“I heard him, a few weeks ago,” Mario said.
“Yes, and what he says is worth listening to. I tried to make Stel see that, but she got so shook up I came down and tried to tell him, politely, that please, Grandfather, my partner hadn’t been brought up on Flying and Reform School methods and anyhow I was a big boy and I could train my act myself.”
“That,” Mario said, “was the mistake of the year, I bet.”
“It’s all right for you to talk,” Johnny said sullenly. “You weren’t there listening to Stel have hysterics.”
“I remember Angelo used to deal with that situation very efficiently,” Mario said, chuckling.
Johnny’s mouth tightened. “He’d better not try it on Stella. I take a very dim view of spanking nubile wenches.”
“For Christ’s sake, be your age, Johnny! If Angelo had thought of Liss as a nubile wench, he’d never have laid a finger on her, and you know it. He still acts like she’s twelve—or didn’t you hear her ask him for a cigarette the other day? He said, ‘Kitten, you know Papa doesn’t like you kids smoking.’”
“Well, anyway, as I was telling you, Papa Tony flew into a rage. I can ignore it myself, but he started in on Stel, and some of the things he said—well, he was pretty rough. He said a real performer could learn from anybody, even a heckler booing from the blues, and did she want to spend her life as a third-rate performer, just a pretty girl showing off her legs on a trapeze? He asked, ‘Do you think you are so beautiful that no one will notice whether you know one end of the bar from another?’ And Stella started to cry and said she’d been working in the ring since she was four years old, and he snarled at her that she ought to have learned something in all that time!”
“Yeah, I admit that was a little rough. But Papa Tony is like that, Jock. It’s just the way he functions. And Stella could do a lot more than she does. She’s had rotten training.”
“Yeah, in that filthy carnival. But she’s coming along. She does what I tell her, but I try to be tactful about it. Anyhow, when he said that, she just flew off upstairs. I yelled at Papa, ‘Now look what you did,’ and then I ran upstairs. I found her in Barbie’s room crying on her bed, and she said she’d do anything I told her to do, but unless I kept the old man off her neck, she was leaving. It took me the better part of an hour to calm her down. And just as I was starting to get somewhere, in walks Lucia! Hell, I was just talking to Stel, the door to the hall was wide open, and we were both dressed—well, I had my tights on and Stel was in her bathrobe. Anyhow, we were both on the bed, and Stel was bawling all over me and I had my arms around her, and it was just plain murder trying to explain to our Lulu that my intentions were perfectly honorable. And of course while I was doing that, Stel went into worse hysterics than ever—”
Mario groaned. But he was laughing, too. “Oh, hell, Jock, you know what Lucia’s like!”
“Yeah, yeah, sure. She was raised old-country style, and she tried her damnedest to bring us up the same way. I suppose it never occurred to her that I could be on the same bed with Stel without even thinking about you-know-what. But just the same, I got mad. Damn it, what kind of bastard does Lu think I am? I’ve got some respect for the family, too! Does she think I was going to bring a girl here under my mother’s roof and—and treat her like she was somebody I picked up off the streets?”
“I guess Lu figures that you picked her up in a carnival and that’s about the same thing,” Mario murmured.
“That’s not the point. The point is, if I was going to do something like that, and God knows, I’m not saying I’m any better than anybody else—I’m not a priest or a monk or anything—I sure wouldn’t do it in my mother’s house and right under Lu’s nose!”
Tommy, his eyes on the floor, knew that both of them had forgotten him.
Mario bent over Johnny and patted his shoulder. “Okay, kid, okay. So what finally happened?”
“Well, the more I tried to convince Lu that we hadn’t been doing anything, anything at all, the more upset Stel got, and the worse it all looked. So finally I just walked out, figuring the women would sort it out themselves. Lu never could be really mean to anybody. Sarcastic, maybe, but not really mean. So I went down and tried to tell Papa how much he’d upset Stel, and he just snorted that he had no patience with female hysterics and besides, he hadn’t said anything she didn’t deserve.”
“You know,” Mario said, “he’s not so far wrong. Stel isn’t bad looking, she has real talent, good timing—very good timing—a good physique—”
“Oh, I don’t know, I like a girl with more—” Johnny’s hands described curves in the air.
