The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (46 page)

"Mabel! Charles Ringling is on the show!"

"Well, good for him."

"No, no, you're not listening ... he wants to meet me. He just sent
for me. He wants to hear how the menage is doing."

"Well, good for you."

Here he grabbed me by the shoulders and spun me around and I
saw he was beaming about something.

"Mabel," he said, "you're coming."

"Me? Coming?"

Art nodded and that did it. I was off, Art struggling to keep up. I
stopped outside the flap of the manager's tent and caught my breath
and then whispered to Art, "Oh my God I'm so nervous I don't think I
can do this."

"You can. You can. Just let me go first...." and with that two
things happened. First, Art stepped inside the tent and said, "Hello, Mr.
Ringling." Second, he reached back through the tent flap and grabbed
my forearm and yanked me on in.

Charles Ringling's face was just as jowly and round as Mr. John's,
though less prone to expressions of pleasure. When I stepped through
the tent flap he was lifting himself up from a chair parked behind a desk
on the other side of the tent. The exertion seemed to be taking all of his
attention, so at first he didn't notice me. Finally, he made it to his feet,
though he was puffing and leaning over and supporting himself on his
hands. He looked up and spotted me, a step behind Art.

They say that John Ringling always kept people a little off guard
by refusing to sit during business meetings. With Charles it was that
mug of his: sour, as though he'd just swallowed borscht turned to
vinegar. He sighed and sat back down with a huff, a way of signalling
he was no longer going to shake Art's hand given the inconvenience
he'd brought along with him. Instead, lie held up the ring and middle
fingers on his right hand and gave them a waggle, indicating we were
supposed to approach. Was like something an emperor of Rome
might've done, and I admit my initial reaction was to comment on
his rudeness by turning and walking out. Fortunately, Art still had a
hold on my forearm, and lie led me, half against my will and half not,
to the two chairs in front of Charles Ringling's desk. I took one, Art
the other.

Mr. Charles had returned to his work, signing paper after paper
after paper. Even this made him lose his breath. I noticed his hands
were slightly puffed up and that he had the pallor of a gecko's belly.

He spoke without looking up.

"I don't recall issuing an invitation for two."

He stopped scribbling. The silence that followed made my stomach quiver. He leaned back, his chair squeaking. Then lie gave a little
grin, though it was a grin designed solely to intimidate.

"I'd heard the two of you were friendly," he said while looking
straight at me. "To what do I owe the pleasure of your company,
Miss Stark?"

"It's about, well, the upshot of it is, sir, well, it's about my being
in the High School chorus. It's just that I'm not a particularly good
rider, though I am a good cat trainer."

He arched the bushier of his eyebrows. "Your point being,
Miss Stark?"

I started sputtering so Art took over.

"You see, Mr. Ringling, now that cat acts are a thing of the
past, Mabel here is riding High School chorus, which seems a waste of talent and an undue frustration for a committed cat trainer like
herself."

"Rooney," he snapped. "Of course I'm aware of the situation. It
was my brother's decision. Are you saying my brother and I don't talk?"

Was then I saw something I wouldn't've thought possible. Art's
mouth dried up, the only noise coming out of it a poorly pronounced
"oh" that sounded more like a pop bottle cap coming off than actual
speech. He went still, too, the only motion the quivering of his moustache. My heart sank and sank deep. The three of us sat in silence, Art
and I looking like a pair of dimwits while Charles Ringling's brow grew
more and more furrowed. At least ten seconds passed, and believe me
that's a long time under such circumstances. Finally Mr. Charles's face
lightened and his brow unfurrowed slightly and the formation of his
lips approached a condition that was almost a grin but not quite.

"You're right," he said. "It was a stupid idea. That brother of
mine can be a real horse's ass sometimes. I'll make a call or two tomorrow and get this foolishness taken care of. The menage doing fine?"

