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Gigi visited me the next afternoon at Jim’s trailer. For all I knew, he might have asked her to check up on me to make sure I was lying low, like he had told me to do. Then again, maybe she had just got it into her mind that she wanted to stop by and chat, like Mrs. Person and the other farm wives who used to bring my father—the lonely widower raising two children by himself—baked goods and peach pies in the summer and brown bread in the winter.
Gigi didn’t stand on ceremony like those ladies, though. She walked right in and sat down on the couch. “You doing okay?” she asked. She got up to take a cigarette from Jim’s pack of Pall Malls on the kitchen counter and lit it from the gas burner of the stove.
I stood in the middle of the living room, awkward and a little ill at ease. “Yeah. No. I guess.”
Gigi nodded, as if what I had said made perfect sense. She was wearing green satin shorts with a sleeveless cotton blouse and long knee socks. Her hair was tied up in a pale-blue chiffon scarf secured to the sides of her head with silver beauty parlor clips.
“So, we’re going to Beloit tomorrow. You ever been there?” She concentrated on blowing smoke rings in the air.
“I’ve never been anywhere.” I stopped talking because I was teetering on the edge of telling Gigi my story, maybe even my whole story, the unedited one that could get me into unimaginable amounts of trouble.
Gigi hopped onto the kitchen counter and fumbled around in the cabinet above her until she latched on to the half-empty bottle of Four Roses whiskey that Jim and I had drunk my first night with him.
“Let’s have some,” she said.
“No. No, thanks,” I said, unsure whether either of us should be handling or consuming things in the trailer without Jim’s permission. “What I could really use is some help with my act. Hinkle will be pissed for sure if it doesn’t get better in a hurry.” It no longer occurred to me to refer to Hinkle as Mr. Musgrave. I was surprised, too, to hear myself say a swear word out loud, mild though it was. It fit the context. On some level, Hinkle and profanity had become linked in my mind.
“Well, here’s mud in your eye.” Gigi raised her glass and drank half of it down in one swallow. “Don’t worry too much about Hinkle.” She coughed. “He’s always sniffing around for something. You know what I mean?”
Her description of Hinkle made him seem animalistic, predatory. I had noticed how he liked to watch Gigi whenever she was near him. “I suppose,” I said. “Jim helped me get some stuff so I could I start working on my outfit, but other than that, I can’t think of what else to do.”
My dress would be beautiful, yards and yards of magenta with a top layer of chiffon cut to move with the wearer, and scores of sequins attached one by one with painstaking care along the straps and hem. The monotonous precision of the task would be certain to keep my imagination from wandering.
“Well,” Gigi said, “it’s all about the inside money. People pay to get in, and then you can sell them extra stuff like a pitch card or a bible.”
“But why would people want to buy Bibles at a carnival?”
“No, not the real Bible, but like a thing, something you sell that has to do with you or your act. See, you don’t have to share the inside money with the house, so you have a chance to really cash in if you got a good sell. And then at the end, you can do an extra bit, and people pay more money, men especially, if they think they might get to see some tit.”
My mouth dropped open so wide I could feel my chin pressing far down into the collar of fat around my neck. The world tilted a slight bit to the side, causing me to grab the arm of the couch to steady myself. As it was, I could hardly stand to imagine any part of the show besides the flashy sequins of my getup. Now, Gigi was hinting that I might have to show naked parts of my body.
“Goddamn.” Gigi laughed. “If you think that’s bad, you got to go on over to take a look at the dancers in the cootch show one of these days. They play it strong over there.” She topped off her glass. “Don’t take it to heart, all right? Nobody’s saying you have to take your clothes off. Like, when I was in the blade box, Jim used to have me hand out my dress. He’d talk it up real good, so the men would line up to look. Most times I had on a full slip. We made some decent money with that one.”
“But what is it, then, exactly that I’m supposed to do?”
Gigi rubbed the corner of her mouth with her finger and stared at the ceiling. “You could probably get people to pay extra to have you lift your dress and bend over. That’s the thing with all the girl acts.”
“No!” I grabbed Gigi by the shoulders, moving her toward me so that she was mere inches from my face. “You said—”
“Careful. You’re going to spill my drink.” Gigi pulled away from me. “Don’t get so damned worked up about it. You’ll have on those ruffled underpants, so that’s all they’ll see. And then you can just give a little twitch or whatever.” She sat down on the couch, took a sip from her glass and a drag from her cigarette. “Honestly, that’s how people are,” she said. “They want to know what little Freddy’s dick looks like. And Ike. Jesus, he spreads his ass cheeks, and he’s got an eye tattooed around the hole that he makes wink at people. He thinks it’s the funniest damn thing, having all these uptight jerks pay money to look at his asshole.”
