| |
With a new birth certificate in hand, I was far better prepared for the next season with Midstate. I had also bought an old sewing machine to fashion myself some costumes and, more importantly since I’d left home with only two extra outfits, new clothes. They weren’t as expert as what Mrs. Schendel might have made, but they were more colorful and comfortable, too, because I allowed myself shirts and dresses without sleeves, skirts above the knee, and cropped pants.
Hinkle appeared to have a renewed good spirit about him that Jim said was the result of some big wins at the Tropicana in Las Vegas. “That’s what he does when he’s not with Midstate,” Jim explained. “He plays poker and some blackjack. He used to bum around the Indian bingo halls in Florida, but that got too small stakes for him.”
My ability to handle the audience also improved during my performances. By relying on Gigi’s advice to remember that the people in the crowd were only marks and by having a quieter mind and more experience during my second season, I was able not only to inure myself to the audience’s unkind comments but also to control the situation and, by extension, the people who had paid to watch me. One night during a stint near Oak Creek, some guy, probably twenty to twenty-five years old, yelled out, “Hey, you big whale. How about I fill you up, do you a favor, and make you a sperm whale?” He laughed so much that his idiotic friends had to slap him on the back. His voice was loud and piercing, with the sharp clarity to carry a good distance. People around him started laughing as well.
I had been doing a few tap dance steps, the bouncing motion of which really made my body jiggle, while singing something like one of the chants that schoolgirls did when they jumped rope. I tip-tapped my way to the front of the stage. “Hey, man!” I yelled. “Yeah, you. Honey, if you want to catch a whale, you’re going to need a great big harpoon, not that little fishing pole you’ve got. You’re better off in the shallow end.”
The audience drew a deep, collective breath at my outrageous statement, followed by immediate raucous laughter. I would never have had the nerve to say such a thing out loud a year ago. An older man, probably in his sixties or so, clapped his hands in glee at my response and said that he loved me. He was close enough to the stage that I could hear him as plain as day, but still he mimed the words to me by touching his sternum then crossing his arms over his chest and pointing at me to make sure I understood.
That older man became an admirer, of sorts. Over the course of a week or so, he waited for me outside the sideshow tent until the carnival closed down. Every night, he brought me a basket of corn cakes, which I would later take with me to the G-top to share with the girls. Each time he told me a bit more about the course of his life—of how he had been widowed three times, with each wife dying before she had the chance to produce any children, and of how lonely he felt with no woman to warm his bed. He said I looked like a big strong girl, though, and that he was certain he could handle me. Though I joked with the others about Old Man Corn Cake, who had never once thought to tell me his name despite his interest in making me the fourth Mrs. Whatever, his devotion—bumbling, harmless, and just this side of creepy—helped me understand that Jim was not the only man who would want me. After that, the sexual tinge of the way men inventoried my body when I was on stage became more apparent.
The last night I saw Old Man Corn Cake, he was wearing a nice button-down shirt and a tie. He had his usual basket but also a paper grocery sack. “I figured we should spend some time and get to know each other better.” He held up the basket. “How about you and me go to one of these trailers? You can take off your dress, and we’ll have ourselves a nice snack.”
“Mister, that’s not going to happen, so you better get on out of here.” His unchivalrous approach made him seem less like a besotted admirer and more like a dirty old pervert.
“Now, sweetheart,” he said, “I got some bottled beer and sticks of butter in this grocery sack, so you don’t have to worry none about having a dry muffin.”
Then I started laughing because I couldn’t help myself, unable to stop even as tears filled my eyes and ran down my cheeks. Old Man Corn Cake shuffled away without another word, leaving behind his basket and grocery sack, the contents of which I took to the G-top to share with Gigi, Ora Ann, and Daisy.
“You know,” Gigi said, buttering one of the corn cakes, “these really do taste a lot better with the butter.”
“And they go better with beer than you’d think.” Daisy laughed.
“To tell you the truth, girls, I feel a little bad that I laughed at the poor guy, even if he was a bit of a dirty old man,” I said. “He seemed so lonely.”
Gigi leaned over to put her arm around my neck. “I know,” she said in a quiet voice. “And he cared so much about your muffin too.”
The three of them laughed again. I joined in, knowing there was likely no way I could ever make them feel sorry for a mark.