After rushing to tell Rajah the good news, Art and I celebrated
cautiously, having a fish dinner in town. Had it been Mr. John, we probably wouldn't have celebrated at all, what with his reputation for forgetting promises one minute after issuing them. Mr. Charles, though
considered a hard-nosed bastard, had a tendency toward doing what he
said, unless of course what he'd said had only been said to get him out
of a sticky situation, which wasn't the case with us. I suppose guarded
is the word describing how we felt.

The next day Charles Ringling died bloated and pale, a victim of the
same thing that killed every last one of the Ringlings: heart attacks
related to high living. It rained that day, though you wouldn't've
known it, given how well paraffined the big top was. Flags flew at half
mast, and the ringmaster, Fred Bradna, dedicated that evening's performance to Mr. Charles. John Ringling, who had trained in from Florida or some damn place, snuffled throughout in the owner's box.
During cookhouse the orchestra played sad, slow music, like the kind
you'd hear during the first half of a Dixieland funeral. The next day,
rumour had it the last surviving Ringling was carried blind-drunk to his
private rail car and taken to Cape Cod for an application of sea air.

Course, no one mourned more than me. When I heard the news
I went to the menage and I leashed up Rajah and we took a long walk;
he seemed to sense my deflated mood, and was kind enough not to snarl
or air swipe or micturate at anyone. When we'd wandered far from the
lot, I let him off his leash and we rolled in the earth and I nuzzled his
pleasure spot, making him purr. After that, he lay on top of me. I felt
safe and warm under his full weight, the world totally blocked out.
Honestly-if I had to choose between a few Hamm's or a tiger lying
full weight on my back, I'd choose a tiger every time. The two of us
were out for a full hour that day, having the sort of sad-hearted fun you
have when trying to fend off hopelessness. At the end of it, I wished I
didn't have to put him back in his cage.

Basically, it felt like I had shoulders so the world would have someplace to rest. Knowing this, Art was nicer than ever. He brought me roses
and gave me a box of chocolate macaroons. That night, he put my feet in
a tub of water mixed with peach-scented bath oil, and as he rubbed them
lie assured me everything was going to be all right and one day I'd get off
the Ringling show and I didn't have a thing to worry about. Afterwards
he read to me, Art Rooney being the sort of man who owned poetry
books. When I told him all that flowery language was making me feel
romantic, he moistened up his forearm in the same peach-scented oil I'd
had my feet in. Then he was as loving as is possible for one human to be.
Afterwards lie slept with those muscular vase-shaped arms wrapped
around me. Having never been with a kind man before, I had to wonder
why I'd always been so dead set against the notion.

I had a fitful night, waking over and over to noises that ordinarily helped me sleep, like whistle stops and clacking. I slept late. When I opened my eyes, I was surprised to see Art still in our stateroom, for he
was usually up and out the door early to oversee the animals being
unloaded. Instead he was sitting at my desk, hunched like a dwarf, reading something. I got up to see what he had. This proved to be difficult,
for it looked like he'd been at it for quite a while, his back having
hunched way over, so that he now completely covered whatever he was
working on. In the end I just asked him what he had.

He sat up, stretched and peered at me through eyes gone blurry.

"This," he answered, "is your contract."

For the next week or so, most of my time was spent fighting off old
demons. I found making full sentences a trial, and if I didn't so keenly
understand what can happen to woman if she weakens and shows what
sadness has done to her, I think I would've given up talking altogether.
I forced myself to keep going, making mistakes where I made them.
During High School one day, I forgot where I was, and while making a
turn my body went one way and my horse the other. I stayed mounted
only by grabbing poor Alvin's mane, which made him whinny loudly
and lose step. It was an inelegance that disrupted the act and earned me
an earful from the equestrian director. Mostly I was worried my old
friend neurasthenia was paying another visit, the stress of this realization not helping in the least.

Art, however, had reacted to Charles Ringling's death with a
shrug and the comment: "So it's a setback. Pretty much everything in
this world is. We'll think of something else. Mabel, you mustn't worry
so. Believe me it's unhealthy."

