by Lisa Fiedler
“Hell yeah it is,” said Jenna. “People would be a lot less eager to run your collective human and nonhuman asses out of town if they understood what you were trying to accomplish here behind those fancy gates. After all, it’s a truth universally acknowledged that people fear what they don’t understand. You’ve gotta believe me on this. We Lake St. Julianites—or is it St. Julianians?—whatever . . . we don’t want to hate you. That pretty much goes against everything we stand for.”
Taking the empty pizza box to the kitchenette, Callie rolled her eyes.
“I know to the uninitiated, Lake St. Julian looks like some tropical mash-up of Stars Hollow and Twin Peaks,” Jenna went on, “but don’t let our quirkiness fool you. It’s really just a sweet little town where people look out for one another. We may not have apple pies cooling on the windowsills, but you can knock on any door in town, ask for a bowl of gator gumbo, and you’re guaranteed to get it.”
“Who would want it?” Callie wondered aloud.
“Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, Calliope,” Jenna advised, then turned to Quinn and Marston and gave them a glowing smile. “So what do you call that lion of yours?”
“We named him DiCaprio,” said Brad. “Because—”
“Leo was just too obvious?” Jenna finished, grinning. “Excellent. Can we go say hello?”
* * *
• • •
Brad and Quinn walked Jenna up to the mansion in the hopes that some of the big cats would be making an evening appearance.
Callie opted out, which annoyed her mother. Good. She wasn’t exactly crazy about the way Quinn and Jenna were acting as if they were long-lost soul sisters just because the girl liked animals.
The minute they were gone, she put on her tightrope shoes. Seconds later she was in the backyard, mounting the wire.
It almost hurt to feel the tightrope under her weight. The rightness was both soothing and agonizing as a rush of memory swelled—Gram’s voice, her wisdom, the pressure of her hands as they’d adjust the position of a younger Callie’s tiny feet. But the memories didn’t just exist in her mind or her heart—her toes remembered, her arches, her heels, the bend in her knees, the thrust of her shoulders: that’s where the recollections lived most vividly. For Callie, being a tightrope walker was both physical and spiritual, and she sensed her grandmother’s spirit in every step she took, every careful breath that passed in and out of her body.
Alone in the yard with only the wire, she walked, she knelt, she spun. She scooted backward, then forward in the fading Florida sunshine that would never be a spotlight, with no one watching but a lizard clinging to the trunk of a royal palm. She was not ashamed to admit she’d always loved the applause. But there was no applause for her here, there was only—
“Holy shit!”
Startled, Callie lost her balance, causing the wire to rotate. Instinctively, she bent deeper into her plié and extended her arms. Her body commanded, the wire obeyed, and like the talented professional she was, she remained on her feet.
“Oops,” said Jenna, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “I guess shouting out profanities when somebody’s standing on a piece of string is a bad idea.”
“Isn’t shouting out profanities pretty much always a bad idea?” Callie retorted, lowering herself into a slow lunge that lengthened into a full split, then twisting to a side sit and rising up again with ease.
“Sorry. Couldn’t help it. You’re good. Like . . . really good. Like an Olympic gymnast or something.”
Keeping her eyes focused straight ahead, Callie broke into a series of high kicks, jumped into a turn, then walked several quick steps to the end of the wire.
“Whoa.” Jenna’s eyes were wide. “That was amazing.”
“That was nothing,” said Callie. “In the eighties, my grandmother walked the wire in stiletto heels.”
“Stilettos, huh? Sounds like your grandmother would have gotten along well with my great-aunt.”
“Depends. Did she talk as much as you do?”
“Don’t know. Never met her. So I guess you perform with a whole team of tightrope walkers? Like those Flying Influenzas?”
“Wallendas,” Callie corrected with a roll of her eyes. “And no, I do a solo act.”
“Solo . . . as in so-lonely?”
“It’s not lonely. It’s empowering.”
“I guess it would be—for you. You don’t seem like much of a team player.”