“Easy come, easy go, I suppose,” I said. “Too bad, though, that he couldn’t have waited one more day to see the new show with me and Little Freddy.”
Little Freddy and I had concocted the idea of acting out a wedding ceremony. The bridal gown I had made, a time-consuming endeavor, was hot and scratchy with layers of crunchy crinoline underneath. Little Freddy, the incongruous groom, would jump into my arms once we were married, then I would dance, spinning him around and around. We also did a separate performance for some inside money where we acted out the wedding night. Little Freddy would dive under my dress and make obscene noises and movements out of the audience’s view. Then he would try to belly crawl, gasping and desperate, out from under my skirt. “That’s just too much woman for me.” And I would take our prop broom and sweep him back under my gown and tell him he wasn’t done yet. The crowd ate it up, cheering and whistling, so we made some good money right from the start.
Jim loved it much less so. “You need to rethink that bit with Little Freddy,” he told me when we were back at the trailer after the act debuted. He opened one of the kitchen cabinets then slammed it shut, as if he had no idea what he was looking for.
“Why would I want to do that? Fred and I made some good inside money on that.” I filled a glass with water from the kitchen tap, suppressing my smile at the idea that Jim was jealous of Little Freddy. He wouldn’t want to admit that, of course, but neither did he seem able to think of any logical way to explain his objection.
“For one thing,” Jim said, “it doesn’t make any kind of sense for you to spend money to make a wedding dress when you can only use it for one single act.”
Jim’s line of reasoning would seem to argue in favor of my doing the wedding act with Freddy as much as I could. Rather than engage with Jim in a pointless conversation in which he would likely never cop to feeling threatened by a man half his size, I simply kissed him on the forehead. “Who knows? Maybe I’ll get married in it.”
“Ha ha. Very funny,” Jim said.
“I don’t see what’s so funny about it.”
Jim slammed out the door. He would probably be gone for the rest of the night. As the hours wore on, my hurt and outrage that Jim should find the idea of marrying me a laughable, far-fetched possibility when, in essence, we lived together as husband and wife warred with the knowledge that he held me in enough esteem that he believed I was sufficiently attractive to entice another man.
Jim’s absence for an entire night wasn’t a particular cause for concern. In fact, he stayed out until dawn about three or four times a month, usually leaving in a good mood with a kiss or an affable wave of his hand. I imagined he spent the time with Weedy or Roscoe or maybe Ike playing cards and getting drunk, or else hitting the bars in whatever town we visited. Sometimes, I went with him, but I also liked to stay home, happy for the extreme privacy of being able to eat with no one watching. Other times, Gigi would talk me into going for a ride, or she would know who had good hooch or pills or even some special delectable food for me, and we would make the rounds that way. The oddities and hardships of carnival life notwithstanding, I had come to realize that I could have fun as well, something that had been in very scant supply at home.
***
Jim’s side of the bed was still empty the next morning. The clock on the night table, the one I had put in the trailer because its endless ticking soothed me, as did its ability to help orient me upon waking, showed that it was past seven. I pulled down the heavy brown blanket I sometimes hung over the window frame at night to keep out the morning light.
Gigi’s trailer was visible from the bedroom window. Later on, I would go over to tell her the story about how Jim had laughed at the idea of ever marrying me. She would listen to me and probably tell me not to worry, that I was Jim’s old lady anyway even if we weren’t married. Thinking about my future conversation with Gigi and her reasoning, my anger at Jim began to dissipate. Then, as I watched, the door to Gigi’s trailer opened, and out stepped Jim, wearing his clothes from the day before. He rubbed his hands over his face and started walking back home. A cold lump fell from my throat to my stomach.
Jim looked surprised to see me standing in the kitchen when he opened the trailer door. “You’re up early,” he said, going over to the kitchen sink. He stripped off his shirt and tossed it onto the counter and splashed water on his face and under his arms then put his whole head under the tap.
“Is there some reason you can’t do that in the bathroom?” I snapped, saying the first thing that came to mind.
Jim dried himself with the dish towel. “What’s up your ass?” He let the towel fall onto the counter. “You’re not still mad, are you, that—”
I placed both hands on Jim’s chest and pushed him to rid myself of his galling nonchalance. He lost his balance and stumbled against the counter. Knowing that I had this power to move him fueled my voice with authority, ensured that Jim would hear what I had to say loud and clear. “What’s up my ass? Well, let’s see, my old man was out sleeping with my best friend.”