“I mean good for flying, stupid—small bones, no big rear end; she can turn as neat a somersault as Tommy here. But she isn’t a professional. Tommy knew better than to answer me back like that, the first day I let him up on the high rig.”
Johnny shrugged. “What’s talk? Gets it out of her system. Anyhow, she could be right. I’m not infallible, and she’s smart. We’re partners. I’m willing to listen to what she has to say.”
Mario shook his head. “I don’t agree. That’s just copping out, Johnny. The manager of an act has to take the responsibility for how it comes off, and that means being responsible for what the other people do, too. It isn’t bossing them around, it’s just that there has to be one major idea behind an act, and if she won’t accept your leadership, what’s she doing in your act, anyhow? How can a performer have any control if he can’t accept discipline? She ought to learn to take orders—and criticism, too.”
“That’s a fetish with you!”
“Well, it gets results. Last year it got me a triple. And Papa Tony could teach her a lot, if she’d listen to him instead of folding up and running away to cry.”
“Yeah, I know,” Johnny agreed dejectedly, “but if she’s doing something wrong, why can’t he just tell her, instead of yelling and carrying on? Sure, he’s the world’s best, I know that. I wish he could teach Stel. I’d love to work with him—”
“Jock, there’s no reason in the world why you can’t! Look, when that damn contract with Moorcock is out, come on back! Papa Tony can talk Angelo around—he always could. And he’s dying to have a really big act again, the kind where the air’s full of flying bodies—”
“I worked one of those in Minnesota one summer. Flying Morellis. Nine flyers and three catchers. We were rehearsing one day, and somebody asked the ring boss about us, and he said, ‘Oh, yeah, that’s the confetti act.’”
“Yes, well, Papa Tony’s dying to have a confetti act. But he hates working with outsiders.”
“Sure. Because he can’t own them body and soul.” Johnny gave the floor a furious wipe. “He made the gesture, you know. Said I’d settled down. Offered to welcome back the prodigal. But, Matt, I’m not like that. If he’d teach us, manage us on the rigging, and leave our private lives alone, that would be fine. But I can’t go on year after year as if the oldest man in the act was God Almighty, with a few prophets thrown in, and the youngest some kind of flunky. You’re already three times the performer Angelo ever was, even in his best days, which I suspect are behind him. But when Papa retires, and it can’t be long now, what do you bet Uncle Angelo’s all set to be a—a new edition off the old plates? And I’ve seen you training Tommy to step right into line, being kicked around by all of you, and in a few years, to start kicking Clay right into the same old pattern.” He shoved away the duster and got to his feet. “Haven’t you ever wanted to be somebody?”
“I am somebody,” Mario said. “I’m Mario of the Flying Santellis. I don’t have to prove it. I do it up there.” He pointed to the top of the rig.
Johnny said angrily, “Maybe Stel and I aren’t good enough for the Flying Almighty Santellis. Maybe we aren’t in your class at all—”
“I didn’t say that.”
“—but we work as a team, and we don’t get tangled up in traditions and rules and dead letters like Old Mario’s Sacred Goddamn Writings up there on the wal
l! I don’t mind this kind of nonsense”—he kicked the dust rag—“if it’s for fun; it makes me feel like one of the family. But the way you do it, it’s not just a good joke like Liss’s cartoon in there about the Flying and Reform School, it’s dead serious, and I couldn’t take it, and I don’t want to. And if I was a star, I’d want to be a star. Not junior flunky.”
Mario said gravely, “If my work is star work, I don’t care what I am the rest of the time. Until Tommy came along, I was the junior man. Now he’s it. In the air, I am the star flyer. But I’m still the youngest in the act, except Tommy. Why should I want to throw my weight around?”
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about!”
“I do, Jock. Papa Tony wasn’t stingy with the credit. I was the one that got my name on the posters and called out for the last trick.”
“And did all the housekeeping chores and took out everybody’s dirty laundry on the road.”
“Why not? Youngest man always does.”
“Oh, damn!” Johnny exploded. “You’re hopeless!”