“I think I might be sick,” I whispered, sitting down next to Gigi.
“Yeah, well, don’t do that. You sure you don’t want a drink? It might help calm your nerves.”
I shook my head.
Gigi walked over to the window, glass and cigarette in hand. “I think you’ll be okay, kid. Jim said how you never got out much before this.” She turned to face me. “Maybe you’re just a little homesick, you know?”
The thought of missing my house made me want to laugh. Following on the heels of that dismissal, however, came an instant longing to be back home, not as I had left it but the way it had been before Jared fired Mrs. Schendel as our housekeeper and before my father died. Back then, my father and I used to sit at the table and drink tea. Sometimes Mrs. Schendel could be persuaded to sit and have a cup of coffee with us while Jared was somewhere outside of the house, absent and silent but alive nonetheless.
“I just... I guess I didn’t expect any of this to happen.”
Gig spat on the end of her cigarette to douse it and flicked the butt toward the door. “Believe me, I know,” she said, sitting on the couch next to me and pulling her knees up to her chest. “I mean, I thought I was going to get married and have a bunch of kids.” Gigi pulled one of the silver clips from her hair and rubbed it back and forth between her thumb and index finger. “I was going to marry someone rich, you know, so I wouldn’t have to work so hard like my mother and wouldn’t end up sad like her. She cried all the time.” Gigi pressed her eyes against her knees. “And then she left us.” She wiped her face with the palms of her hands then sprang to her feet to go to the kitchen for another drink.
“Hey, you know, I don’t usually drink like this so early in the morning.” Gigi took another cigarette from Jim’s pack. It dangled between her lips, tilting up and down as she talked. “So, what did you think you’d be doing instead?” Jim had left a dirty pair of jeans draped over the coffee table. Gigi fished through the pockets until she came up with a match booklet.
“Umm... well,” I said, watching her constant movements, overwhelmed by her familiarity with everything in the trailer, with Jim’s clothes even. Gigi took a half-full ashtray from the counter and sat back down next to me.
“I wanted to get married, too, you know. Afterward, I mean. First, I was going to lose a ton of weight and be really thin so I could tell every single person who made fun of me to go straight to hell. Then I was going to find some guy who was rich but really smart, too, like a doctor or lawyer or something. I was going to leave town and maybe go live in New York City because that’s where my mother’s family is. I was going to be a famous writer too.”
“A writer, huh? Well, that’s something. Like books and stuff like that?”
“I don’t know. I guess I thought I would have some kind of newspaper column or something. Maybe I would write a book.”
Gigi smiled and leaned back against the couch, her hands interlaced behind her head. “Like about what?” She closed her eyes.
I twirled my hair, looping it over and through my fingers. “Let’s see... There’s this girl, right? She’s the main character, and she lives with her father and her brother, let’s say, in a tiny little house.”
“Where’s the mother?” Gigi asked, not opening her eyes.
“The father told the girl that her mother died from sepsis when the girl was just a baby, but really—” I stopped myself, wondering if I should continue to tell the lie my father had invented or the truth Mrs. Schendel had told me. “She killed herself, the mother did, when the girl was only a baby. The father never said anything, I guess because he was ashamed.”
Gigi turned her head, opening her eyes to look at me. “He thought he could save her?”
“Maybe,” I said.
My father had always been reluctant to talk about my mother, never wanting to share any memories of her. One night, though, not long after my fourteenth birthday, I overheard my father, who had been drinking a great deal or at least more than usual, muttering in low, angry half tones while he sat in the recliner. He said my mother’s name—Emma. It was late at night with just the two of us at home. Jared, like usual, was away from the house, so I seized the opportunity, pressing my father with questions, asking him to speak louder. In response, he walked over to where I sat eating slices of bread at the table. He dropped to his knees and ground his face against my shin, making an animalistic noise not instantly recognizable as human sobbing. When he glanced up at me at last—his glassy red eyes making him look like a demon who grabbed at the feet and ankles of careless children while they slept—he whispered that his relationship with Emma hadn’t been shameful, not like people said.
