can’t last.

Anyway, if she won’t tell me what she’s going to do, how am I supposed to help her? A man’s got trouble, he’ll either talk about it or he won’t. He’ll either tell it to you or keep it to himself. Women, though. They’ll tell you a little piece and keep the rest, and no matter how many ways you try to dig the rest of it out, you can’t get any more of the story.

Maybe if I’d had sisters I’d understand.

I just wish I knew what was haunting her.

Maybe then I could do something.

Joseph

I thought the new girl would leave, but Violet did instead.

Mother has been crying for two days, and Mosco had to change the sign on the stage to say
FATHER AND SON
instead of
FAMILY
because if Mother was up there crying, people would think she was being mistreated. Father says Violet will be back but I don’t think he believes it. He sounds very empty when he says it, like he is a tire and someone has let all the air out of him. She always talked about leaving and none of us thought she really would because she didn’t really have anywhere to go. She doesn’t know anyone we don’t know. Does she?

Violet is gone and the new girl is still here. Sometimes she tries to talk to me but I don’t want to hear her say “I’m sorry” again, so I just ignore her. It doesn’t matter if she is sorry. Violet is gone and no one will play cards with me now.

I wish I had my elephant. I would stomp that new girl and then I would find Violet and bring her back. We would ride my elephant together like a prince and a princess and I would never think Violet’s black hair was ugly again.

Punks

Portia was suspicious when Joseph offered to show her his favorite place, but she knew he’d been lonely without Violet, and she decided that even if he was up to something, she felt sorry for him just enough to go along with it.

“It’s this one,” he said. He’d led her to a trailer she’d never noticed before, one that looked older than the rest. It was made of wood instead of aluminum, and it was plain, painted a dark red, without any decoration. It sat alone at the edge of the cluster.

“Who lives here?” Portia asked.

“The punks,” said Joseph.

“Who are the punks?”

“They’re the oldest part of the show,” he said. “They were here before Mosco came, and he had to keep them because it’s bad luck to leave them behind. Come on.”

The door was unlocked.

“They won’t mind us just walking in?”

Joseph laughed. “The punks don’t mind anything. Come
on.
” He skipped up the steps and beckoned impatiently for her to do the same. He was practically hopping up and down, he was so excited. Portia sighed and followed.

“Close the door,” Joseph said.

She was getting more suspicious by the second, but she was also getting curious, so she closed the door behind her. She could barely see anything, it was so dark inside. It was as if the whole interior of the trailer had been painted black, as if there were a wall in front of her. It was incredibly hot. She couldn’t imagine anyone living in here.

“This is it,” she heard Joseph say.

“This is what? I can’t see a thing. Can you turn on the lights?”

“No lights,” he said. “I’ll open the curtains.”

There was the sound of him stumbling, and then sunlight flooded the room. The first thing Portia saw was the dust in the air, like a blizzard, and then she saw the jars.

Huge glass jars. Lined up like soldiers. Full of liquid and blobby shapes that didn’t look like anything, until she got closer and saw they had arms and legs and faces.

Faces with dead, open eyes.

Portia screamed.

“Do you like them?” Joseph hissed. “I think they like you.”

The tone in his voice, the sheer satisfaction, sliced through her horror and held her scream fast. She wanted to close her eyes and feel her way out of the trailer blind, so she wouldn’t have to see the rest of the jars and their gruesome contents, but instead she forced her hands to her sides and looked straight at Joseph. He blinked uncomfortably, edged away from a thick ray of sunlight cutting into the room. His hand itched at his pants pocket where his sunglasses were nestled.

Portia had a choice. She could outdo him in cruelty, pretend to enjoy her surroundings, and thank him for bringing her. Or she could act scared, run away, and give him some small measure of power. Even if neither of them believed in it. It was a concession she was willing to make.

But before she could do anything, Joseph threw her aside and lunged for the door. He opened it with one hand while the other struggled at his pocket. Portia heard the sound of fabric tearing as Joseph wrenched the glasses out of their hiding place and slapped them onto his face.

He slammed the door behind him.

“Well,” Portia told the punks, “that’s that.”

She tried to open the door, halfheartedly, and found what she had expected: it was locked. The trailer immediately felt smaller, the glass jars more numerous, the air tighter around her like a tourniquet. She pulled the curtains closed again, bathing herself in darkness, so at least she wouldn’t have to look at the punks watching her, bobbing in their individual oceans, waiting to see what she would do next. She sank to the floor and stretched her legs in front of her.

No one knew she was here. No one except for Joseph, and it was clear to her now that he would never be her friend.

She thought of Delilah then, and of Caroline, and of all the girls she had known at Mister’s. How many of them would call her a friend? How many had wondered where she was? They each existed so separately, despite sharing the same space and the same fearful hatred of the same man. How many of those girls would come to her rescue at a time like this, when she was trapped in a small, dark place?