THERE WAS SNOW ON the ground. The air was bitter and stung his cheeks like ice, and the wind, tearing through his black parka, knocked against his heart. Rounding blowy corners, he thought about how cold all of them must be in their graves how. But he had endured; he had to go out he had promises to keep. His rumored talents were in great demand. The parents of young schoolchildren invited him to entertain at birthday parties. He gave spectacular, if highpriced, magic shows, and the rich bastards forked it over without a whimper. Some curious teachers from the early-morning gymnastics class invited him to dinner: as a guest he was an excellent commodity he could sing for his supper. And at school, since they had discovered he could tell a good story they had been trying to persuade him to do it weekly for the kindergarten across the street. At this rate he would become an institution. There had not even been time for Yoga. He was saving Yoga for the spring, if he lived that long. Meanwhile it was nearing February, worst of months. He dreaded like a recurring bad dream the month she died. He used to feel, when he closed the door of their apartment in the Village, that nothing could intrude. They even took the phone off the hook. Death, as it turned out, was the only intruder to be reckoned with. Slipped in with Susie, her shadow.
Now he answered every call. His phone rang more in a week than it had in months, those last years in the city. Alison, for one, had taken to calling late at night. First there were reasonable pretexts, questions about the tumbling he was teaching in the gym. Then as she gained confidence she began closing in, like a fly buzzing around its chosen crumb, in narrower and narrower loops.
‘Max, say a kid joins a circus and works around the place, you know, doing odd jobs—how long would it take before she could get into an act?’
‘That depends, on how fast she can learn, what kind of physical shape she’s in, what their situation is. A lot of things.’
‘Well, suppose she’s very agile and a fast learner and all that.’
Max frowned into the phone. It was midnight. It had been a long, cold day, and he was in bed, yearning to curl into oblivion with Hercule Poirot. ‘If you’re thinking of trying it, Alison, let me warn you, you’ll be sweeping up an awful lot of elephant dung before you become a star.’
‘Oh, it’s not for me.’
‘Who is it for, then?’
‘I can’t tell you...Oh, all right. I’m writing a book.’
‘You’re writing a book. I see.’
‘It’s an adventure story, about a girl. But please don’t tell anyone at school.’
‘I won’t tell. Look, it’s rather late. Why don’t we talk about the book another time?’
‘Okay. But listen, there’s just one more thing, Max. It’s about the juggling. I saw these three jugglers once, two boys and a girl, at Rockefeller Plaza a couple of years ago. It was New Year’s Day—my parents took me in to see the tree. They were so fantastic—they had these tramp costumes and their faces were painted all white with green eye shadow, and a big crowd gathered around. It had just snowed. It was all cold and sunny, and they tossed these big black pins back and forth and kept cracking jokes and laughing while they did it. It was so weird, Max, I mean, right in the middle of the city and all the big buildings, to see this. So anyway, what I wanted to know was, how can a person join an act like that? Because I am getting pretty good at it, and maybe if I could get in touch with people like them, who do it for a living...Max, are you still there?’
‘I’m still here.’
‘So how do you think I should go about it?’
‘Alison, I haven’t the vaguest idea. But why don’t you finish junior high school first, then maybe try high school?’
‘You’re being sarcastic again. All right, I’ll let you go to sleep. But you want to know something? Guess what happened to those jugglers that day.’
‘What?’
‘A cop came along and chased them away. Isn’t that just typical?’
‘Typical, yes.’ His eyelids were drooping. ‘Good night.’
But when he hung up he could neither sleep nor concentrate on the whodunit. It had begun hailing outside, and the brisk tapping sound on the windows was exactly the same as on that night he could never forget, when she brought home with her death the intruder. In his head it was like yesterday, keener than yesterday. She had been feeling weak and had an appointment the next morning for some blood tests. He was home from the shop first; she had stopped to buy new boots. Her old ones were letting in the snow. When he heard her key he went to take her coat and packages. He kissed her. He brought a towel to dry her hair, gleaming with bits of hail. She stood leaning against the door. Without a word, with a slow, numbing authority, she unbuttoned his corduroy vest, slipped it off his shoulders, and let it slide to the floor. She did the same with his shirt, then started to unbuckle his belt.
Confused, Max submitted with a silly grin. ‘What are you carrying on? You’re a totally abandoned woman.’
‘Assault,’ she whispered, and continued.
