The Circus in Winter (28 page)

 

WHEN I
WAS
fourteen, Dad took us on a camping trip to Tennessee. He borrowed a camper from Earl Richards, a guy he went to high school with. It had a little kitchen, complete with fridge and stove, and a bathroom—thank god. By day, my dad and I fished and swam and hiked while my mother stayed in the camper by herself. We'd come back to her tight smile and find the campfire burning, dinner started, the camper neater than campers are supposed to be. At night, my dad wanted Mom close by—on his lap or at his side—and so I'd yawn and say good night. Trying to fall asleep, I'd hear their voices speaking softly—mostly his. They were doing a lot of talking then, which was certainly better than the yelling that preceded it. When the campfire died, they'd come inside and get in the full-size bed up front (I was in the back, a thin door between us), and then I'd feel the gentle rocking begin, the way the tires bounced, the jacks letting out small squeaks. Then they'd start talking again.

I knew what they were doing but had never seen it done. I lay there in my bunk bed, listening to the hum of cicadas, the wind moving through the trees, my parents making love, trying to save their marriage. I wished they'd just wait until we got home, but I also knew (without really knowing, because I was just fourteen) that something important was happening up there in the front of the camper, that sex is how people really, really talk to each other, that a marriage isn't who people are in the daylight, but rather who they are at night.

That was the year I'd started living in my head. Every Friday night, I walked to the B&B Grocery to check out the latest copies of
Vogue, Spin,
and
Rolling Stone.
I stared at the slick photos of rock stars and movie stars, artists and fashion designers, and imagined myself interviewing them: sipping espressos under umbrellas at sidewalk cafes, drinking martinis in secluded cocktail lounges. Creepy old Mr. Barnett always interrupted my fantasies, saying, "What are you reading that hippie trash for, Jenny?" Then, as a kind of apology, he'd say, "You're looking more like that mother of yours every day," touching my palm as he handed me the change. Every night after dinner I escaped to my bedroom alone instead of watching television with my parents. When I couldn't avoid them—in the car, at the dinner table—I made up stories in my head. Teen romances mostly, starring me and the boys I loved in secret.

The camping trip, I came to realize, wasn't a family vacation at all, but rather a group second honeymoon, my dad's attempt to save their marriage. I was there to cinch the deal (
For Jenny's sake, we have to try, Laura!),
and I resented that. I didn't want to be there, but I was trapped with them in that cramped camper, and so I escaped into my own head, lost in a conjured-up world. I don't remember a lot about that week in Tennessee except the camper rocking with all of that terrible, desperate trying. And I remember the dream.

Our last night in Tennessee, I stayed up late, trying to decipher my parents' whispers, but I couldn't tell if the trip had done its intended work or not. Finally about three or four, I fell asleep and into a dream—and it wasn't about any of the boys I secretly loved or about me interviewing Sting for
Rolling Stone.
It was about David Lindsey, an older boy who went to Nana's church. All the girls in Lima knew who David Lindsey was, but I'm sure he had no idea who I was. In the summer during the amateur circus, he was the catcher in the trapeze act, and in the fall, he quarterbacked the football team. Only in a place like Lima can a boy wear a leotard and still retain hunk status. He was a sight to behold, hanging upside down in his black leotard, his lats spreading like a bat's wings as he caught flying girls by the wrist. He was almost a senior, a lithe, blond god in the spotlight. I was a little girl in the stands, eating a snow cone. And that about sums up how close I was to David Lindsey.

Anyway, in the dream, we go to a party. I'd never been to a party before, but in the dream, this didn't seem to matter. When we get there, we split up immediately, as if that was the plan. David mingles, and I stand at the front door, talking with the parents who've decided to let the party happen at their house. All night, I watch him out of the corner of my eye. When the parents say it's time to go home, David gets very sad. He's drunk and hugging everyone. "Don't go, man! Let's party some more." This, apparently, is my cue. I edge my way into the throng and take David by the elbow. "Time to go," I say, and I steer him toward the front door. He's having trouble walking. Everyone seems to understand this is my job, and they clear a path. The parents tell us to take care, drive safe. We walk out the screen door, and then I woke up to another humid Tennessee morning and the sound of my parents talking over morning coffee.

