Touch of the Clown

by Glen Huser

  Which isn’t such a great idea because Livvy can never catch the ball and ends up spending all of her time chasing it along the sidewalk and sometimes even into the street as I scream at her to look out for cars in my fiercest imitation of Grandma Kobleimer.

  Livvy is having a great afternoon. Somehow the ball with its sad little glittery stars has made her feel like a winner. She hops and skips as she goes along, and claps her hands, and sings a song that she learned at school about a dog named Bingo.

  “I’m gonna call this ball Bingo,” she informs me. “Bingo is my ball-o.”

  There are two girls in high heels at the next corner, so I hiss at her, “Cross here, Livvy.”

  And then it happens. She throws the ball ahead of her so that it goes bouncing into the street, and before I can yell at her, she is chasing it down the middle of the road. A car swerves, startling her so that she darts into the oncoming lane and a man on a bicycle runs right into her.

  Have you ever noticed how, when something truly terrible happens, the world stops for a few seconds? Nothing seems to move. I can hear, faintly, the sound of a ghetto blaster from an open upstairs window across the street. Somewhere a dog barks. The car that swerved to avoid Livvy moves on. I am like a statue, pure stone.

  Just a couple of seconds and then Livvy’s cry shatters the air and sets everything in motion. Another oncoming car screeches as it stops and then swings around the tangled pile of Livvy and the man on the bicycle. My feet move at a run.

  CHAPTER THREE

  By the time I get there, Livvy has pulled herself away from the man and the bicycle. She is sitting on the pavement holding her knee, screaming nonstop. There is blood all down one leg, and blood on her hands, and more blood starting to ooze from a gash in her forehead.

  The man untangles himself from the bicycle. He is bleeding, too, but just above one hand, and he quickly unties his neckerchief and wraps it around his forearm.

  I am there now, with my arm around Livvy’s shoulders, my hands brushing at her cheeks, trying to smooth away the tears, wipe off the blood. “It’s okay, honey-pie,” I croon. “Its okay.” And I rock her a bit.

  The man is on his feet now and he picks up his bicycle and lays it on the grass between the sidewalk and the curb.

  “Let’s get her off the street,” he says, all the time making funny rag-doll shaking movements with his arms and legs, tilting his head toward one shoulder and then the other, and moving his jaw like he’s checking to see if anything is broken.

  “Gee, I’m sorry,” he says, crouching down next to Livvy. “I didn’t have time to get out of your way. Are you okay? Let’s see if you can get up.” He has a soft, gentle voice, and he smiles at me, just a quick smile filled with white teeth. It’s then I notice he is dressed differently from most men we see in this part of town. He has on a T-shirt the color of egg yolk, blue suspenders, faded red jeans and green running shoes the color of limes.

  Livvy’s mouth is open but no sound is coming out at the moment. Just a little rattle at the back of her throat.

  “See if you can get her to move her arms and legs–just a bit to start with,” the man says to me. “I’ve been bleeding so I’d better not handle her.”

  Livvy has found her voice again, a howl that can shatter windows.

  “Sssh, baby-pie.” I hug her closer and rock her a bit more. A car honks its horn as it goes by. “We’ve got to get off this street. Let’s see if you can move your arms.” I feel along her arms and get her to bend them. The blood is coming from a big scrape I can see. “Now let me help you up.”

  “I cant.” Livvy has found her voice. “I’m dying,” she screams.

  “Try, sweetie-pie. Try for Barbara.” I hold onto her, my arms wrapped around her chest, and gradually lift her.

  “Owww.” She softens her cry to a wail when she finds out her legs still work.

  “Atta girl,” says the man. “Just a few steps and we’re off the road.”

  I end up carrying her, easing her onto the grass. Livvy has stopped crying for a minute, suddenly intrigued by the man of many colors. And, by this time, one of the girls in high heels has hobbled over to us.

  “You okay, honey?” she asks. Livvy is looking at the pattern of black lace butterflies flying up the girl’s net stockings to her leather skirt. “I seen it. You shouldn’t run out in the road no matter what or you could get killed.” She smiles a big lipstick smile at Livvy. “You need some help or something?”

  “No, I think she’ll be okay,” the man smiles. “I think it’s mainly scrapes and scratches. Are you close to home?”

  “We’re about six blocks away,” I calculate.

  Suddenly Livvy opens her mouth in a howl again, as if she’s been hit by a bicycle for the second time. “Bingo,” she screams. “I want Bingo.”

  “Bingo?” The man and the lady in high heels speak at the same time.

  “Her ball,” I say. “The ball she was chasing.”

  The man in the colored clothes places his hand overtop of his eyes and bobs his head up and down like a bird. He makes me think of someone who is acting. “Aha,” he says. “I spy Bingo.” Waiting for traffic to clear, he lopes across the road to a fence on the other side and plucks Bingo out of a clump of crabgrass.