Jim stood shocked to immobility, as if my anger defied belief. Grabbing two handfuls of my own hair, I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed. “I don’t know who to hate more. You or Gigi.”
Jim grabbed my wrists and held them tight in front of my face. “Stop it now. Quit acting so goddamned crazy.”
I pulled free and turned my back on him to stare at the wall because I feared I might splinter and break if I looked any longer at this man who, flawed and unpredictable though he could sometimes be, had seemed like one of the few trustworthy people in this crazy carnival world. Gigi had been the other one.
The kitchen and back living room walls were covered in beige wallpaper with interlocking circles in pale green, now gone yellow and peeling back in certain places. Staring at that ugly design, seeing it anew after many months of not noticing it, of having forgotten the truth of how unappealing and worn out it really was, showed me the words I’d been holding down somewhere, nestled in a dark corner of my mind, waiting to awaken at just that moment.
“No, you stop it,” I said. “You stop running around and lying to me, saying one thing to my face and then doing something else behind my back.” I ran my hand along the wallpaper, faced Jim, and waited.
He took a can of beer from the refrigerator, pulled off the tab, and put it in his pocket. “You’re too much. Just too fucking much.” Taking a long drink of beer, head tilted back, he showed me his bobbing throat. Wiping his mouth with the back of his hand, he studied the beer can for a moment before throwing it into the sink, sending an explosion of foam bursting into the air. “I don’t see why the fuck this whole thing with Gigi is such a big deal now when it never bothered you before.”
The shame of not knowing was almost as bad, worse even, than the pain of the betrayal—a breach of trust of a promise that had never been made. “Because I didn’t know about it before. Okay? I’m that damn stupid. If you weren’t here at night, I thought you were drinking or playing cards or something like that.” I sat down on the couch and pulled the edge of my housecoat up over my face to hide in the dark space I had made.
Jim sat down beside me. “It’s not as bad as all that, Lolly.” He pulled on my arm until I unburied my face. “Here, look at me.” He touched my face lightly to make me turn my head. “You’re my old lady. Not any of these other girls. Not even Gigi.”
So it wasn’t just Gigi. I had probably talked to a lot of these women, laughing, telling stories, passing the time of day. And what had they thought of me? “I think the best thing would be for me to leave the carnival.” I didn’t want to rely on Jim for anything ever again. “I’ll go home, back to my house.” The heat of Jim’s stare caused a searing pain in my chest. “I’ve got money saved. I’ll go to the police station and answer their questions. And I bet they’ll believe me, you know? They’ll see the fat and won’t think that I’d be capable enough to kill a man. Even though it’s the easiest thing in the world to do.” That last statement felt right and close to a full confession. Breathing in, the air felt good and clean in my lungs.
“No,” Jim said. “Come on, don’t talk like that.” He put his arm across my back and moved closer, falling into the side of my body. “You belong here with me, going places and meeting people, not boxed up in a falling-down house with no job and no friends and no nothing.” Jim pressed his mouth to the side of my face and wended a trail of feather-light, silky soft kisses from my ear down my neck. Each point of contact with his lips felt like a small starburst of warmth, part tingle and part shiver, making going home and being without Jim seem like death, only worse because there would be no peace to it.
“I don’t want to be alone.” Tears filled my eyes as my brain struggled to process the desolate sadness of that prospect.
Jim pressed his lips hard against mine and kissed my face, smearing my tears. “You’re right here with me.” He reached under my housecoat and started to rub me between my legs the way I liked.
Did he do the same things with Gigi? My skin flushed with rage and shame at the thought, but more than that, I didn’t want Jim to stop touching me or wanting me or loving me. I closed my eyes and pushed my thoughts, my consciousness even, down to a quieter, more opaque layer of the mind. In that nearly hypnotic realm, it occurred to me that Jim had never once asked if I had actually killed Jared, had never even requested an account of what happened that night. Jim knew I wasn’t an inert, incapable blob, but he never asked if I was a killer. He slept soundly beside me night after night, never shocked or appalled at the thought of what I might have done, apparently not caring and not needing any explanation. Maybe he made his choice that day alongside the road when he didn’t drive away and leave me.