 

ALL DAY AT
Grandpa Ollie's funeral, I keep thinking I see my mother out of the corner of my eye—a rustle behind the heavy curtains, a flash of shoe leaving the room. The same thing happened when I graduated from high school, from college, from graduate school, and I know it will happen when I get married, if I have a child, when that child graduates from high school, if that child gets married—and so on—for the rest of my life. She's like the blurry smear in a photograph when someone moves too fast for the shutter speed. I wonder if she even knows her father is dead. I wonder if she cares.

The sun is going down by the time we get into the hearse. The windows are frosted over, and looking out at the pinkish sunset is like peering through a scrim of lace. Dad drives and Nana and I sit in the back for the ride up to Mount Pleasant Cemetery. Very few cars are in the funeral procession, and as we make our way through town, nobody stops on the sidewalks or pauses while getting into their cars to watch us pass. The time and temperature sign at the bank reads twenty degrees. Dad pulls into the cemetery and up to Grandpa Ollie's row. The dark earth is powdered with last night's sugary snow. We climb out and stand there silently, waiting for the pallbearers. I've seen my grandpa's headstone a hundred times; he bought it when he retired from Clown Alley, right around the time I was born. It's been waiting for him up here for more than thirty years—I used to ride my bike past it all the time.

OLLIE F. HOFSTADTER
1900–
MAY ALL YOUR DAYS BE CIRCUS DAYS

On either side of his grave are his parents' headstones, Hans and Nettie Hofstadter, and one waiting for Nana. Walking down the row, I find the Porter family crypt, which I've seen before, but then I notice a small group of graves marked "Bowles": Bascomb, Pearly, Gordon, Mimi. "Verna's family," I say, although Nana isn't within earshot. In the next row, there's a small cross for a Jennie Dixianna—there's no birthdate, only the year she died, 1913. My dad crunches along behind me as I keep walking toward some of the newer graves. Flinn. Burns. Miller. Lockwood. Stringer. Garrison. Ames. Polowski. Krup. Then I see the one marked D
AVID
L
INDSEY
, 1965–1982, and I stoop down to brush away the snow that's blown over the epitaph. O
UR
B
ELOVED
S
ON
, it reads.

"I can't remember if you knew him or not," Dad says.

"No. Not really."

 

THAT MORNING
in Tennessee as we broke camp, I kept thinking about my dream. I was getting ready to start high school, and maybe something was going to happen between us that year. Why else would I have had a dream about a guy I'd never really thought about before? During the long drive back to Lima, I dozed in and out of my new dream about me and David Lindsey. The beginning of the story was always the same: David and I go to that party, but I made it up from there. David and I go see a movie, or we go eat breadsticks at Pizza Hut and play stupid Air Supply songs on the jukebox, or we go park down by the Winnesaw River, and then I'd fall asleep with an ache between my legs.

We got home late that night. Dad pulled the camper into the funeral home parking lot, and I ran inside to use the bathroom. That's where I was, sitting on the toilet, when my mom walked into the bathroom, holding that afternoon's copy of the
Lima Journal.
She looked at me and asked, "Do you know this David Lindsey?"

I must have had a pronounced reaction, because my mother said, "You do?"

"No, not really," I finally said.

She laid the newspaper on my bare legs and left the bathroom. That's when I saw David's senior picture on the front page, and the headline:
LOCAL BOY KILLED IN TRAGIC
CAR ACCIDENT.

The night before, after the circus performance was over, David had gone out to the Winnesaw Reservoir to swim and drink beer with his friends. Around one, he told a girl named Sharon Gregg he'd give her a ride home, but on the way back to town, he fell asleep at the wheel and drove into a tree. Sharon lived, but David died instantly, the paper said.

After he unhitched the camper, my dad drove the hearse to the hospital to pick up David's body. I heard him come home around two in the morning, and for the rest of the night, I kept thinking about David. No, I didn't go downstairs and look at him. Why do people think I spent my childhood sneaking into the embalming room? But you'd be right if you wondered if—just this once—I actually considered it. All my life, dead people slept two floors below me, but this was the first time it was someone almost my own age, someone I had a crush on for about eight hours when I didn't know that he was already dead.

The next day was Saturday, the last day of Circus Week. In the morning, the town put on an old-fashioned circus parade, complete with calliopes and refurbished Great Porter Circus tableau wagons. In the afternoon, the kids put on their final performance, the grand finale, and it was almost always sold out. The paper said that the kids had voted to go on with the show, and my dad pulled two tickets from his wallet. "I bought these before we went camping," he said. "Do you still want to go?" He and I went to the grand finale every year, and this year especially, I wanted to see it. My mom never went to the circus because she said it was too hot.