He delighted in every touch of Susie’s, but this touch made him uneasy. She wasn’t playful. Dead serious.
‘Do you still...’
‘What, Susie?’ She was tugging awkwardly at the zipper of her new boot. He bent down. ‘Let me do that.’
‘Do you still want me like when I was young?’
‘There you go—it was caught. You know you’re my unbridled passion,’ he teased. It was all wrong that she should ask.
She made love to him wildly, on top of him on the couch, to the sound of the hail pelting the windows. He felt seized and taken and devoured, but he yielded completely, for Susie was possessed by something that had to be placated. She cried out with pleasure but her face above him was sorrowful. When it was over she collapsed on his chest and sobbed.
‘What is it, for God’s sake?’
‘Don’t you know I’m dying?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with you! You’re tired, that’s all, run down. It’s the weather. Please, Susie. Please.’
‘Oh, I am so scared,’ she wept.
She was right. She had found out long before him what dying felt like. He knew a little bit now, but far from all she had known when she lay flat with the tubes in her arms. Sometimes he felt a shiver of knowledge, not understanding but more like a tainted breeze passing over him. And at those moments, he wanted to follow right into that barren wind and away.
He wanted out, but they wouldn’t let him go. They called with their offers. He might feel like a wall around dark space, but it appeared a beam was still visible from outside, as when one leaves a room but forgets to turn out the light. He accepted the offers, and though his heart wasn’t in it, he did his best. It was no use living in the past, Dr Small and Miss Tilley had advised. But with all due respect, where else should he live? That he had no future his fluttery chest informed him every time he walked up a flight of stairs.
Even Vicky Cameron had strategies to whip her charges out of depression. On one of her late nights she phoned him at eleven-thirty.
‘Mr Fried, I know you keep late hours so I’m not going to apologize. And you don’t like it when I’m polite so I’m not being polite: I want you to give a little performance Friday night for Mr Rakofsky’s birthday party. He’ll be eighty-four—you can’t refuse.’
He had no one but himself to blame that she was so well acquainted with his skills. How many times had he juggled her paperweights, conjured her stapler and Scotch tape off the desk, slid her ballpoint pens into his pocket and out his sleeve? The bill for those indulgences had fallen due.
‘All right, all right, I’ll do it. But I must say, you puzzle me. Is this the Victoria Cameron I knew?’
‘You do bring out a new side of me, that’s quite true.’
‘There’s hope for you yet, Victoria.’
‘Never mind the prognosis, Mr Fried. Just see that you’re in the lounge Friday in time for the dinner. Seven o’clock. It wouldn’t look right to come in afterwards. I trust you’ll put together a really fine act. Nothing too risqué, please. Thank you and good night. I say that as a formality, not as a wish.’
‘Well done.’
He entered the lounge Friday evening with an arm linked through Lettie’s. The high-ceilinged room was laced with red and blue twined crepe-paper streamers. People in small groups stood about chattering. On the far wall, between the picture windows with beige curtains drawn across them for evening, hung ‘Happy Birthday George,’ in big red letters. Ten white-clothed tables set for six were arranged in a circle, each with a bottle of wine in the center. Across the room he spied, wearing a green and white striped party hat, the birthday man in a wheelchair. The place was brightly lit by overhead fluorescent beams; light bounced off spectacles on the faces that turned to examine Max.
He had never faced his fellow residents en masse. The tableau, in the harsh fluorescence, made his heart hurt. Voices from all sides called out greetings to Lettie—it seemed he had latched on to the most popular girl in the dorm. With so many friends, why did she need him? Pity? Aloof from her, he let himself be propelled among the tables and introduced. ‘My good friend, Max Fried.’ He shook a dozen aged hands. ‘Happy birthday. Congratulations.’ He clapped George Rakofsky carefully on the shoulder. Surely he could not say ‘Many more’?
The soup was brought in. At the next table a man’s head, wobbling, bent to meet the bowl a woman raised to his lips. Parkinson’s. Max averted his glance. The last time he ever saw his father, a touch of it. A man opposite said, ‘I’ll be sixty-seven next April, and I’ve never felt better in my life.’
‘It’s since you retired, Joe. For thirty-five years, I told him, take it easy, slow down, but who listens to a wife? Up every day at six and in the store by seven—that’s no way to live!’