Beside me, Gigi waited for me to continue, her body soft and relaxed as she let herself rest against my arm. “Anyway,” I said, “everyone in the town made fun of this girl. Her brother was the worst of all. He said awful things to her. He used to poke her and pinch her. He even made fun of the way she walked. The father...” I swallowed hard. “He never tried to stop the brother. He would say something once in a while, but he was just too tired or sad to really do anything about it, so the brother could be as mean as he wanted. The girl had a stepmother too.”
“An evil one?”
“No, a nice one. You know, she harped on the girl a lot about her weight, but... she really did want her to be happy.” My voice was quiet, barely audible over the turning fan blades. In my mind, in the version of the truth I told myself, Jared played the role of tormentor, a fantastical meanie, who loved to laugh at me and be cruel to me in all the ways available to his limited imagination. Mrs. Schendel was in the middle. She loved me and wanted the best for me, but she couldn’t resist the compulsion of being stern with me, of forever searching for the right formula to make me snap out of it and behave like a normal person. My father was the hero, the one I loved in that diminished emotional life of only three people and no friends. Hearing myself tell the story to Gigi, though, made him seem less than what I had thought him to be. He could have stood up for me or could have made Jared hate me less or could have engendered a feeling of family within us, of being a cohesive group, instead of keeping me stuffed in the house like an overfed pet and resenting Jared for not needing him. My father had never wanted me to leave him. He had always been there pulling at my hands, tweaking the fingers, wrapping his arms around my neck.
Gigi turned her head without lifting it from the edge of the couch. Her eyes were less focused from drinking. Her lit cigarette held a long column of ash. She clapped her hand on my leg. “Well, it’s no wonder, then, why she left home. Who’d want to stick around for that shit?”
“Nobody, I guess.” I paused. “She wasn’t really my stepmother,” I confessed. “She was our housekeeper. We weren’t rich or anything, but my father had to have someone help him. She lived at the farm next door and came over every day.” Mrs. Schendel had always seemed like one of the family. It felt like a cruel oversight to give her the same label as some domestic employee who hadn’t taken on the additional tasks of telling me the truth about my parents’ marriage and my mother’s death or of forcing me to leave the house when I wanted to stay inside and hide. “I don’t know why I said she was my stepmother.”
“Was it because she was sleeping with your father?” Gigi asked.
“What? No!” My voice got louder at Gigi’s suggestion. “She was a married woman who went to church every Sunday!”
Gigi just shrugged. “Well, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything.”
I opened my mouth to express more outrage then said nothing. My father had confided everything in Mrs. Schendel, even the fact that he had met and impregnated my mother when my mother was only a fifteen-year-old student in the high school English class he taught. Mrs. Schendel had been his only confidante and the person to whom I had turned, without stopping to wonder why, when I wanted the truth about anything involving my own family.
“You didn’t know her, though,” I said in a calmer voice. “She thought I could go to college even. My father said I needed to stay home with him, but she was pretty sure I could figure things out on my own.”
“Yeah?” Gigi asked.
“Yes. I got really good grades when I was still in school. I had to leave in the fourth grade because I got too big to fit in the desks. Then my father taught me at home after that.”
“Is that right? I never got any further than the sixth grade.”
I shook my head. “Right, but my father was a real university professor someplace famous back East, and he tutored me, so... I mean, I would have done great in college.”
Gigi flicked her ash toward the ashtray and missed. “That’s right. You asked me right away for a newspaper when you got here, so you must be good at reading.”
How could I explain the ocean between what Gigi thought of as schooling and the world of ideas my father and I had shared? A surge of loneliness washed over me at the thought that I would never again have discussions like the ones I had had with my father.
“Yeah, but it probably wouldn’t have happened anyway.” Gigi stood up and stretched her arms over her head. “Like with me, where the fuck was I going to find a rich man anyway in that shit town?” She bent down and touched her toes, holding the pose, until her balance gave out and she fell onto the couch. “Goddamn, I guess I had more to drink than I realized. I think I’ll lie down for a little while.” She walked into the bedroom and flopped face first onto the bed.
I followed her, astonished again at her level of comfort in the trailer, but she was already asleep, snoring, her indrawn breath a high-pitched wail, her exhale a whooshing rush of air. So I left her where she was, deciding to use the time to reread some of Emerson’s collected works and better my mind to feel closer to my father. He often used to recite the essays and poems aloud, his voicing rising and falling with perfection, like rain clattering down through the leaves.
