“No. When Papa Tony gets to rehearsing, you’ll be sleeping here most of the time. What about the old room next to Angelo’s?”
“The nursery? Good God, Lu, the crib’s still set up in there—Liss will want that for the baby. And I’ve told you and told you, I will not be sleeping here!”
Lucia Gardner spread her hands with a humorous gesture. It occurred to Tommy that she must at one time have been a very beautiful woman. The materials of beauty were still there: the high intelligent forehead, the wide-spaced dark eyes under slanted, winged eyebrows very like Mario’s own, which gave a perpetual look of question, of daring, to the face. She was a small woman, full-breasted, but with a slender waist and lovely slender hands. She said, with a graceful shrug, “Well, it is far too late for me to tell you where to sleep,” and turned back to Tommy. She had been talking past him, very fast, to Mario. “Take off your sweater, Tommy. Here.” She took it from him—again he noted, and filed in his mind, the deftness and beauty of her gestures—and laid it on a table, as if it were some movement from a dance. “Come to the fire and meet the family. It won’t hurt Johnny one bit to give up the spotlight!”
Mario detained his mother with a touch. “Didn’t Liss get in?”
“No, she wired from San Francisco. Davey has a cough and a little temperature, so they’ll come down when he’s well again.”
Mario’s face fell a mile. “I wanted Tommy to meet Liss.”
“Well, you might say hello to your brother, too,” Lucia chided good-naturedly. Whirling about, she called, “Johnny.” Her voice was not loud, but had the whipcrack of authority. “Be quiet a while!”
She drew Tommy forward, into the center of the group, and flung out her arm, displaying him.
“Everyone, this is Tommy Zane. You remember, he made his first appearance with us last summer.”
Tommy stood mute under the impact of eyes and raised faces, all subtly alike. Blessedly, Mario came to his aid, moving through the chairs to his side. “Our new third flyer. Don’t all jump on him at once—he isn’t used to Santellis en masse.”
Johnny, having suddenly lost his audience, came over to them. He eyed Tommy, then said, “Hi, Matt. This the protégé Lu was telling us about?”
“This is Tommy, yes. Tom, my brother, Johnny Gardner.”
“Hi.” Johnny stuck out a hand. He had curly, unruly fair hair, and a small crescent—scar or birthmark—gave his face a raised-eyebrow, devil-may-care expression. He was as blond as Mario was dark, but had the same taut, rakish good looks. They faced each other, Mario smiling nervously, Johnny standing with his thumbs hooked in the pockets of his trousers, good-natured and belligerent.
“Steal my thunder, will you, Signor Mario? I come in all full of myself and bragging because I’ve outsmarted a manager, broken up an act, got myself a partner and a season’s booking, and Papa Tony quietly caps everything I say by telling me that oh, by the way, your big brother caught a triple last season. That must have been some performance,” he added. “Tommy makes his first appearance and you go around doing triples all over the place—must be something in the Texas air.” He put his hand on Mario’s shoulder and shook it lightly. “Nice going, big brother. Wish I’d been there to see it.”
“You will. What’s this about getting a partner, Johnny?”
Johnny whirled them around, one arm through Mario’s, crooking the other into Tommy’s elbow, and drew them toward the fire. “Come sit down and I’ll tell you all about it.”
Tommy sat down on a high-backed wooden bench at right angles to the fire. Johnny folded himself up gracefully on the floor and reached out toward a blonde girl who was sitting on one of the hassocks. She leaned forward, smiling, then slid onto the floor beside him.
“Fellows, this is Stella Kincaid, and for your information, we’re booked for the whole summer with Moorcock Shows!”
Stella Kincaid was small and slender, as small as a child, in a plaid skirt and fuzzy sweater. She had a small, pointed face, fair skin, and very short, very curly silver-blonde hair that bunched in wispy tendrils around her thin temples. Her hands were bony, with red chapped knuckles; her legs were thin and looked awkward in dirty saddle shoes.
Mario smiled at her politely. “Dancer? Tumbler? Ballet broad?”
“Flyer,” Johnny said defiantly, “but she was doing head balance and loop-the-loops, and we finished the season in a double-trap routine. They billed us as Frankie and Johnny—can you figure it?”
“Moorcock Shows? That’s a carny outfit, isn’t it?”
“Mixed show,” Stella said softly. “They set up their midway at county fairs and things, but they put on free acts to draw the crowds.”