Later they all gathered around to watch George cut the cakes, one huge and tiered like a wedding cake, frosted with pink roses, and one small and less ornate, baked by Lettie with ingredients, she explained to Max, safe for George and the other diabetics.
They were his own people, but he wished he could disown them. All right, so morally he was some kind of monster, warped by a lifetime defying the laws of nature. Still, his own undeniably: they had shared the century, together undergone the Depression, two world wars and lesser skirmishes (which of them had lost their children or husbands?). Together watched hemlines go up and down, prices go up, and Presidents go from bad to worse; watched foreign enemies become friends and friends become enemies, immigrants assimilate and new immigrants arrive; watched their own bodies go from weak to strong to the final weakness. The ones with walkers and in wheelchairs had known freedom of movement, like himself. Their bodies concealed a history of moments of elation, passed. They could speak of all these passages in a language shared by those who shared a lifespan.
Still, if he had the chance he would defect without a qualm from the common history. Were a stranger miraculously to appear at the door, scan the group, and point to him—‘You! You over there! There’s been a mistake. Come away.’—he would go without a backward glance. Rejuvenated, he would return to the hardy. To her. Yet gazing around, he could see he was no different; no one would single him out. And Susie, of course, nevermore.
Vicky Cameron came in during dessert to announce a Social Hour, after which Max would provide entertainment.
‘A Social Hour!’ he moaned under his breath.
‘Shut up and socialize,’ Lettie whispered back.
He had a second cup of coffee and wandered. In a corner, alone and motionless, sat two women. The larger one, solid and smooth-skinned, held the hand of the other, who was spare as a bone and shrinking into her chair. The yellow-green hollows of her eye sockets shone as if oiled. Her hair was sparse white tufts; her eyes, set deep in a pallid face, stared darkly, neither curious nor critical, but profoundly indifferent, as if from beyond the grave. He was about to walk over, to give them—yes, with condescension, he admitted it—the facile gift of his charm as he gave it to the children. When he recognized the look in those eyes, both charm and condescension failed him. He found Lettie in a cluster of men and pulled her aside.
‘That woman over there in the corner—don’t turn so much—in the dark-blue dress. What’s with her?’
‘Oh, Mrs Jordan.’ Lettie lowered her eyelids. ‘She has leukemia.’
‘I knew it. I knew it.’
‘What are you, a doctor all of a sudden?’
‘I just knew.’
She watched him for a moment, then touched his arm. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said softly.
‘Okay, you can go back to your admirers.’ He walked off.
Except for the momentary distraction of a police siren, the act went flawlessly. He made coins and balls multiply and disappear. He turned a big paper flower into a parasol and turned the parasol into a top hat, which he presented to George with a deep bow. Behind a handkerchief he transformed a crumbled piece of birthday cake into a perfect slice. As a finale, he played ‘Happy Birthday’ with a spoon on an octave of glasses variously filled with water, then made the glasses vanish behind a scarf. His audience clapped and cheered.
‘You’re the hit of the evening, Mr Fried. What a marvelous talent.’ A woman in velvet décolletage and an ash-blond wig bore down on him.
Max took a step back.
She advanced. ‘But you can’t really trust a magician, can you? Who knows what kind of tricks he might play?’
‘With someone like you, my dear lady, a lot of tricks.’ He leered just a bit too overtly down the bosom of her dress and she retreated.
The guest of honor came over to thank him personally. ‘Drop in to visit me sometime. I’m right below you.’ George had had a toy store, he told Max. He was familiar with games and tricks.
‘What happened to the business?’ Max asked.
‘It’s still there, in Suffern. My sons are running it. Hey, maybe you could give them some ideas.’
He could be a business consultant. The nation was in a frenzy over unemployment, but for him opportunities were rampant. Soon he would need an appointments secretary, like the President.
He remained till the party broke up. At their adjacent doors, Lettie said, ‘How about coming in, Max, for a cup of coffee?’
He looked at his watch. ‘I don’t think so, Lettie. I’ve had about all the coffee I can take. Thanks anyway.’
‘Well,’ she sighed, ‘the show was fun.’
‘Good.’
She came over to his door. ‘Max, it’s no use being depressed. You have to make the best of it.’
‘Who’s depressed?’ He forced a show of spirit. ‘There was a good-looking woman down there running after me. Are you jealous?’
‘Ha!’ She threw her head back haughtily. ‘Me, jealous! What on earth for? Anyway, that one gives every new man the eye. It’s no special honor.’