Basically he was looking for a loophole. Seemed every time I saw
Art he was carrying my contract, a dictionary and a magnifying glass
for the small print. The document was twenty-seven pages, crowded
with subsections and subclauses and legal gobbledygook, so poring
over it was taking some time. I'd see him in the pie car, his coffee
long stopped steaming beside him, puzzling over the meaning of every section, forehead supported by a clawed, hammy, nail-polished
hand. One day I found him in the menage, sitting next to the distempered yak. He was turned sideways and craned over reading, contract
in one hand, legal dictionary in the other, magnifying glass at his feet.

He read through it once, just to understand it, then he started in
on it again, this time looking for what he called "areas of interpretability." Soon the document picked up animal stains and began to look dogeared. When the staples went, he started keeping it rolled up like a
scroll, the whole thing bound with a thick elastic band.

Six days into the project he found me in the female change tent.
He just walked right on in, despite there being half-dressed ladies present. None of them shrieked, however, seeing as it was only Art.

He came over, the contract opened to page sixteen. He pointed to
a line he'd circled. My mouth fell open as he said, "After the matinee, I
do believe we'll pay Mr. Curley a little visit."

I was so eager for my display to end I kept spurring Alvin to move
through his steps a little faster, hoping the others would follow my cue
and get the thing over with faster. Course, this didn't work, Alvin being
the one in charge and the two of us both knowing it. When I finally
rode out through the blue curtain, I dismounted and practically ran to
the change tent where I met up with Art. We strode over to the tent
belonging to the Ringling manager, Charles Curley.

Now, I'd had meetings with Curley already, and he'd seemed
genuinely sorry I was a cat woman having to work with horses. By the
same token, he always told me a contact's a contract, and though lie felt
for me there was no way he could farm me out without talking to John
Ringling, who quite frankly had bigger fish to fry.

We barged in. Found him seated at the same desk where we'd
encountered Charles Ringling a week earlier. Art slapped the contract
on Curley's desk and pointed to the circled sentence.

It read: "Under no circumstances, during the duration of the contractee's tenure with the contractor, will the contractee have the
option, right or freedom to perform or otherwise labour or otherwise
appear, in any capacity, for an American circus, vaudeville, carnival or
theatric troupe other than the one owned and/or operated and/or
presided over by the contractor."

Curley read it. From the looks of it, twice.

"What's your point, Rooney?"

Art pointed at the part of the sentence most germane to our little
visit.

"American circus? So what? That's something people just say."

In a way he was right; back then the phrase American circus was
as apt to roll out of people's mouths as the single word circus. Art, however, wasn't put off.

"Now you know as well as I do when it comes to lawyers there's
no such thing as `something people just say."'

Curley looked at the phrase in question again, this time holding it
up for closer inspection. For a few seconds his face was hidden. I heard
a sigh and he put the contract back on his desk. Then he grinned.

"You might just have something here, Rooney."

A week later, Art and I said goodbye on a platform next to an idling
train that was about to take me all the way to New York City, where I'd
board an ocean liner to England. There, I'd do my wrestling bit for an
outfit called the Mills Circus of London. Rajah was in a crate in the
baggage car, sleeping the sleep of kings, owing to a tranquilizing pill
he'd had with his horsemeat that morning.

Art kissed me, and it was one of those moments when equal parts
joy and sadness mix together and make everything feel right. His arms
were wrapped around me, and I was dampening the front of his flannel
shirt. We stood that way for the longest time, Art dripping tears on the top
of my head and me snuffling. Finally, we gave each other a little shove and
I turned and mounted the train. He followed along the platform as I looked for my seat. As the train pulled out, I waved and blew kisses and
soggied a hanky. I stopped to wipe my tears with the back of my hand,
and by the time I was finished the train had pulled out of the station. I
sat back, took a deep breath and marvelled at how pulling away from a
place makes you think hard on the things that make life worth all the
problems. A few minutes after that and I was slumped in my seat, feeling warm and drowsy and not at all bad to be me.