“We came here to work out a good act for next year, and to ask Lucia about costumes and things,” Johnny explained. “Papa Tony was really grand about it. I was halfway expecting him to do the never-darken-my-door routine with us, but he just said sure, the place was open to any of us, which was pretty decent of him—considering . . . .”
“He’s a pretty decent old boy, and don’t you forget it, brother John.”
“Hey, listen,” Johnny said, “we inherited a stack of mixed riggings, and when we lit out, we just threw it all in the back of the car—I don’t know what half of the stuff is. Don’t we have Teresa’s old cloud-swing stuff somewhere around? Lu said you’d know about it. I was telling Stella—”
Tommy’s attention slid away. He was trying to get his bearings. Papa Tony had greeted him and then vanished somewhere; he felt as if he were surrounded by strange shadows that kept coming and going, not quite real. Even Mario seemed shadowy and unreal in this setting. Johnny’s rakish flamboyance, Lucia’s imperious manner, even the unreal fairylike prettiness of the girl Stella, kneeling beside Johnny on the carpet, made them all flicker in and out of focus like characters in a costume movie. He stared at the carpet. It was worn almost threadbare, and there was a burned patch next to his shoe. Somehow it gave him a toehold on reality. Enormous and strange as it seemed, it was just a house, not a sinister castle. Just a big old house, inhabited by a big and noisy family.
A short, heavy man with curly white hair got up and came over to Tommy. “When the boys start talking riggings, they’ll keep it up for hours,” he said. “Come on over and meet my kids. My daughter’s about your age.”
Tommy didn’t feel much like meeting any more strangers, but he acquiesced politely. “I’m Joe Santelli. This is my son, Clay, and my daughter, Barbara.”
Tommy dismissed Clay at once; he was chubby and dark and only about eight years old.
Barbara was slight and dark and delicate. She was stretched out on the rug, listening to Johnny and Mario, but when her father spoke to her she turned over and sat up. She too had the slanted, exotic Santelli eyebrows. Tommy decided she must be about twelve.
“Hello, Tommy. Do you feel like you’ve landed in the local booby hatch? Most of the time we’re fairly civilized, but New Year’s—well, I guess it’s just that we’re all getting together again. At that, it’s sort of quiet this year, with Liss still up in San Francisco and Uncle Angelo down somewhere in Mexico.”
Joe said, “Tommy, I used to know your mother and father. Do they still work together in the ring?”
“No, sir. Mother stopped working the cats when I was just a kid.”
“A pity,” Joe commented. “Good women trainers are rare. One year, I remember, Beth had a mixed act with cheetahs and a tiger.”
“I was too young to remember, but I’ve seen pictures of it,” Tommy nodded. It struck him as strange that it should be his mother’s work, rather than his father’s, that was remembered.
Barbara was looking at Tommy with intense curiosity. “How old are you?” she asked.
“Fifteen,” Tommy said, exaggerating by five months.
“I’ll be twelve this winter.”
“Are you a flyer, too?” Tommy asked politely. “I mean, being in the family and all.”
Barbara wrapped her thin arms around drawn-u
p knees. “Lucia lets me go up and swing sometimes when she feels like standing around and being bored to death watching me. I think I’m ready to go over to the catcher, but Lu can’t help me with that and Mario says not yet.” She smiled, showing generous dimples.
“Well,” said Tommy, “I was already thirteen when I started, and besides I’d been in a web act for a long time. I’m probably stronger than you are.”
“I’m strong,” Barbara protested. “I’ve been in ballet school for six years, and that makes you just as strong as tumbling. Mario says so.” Of all the Santellis, Tommy realized, Barbara was the only one who had yet called him Mario, except for Johnny, and Johnny had done it ironically, as an obvious joke.
“All the girls in the family have always studied ballet,” Joe Santelli said. “Lucia was very good, and Elissa could have been, and Teresa, of course, was once a professional dancer. I have no objection to Barbara learning to fly if she wishes, but it would be nice to have a ballerina in the family—”
A tiny wraithlike woman, deep in an upholstered armchair, suddenly stirred and said something in Italian. She was gray-haired and wrapped to the chin in a thick white hand-knitted shawl, but her face, heavily lined and as pale as a skull, had the delicate bones and slanted, well-defined eyebrows of all the Santellis. She said then, in a high, sweet, querulous voice, “Is it Rico? Why doesn’t he come to speak to me?”