It's only a couple of blocks from the Perdido Funeral Home to the circus. The building is Wallace Porter's old livery stable, painted white and red with a big-top roof. We walked down Broadway, transformed for Circus Week into a carnival midway, blocked off with orange cones and yellow sawhorses. We made slow progress toward the circus building; Dad knew so many people in town, and everyone wanted to shake his big hand and talk about David Lindsey. The funeral was the next day, and by the time we got to the circus building, it seemed almost everyone in town had said they would be there.

The inside of the circus building resembles a huge high-ceilinged gym rimmed with bleachers—with three rings instead of free-throw lines. The walls are draped with old sideshow banners—Two-Headed Lady, Dog-Faced Boy, Sword Swallower—each one sponsored by a local merchant. Enormous exhaust fans roared, and a bunch of big-shouldered riggers tinkered with the impossibly intricate web of wires and ropes. Up in the bandstand, the musicians tuned their instruments, and clowns with brooms cleared sawdust from inside the rings. All of these people were volunteers—plus the red-coated ringmaster, concession-stand workers, ushers, wardrobe assistants, makeup artists, nurses, electricians, trainers. We found our seats and bought programs, listening to the buzz around us. Everyone was talking about the accident.

"I was down at the drug store today buying a card and I ran into Mrs. Lindsey's sister Ann, and she told me that David wasn't drunk. They're mad that got into the paper."

"My daughter's in the trapeze act with him. She was supposed to go out to the reservoir, too, but she was tired. No, they aren't doing the trapeze act tonight. I don't see how they could."

"Our grandson's doing the Roman Ladders this year. He's nine and won't talk about it. I didn't think he should go on today, but his mom said he wouldn't hear none of it."

"My friend Joe is in the band, and he told me about the song they've been playing all week during the trapeze act. They didn't realize it until last night, when they skipped that act. You aren't gonna believe this. It's that song by Billy Joel, 'Only the Good Die Young.' It's so spooky, I get shivers just thinking about it."

"I made them a casserole. They got a fridge full of casseroles."

"It's just so sad. It's just so awful thinking about his folks."

Every year, before the circus started, my dad would always say, "Now
this
is what a town is supposed to be. Everybody working together to make this happen." That year, he didn't say it, but he didn't need to, really. Already, I was sweating, but I knew that the ringmaster would remind the audience that up high, where the performers were, it was much hotter. It was over ninety that day, and the show usually ran for more than three hours.

Finally, the lights dimmed, and the ringmaster (my school superintendent) shouted:

"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN! CHILDREN OF ALL AGES! WELCOME TO LIMA, INDIANA, CIRCUS TOWN, U.S.A.! HOME OF THE GREATEST AMATEUR SHOW ON EARTH!"

The band played the national anthem, and then all the performers filed into the building and stood quietly behind the ringmaster, who said:

"THE KIDS VOTED TO DEDICATE THEIR PERFORMANCE TODAY TO THE MEMORY OF DAVID LINDSEY, WHO PASSED AWAY THURSDAY NIGHT. WE'RE GOING TO DARKEN CENTER RING NOW IN HIS MEMORY. LET US PAUSE FOR A MOMENT OF SILENCE."

The lights went down, and everyone in the building lowered their head—except for me. I couldn't take my eyes off the performers, who were all holding hands. I couldn't see their faces, only their backs, which were heaving and shaking. The place echoed with sobs and sniffs underneath all that silence, and I felt it all gathering in my chest and behind my eyes. My head ached from trying not to cry.

Finally the show began, and for the next three hours, everyone tried to forget about the one person who wasn't there. Teeterboards. Kiddie Clowns. Roman Rings. High Wire. Slide for Life. Rolla Bolla. Unicycles. The aerial ballet of the Spanish Web was always my favorite, twenty girls pirouetting on thirty-foot ropes. For the finale, each cinched a small loop around her wrist and spun while the rigger below twirled her cable like a jump rope. Looking up, I saw they'd become twenty human disco balls, their shimmered costumes flashing in the lights. But this year, all the smiles were forced, and it seemed like every girl had raccoon eyes from crying. After the Walk Around, after all the applause had finally died down, the ringmaster said what he always said at the end of the show, but that year, he said it more softly, without his usual bombast: "May all your days be circus days."