Callie stopped walking to shoot Jenna an angry look. “Just because I happen to prefer working alone doesn’t mean I can’t perform with a partner. My grandmother taught me everything I know, and when I was really small she and I were billed as a team.” But it was never just the two of us; never just Gram and me. It was Gram and me and the VanDrexel family name. Whatever you do, Callie, don’t let that name hit the ground. “I even did a trapeze act with my father in Italy once.”
“Sounds like a real swingin’ time.”
“You’re hilarious.”
“Yeah. I get that a lot.”
“But on the wire, I’d just rather be alone. That way I’m only responsible for myself, for my own steps.”
“Ah. So you’re a control freak.”
“Ugh, I’m not a control freak! Working alone is just less stressful. It’s all about me.”
“Ah. So you’re an egomaniac.”
Callie narrowed her eyes. “I didn’t mean it like that. I mean, if I had partners, I’d have to constantly be worrying about them screwing up.”
“True. But to be fair”—Jenna folded her arms—“wouldn’t they have to worry about you screwing up too?”
Callie glared at her, rose up on her toes, and executed a perfect aerial backflip, landing on the bouncing rope without even the slightest wobble.
Jenna grinned. “Okay, so maybe they wouldn’t.”
* * *
• • •
Callie stayed on the wire until the moon showed itself in the cobalt sky. Pretty, but still not a spotlight. Jenna had parked herself on the ground, watching Callie go through her routine.
“I’m tired, I’m going in,” Callie announced, jumping down from the rope and peeling off her shoes. “That was a hint, by the way.”
“Yeah, I got that. But I’d like to say goodbye to your mom, if that’s okay with you.”
Since Jenna had already followed her into the garage, Callie figured it would have to be.
“It was cool of her and billionaire boy to show me around. Great head of hair on that guy by the way, huh? And Quinn really knows her shit when it comes to tigers. We spotted three from the terrace and even at like five hundred yards she knew which two used to belong to VanDrexel’s.”
“Antony and Cleopatra,” said Callie, recalling them as newborns and feeling an unexpected tug at her heart. She’d found the cubs ridiculously cute for like five minutes. Then Quinn decided to make them the center of her existence and Callie lost interest soon after. “One of the elephants is ours too. Gulliver.”
“Yeah, according to your mom he’s ticklish.”
“I wouldn’t know. I try to avoid tickling elephants whenever possible since it seems like a good way to get crushed to death.”
Upstairs, Callie went straight to her bedroom and tossed her tightrope shoes into the closet. She could hear Jenna chatting up Quinn, and decided she’d just hole up in her bedroom until Jenna left.
Turning toward the bed, Callie froze. On the floor beside it was the tattered cardboard carton with Victoria’s name on it. Sitting on the quilt was the blue vinyl jewelry box.
“Mom? Mom!”
Quinn came rushing into the room with Jenna close behind.
“What’s the matter?”
“How did this get here?” She pointed to the jewelry box as though it were a live grenade.
“I found it in the garage. I th
ought you might like to keep it on your nightstand, since it was Gram’s.”
“It’s definitely more upbeat than your other knickknack,” Jenna observed, eyeing the pewter urn.
Quinn ran her finger across the lid of the jewelry box. “I know the style’s a little dated, but it’s such an interesting blue, isn’t it? I was thinking we could use it as our inspiration for the new paint.”
Callie just stared at the jewelry box. The color isn’t even remotely the most interesting thing about that box, she thought, remembering the notes inside.
“If you don’t want it, I can bring it back down—”
“No! I want to keep it here.”
Quinn eyed Callie curiously, nodded, and left the room.
Jenna, of course, stayed put. “I’m gonna go out on a limb here and speculate that your grandmother has shuffled off her mortal coil.”
“If that means she’s dead, then yes. As of three weeks ago.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Jenna’s eyes dropped to her beat-up Jack Purcells, and for a moment—just a moment—she was quiet. Then: “So what’s in the box?”