‘Do you ever think about getting married? You seem younger than a lot of these people.’
Lettie hesitated. ‘Do you mean in a general sense or a particular?’
‘General, general!’
‘Of course not! Lower my Social Security and cook three meals a day for some old bastard? Never.’
‘You’re faking.’
She went back to her own door. ‘Good night,’ she said coldly.
He was limp with remorse. ‘I’m sorry, Lettie. That’s how I get.’
‘Forget it.’
He started towards her. ‘I want to kiss you good night, for once.’
‘I don’t need any favors, Max. And keep your voice down when you make that kind of proposition. The walls have ears.’
‘You’re refusing me?’
‘Go take one of your hot baths instead.’
‘You have to admit I’m the cleanest dirty old man around.’
She shut the door firmly in his face.
When the phone rang as he was setting down his bag of tricks, he was hardly surprised.
‘Max, I’ve been meaning to ask you—what made you set out on a life of adventure?’
‘Alison, do you know what time it is? I’m an old man. I’ve been out partying all night. I need my sleep.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Her voice sank, deflated. ‘What party?’
‘A birthday party for an octogenarian. Oh, it’s all right, I was up. But why always so late? What about all the other hours in the day?’
‘I can’t fall asleep. I’m sitting here in the kitchen, and there’s no one else I feel like talking to.’
‘What about your parents?’
‘They’re impossible. All they care about is being normal, like everyone else. You can imagine what a disappointment I am. Anyway, they’re in bed. My mother is supposed to get a lot of rest. I told you she’s pregnant.’
‘Yes. I remember. When is she expecting it?’
‘Oh, who the hell cares. June. Max, I am really in a fucked-up mood. Can I come over and talk to you? You don’t have such a provincial attitude towards life.’
‘At this hour? Don’t be silly. There’s not a soul out on the street. Why don’t you talk to the guidance counselor at school?’
‘Are you kidding? You’ve seen her.’
She was right. A formidable, heavily powdered woman, Miss Wharton had once stopped him at the door to the men’s room, loudly demanding his credentials.
‘Find someone better, then, Alison. I have my own problems.’
‘Really? Tell me about them. I can be very sympathetic.’
‘I’ll see you in school Monday.’
‘Do you want to have lunch together? I’ll bring you a sandwich. We can take a walk if it’s not too cold. Okay?’
‘Okay.’
‘What kind of sandwich would you like? I’ll make you anything except meat.’
‘Anything at all. Please, let’s hang up now.’
She took to dropping in, late afternoons.
‘Hi, Max,’ she announced. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d be in—you’re so busy lately.’ Striding into his living room, she yanked the knapsack and jacket off her shoulders and dug out her oranges. ‘Watch this.’ She juggled all three in pure low arcs and an easy, steady rhythm. Then she caught them expertly, with a flourish. ‘Isn’t that good? I’ve been practicing a lot.’
‘That’s remarkable! You’re a hard worker, I can see. Next thing is to get them up a little bit higher, and then you can start going behind your back. Is that what you came to show me?’
‘Well, partly. It’s also a social visit. Can I take a glass of milk?’ She was already in the kitchen.
‘Help yourself. There are some brownies that Lettie baked, on the counter.’
‘I found them, thanks,’ she called. ‘How is Lettie?’
‘Fine, as of yesterday.’
Alison returned, carrying the milk and brownies. ‘She’s a very close friend, isn’t she?’
‘Right now, the closest I’ve got.’
Her eyes were downcast. ‘So you’re not lonely?’
‘I didn’t say that.’
‘I understand about feeling lonely. I find people my own age very limited.’
‘Is that a fact?’
‘Yes. There are things a person really can’t talk about to a thirteen-year-old. I mean, they don’t have the experience.’ She settled in his armchair. Max poured himself some Scotch and took the couch.
‘Like the future, for instance. They don’t have any concept of it; they just drift along from day to day. I have to get my plans organized. I don’t like to feel...aimless. Remember you said, about leaping in the air, that you have to feel in control—you can’t let surprises control you, like when the board pops up? I want to control where I’m going.’
‘But you’re confusing things. I was talking about a feat of skill, a—a performance. A performance is a planned thing. No one can control the future, or what happens to them. The best you can hope to do is control your own balance. And sometimes even then, a surprise will knock you over.’