I started to read, trying to recapture that happiness. Instead, my mind kept returning to Mrs. Schendel. I had always wanted my mother, like all motherless children do, but I had only had Mrs. Schendel—homely Mrs. Schendel with her beak nose and big, competent chapped hands. She had scrubbed our house clean, had cooked enormous pots of chicken pieces and gravy, and had demonstrated an uncharacteristic dislike for the farm wives who had visited our house, charmed and half in love, as they were, with my father’s flat stomach and strong body with hands softer than their own. How, in all that time, had I never realized that he and Mrs. Schendel were lovers?
Returning to the here and now, I snapped Mr. Emerson shut. Maybe it had been foolish to bring that bulky book with its cracked and splintering spine with me from home. It weighed a ton.
I was tired and wished Gigi would leave. I thought about waking her and asking her to go, but if Jim had sent her over to the trailer, he might be angry if I did that. Gigi had one of the pillows in a tight grip, as if she were holding hands with it, as if it were a good friend.
I took off my shoes and sat on the edge of the bed. Gigi was sprawled in the very middle of the mattress, so I put one hand under her stomach and the other under her thigh to roll her over to the edge. I must have been too forceful or been too effective as a human spatula because she turned twice and hit her head against the wall.
“Oh God,” I said. “I’m sorry.”
Gigi sat up and rubbed her head. “The fuck, you say.” She flopped back down and resumed her sleep.
I burst out laughing, but Gigi didn’t even open her eyes. Easing myself down onto the other side of the bed, I felt suddenly exhausted and glad, too, that I hadn’t asked Gigi to leave. I drifted off, savoring the experience of being next to someone who could be so comfortable by my side—someone who didn’t require watching, who didn’t have any plans for my fat body. I didn’t have to worry about her coming up behind me.
***
That was how Jim found us a few hours later—both of us fast asleep on the bed. “Well, will you look at this?” he said. I struggled to sit up at the sound of his voice while Gigi only murmured something and kept on sleeping. “And here I thought you might be lonely and want some lunch,” he said, showing me a clear plastic trash bag filled with buttered popcorn in one hand and a brown paper sack stained with grease in the other.
When I came out of the bedroom, Jim was standing in the middle of the kitchenette, holding the opened Four Roses, waiting, it seemed, for me to see him staring at the less-full bottle. “I see Gigi made herself at home here,” he said. “Or was it you?”
“No, no,” I said. “Drinking’s not my thing. You know that.”
As I waited for Jim’s next words, for his reaction, I thought about picking up the full ashtray from the floor, worried that it might be a magnet for his anger. In the other room, Gigi shifted on the bed, rolling and noisy, making me forget about the ashtray.
“Anyway,” I said, “Gigi came by to keep me company, and, you know, it didn’t occur to me to tell her ‘no,’ that she couldn’t have a drink or make herself comfortable. I mean, at home, we always had coffee and something to eat when people came over.” I closed my eyes for a second, savoring the darkness, the internal quiet impossible in strong light. “Or at least that’s how it sounded.”
Jim stared at me for a minute then screwed the cap back on the whiskey bottle. “What do you mean, ‘That’s how it sounded’?”
“I always stayed in the room I had to share with my brother when people came to visit my father.” I coughed. “And I would hear them out in the kitchen, drinking coffee and tea and eating pies or bread or whatever.”
Jim sat down on the couch, elbows resting on his knees. “How come you didn’t just go out and join them?”
“Because I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of being able to make fun of me, of watching me eat, so they would have a hilarious story to tell their friends or families.” There was a metallic taste in my mouth. “Also, I think my father wanted me to stay away. He didn’t want people looking at me either.” That last part, something I had never voiced aloud, was terrible to admit but a relief to finally say.
Jim reached over and ran two fingers down my forearm, raising my flesh. “You won’t have to worry about that here. Everybody is going to want to get a look at you.” Jim motioned to the bags of food on the table. “Come on and eat. Fergs dumped out the fry bins, and these are the leftovers. I’ve got some funnel cake and sausages too.”
“It looks good.” I smiled. “Do you think Gigi wants some?”
“Ah, let her sleep,” Jim said. He picked up a handful of French fries and started eating them one by one. “Gigi’s got a good heart, but she drinks too goddamn much.” Jim shook his head and kept eating. “Almost thirty years old and still crying for her mother.”