  “There. Ya see, honey?” The girl in the high heels lights a cigarette and squats awkwardly in her tight skirt, just in front of Livvy. “Ya got your ball back now. Ain’t that lucky?” She plucks some tissues out of her purse and dabs at Livvy’s forehead. “Ya got a little cut there but it ain’t too bad. My old man give me worse.” She winks at me.

  He is back with the ball but he doesn’t give it to Livvy right away. Instead, he tucks it under his chin. Rummaging through a backpack attached to the bicycle seat, he pulls out three colored balls. Magically, he tosses the balls into the air, adds Bingo, and continues juggling, the neckerchief bandage a blue blur, all the time making funny faces at Livvy.

  Both Livvy and I are speechless, and Livvy seems to have momentarily forgotten her wounds. “Well, will you look at that,” the girl in high heels says in a whisper. But her friend at the corner is hollering, “C’mon, Melody,” and she reaches into her purse, pulls out a loonie and presses it into Livvy’s blood-stained hands. “You buy yourself a little treat, honey,” she says. Sighing, she rises from her crouch, adjusts her skirt and heads back to the corner.

  I can see Livvy thinks this day has turned into some kind of strange dream, and I’m beginning to think so, too. The juggler is throwing the balls higher and higher into the air, finally scooping the three colored ones into a kangaroo pocket in his T-shirt. Then he clasps Bingo in both hands and presents it to Livvy like one of the three wise men bringing a gift to the baby Jesus.

  “Behold, Bingo,” he says.

  Livvy actually laughs, and then, remembering herself, turns it into a prolonged moan.

  “I live just down the street here. You come along with me and we’ll get you washed up, and do you know–” he looks Livvy directly in the eye, “I have some Band-Aids that glow in the dark. I think you’re going to need at least ten or eleven.”

  I remember all of the things I have ever been told about never going anywhere with a stranger. “We’d better get home,” I say. I cannot believe this man in his rainbow clothes, juggling for Livvy even while his arm is bandaged, can be bad, but it is better to be safe.

  He seems to be reading my mind. “We’ll do a little front yard ministration,” he says. “There’s a place where we can sit down, and I’ll nip up to my flat and get some water and bandages. Do you want me to call your folks from my phone?”

  “Naw. It’s okay.” I don’t want to tell him our phone was cut off when Daddy didn’t pay the bill for three months.

  “Before we go anywhere, though,” he smiles his wide smile, “we need some names. You have before you Cosmo Farber.” And he does a little bow. “My mangled companion,” he makes a sad clown mouth and points to the bicycle, “is Mehitabel.”

  “
My name is Olivia de Havilland Kobleimer,” Livvy shouts. I watch Cosmo do a mock staggering back, as if the name has struck him.

  “You’re kidding me,” he says.

  “No kidding,” I say. “She’s Olivia de Havilland and I’m Barbara Stanwyck. My dad suffers from a bad case of old-movie illness.”

  “Hey, you’re all right,” Cosmo laughs. “You support the wounded Olivia de Havilland, and I’ll tend Mehitabel.”

  “And I’ll take Bingo.” Livvy takes a few tentative, limping steps and makes a little song of moans and ows mixed in with a bit of “Bingo is my ball-o.”

  “Olivia de Havilland and Barbara Stanwyck.” Cosmo shakes his head. He is carrying Mehitabel in front of him. One wheel is all twisted. “Here we are,” he says. We stop in front of an old three-story house with a verandah and an outside stairway leading up to the second and third floors.

  The yard is crowded with bushes and flowers, a bird bath and a patio table with a broken umbrella, half of its flowered vinyl stretched over spokes, the other half caved in as if something has tried to land on it.

  Cosmo leans the wounded Mehitabel against the table. “You guys park yourselves here and I’ll go and get some warm water and a washcloth and some Band-Aids. You be okay for a couple of minutes, Olivia?”

  “Livvy?” I can see she is on the verge of tears again, now that she’s had a chance to sit down and take an inventory of her injuries.

  “Livvy.” Cosmo tries out the name while he rummages for a key. “We’ll get you all fixed up in just a jiffy–a little washeroo, some glow-inthe-dark Band-Aids. Would you like something to drink?”

  “Oh, goodee,” Livvy slips into her baby talk and claps her hands together, forgetting they are bruised and scraped. “Ow, ooo.” Tears well in her eyes.

  “Where do you want to sit, Livvy? The patio chair or the bench?” It is enough to divert her attention. I search in the survival bag and bring out the scrapbook and crayons. “Why don’t you draw a picture of Bingo ball?”

  “I want to draw a picture of Cosmo and Bingo and those other balls.” She has her tongue between her teeth as she starts to color on a blank page. She is still creating the picture when Cosmo returns carrying a tray with an ice-cream pail of warm water, a washcloth and a towel, and a smaller tray with drinks in tall glasses.