‘Not if you’re prepared for it. What I mean is—a couple of years ago I used to stop at Bamberger’s every day after school to ride the escalators—I mean in the wrong direction, up the down and down the up. The guards get to you pretty fast, but still, you can have a few good rides. I figured out how to do it. You have to race against the pull of it. First it seems like you’ll never get there—you keep going and going. But you have to go a lot faster than the stairs go, or else you just stay in the same place. And then suddenly the floor is coming up to meet you, and the only way to reach it is a sort of flying leap. It was scary at first, because as you get ready to leap you’re being pulled back the opposite way. But then you get used to it, and it’s fantastic. Do you see what I mean? If you figure out a technique, no matter what...’
Max smiled. ‘It might be fun for an escalator, but it’s a hard way to live. Do you really want to race against the pull all the time?’
‘I don’t know. I want to be able to do things. Someone like you—you know exactly what you’re doing all the time. You can even make people do things they could never do before. Like Nick. You picked him at the beginning because he was the most frightened.’
‘I’ve told you before that I don’t make people do anything. It’s a common teaching method. Socratic, since you’re so smart. I used to train the new kids when I was on the road. They had the ability but they didn’t always know where to look for it. How to bring it forth. It’s simply helping people find things in themselves that they didn’t know were there. Drawing it out is very different from putting it in.’
She pondered for a moment. ‘Not really so different, if you think about it. Because if you can’t reel something it might as well not be there. So then it’s like the person who found it almost made it. Right?’
‘Wrong.’ He laughed and finished his drink. ‘But interesting.’
‘Well, anyway, Max, can’t you tell me how you got to have—I don’t know, it’s like an aura. It’s just there—nobody has to draw it out. You know things.’
‘An aura? There’s no such thing. An aura is in the eye of the beholder. As far as knowing things, I’m as much in the dark as everyone else, believe me.’ He got up and paced the room. ‘Only older. Older.’
‘But at least you had the kind of life you wanted. Did you run away from home?’
‘In a manner of speaking.’
‘Did they send the police out looking for you?’
‘No, I left a note explaining. And I was past seventeen. People went out on their own much earlier then—they had to earn a living.’
‘How did you know where to go?’
He sat down opposite her. The recollection made him smile. ‘I didn’t. But I used to read a lot. And in my books all the adventure was west, so I took a train west.’
‘That’s funny—in my book, too, she goes west. She hitchhikes, mostly.’
‘I had a little money. I went up to Penn Station about six or seven in the evening and sat in the waiting room trying to look casual, as though I did this every day and knew exactly where I was going. Chicago, Des Moines, Denver—the names sounded so exotic over the loudspeaker. It seems comical now. I sat there a long time. I remember I bought a candy bar and ate it very slowly while I read a newspaper. With a newspaper, I thought, I wouldn’t seem shiftless. It wasn’t long after the war—everyone still read the papers religiously.’
‘Was that the First World War?’
‘Of course. What did you think, the Civil?’
‘I wonder if I would have that kind of nerve.’
‘You don’t need it. Your parents will send you to college and you can choose whatever field you like. Things are altogether different now. Here.’
‘But I don’t want that,’ she cried. ‘I loathe school! I want to be out in the world. I want to get on a train like you or like Alice, and ride and ride for a long time, and then get off in some strange place, and know that I’ll manage to get along somehow, no matter what.’
‘Who’s Alice?’
‘The girl in my book. She’s—she’s a person who does what she feels like. Do you have any children, Max?’
‘No.’
‘But you were married?’
‘Yes.’
‘I thought you might have had children. What was your wife like?’
He shook his head warningly at her. ‘Don’t you have any friends you sit around and talk to?’
‘Oh, a few. No one special. Is she dead a long time?’
Astonished, he stared: bony, hungry shoulders, sharp chin, green eyes digging in him. ‘I don’t discuss it.’
‘Oh, well. Do you have any circus pictures?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do. I have quite a few.’ Maybe they would appease her. He never bothered with them—two-dimensional things, no feel or texture. He had dragged the albums from place to place, unable to toss them out, because they were precious to her. ‘Su—my wife took them; it was a hobby of hers. I’ll show you. You’ll see it’s not so glamorous as you think.’
He fetched the two large albums from a shelf in the bedroom closet. They were heavier than they used to be; his muscles slumped with the weight. ‘I haven’t looked at these in I don’t know how long.’