“No, no, Nonnina,” Joe said gently. “This is Matt’s new partner, Tommy. Tommy, this is my grandmother.”
She looked old enough to be anybody’s grandmother, Tommy thought, even, at a pinch, Papa Tony’s. At Joe’s gesture he lifted the thin, brittle hand she extended to him, saying politely, “I’m glad to meet you, ma’am.”
The faded eyes looked very troubled. “We were expecting you days ago,” she said irritably, blinking.
Startled, Tommy protested, “Please, I don’t—”
“It’s all right,” Barbara whispered, “don’t argue with her. She doesn’t know—”
The old lady said, in a tone of surprising sharpness, “I know perfectly well what is going on, Lucia. Do you think I don’t know that today is the New Year? You young people are all the same, no respect for discipline.” She spoke very good, clear English, but something in the intonation betrayed that it was not her native language, and the accent grew more marked as she went on. “Rico, if you would listen to your father, not spend all of your time with worthless people and hooligans . . . .” She broke off, then muttered in a low, unsure voice, “Lucia—Lucia is looking for you, I think—”
Lucia Gardner had reappeared in the doorway, and Mario, his attention suddenly caught, said abruptly, “Save it, Johnny, we’ll talk later,” and swung himself up to his feet. He was at Tommy’s side in two steps. “Come on, you’d better get your room before someone else grabs it.” He bent over the faded little lady, brushing her withered cheek with his lips. “Buon’ giorno, Nonnina, come sta?”
She smiled at him, her lips trembling, and said something in Italian that Tommy couldn’t begin to follow. He whispered to Mario, “What’s wrong? Did I say something I shouldn’t have, something to upset her?”
Mario bit his lip. “No, but what she said was ‘Why doesn’t Rico come and kiss his mama?’” The old lady looked uncertain and miserable now, turning her head in confusion between Tommy and Mario, the faded eyes full of tears. On an impulse Tommy bent as Mario had done and kissed the lined old cheek. She smiled, put her free hand to Tommy’s face, and spoke to him in Italian before Mario quietly induced her to let him go.
Lucia was waiting in the doorway. Mario asked, “Did you find a place for everybody, Lu?”
“I think so. There are twin beds in Barbara’s room; the Stella girl will have to go in there, and Barbara will have to make up her mind to not having overnight guests this winter. When Angelo comes I will take Tessa to sleep in my room until she returns to the convent, and he can move in with Papa; then Liss and David can share Angelo’s room, next to the nursery. Tommy can go into your room, and Johnny can either sleep with Clay or put up a cot in the sewing room, whichever he wants to do. Shall I help you come and get settled?”
“No, we’ll manage, Lulu, but you’d better go and speak to Nonna. She thinks Tommy is Uncle Rico.”
“Madre Santissima! Did he—”
“It’s all right, Lulu, he handled it like a real member of the family. But if you could straighten her out—”
“Yes, I know. All right, Matt, you take him upstairs.” Lucia brushed past them and went toward the old woman.
The wide, curving stairs were covered with worn dark carpeting, but the landing was wide, balustraded in beautiful cherrywood. Along the broad corridor at the top of the stairs, doors half open gave glimpses of different rooms: a room with yellow wallpaper, rabbits on the linoleum, and a crib, a big light room with rose-colored dimity curtains, a dark untidy chamber with two opened suitcases spilling tangled clothes on the floor. Mario said, as they turned an angle in the hall, “I suppose you gathered, my great-grandmother isn’t in her right mind all of the time. She doesn’t always recognize us. If she calls you by some other name, just do what you did downstairs, just answer to it. She’s almost ninety-four years old. She almost always recognizes Papa Tony—he was her oldest son—and most of the time Lucia can get through to her, although about half the time Nonna calls her Clara—that was Papa Tony’s wife, my grandmother. But the rest of us—well, Liss and I got used to it when we were just babies.”
“Joe said she was his grandmother.” Tommy was still trying to get the relationships straight. “Is Joe one of Papa Tony’s brothers?” It didn’t seem logical even as he said it.
“Good Lord, no! What gave you that idea? No, he’s my mother’s brother, he— Oh, of course,” Mario said suddenly, “his hair. It’s been white for years—it turned white when he was only about forty. He’s older than Lucia, but not much. His wife, Stacy, died several years ago. She wasn’t a flyer.”