The realization of such extraordinary tolerance and acceptance deflated my anger, in that moment, at least. We had moved to the bed and taken off our clothes. Jim was on top of me, having sex with me, when at last I opened my eyes.
“Oh,” I gasped.
Jim smiled, surprised and pleased, because I had never before uttered a sound when we made love. “Thatta girl,” he said, causing me to wrap my arms and legs around him with spine-cracking force to pull him closer and draw him into drowning in my flesh, holding him tighter and harder.
“Oh my God.” I pounded his back with my fist as my body tensed and locked into the accelerating track of orgasm. And when it happened, the sensation and the wonder of it, too, because I had never had one with Jim, made me squeeze him with all my strength.
He came after that and collapsed on top of me for a moment before freeing himself from my grip and rolling off me and over onto his back on the other mattress. Jim lay there naked with his chest heaving, holding his heart and gasping for breath. “Jesus,” he said. “Sweet Jesus, Lola, you’re going to kill me.”
I liked the idea of having worn out Jim and the sound of his quiet laughter while he tried to catch his breath. I rolled to my side, ran my hand down Jim’s chest, and touched my mouth to his sweaty skin. Raising my head, I could see out the window and noticed Gigi standing in the doorway of her trailer, fists digging into her hips, pressing her spine forward to stretch her back. She looked as she had the hundred other times I’d seen her on a morning after with her melted eye makeup and wearing that ratty, threadbare housecoat that only came down to the middle of her thighs and was missing two snaps on top. She hadn’t combed out her stage hair from the night before, and as I watched, she began unraveling its intricate mass.
“There’s your whore out there,” I said, slapping my open hand down hard on Jim’s chest. “Standing around in that short nightgown, hoping someone will come take a look, I guess.”
Jim grabbed my wrist to push me away from him. “Jesus Christ,” he said, jumping off the bed to stand in front of me, naked, holding his hands stiff with the fingers splayed. “Goddamn it, don’t start up again. Enough already.”
I grabbed one of the heavy pillows from the bed and threw it at Jim, who batted it to the side with no real effort. “Don’t piss me off, Lola,” he said, jabbing his finger toward my face. Then he stood up and began to walk away.
“Where are you going?”
“To take a shower,” Jim said, shaking his head. “I’ve got too much pussy on me.”
As he was leaving, I grabbed the bedside clock and threw it at him but missed and hit the doorframe instead. Jim closed the bathroom door, and the lock clicked before I even managed to get off the mattress. “You’re disgusting,” I said, hitting and kicking the door to make Jim hear me. “I hate you.”
“Jesus, leave me in peace, woman,” he said. I heard the shower tap open and the hissing spray.
“Take all the peace you want,” I said. “I’m going over to talk to your alcoholic whore.” I put on my clothes and stomped away, slamming the trailer door after me. It didn’t close properly and instead bounced back on the doorjamb from the strength of my hand. Jim called something after me, maybe about not making a scene or leaving Gigi alone or being careful with the goddamn door, but I didn’t hear, and I didn’t care.
Gigi had set up her aluminum lawn chair in front of her trailer with the door propped open. Holding a cigarette between her fingers, she waved her hand over her head when she saw me approach. “Hey there, Lola. Come on, and I’ll pull down a chair so you can pass the time with me.” Her voice was friendly and normal, like always, her actions ordinary as she disappeared into the trailer and brought out a sturdy, armless, straight-back chair. That was our habit. We liked to sit outside and talk about whatever we wanted to say.
Gigi patted the ladder back of the chair. “So, what’s got you up so early?” she asked, plopping back down into her own chair. “I got the door open”—she pointed to the trailer—“so I can air the place out, you know. It gets real stuffy after a long night. You doing okay? You look sort of funny.”
I stood in front of Gigi, looking down on her. The casual response first from Jim and now from Gigi made me wonder if maybe I were losing my mind. “You really have no idea why I’d look funny or maybe be upset? I saw Jim coming out of your trailer! That’s why. I know he slept with you last night. And it’s like you can’t fucking figure out why I’d even be mad about it.” That was the first time I could recall saying the word “fuck” out loud to another person. This situation seemed like the perfect occasion. When Gigi didn’t respond, more words I didn’t know I had at my disposal tumbled out of me. “You’re a dirty whore for fucking my old man behind my back. That’s what you are.”
