The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (34 page)

We finished that season on November 4 in Richmond, Virginia.
Back in Bridgeport, Albert and I moved into a little bungalow in a
neighbourhood filled with circus folk, meaning no one batted an eye at
a couple with a Bengal tiger in place of a toddler. Soon after I checked
myself into a hospital and they took pictures of the inside of my head
with an X ray; afterwards, they told me an abscess of the tissue of the
brain was likely the cause of my headaches and dizziness and periodic
deafness. They also told me if I'd waited another three days to come in
it likely would've killed me. Course, it was far from the first time I'd
been told I had days to live, doctors having a habit of telling you that
so you'll be happier paying for whatever costly procedure was being
proposed. An hour later, they lanced the abscess with a long glass tube
snaked up through my nose. When the ether hangover wore off a few
days later I was fine.

Shortly into the new year the menage caught fire and killed a
bunch of animals, a tragedy that added a huge figure on the debit side
of the circus and therefore caused Albert neckaches and irritability and
stress-related indigestion. One of the animals who died was Nigger;
though he wasn't burnt he took in one too many lungfuls of smoke, and
despite my best efforts to nurse him back to health he passed from
pneumonia three days later. I spent most of that morning feeling sniffly
and wet-eyed, though after a can or two of beer in the blue car I
marched back to our bungalow and leashed up Rajah and informed him
he'd had enough coddling. That afternoon we went to the training barn
and I let Rajah into the steel arena and a minute later I was lying prone
under five hundred pounds of humping hair and muscle. When Rajah
streamed over my back I felt like things were getting back to normal.

I debuted him three months later in Madison Square Garden. You
should've heard the screams, the applause, the cheering. After that, I
couldn't hang a bra out to dry without some reporter popping out of
the bushes and asking me whether lacy or non-lacy was better for training tigers.

What I'm trying to say is this: Albert and I managed to achieve an
ebb and flow that would've looked a lot like married life if you took the
circus out of the equation. Problems came along, but I would've been
nervous if they hadn't. He had his work and I had my work, and at the
end of the day we talked and had dinner together and on Sunday nights
we went to the pictures. There were afternoons we took walks, sometimes with Rajah and sometimes without, and in the evenings we enjoyed
games of cribbage and backgammon for Albert was fond of pastimes
requiring an understanding of risk and numbers. He was always polite,
never raising his voice or being critical, and if he showed a less than
burning interest in my tigers it was because he had more than enough
problems of his own. Throughout, I was still hopeful my handstands and
yoga moves might one day take effect, and when you boil it right down,
hope is what we talk about when we think we're talking about happiness.

A month later we reached Boston for the only other arena show of the
season. After the evening show a bunch of the other performers were
going out and invited Albert and me along. Though I didn't particularly want to go, I'd been thinking that part of my attempt at living regular should really include making some friends who weren't husbands or
tigers. Plus Albert was going through a difficult time, Mr. Charles having bought himself a 200-foot yacht he named Zalophus. When Mr.
John found out, he bought himself a 220-foot yacht called Symphonia.
Both boats got listed as circus expenses, meaning Albert needed some
relaxation and he needed it badly.

That night, after the show, I got dolled up in my evening finery,
including my fox stole and my drop-waisted dress and my evening gloves stretched to the elbows. Albert put on a suit that positioned him
near the handsome end of the spectrum. Then we all met out by the
ticket wagons and tipped some workingmen to take us into town, we
being Bird Millman, the wire-walking sensation, who never went anywhere without her pet parrot on her shoulder; May Wirth, the
Australian trick rider; the Spanish wire walker Con Colleano; the acrobatic clown Poodles Hannaford; the bear trainer Emil Pallenberg; and
that bossy little plange-turner Lillian Leitzel, who of course brought
along her insane husband, the trapeze artist Alfred Cadona.

We pulled up in front of the classiest of the nightspots that'd
opened in Boston since prohibition. You had to be either famous or
mob or a high-ranking police officer to get in, and since we classified
under the first category the red velvet rope was withdrawn and we were
welcomed inside. The doorman wore white gloves and a tuxedo, and
seeing Leitzel his eyes lit up and he led us to a big round table right in
front of the bandstand, where a group of black musicians was playing
a new kind of music on piano, drums and an assortment of horns. To
me, it sounded like bedsprings getting a workout.

This was my introduction to the Roaring Twenties. I can't say I
liked it much, for it was loud and there was smoke everywhere and I
was uncomfortable around people as haughty as Leitzel. Plus they were
all chattering away in different languages, switching from French to
German to Spanish to weird East European tongues with even a little
of that Hungarian Esperanto tossed in for good measure. I, on the other
hand, was that rarity of rarities among circus performers: Americanborn, and therefore burdened with a curse common to all Americans.
No matter how many different languages I heard, the only one that ever
made any sense to me was English. Leitzel, on the other hand, knew
eight or nine. Mostly she used them to curse more dramatically when
she wanted something.

So as I sat at that big table amid all that smoke and laughter and
music, I mostly felt alone and yearned for our Pullman. Frankly, with all that noise and all those different languages it wasn't that different
from being deaf, my only meaningful conversation coming when
Leitzel leaned over and said, "You had better keep an eye on zat hussband off yours. It seems he has vondered off. You know vat they say,
Mabel dear. The quiet ones are the ones you have to watch out for."

She was trying to get a rise out of me, not because she had anything against me but because she was the type of person who just plain
enjoyed doing it. It worked, too, but not because I had any concerns
over Albert; was more my feeling that someone ought to cut Leitzel
down to size. Luckily, I was smart enough not to act on that feeling, so
in a voice rich with fake appreciation I said, "Yes, of course you're
right, Lillian. Perhaps I'll go find out where he is."

