Loretta Has Found a New Holloway
The ambulance cast isn’t on set yet, so Loretta grabs a small cardboard jewelry box from her bedroom and starts to collect the fleas that are jumping over her mother’s barely breathing body. She tries to find the one who does flips. She catches about five and puts the box lid on. Then she opens it to test the new talent. The flipper is there. He tries to escape with a somersault the minute she opens the box.
“This won’t make Gerald very happy,” she says, “but you’re perfect. He’ll see that. He’ll know it’s for the good of the show.”
Sirens sound in the distance as Loretta puts the jewelry box in her backpack next to the circus lunch box. She knows how to do this. She’s rehearsed the last scene of Act Two a hundred times. Even the unscripted parts. The unscripted parts are her favorites. Life is about going off script anyway.
Wardrobe has dressed her mother in a pair of flannel pajamas that don’t match. Loretta looks around for a bathrobe and finds the worn fleece one her mother wears every day. She puts it around her mother’s shoulders and grabs the new afghan Loretta gave her for Christmas and puts it overtop. As the sirens grow louder, she realizes that she should go to the bathroom now because she doesn’t want to pee by accident in the ambulance.
The sirens still sound far enough away.
She stops in her room and takes care of the curse. She’s breathy and flushed by the time she gets to the bathroom and pees. Sirens grow louder. She checks to make sure her pits don’t smell and she puts on deodorant anyway. She uses her mother’s so she’ll smell like her. Goes back to her room for her two bags—one, a backpack with her circus equipment and the troupe; the other, a suitcase with everything she wants to keep from her room inside it.
Sirens stop—now it’s just the sound of a truck barreling down the stone lane—and Loretta steps onto the porch of the wagon and waits. It’s there she gets a new idea for a dress. Thin straps, and sequined—maybe red. Something about the color red is right for now. The powder blue was a child’s life. Now she’s a circus woman, not a circus girl. Things have changed. And if her mother doesn’t live through the day, things will change more by nightfall.
The wagon feels like a stranger’s house with strangers in it. No one ever comes in except their cast of three. And the fleas. And a few times, police or the landlord. Loretta sits in her mother’s chair in front of the TV. The TV is off. She was told to sit here by the ambulance men who know the script better.
She doesn’t hear what they’re saying even though they’re loud and are clearly saying things—just not to her. Soon, they have her mother on a stretcher and are maneuvering her down the steps of the wagon and sliding her into the back of the truck. Only when they look like they’re leaving without her does Loretta speak.
“I’m coming with you,” she says.
“Um—”
“I have to come with you,” she says.
“You can ride up front,” the guy says.
“No problem.” Loretta walks slowly, taking each step in a measured, dramatic stride, lugging her two bags with her. She walks in front of the ambulance and they seem to be waiting for her, which is not an ambulance’s job, waiting. The driver is mesmerized, though, as if Loretta were already wearing her red-sequined gown. She can see him saying something to her, but she can’t hear over the roar of the crowd. Act Two is over. Act Three is going to be the best ever.