Gigi sprang to her feet directly in front of me so that we were standing almost nose to nose. “What’s that you called me?” she yelled. Her breath, hot and outraged, smelling of old cigarettes, fanned my face.
“I’m pretty sure you heard me just fine.” My own voice was calm and measured because I wanted her to understand that I meant every word.
“Well, you say something like that again, and I’ll slap your face. You’ve got a nerve coming over here and talking to me like that.” Gigi sank back down into her chair. Even with her face turned away from me, I could tell she was crying, the wetness mixing with her old eyeliner and mascara, cutting rivulets down her checks that looked like dirty runoff. “Why don’t you just get on out of here if you’re going to be so mean?”
I had the instant urge to put my arms around her, to comfort her against my own cruelty, an inclination that made no sense. “But... I’m the hurt one here. Why are you crying? You’re the one who did me wrong. Not the other way around.”
Gigi wiped the entire underside of her forearm across her face, leaving a black smear. “How’d I do you wrong? You never said nothing about me and Jim before, so why come stomping over here now and call me names?”
I banged my fist on the open trailer door. “Because I didn’t know! Okay?” Even though I’d learned how to put on a performance and control an audience and how to have friends and make love with a man, it appeared there was still a lot I didn’t understand.
“Really?” Gigi asked, as if my gullibility defied human belief. “I’d a thought you were smarter than that.”
I grabbed the ladder back of the chair Gigi had brought out and lowered myself into the seat. My knees ached from maintaining my rage-filled posture. “Yeah, me too. I guess I’m the stupidest goddamn person on earth.” A feeling of hopelessness and confusion overwhelmed me, leaving me to wonder what else I didn’t know.
Gigi squeezed my shoulder. “Come on. No, you’re not. It’s just... you know, I think there’s a lot of things that went on before you even got here. Me and Jimmy always got along real good. He’s had my back more than once. Yeah, he’s old, but he’s an important guy around here and definitely better looking than some of these dirtbags, better than Hinkle, at least. Then you show up, and all of a sudden you’re his old lady, but it’s like you don’t realize how lucky you are. You know how hard I had to work and hustle to buy this trailer or anything else I’ve got? And there you are, living in the one of the best spots on the back lot without hardly lifting a finger. And did I ever say anything about that or complain and call you names?”
Gigi’s words, her description of my unappealing arrogance, filled me with a deep sense of shame when only moments before I had been convinced that it was Gigi who should be embarrassed and remorseful. “No,” I whispered, my cheeks flaming hot. “You’ve always been a good friend to me. I’m sorry I called you names, Geeg.” My voice sounded pitiful, the sniveling of a child, someone who, just as Jared used to say, didn’t know how things really worked.
“Don’t be so sad.” Gigi reached over to grasp my hand. “Us girls got to stick together, right?”
We sat there in silence for a few moments, still holding hands. The morning air felt refreshing and the smallest bit damp against my skin.
“Why do you think Jim did want me as his old lady?” I asked. The question had occurred to me before, and it had risen to the front of my mind again as I watched Gigi, whose prettiness and slim perfection were visible even in her haggard state.
“Come on, now,” Gigi said with a laugh. “You’re lovable enough, aren’t you?”
“Right, but like you say, he could be as picky as he wants, and...” In my mind, I pictured cootch dancers, pretty townies, friendly cashiers, and Gigi, especially, walking across a stage, all of them far more thin, perfect, and beautiful than I was. People surely wondered what Jim saw in me, in a way that never would have occurred to them had he been with any of these other women.
“Geez, Lola, don’t get down on yourself,” Gigi said, as if she could read my thoughts. “He’s lucky to have you too. Just so long as there’s no hard feelings between us.”
She went into her trailer and came back out with a large wadded-up ball of toilet paper and gave me some to wipe my face. “Have some Oreos too,” she said, pulling the package from under her arm. She rubbed her half of the paper across her eyes and down her neck. “You know, I was thinking while I was getting this stuff that I’m going to try not to sleep with Jim again if that makes you feel better.” Gigi flopped back in her chair and stuck her hand into the cookie package. “If it was me, though, I’d rather know where my old man was dipping his wick than send him out to find some floozy.”
Maybe Gigi was right. Maybe bodies didn’t matter. The clean simplicity of this philosophy made me wish I could hold similar beliefs. Then again, maybe Gigi drank too much too often to ever know what she was talking about.