“It’s the difference between modern dance and classical ballet. No, Jock, let me finish. Modern dance has vigor and power, but it’s undisciplined. Classical ballet never takes anything from today until it’s proved its worth. Classic trapeze work is a lot like that. All discipline, carries on a special tradition. And it can’t be faked. It just is.”
“That’s a load of horseshit. It’s less than a hundred years old. And it’s changing all the time. I’m not half the reader you are, but I do know that they used to think nobody would ever do a two-and-a-half, let alone a triple.”
“Have it your own way,” Mario said. His face looked closed and stubborn. “I only know Papa Tony is one of the great flyers of the past, and if I stick with the ways he believes in, I just might be one of the great ones of the future. And if he gets curled into a ball with rheumatism, and I’m fourteen times over the star Barney Parrish ever was, he’ll still make me jump when he nods. Just because of what he was, and is.”
“I hate to do this to you, big brother.” Johnny raised his head suddenly, with a wide grin. “But I feel it my solemn duty to inform you, conscientious follower of the family traditions that you are, that you are defiling our freshly polished floor with your big flat feet in your big flat shoes.”
Mario said helplessly, “Well, shut my big mouth.” Tommy bent over and tried not to snicker aloud as Mario meekly fetched a cloth, got down on his knees beside Tommy and Johnny, and started polishing up the huge expanse of floor.
~o0o~
Johnny and Stella were leaving in a week, and it was a Santelli tradition that before any members of the family went out for an engagement they gave a special performance, a sort of dress rehearsal, for the non-working members of the family. All day a special expectancy hovered over the house; Lucia was closeted with Stella upstairs in her sewing room, and the regular practice session was called off so that Angelo and Mario could help Johnny set and adjust the rigging for his and Stella’s act.
Just before dinner they all filed ceremoniously into the musician’s gallery that opened onto the practice room, Nonna leaning on Liss’s arm, Lucia tense and preoccupied. When the family were all seated, Mario, down below at the door of the change room, hesitated with a slightly self-conscious laugh; then the laughter slid off his face, and Tommy realized that for Johnny and Stella this would be the severest test of all. This was no ignorant audience they were facing, seeking only to be thrilled or entertained, but the serious, critical judgment of fellow performers. Even young Davey, in fresh rompers, seemed aware of the seriousness of the occasion and sat without wriggling in Barbara’s lap.
Mario held their attention for a moment; then, imitating but not mimicking a ringmaster’s manner, he said, “Lucia Santelli presents”—and gave a little upward flick of his eyes to his mother—“the aerial team of Gardner and Kincaid!”
He flung open the change-room door and revealed Johnny and Stella, standing with their arms about each other’s shoulders.
They really were exaggeratedly beautiful as they moved slowly into the ballroom, turning gracefully to let Lucia have her moment of admiration for their costumes. Johnny was a slender golden Apollo, Stella a silvery-blue Christmas-tree angel.
“Lucia,” Liss asked reproachfully, “did you bleach Johnny’s hair?”
Their peacock-blue capes were lined with silver satin, which flashed with a dull luster when they walked. When they laid the capes aside, they sparkled in electric-blue costumes, sequins catching the lights like flame, Stella had a soft ruff of blue plumes about her throat.
As Stella climbed the rigging, Liss whispered wistfully, “She’s so pretty.”
It was not a flying act, though they had ingeniously combined picturesque poses from the flying trapeze, especially those that best displayed Stella’s beauty and grace, with the basic double-trapeze act. At the close, Stella somersaulted down from the higher trapeze, her ankles caught by Johnny just as it seemed she must plunge headfirst to the floor; then they pulled up side by side and clung to the lower trapeze, one leg apiece twisted around the rope, flung out into carelessly perfect arabesques. The family applauded generously, Grandmother Santelli beating her dry palms together and even Papa Tony nodding grudging approval.
“You’ve got to admit he’s good,” Liss murmured as Johnny and Stella ran for the change room. “If only you weren’t so down on him, Angelo!”