At the end of the hall Mario opened a door. “Here, this is my old room, where we’re going to put you. Clay’s next door, and Barbara’s across the hall; we passed Liss’s old room and the nursery. You’ll have to share the bathroom with the kids, I guess; there’s another one down there, under the stairs. Joe and Nonna and Papa Tony are all down in the other wing, and Angelo’s around there—” He pointed. “There are some more rooms up on the third floor, but we closed that whole floor off, years ago—costs enough to heat this old barn as it is. Then at the back of the house there’s the old ballroom. It runs all three stories high, and it’s not much bigger than the Hollywood Bowl.”
He stepped inside the room. “I see Lu brought up your suitcase.” He shook his head, exasperated. “I wish she’d ask one of the kids to do things like that; her back’s not all that strong.”
The bedroom was dark and narrow, with old-fashioned striped wallpaper, and all the furniture was dark, too, and oversized, making the room look crowded. There was a big bed, a bigger bureau, and one chair. “You’ll probably find some of my stuff in the closet and bureau drawers,” Mario said. “You might even have to put up with me moving in on you now and then, for a night or so, if rehearsals get hectic—since everybody’s doubling up this year.” He moved to the window, pulling back the cretonne curtains.
“I’m glad you’re here, Tommy. I guess I didn’t have much of a chance to say so, downstairs.”
“I’m glad to be here.”
“I was telling you about Uncle Joe, wasn’t I?” Mario came back and sat on the foot of the bed. “When I was a kid,” he began, “Joe and Lucia were the stars of the act—stars of the show. We were with Starr then, the Big Show—center ring. Then—oh, it was about nine years ago now—there was a bad accident.”
“My father said something about it. Only my mother wouldn’t talk about it in front of me,” Tommy said. “What happened, Mario?”
Mario spread his hands behind his head. “It was pretty awful,” he said quietly. “Mark—that’s
my other brother; you haven’t met him—Mark was the only one of us kids who did see it, and he used to wake up screaming bloody murder for months and months afterward. I’ve always thanked God I didn’t see it. Because Mark never could fly, never could go up on the rigging. Every time he tried—and he really did try, no matter what anybody may tell you—he’d just quietly turn green and drop off.”
“How did it happen?”
“God only knows. Liss and I had been on the rigging just before the same show. Liss was fifteen, and they were just letting her start to work now and then in the act, only she wasn’t working that day. Just luck she wasn’t, too. Joe was coaching Liss, up on the board, and then Lucia came out to work. She sent me and Liss to take a bath, but Mark stayed to watch the show, and saw the whole thing. A ring on the fly bar broke, and Lucia and Joe fell together. Joe tried to break my mother’s fall—he wrapped himself right around her and hit one of the spreader ropes with his head. It’s a miracle they weren’t both killed, right then and there, but you never know, with that kind of accident. Barney Parrish hit a spreader rope once and bounced out on the floor, and he wasn’t even hurt, he only sprained his thumb. Anyway, Lucia broke both shoulder blades and her collarbone, and they thought she’d broken her back, too. She was in and out of hospitals for a couple of years, had all kinds of operations. She made a marvelous recovery, even tried to go back to flying, but there was just a little too much damage to one shoulder.
“Joe, though—everybody thought he was perfectly all right, he wasn’t even knocked out. All the time a big fuss was being made about Lu, getting an ambulance, rushing her off to the hospital—they thought her back was smashed and that she might not even live through the night—everybody thought Joe was just fine. He went on in the night show, but while he was climbing the rope, he fell off—said he couldn’t see. He broke his arm, falling from the rope, but the real damage had occurred in the fall with my mother. He was blind for three weeks—there was a nerve gone wrong in his head somewhere. And when he got his sight back, he couldn’t handle heights anymore, couldn’t even climb the rope. It wasn’t that he’d lost his nerve, or anything; he just couldn’t balance. There was something wrong in his head—he kept having these awful dizzy spells, kept falling over, couldn’t walk or anything. His hair turned white inside a couple of months. It was”—Mario spread his hands in a gesture of futility—“it was awful. He traveled with the show for a while after he could walk all right again, but he never got completely over the dizzy spells. He still has them sometimes—not very often. Vertigo, they called it. Finally he quit and settled down here in town. He owns some amusement-park concessions out on the beach.”
The Catch Trap Page 9