‘Oh, this is great! I love old pictures.’ She swallowed the last bit of brownie and came to sit close to him on the couch, pulling the album over so it rested on both pairs of knees. She had a funny child smell—chocolate, sweat, pencils, rubber-soled sneakers. ‘Who’s this? He looks like some kind of animal.’
It was Henry Cook, standing on parched shaggy grass in front of the tent in an absurd muscle-man pose, arms held out L-shaped and biceps bulging. Somebody—Brandon or Susie, he couldn’t remember which—had stuck a clown’s small dumpy hat on his head. Off to the left, a banner suspended between two poles rippled in a forgotten wind. It was Henry Cook all right, but also nothing, a weightless image no one looked at, a moment no one alive could locate. Without this evidence, that moment, that wind, might never have existed.
‘Henry. He was the man on the bottom, who supported everyone on his shoulders.’
‘I thought you did that.’
‘Oh, no, you need those shoulders and legs. Look at the size of the fellow.’
‘Where is he now?’
Max shrugged.
‘What’s this?’
He peered. It was in color, faded and indistinct. ‘Oh, yes, I remember that now. We were having a party, New Year’s or something. See the balloons? We took it with a flash—that’s why it’s so blurry. You see this fellow over here on the side? John Todd. He was a wonderful clown. This was his trailer. I can’t make out the others too well, there’re so many crowded in.’
‘Is that a monkey he’s holding?’
‘Yes, she was his pet. He called her Joanna. I never cared for her myself. She used to sit up on a kitchen cabinet sometimes, while we ate breakfast.’
‘Which one is you? And where’s your wife?’
‘She’s taking the picture. Let’s see if I can find me.’ He bent nearer to search. His finger wavered, then rested on the dim image of a young man with a broad chest, thick dark hair, and a wide grinning mouth. A patter of light hollow thumps ran through his chest. So his youth was extant, preserved in plastic coating. How forgetful—he had been lugging that image around in a suitcase for years, a jittery monkey on his back.
‘That’s really amazing! You don’t look that different, Max. You had more hair, though. Why do you have your arms up in that weird way?’
‘A few of us worked up this little number, sort of a parody of the girls doing ballet on the ropes. Just for laughs, in private.’
‘You must have had a lot of fun.’
‘Fun! Half the time we were exhausted—getting up so early and rehearsing. Two shows a day sometimes, and then we had to pack it all up and move on. You get to hate the sight of a road. Eight, nine months of the year, traveling. Plus the smells, the animals, always shitting all over the place. Oh, pardon me.’
‘Do you have any pictures of the acts—you know, during the show?’
‘No, this is all personal stuff. We were small, no fancy programs or publicity shots. Mud show, it was called. But in the back here, I think there may be an old poster. Ah, yes.’ As he opened it the paper, yellowed and blotched, crackled. The words ‘Brandon Brothers’ in red honky-tonk lettering made an arc in the center; above and below were pictures of bespangled women and haughty men in silver, elephants and dancing bears decked out in costume. The border was a chain of flaming hoops. ‘The usual thing,’ he said.
Alison studied it and turned back to the photos. ‘I’d rather see some of your wife. What was her name?’
‘Here’s our trailer. We never really had a chance to fix it up the way they do nowadays. We were always on the move.’
‘My father sells trailers. Mobile homes, they’re called now. Out west people buy them because they can’t afford houses any more—the market is so high.’
Max turned a page and got a thud behind his collarbone. Blots before his eyes. Susie stared straight up at him—thirty-five years vanished and he was there, pointing the lens down at her on the blue shag rug. She sat leaning against an armchair wearing lush velvet slacks, knees drawn up to her chin and arms hugging them, curly head slightly tilted. Her lips were parted—just before he snapped she ran her tongue over them to make them shiny. Her eyes were huge and deliberately seductive—as if he needed to be seduced. Susie playing provocative. After he took the picture he sat down on the rug with her and they played a game, touching fingertips only, till they couldn’t stand it any more. Then her eyes gave up the teasing glance, darkened and shone. In the picture now they looked pained, asking why he hadn’t rescued her. Up in the air, he had never once let her fall.
‘Oh, Lord,’ he whispered. She wore a black turtleneck sweater; her face was pale next to it. It was December. She had always hated the cold; they both did. At night she sneaked her icy feet between his to warm them, and he would jump and groan, ‘Jesus, Susie, have a little consideration.’