“I’m not down on him, kitten. And I never said he wasn’t good. But he’s dishonest. Not with money, I don’t mean that—I don’t think he’d snitch a postage stamp. I mean where it really counts, with work. He makes everything look harder than it is, and showy. Like that trick where they fixed it to look like Stel was going to fall. That’s cheap, a cheap way to get people to applaud. It’s crummy. It’s a crowd-scarer. Playing up to the ghouls who come to see somebody get killed, not fine trapeze work.”
“You really don’t like him, do you, Angelo?”
“Hell, Liss, it’s not that. As my nephew, I’m as fond of him as I am of you or Davey or Clay. I love him. He’s family. But as a Santelli, I don’t respect him, and that’s got nothing to do with liking him or not liking him.”
Liss frowned. “But that’s show business,” she argued.
Mario, who had joined the others in the gallery after completing his ringmaster duties, was frowning. Watching Angelo as he picked up Davey and went down to the practice room, he said under his breath, “That’s what it was. I knew there was something about that stunt I didn’t like. Only I couldn’t say it the way Angelo did.” He turned, suddenly, and grinned at Tommy.
“But they’re good, for what they are,” he said. “They aren’t a flying act, they never claimed to be. Hell, Moorcock couldn’t afford to carry a good flying act, and the rubes on their lots wouldn’t appreciate a good one if they saw it. It’s just what that carny crowd wants—they’ll probably eat it up. Let’s go on down and tell them how good they look.”
For once the rules about the floor were disregarded as they crowded around to hug and congratulate Johnny and Stella, now wearing street clothes again. Stella, in her new pink-striped cotton frock, one Lucia had made for her, with puffed sleeves and a full skirt, looked radiant and flushed. Liss took the girl in her arms and kissed her soundly, then everyone else followed suit. Papa Tony planted a ceremonious kiss on her forehead, and Angelo gave her a robust smack on the cheek. Even Tommy, when his turn came, gave her a shy peck. Mario took Stella rightly by the shoulders and looked down at her, smiling.
“I wish you were flying, instead of fooling around with those trap routines.”
She flushed, looking down. “So do I.”
“Stella, listen—” Mario began, but at that moment Barbara came up and flung her arms around Stella.
“I’m so jealous of you I could scream!” she squealed. Mario, with a deprecating shrug, turned away.
Papa Tony said to Johnny, “That was very nice, my boy, very competent.�
�
Johnny flung his arms impetuously around Stella. “And all the credit goes to my cute, pretty, talented little partner here! Lulu, give our new star a big hug!”
Lucia put her arm around Stella’s thin shoulders and kissed her lightly on the forehead.
“My dear, I hope this is only the beginning. You have the talent for a much more sophisticated act, someday. You and Johnny work beautifully together.”
Stella was looking up at Lucia, her eyes brimming with tears.
“You’ve all been so good to me. As if I were really one of the family.”
Lucia smiled her gypsy smile. “Come upstairs, children. You’ve certainly earned your supper.”
Johnny and Stella were given the place of honor, side by side at the head of the table. Papa Tony, after pouring a ceremonial glass of wine all around (even Clay and Barbara were allowed a few drops in honor of the occasion), stood at the foot of the table, beaming and raising his glass.
“To Johnny and Stella, the newest and shiniest branch on the old tree. Come, come, Stella, no tears in those pretty eyes!”
Tommy was always to remember her best like this: a flushed, joyful child, crying with happiness, unable to speak until Johnny took her hand.
They all felt let down afterward, quenched, suffering reaction. Liss, trying to play checkers with Barbara, finally pushed the board away. “I’m not in the mood for this. Lucia, can we get out the book? Tommy and Stel have never seen it.”
Lucia hesitated, then shrugged. “Suit yourself. But don’t let Davey get his sticky fingers on it.”
Joe looked up. “Did you get a picture of Johnny and Stella in costume, Lu?”
“I took some pictures yesterday when they tried their costumes on the rigging, but I’ve sent them off to be developed.”
“Why, you sneaky thing, I wondered what you were doing down there,” Johnny said affectionately, touching his mother’s sleek head. She shrugged and smiled, but seemed pleased. Liss came back with a heavy scrapbook, which she placed on the card table. Johnny beckoned to Stella. “Come see this, honey.”
The Catch Trap Page 17
