Mercy eases, with a hiss, into the small copper tub. She’s sore and the water is scalding; it takes a moment of adding cold water from the basin beside her until the temperature is tolerable. Not much cooler, though: she likes the water as hot as she can make it. The barely endurable heat makes her feel clean, or as clean as she ever feels any more, although the water quickly becomes tepid and the illusion is fleeting. She’s a small woman but still the tub is barely big enough for her to sit in; her shoulders chill regardless of how often she ladles warm water over them. In this weather, the tub isn’t relaxing, not even particularly pleasant. It’s almost more effort than it’s worth, really, but she will not give it up. A whore’s bath – face, crotch, and underarms, a splash from a basin – is not enough for her to feel clean.
Whore. It’s such an ugly word although, truly, it merely describes her profession, not her person. No, it isn’t even ugly, per se, not really: it’s just a word, no different than blacksmith or clerk. But, still, it’s not a word that, in her prior life, she’d thought could have ever become attached to her. She’s a singer, an artist. That’s how she thinks of herself. That is what she is. Not this, never this; never that word. Mais oui, il est là.
Really, when she’s honest with herself, she’s almost stopped caring about it all. It’s just a thing, only one thing among the many things that make Mercy Yvette Levesque Rhoades. It isn’t her, not at the heart of it. The shame that was once there has gone; to where, she’s not sure. She isn’t proud any more, and caring has simply become too challenging, most days. One must pick one’s battles in this life, after all.
She only hopes that Papa does not truly know the depths to which she’s sunk, has been sunk, that he’s unaware of the things her husband makes her do, night after night. It’s a fiction, perhaps, Papa’s innocence, but she clings to the idea that he thinks her only a failed singer in a shabby traveling company, doing her best to make something beautiful, to make art, with nothing but her voice and a winded, reed-sprung accordion. Nothing more than that; certainly not that other word, that word that describes what it is she does, once the music has stopped for the night. It’s only when thinking of her father that the shame comes back.
Il est là.
Of course, she’s lying to herself, about Papa. Mercy understands that, really, regardless of the stories she tries to make herself believe. Pascal is no fool and he knows Lyman as well as anyone, better than most. Would he really be all that surprised, seeing her now, seeing the marks on her skin, the bruises and scrapes and scratches? Knowing, just by looking at her, what she is? It’s no mystery what kind of a man her husband is. That’s why her father is here, after all, why he’d come after her, after she’d left Paris with Lyman. When she’d called for him, the panicked telegram sent from Boston. Je veux que vous, Papa. I need you. He thinks he’s protecting her, that he’s come to save her. But her father doesn’t understand that she was only a tool to bind him here, to Lyman, and whatever it is Lyman has set him to doing. He doesn’t know that the telegram had come from Lyman himself, in her name. She never would have brought her father to this place, knowing what she knew by then.
Mercy reaches up, touches her necklace. Lyman has ordered her never to take it off, even in the bath. Her father’s fingerbone, the small one from his right hand, dipped in some kind of clear sealant to preserve it; a twist of copper, which blackens the skin at her throat’s hollow, attaches the bone to the leather cord around her neck. A reliquary, of sorts. A reminder from her husband.
She’d watched, that day, as her father had come limping into camp, wincing at every step. One hand in the other, held huddled into his belly. Mercy, he’d said, when he’d stopped, Lyman would like me to give you this. Reaching out, a bloody handkerchief in his good hand.
Friends, her father said then, woodenly, looking at Dr Potter, Oliver, and Mercy, who Lyman had ordered to the clearing by the black tent. We all have our parts to play in this endeavor. We all have our own work. I have failed you all, and I have failed our employer, as I have failed myself. It sounded as if he was reading from a script, a prepared statement, which likely he was. Lyman was fastidious about detail. With a stiff bow, Pascal had turned and, without another word, limped back to the waiting wagon, which drove off with a creaking of springs on the rutted road.
By the next afternoon, Mercy had a new necklace.
Now, poor Alexander has a reminder of his own although, so far, his only lives in a pocket. Perhaps Lyman is still searching for the proper setting for it. A watch fob, perhaps. Such elegance that would be. Another gift from her father, by way of Lyman. Another point made, a lesson. We travel together was all Pascal had said to them, this time, stepping forward to hand the handkerchief to Dr Potter, looking sharply at him, nodding. We travel together. He repeated it once more, folding Alexander’s hands around the bloody cloth. We travel together. Saying what he couldn’t say, the implication of what he’d tried to do.
Mercy hadn’t believed it then. She doesn’t believe it now. Her father would never leave her to Lyman. He will never abandon her and, so, neither will ever get away.
After a time, she realizes that the bathwater has gone icy cold.
After the bath, she walks the outskirts of the show, a shawl wrapped over her head and around her shoulders. It feels good to walk, to stretch her muscles, breathe the night air and get away from the smells of camp: sawdust, wet canvas, damp cigarette butts, the musty fug of the black tent. She’d taken care of Holly and Rula and Bascom earlier, fed them all again and cleaned up the girls as best she could. Ridley would do for Bascom. Now, she has some precious time to herself, which is in short supply, always. The rain has even died off, mostly, and she relishes just being away, from everything. There’s the persistent fantasy, from step to step, that she can just walk off into the woods and keep walking, forever, get as far away as any person can ever be from another.
But that’s all it is, of course, a fantasy. Soon enough, she turns around and walks back to the edge of camp. She has one last stop to make before returning to the tent she shares with Lyman. Mercy makes her way to the dry clearing she’d seen earlier, under the overhanging branches of a large fir. It’s almost like a room, really, once you duck under the drooping limbs. She sits on the soft, spongy ground, leans back against the trunk. Breathes in the sharp green smell of the tree, of life.