“None of your business,” Callie snapped. But as if to confirm that she hadn’t imagined them, she said, “Notes. Handwritten ones.”
“Cool. Let’s see.”
Before Callie could refuse, Jenna had crossed the room, opened the box, and was staring at the black-and-white snapshot Callie had found earlier. “Wow. Is this your grandmother? Check out that bouffant flip.”
“Other one,” said Callie, her voice dull. “With the long hair.”
“Oh. Yeah, I see the resemblance now. Where was this taken?”
“I have no idea. I’ve never seen it before.”
“Really.” Jenna settled onto the bed. “I thought you two were close.”
“We were.”
It suddenly occurred to Callie, like a punch to the gut, that this was the reason the box and its contents had bothered her so much. Clearly it had been important, meaningful enough for Victoria to have saved it all these years. But she’d never bothered to share it with her granddaughter.
There was a narrow drawer at the bottom of the box, which Callie hadn’t noticed before. Jenna gave the glass knob a tug. “Locked,” she pronounced. “The plot thickens.”
“There’s no plot,” Callie snapped. “It’s just a jewelry box filled with little notes.”
“Love notes?” Jenna waggled her brows and lifted the velvet shelf. “Maybe the glamorous tightrope walker was having a steamy love affair with the sword swallower.”
“They’re not love notes. They’re more like inspirational quotes. Sayings, observations. Lessons, I guess.”
“So . . . what?” Jenna pulled out what appeared to be an old Camel cigarette wrapper and examined it. “She never heard of a diary?”
When Callie slammed the lid closed, Jenna turned her attention to the cardboard box, withdrawing an old VanDrexel’s program from 1971. It looked like the ones Callie herself had been featured in since the age of seven, except the graphics were less flashy and the color photos were faded.
Watching Jenna flip through, she spotted a full-page shot of Victoria on the wire executing a graceful arabesque. The caption read Dainty and Death-Defying. Beautiful but Brave. Sassy yet Sweet.
“Not exactly a feminist manifesto, is it?” Jenna joked. Putting the program aside, she examined another snapshot of the same black-and-white glossy variety as the one taken in the pickup truck. It was a picture of Victoria, at about Callie’s age, standing in front of the lion’s cage, holding hands with a handsome boy. The photographer had obviously caught the young couple unawares, and in so doing had captured a truly magical moment.
“Who’s the hot guy?”
“That’d be my grandfather,” Callie rasped, taking the photo and studying it. “James VanDrexel. He was the lion tamer.”
“Of course he was,” said Jenna, chuckling. “Which would make him, like, the coolest grandpa ever.”
“I wouldn’t know. I never met him.” Callie traced the edge of the snapshot with her fingertip. “Neither did my mom. And actually other than a bunch of publicity photos of him and my great-uncle Gideon posing with their cats, this is the first picture I’ve ever seen of him.”
Jenna reached into the box again, removing the threadbare T-shirt and a pair of denim cutoff shorts. “These are totally in again. You should wear ’em.” Setting the clothes aside, she thumbed through sheet music for a song called “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” accidentally loosing a flurry of dried rose petals. She quickly collected them and scattered them back between the pages.
“You realize this stuff might be considered personal, right?”
Jenna ignored her and pulled out a brittle page from the Boston Globe. “Woah, TBT,” she remarked, scanning the yellowed newsprint. “This is from April 1965. Look, there’s a sale on girdles at Filene’s Basement, and—ooh, bummer—an article about a local girl who went missing, and the details of a bombing on the Viet Cong.” She folded the newspaper and placed it on the bed. Callie didn’t spare it a glance; she was still staring at the picture of James and Victoria. She knew she was being silly and overly romantic, but from the way they were looking at each other in the photo, she couldn’t shake the feeling that this may very well have been the exact moment her grandparents fell in love.
Jenna moved on to a photo album that was so old the pictures were held in by little paper triangles stuck at each corner. The first several pages were all photos of Victoria in her teens. Halfway through, Quinn appeared, a chubby dark-haired baby with two deep dimples.