‘Oh, that must be her,’ said Alison. ‘She’s really pretty. What was her name again?’
His skin felt like a net drawn tight. Blood beat down every pathway, while outside him, as the pages turned, Susie was everywhere, framed by those silly black tabs she used to paste the photos in. She did that soon after they left the circus and opened the bike shop. For a week she sat each evening at the kitchen table with her jar of glue and her shoebox full of photos, patiently organizing and pasting. Her hair was long then, fluffy and restless on her shoulders; her hands strong and bare—she didn’t like rings. She wore big horn-rimmed glasses and one of his plaid flannel shirts over dungarees, and as she worked she sipped from a mug of tea. She was fifty, overwhelmingly sexy at the kitchen table under the strong overhead light. Max laughed at her industriousness.
‘Why are you spending so much time on that, Susie?’
‘I like to.’
‘It’s not as if we were going to pass it on to our grandchildren.’
She gave him a severe look through the glasses. ‘What is that supposed to mean, Max? Isn’t it enough that it’s for us?’
‘Yes, yes. I feel neglected, that’s all.’
‘Act your age. I’ll be finished in a little while.’
‘I have this terrific idea, Susie.’
‘Well, you just hang on to it.’
‘You’re so strict. Come on, put it away and come to bed. I’m more fun. I’m flesh and blood.’
‘I’m aware of that,’ she sighed. ‘That’s why it’s strange you don’t seem to tire out like other people.’ She removed her glasses and took a last gulp of tea before she stood up and came towards him. When he touched her she started to laugh, and said, ‘You twisted my arm.’
‘You didn’t even answer me,’ said Alison. ‘What are you thinking?’
He had forgotten she was there. ‘Don’t ask that! It’s a rude question.’
‘All right! You don’t have to snap like that.’ She tossed her head carelessly. ‘I know anyway. You’re thinking about her. I bet you think about her a lot.’
He moved away from her. His back was stiff from leaning over the album, and stiff words were on his tongue. He held them back: it would be cruel to hurt a child, nothing yet but a mass of possibilities. In anger, he doubted if the possibilities in this one would ever radiate out to reality. She was certainly going about it in the wrong direction: involuted and curled in on herself, smothering the craving flame. He knew all about latent powers, about urging what was inside to beam out and glitter. What she needed was someone to recognize her; unrecognized she didn’t trust her own reality. Recognize and take her on. But it was too taxing. He was in retirement. He sat silent.
‘You can tell me about her,’ she said earnestly. ‘I can keep a secret, I swear. Tell me how you met.’
He would throw her a scrap to make her stop clawing. ‘I had a job there, cleaning up, setting up the acts, and so on. She was the girl who swung on the trapeze, with some big fellow called J. B. Jones. He was a bum.’
It wasn’t Susie he had wanted at first. He wanted the flying. Brandon said if he could get someone to teach him in his spare time, it was okay with him. Max picked Susie simply because she was the best; her moves appeared effortless. Fluid. ‘You don’t have the right body,’ she said when he asked. ‘Never mind about the body. Just teach me.’ She was surprised by his progress. She gave him all her free time and worked him without mercy, but it didn’t even occur to him. He was a sweeper of dung and she was a star, to the manner born. Her parents had been circus people all their lives, till they were killed in an auto accident. Brandon, an old family friend, had always looked out for her: the orphaned princess. Then one night Max had to go on because J. B. Jones, the bum, was sick, and the next man in line had a torn ligament. They cut the act to a minimum, trusting him with a few simple routines. When they were done she kissed him on the cheek. ‘Max, you were terrific! You caught me!’ He could still hear the delight in her voice, the guardedness in his. ‘Of course I caught you. What did you expect?’ ‘I wasn’t absolutely sure.’ ‘And you went on anyway?’ She smiled, a clever, wry smile. ‘Someone had to take a chance on you.’ Still he didn’t see what she was getting at, until she took hold of his hand and squeezed it. ‘Hey, Max,’ she said in a funny, questioning voice, and flashed the clever smile again. Then he understood. With that look she had him.
‘I’ll tell you: she coached me,’ he said to Alison. ‘I don’t remember all the details, but to make a long story short, she coached me, and somehow we got together.’
‘Did she like you right away? I mean, did she tell you?’
‘Well, naturally she let me know, one way and another.’