She shouldn’t be here. It’s dangerous, most likely; she doesn’t think for a moment that she’s fooled her husband. He’ll know where she is, who she’s with, like he seems to know everything. But she’s been at this, most nights, for weeks now and, so far, Lyman has done nothing. Perhaps it’s just one small something he allows her, for herself. A minuscule little bit of reward to offset the rest of it. It could be that he just doesn’t care but, more likely, he gives her this time of night so that, one day, he can take it from her. Best not to think about that, best to just enjoy it while it lasts. What will happen, will happen.
There’s a rustle of fir branches and Ridley pushes his way into the little space. Even though it’s dark, she can tell that he’s smiling. She pats the ground next to her, lifts an arm.
The first time they’d met, away from the others, it had happened by accident. Or so she’d thought, and then soon enough realized that Ridley had sought her out deliberately. She’d sighed, knowing what was coming. He was only a boy, after all; he was alone and at that age and well, this was something she could give to him. It meant little enough to her and, if it would bring him pleasure, some happiness, then let this be a gift. But she’d been wrong. At first, still, she thought he was only shy, as any boy of that age would have been in the situation. He was not yet a man: spotty, gangly, elbows and knees, but not entirely a boy still, either. Liminal. She herself was a woman; if she was anything, she was that. A mystery, to a boy of that age, an exciting, terrifying possibility. There was a charm to it, she thought, smiling to herself and, so, she’d reached out to him, tried to pull him into a gentle embrace, bring his face to her own, but he’d pushed away. No, he’d said, no, not that. Can’t we just talk for a while? Maybe just talk?
So they had; they’d spent an hour talking, hesitantly at first and then with greater ease. The next night it was the same, only talking, of small things at first. The state of the weather, the routine of their working day. Interesting faces in the crowds, the shape of the passing country. Sitting close enough for their shoulders to touch, sometimes, but chaste, like an older sister with a callow younger brother. Motherly, really, not far from it, Mercy realized. It was a strange feeling, but natural in its way. She still expected the inevitable to happen, eventually, once Ridley had become more comfortable with her, with himself. The awkward, shaky embrace. A kiss that was ill-aimed and clumsy. But no, night after night there was only this, this warm, mothering companionship. She’d reach out without thought and brush down the cowlicks in his thick, dirty hair; often, she’d realize they were holding hands while they talked. Mercy had never had siblings; her own mother had passed when she was very young. But, again, it felt natural. Maybe it was only some maternal atavism that all women possessed. Even a woman such as she.
Over time, she – and only she, among Dr Potter’s company – began to learn something of Ridley’s own past. Why he’d run off to escape it, what had brought him here and, knowing what she did, perhaps it was only natural, then, that this was the thing he craved, this quiet talk and gentle touch. Someone to listen to him, understand him. Not that other thing. A boy could find a whore anywhere, after all.
“How has your evening passed?” she says now, leaning over to fuss with his collar. She sniffs. “You’ve been smoking, haven’t you?”
“Aw, just a butt, Mercy.”
“It’s a filthy habit, smoking.”
“But everyone smokes.”
In some ways, their relationship has something of sweet-natured caricature to it, like two children playing house. Mercy, unfamiliar with the role, perhaps overacts her part, exaggerating the years between them although, in truth, they’ve no more than fifteen or so years separating them.
She huffs, although really she couldn’t care less whether he smokes or not. “It is a filthy habit,” she repeats. “Une sale habitude.”
They talk of nothing much for a while; by now they’re comfortable enough with each other that silence can be pleasant, warm. Sitting, their shoulders touching, Mercy fiddling idly with the cuff of Ridley’s sleeve, just smelling the fir and listening to the quiet sounds of the night. The drip of water, the click of bats, the faint grassy mumble of the grazing stock.
“What’s going on here, Mercy? I mean, you know. With the show. What’s going on?”
Mercy feels a cold jab in her belly; she’s been waiting for Ridley to ask this sort of question for weeks now. They all have, she and Oliver and Alexander, anyway. Ridley is young, but he isn’t stupid. It has to be obvious that there is something wrong about Dr Potter’s Medicine Show, after extended association with it. That there’s something else to it, that they do more than sell bunk medicine, while staggering and wheezing through their acts. Ridley’s been with them for a few months now, after all. It isn’t surprising that he’s asking, it’s only surprising that it’s taken this long. He’s already been caught, once, trying to look into something he shouldn’t. It was only a matter of time.
Mercy knows that Alexander wants the boy gone. She does too but, at the same time, she’s selfish enough to want these warm, mothering nights to continue. Just a bit longer, just a bit. She has little else, after all, only Alexander and Oliver. Let her have this. Her feelings for Alexander and Oliver are complicated by circumstance, but what she feels for Ridley is simple, good. Pure and clean, unlike so much else in her life. “What do you mean, what’s going on?” she says. “This is the life, cherie. The life of the road. La vie artistique.”
“No, it’s not that. Something is wrong. Don’t tell me it isn’t.”
“And what would you know of wrong?” She squeezes his arm, pinches him playfully. “You are an expert now?”
“Come on, Mercy, don’t be like that. Something isn’t right. Just tell me. I deserve to know, don’t I? I work here too.”
Mercy is glad that it’s dark, so Ridley can’t see the bleak look on her face. Not right? Oh, my sweet, if only you knew. Yes, yes, cherie, there is something wrong here. Something very wrong.
“I must go, mon petit,” she says, instead, forcing brightness into her voice, though it tastes flat and metallic in her mouth. Mercy rises, brushing fir needles off the back of her skirt. She leans down and grabs Ridley by the hair at his temples, giving him a quick kiss on each cheek. “My husband will be looking for me.”
Something is wrong, yes. If only you knew, Ridley. But you must never.