“Weird,” said Jenna.
Callie stiffened. “Weird that she’s a teenage mother?”
“No.” Jenna rolled her eyes. “Weird that there isn’t a single photo of your grandmother as a little girl. No baby pictures, no first-day-of-school photos. It’s like she was born at sixteen. Why is that?”
Callie had no idea. It was weird, but she had no desire to encourage further discussion. She just shrugged and continued to stare at the photograph of Victoria, James, and the lion.
“Ms. VanDrexel?” Jenna called. “Can you come in here?”
Callie snapped her eyes up from the photo. “What are you doing?”
“Can’t help it if I’m naturally curious.” Jenna smirked and flipped to the next page. “Look, here’s a shot of your mother—I’m guessing it’s her eighth or ninth birthday—surrounded by clowns and . . . Wait, is that a llama? Shit! It is a llama. This is awesome. She’s at the circus and she’s actually having a circus-themed birthday party.”
“Well, technically she was having a circus-themed life.”
“Exactly. Totally meta, right? Like, the essence of meta, even before meta was a thing. So cool.”
Quinn returned to the doorway. “What’s up?”
“I was just flipping through your photos and I thought perhaps a bit of color commentary was in order.”
Callie glanced up in time to see her mother’s face brighten, the crinkles around her eyes deepening as she smiled. “Really?”
“Yeah. Like, for example, this little kid with the baldy-sour haircut and the buckteeth. Who’s he?”
“Oh! That’s Toddy Harris.” Quinn sighed, dropping onto the bed. “My first love. His parents were Francie and Dennis. Francie was the elephant trainer, and Dennis ran the lighting crew. Lovely people.”
“Lovely people who let their nine-year-old son get a neck tattoo?” Jenna queried, indicating the reddish-brown markings encircling little Toddy’s throat.
“It’s just henna. Genevieve used to draw those on us kids all the time. Completely temporary, but they wreaked havoc on the laundry.” Quinn laughed; it was a faraway sound, filled with memory. “I got one once, without asking Gram. I thought she was going to flip her lid, but it turned out she was delighted. Kept congratulating me on my sen
se of adventure! Even after the henna paste stained my new white piqué culottes and all of our sheets.”
Meta? Henna? Piqué culottes? Callie scowled. When did these two start speaking a foreign language?
“Who’s this?” Jenna prodded, pointing to a lanky man in a starched cotton shirt and the 1960s version of cargo pants.
“That’s my uncle Gideon.”
Callie leaned over to peer at the pale colors of the snapshot. She had only the faintest recollection of her great-uncle, since he retired when she was three, but she knew that as a child her mother had been very close to him. In fact, he was the reason Quinn had decided to work with the animals.
So I guess I can blame him for all this, Callie thought.
Jenna waggled her eyebrows. “Uncle Gideon was quite the—what would be the historically appropriate term?—dreamboat.”
“Well, he was no Toddy Harris, but yes, he was handsome.” Quinn laughed. “So, Jenna, I bet there are some handsome boys here in Lake St. Julian.”
Callie snorted. Subtle, Mom, real subtle.
“A few,” said Jenna.
“And what sort of things do kids your age do for fun around here?”
“Well, along with your basic all-American teen rituals—house parties, football games, hooking up in parked cars on dark side streets—a lot of kids around here are into surfing. Crescent Beach is basically Mecca for my demographic.” Jenna aimed her knowing grin at Callie. “There’s also a fairly competitive teen croquet league, which is not, as one might expect, a dorks-only enterprise.” When Quinn looked skeptical, Jenna laughed. “I’m not making this up. We’ve even got team jerseys and a league slogan, compliments of yours truly: ‘Croquet is wicket cool.’”
Quinn was charmed. “So you play?”
“I used to.” Jenna shrugged. Or was it more of a squirm? “Haven’t lately. But I could sign Callie up if she’s interested.”
“Not a chance,” said Callie, at the same time that Quinn said, “Great idea.”