‘I would never have the nerve to tell someone I liked them. Someone my age, I mean. Unless maybe they told me first.’
‘It’s not a question of nerve at all. It’s more being ready to reach out and take what comes your way. If it’s what you want.’
‘Are you ready to reach out and take what comes your way?’
‘Me! Now?’ He laughed grimly. ‘Certainly not. I’m ready to be finished. Anyhow, things don’t come your way unless you’re ready. It’s kind of a paradox. A paradox is—’
‘I know what a paradox is. I looked it up once. But can’t you let me be your friend? I came your way.’
‘You are my friend,’ he said, slamming the album shut and drawing back from her. ‘You come over to see me, don’t you?’
‘That’s not the same thing and you know it.’
‘I feed you, I take you to the movies, I show you pictures. What more do you want?’
‘Do you think about me when I’m not here?’
‘Well...’ Max said.
‘You certainly don’t think about me like...you know...’ She dropped her head and put the tips of two smudged fingers between her teeth.
He rose. The unpleasant tightness was still in his back. His left eyelid began to twitch. ‘Let me try to...enlighten you,’ he said carefully. ‘Whatever it is you seek in me is not available, for the simple reason that it does not exist. It may never have existed—I don’t know myself any more. But’—and he shook his finger at her—‘you are operating under a delusion. You have placed your eggs in the wrong basket.’
She stood up too, her body loose and dangling like a garment on a wire hanger. ‘See!’ She stamped her foot. ‘Now you’re talking that way again! You throw words at people like they throw knives at girls in a—in a side show. You’re a real case, Max.’
‘I can’t recall soliciting your opinion of me. No wonder you have trouble finding friends.’
‘I have trouble!’ she shouted. ‘You can’t be friends with anyone because you’re still back with—I bet you think about her all the time, don’t you? Only you’re not dead yet. You know what Joan of Arc said? That living is not simply not being stone—’
‘I don’t give a flying fuck what Joan of Arc said!’ Max roared. He grabbed the album from the couch and held it like a shield against his chest. ‘Go home, will you? I’ve never invited you here, have I? So go home to your own parents!’
‘All right, I will!’ She hoisted up her knapsack. A clump of chewed pencils fell out and rolled along the carpet.
‘Oh, shit!’ cried Max. ‘You’re a messy kid.’ He spun around and fled into the bathroom, slamming the door shut. What madness had he sunk to, howling back and forth with a child?
For maybe ten minutes he sat on the closed lid of the toilet, waiting for a slice across his chest. Now, with his secrets all bared by her, his life fingered like a raw wound—now would be a good time to go. Strike, heart. He was ready and willing. But nothing. Never suited your convenience. This child was gratuitous. This extra time, borrowed time, also gratuitous. He had never requested any loan. Thank you very much, but no, thanks. Then a timid knock on the bathroom door.
‘Max? Are you okay?’
Not gone yet!
‘Max? I’m sorry. I was leaving, but you’ve been in there so long. Max?’
Good. Let her think he dropped dead.
The familiar dull bang of her knapsack hitting the carpet. She was knocking louder, pounding. ‘Max? Max! Say something! Should I call Lettie?’
That roused him. He opened the door and raised his arm, ready with the fierceness he had used on roughnecks trying to crash the gate. But her face, bleached by terror, stopped him. The arm lost its impulse; he breathed in and patted her shoulder awkwardly. ‘Alison, you’re a little girl. You see what I am. Go find some other girls who are precocious like you—there must be a few around. Go play, or write books, or do whatever smart girls do.’
‘Are you sick again, like in the store?’
‘No.’
‘All right, I’m going. I’m sorry. I only wanted to talk to you.’
The sharpness of her face had vanished, and her eyes had softened from their lucid green to a murky hazel. She was someone else, someone younger come out of hiding and wholly unarmed in the face of all the world’s dangers. Somebody ought to rescue this fragile one from the crude character who guarded her like a dragon. It was tempting. But not him.
‘Why don’t you take an apple, a cookie, or something before you go?’
‘Thanks. But you know, an apple is no substitute for anything.’ Recovered and swaggering again, she got an apple from his refrigerator and dug her teeth in loudly. ‘Okay, Max. See you in school tomorrow?’
‘Right.’
At the door, not done yet, not looking at his face. ‘Can I come back sometime?’ Desperate, behind eyes once more cool and green.
‘Yes.’