So I excused myself. If the others noticed, they didn't care
enough to stop yammering and smoking and laughing. I walked past
tables peopled with chiefs of police and chiefs of the waterfront,
jumping out of the way of cigarette girls wearing flapper dresses,
dodging black musicians smoking a tobacco sweeter than any I'd
smelled previously. Found Albert over by one of the wheels of fortune. I stood beside him. At first he didn't notice me for he was concentrating hard on that little white ball, his face having gone all
pursed, the way it did whenever he was concentrating on his ledger
books. After a bit, he leaned over and kissed my cheek, but he still
didn't say anything.

Not particularly wanting to go back and join the others, I
watched him watch the others place bets on that spinning little ball,
wondering what on earth the interest could possibly be. Albert, meanwhile, couldn't look away; riveted, he was, jaw muscles clenched and
eyes burning holes.

Finally, and I do mean finally, for I'd been standing beside him
for the better part of twenty minutes, he leaned over and whispered
loud in my ear, "Do you see that, darling?"

"Do I see what?"

"The wheel. I've watched every hand for the past hour and I've
noticed it has tendencies. It favours certain numbers. Look. It did it
again. The wheel likes high, odd numbers. Colour red. I am sure of it."

"Really?"

"Yes ... look."

I looked and the ball hopped into a slot showing a low even black
number, though when I pointed this out to Albert, he said,
"Tendencies, Mabel. Observe." I did, and his theory failed again,
though the third time it worked. He told me it'd worked seven out
of the last twelve times, though before that it hadn't worked for ten
times in a row, which was another part of his theory, for apparently
there were stretches when the wheel tendency worked and stretches
when it didn't.

"Is the tendency working now?" I asked him.

"Yes."

"Then why not put some money down?"

He looked at me, eyebrows arching. "Really?"

"You might get lucky." Course, I was joking, for like most people I didn't really believe luck was the reason things happen. What I
figured was Albert would bet, the ball would spin, we'd get all excited,
he'd lose some money and we'd rejoin the others. "Live a little," I even
said, and it was this encouragement Albert had a tough time turning
down, accountants being people who go through life having to prove
they're neither boring nor cheap. So he turned and bought some betting
markers from a flapper chewing gum so loudly you could hear it over
the music.

Just before the "All bets in," Albert dropped the markers on a single number. The little white ball spun around and around before slowing and hitting the number-slot edges and bouncing and hopping and
finally settling into the very number Albert had bet on. The ball spinner acknowledged the win with a nod, and he pushed a pile of markers
in Albert's direction. Albert, looking flustered and pleased, picked them up and I followed him to one of the cashier windows. He pushed his
dominos through the window. A stack of twenties was pushed back at
him. Trying to look nonchalant, he took them and folded them in two
the way gangsters did. A few seconds later, in a corner of the speakeasy,
he counted it. Seven hundred dollars and change.

When I heard the amount I gave a little hop with an accompanying shriek that embarrassed Albert but at the same time made him
beam with pleasure. His win seemed to give the evening a totally new
complexion, for it suddenly felt to me like the people we'd come with
were my best friends and needed to share in this windfall. So I rushed
over and leaned my head into their circle, making sure I was right
beside Leitzel.

"You wouldn't believe what just happened! Albert won $700 at
the wheel game!"

At this a cheer went up, Colleano yelling "Ole!" and Millman's
parrot squawking. Though Albert continued playing he held on to
most of his winnings so at the end of the night we all went to another
speakeasy Poodles Hannaford knew, one where they served champagne
and salmon breakfasts on white linen, which of course Albert paid for.
We both came home feeling flushed and happy, and before putting
Rajah into his shelter I scrunched my cat's face up and kissed him and
said, "He's a genius, that daddy of yours, a natural-born genius!"

It was eight o'clock in the morning. I took myself a nap that lasted a couple of hours before the parade bugle. Was no jump that night,
so Albert and I took it easy and stayed in and played cribbage. Around
ten o'clock I said good-night to Rajah and put him in his shelter, and
when his sides were rising and falling in a way that was wave-like
Albert and I had ourselves some time together, after which I turned
myself upside down so the seed might go where it might do some good.
By then he'd guessed why I'd become so interested in handstands
and yoga, it being a relief he supported my plan. In fact, he held my
hand during my inversions, after which he held me. We chatted some, mostly about places we'd like to visit and people we'd like to meet and
things we'd like to accomplish. In other words: future stuff. Hopeful
stuff. After a bit, my thoughts drifted into nonsense.

In the middle of the night I woke up with a thirst and reached for
the glass of water I kept on my bedside table. I took a sip and looked
over at Rajah. Moonlight was sneaking in through the Pullman windows, and some of it caught Rajah's coat and made it gleam a ghostly
orange. Was then I felt it, in that way you feel the presence of something different: taking hold at the back of the neck, tickling hairs, a
quiet too quiet.

I spun around. Albert's side of the bed was empty.

Now. THE PROBLEM WITH TELLING THE STORY THIS WAY AND
not an old person's way? With telling the story as if time was
a straight line, with a beginning and a middle and an end? As if time has
itself some sort of plan? As if it has a purpose?

I'll spell it out for you. You look at that line and you think,
Hmmmmm. Needs sprucing up. Hmmmmmmm. Needs decorating. Next
thing you know, you're drawing in peaks and valleys so as to give time a
meaning it probably doesn't deserve. You're picking out moments on
that line and assigning them importance, based solely on what came
before or after. Worse yet, you start looking for significance, for an overall reason, and if anything will drive you crazy it's that. I'm not saying
it's not there. I'm just saying it's not something you'll ever find.