  “Mmm. Yum-yum.” Livvy abandons the picture when she sees the lemonade.

  Cosmo has turned the scribbler toward him so he can see the drawing. “Wow.” He makes big eyes at Olivia. “Maybe we should rename her Olivia da Vinci. Now let’s take a look at these wounds.”

  He is very gentle, sponging off the dried blood. With the blood washed away, we can see the actual damage: the gash on Livvy’s forehead, a scrape on one arm, scraped hands, and one knee skinned. It takes two glow-in-the-dark Band-Aids to cover the knee, one on her forehead, one on each hand and three on her scraped arm. Livvy seems to gather strength with each patch. She is enchanted with the Band-Aids, twisting her arm back and forth, admiring her knee.

  We sit at the patio table. The sidewalk is beginning to be busy with people going home from work. They look at the three of us sipping tall glasses of lemonade, with little trickles of moisture running along the sides of the glasses. A small, quiet picnic in the middle of rush hour.

  “Hey, buddy,” a bearded man lurches against the picket fence. “That lemon gin?”

  “Not a chance,” Cosmo laughs.

  “You gotta cigarette, man?”

  “Don’t smoke.”

  “Well, this ain’t my idea of a party.” He grins and tips a greasy baseball cap to us before weaving off down the sidewalk.

  “Par-tee,” Livvy purrs. “I love parties.”

  “The patient is recovering,” Cosmo whispers to me. “Now tell me about yourselves, Miss Barbara and Miss Olivia. I know you’re on summer vacation, but what grade are you going into this fall?”

  Livvy mugs a smile at him and holds up two fingers.

  “She’s going into grade two,” I say, “and I’m going into grade eight.” What else can I tell him? “We live with Dad and Grandma over on the street with the churches. We were just coming from the park.” And then I make a bold move. “Are you an actor?” I ask.

  “Actor, magician, dancer, juggler, clown,” Cosmo laughs, “and sometimes a waiter.”

  “A waiter?”

  “Yeah. Waiting for jobs.” The afternoon sun makes his hair look like soft gold. It is short hair, thinning on top. “Sometimes waiting on tables.’

  “A clown!” Livvy shouts.

  “Yes, Miss Olivia de Havilland Kobleimer. A clown. In fact, right now I’m doing clown work-shops downtown. I’ll be finishing this first one next week.”

  “A clown!”

  “Yes. That is, when I’m not running down little kids on my bicycle.”

  His arms move a lot when he talks, and the bandage swoops and darts like a bird on his wrist. I can see there are bruises along his arms, and I think he must have been hurt more than we thought when he ran into Livvy.

  “Now, tell me what you’re going to be when you grow up,” he says.

  “I’m going to be a fireman,” says Livvy through the long slurping sounds she is making at the end of her lemonade.

  Usually when people ask me this, I say life-guard. I can see myself at a big sandy public beach, sitting high up under the sun in a life-guard chair, and down below me are kids splashing and building sandcastles, and people lying on the beach sun tanning, some of them reading, some of them doing word searches. But now, when Cosmo asks me, I surprise myself.

  “An actress,” I say.

  “Well, kid,” Cosmo chuckles, “you got the right name for it.”

  An actress. Livvy is chattering away to Cosmo about the trip her grade one class took to the firehall last spring and, for a minute, I let what I’ve said soak into me. Is it something a person could actually put down as a career choice on those little personal inventory sheets our school counselor, Mr. Graydon, makes us fill out? Dentist. Gas-station attendant. Actress.

  “You might like to get involved in the work-shop that’s starting in a couple of weeks. It’s for kids fifteen and up, but it’s not full and I could probably squeeze you in.”

  For no reason, I feel my face flushing.

  “Seriously, think about it,” Cosmo says.

  The rush hour seems to be winding down. Fewer people on the sidewalk, mothers calling kids in to supper, traffic thinning.

  “Maybe I should come home with you. In case your dad or your grandma have any questions about the accident,” Cosmo proposes as I check to make sure everything is in place in the survival bag.

  “We’ll be okay. Thanks,” I add.

  Livvy is chasing Bingo around the yard. “Come here, you stupid ball!” she shrieks.

  “Yes, I guess Miss Olivia de Havilland is going to live after all. But here, before you put your scribbler away, let me write my phone number down. If it’s okay with your folks, maybe you and Livvy can pop over when I get home from work tomorrow–no, make that the day after tomorrow–and I’ll give you a brochure on the clown workshop. Have to pick some up from the office. Any time after four.”

  “Sure,” I say. “I’ll check.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  I think about the clown workshop all the way home while Livvy sings her Bingo song. The more I think about it, the more I think it is something I want to do.

  The school that Livvy and I go to offers a drama option in grade seven.

  “I’ll put you down for it,” Mr. Graydon told me at the start of last year. Mr. Graydon has me come into his office often. He has an old sofa chair by his window, where you can look out and see the rooftops of buildings for blocks around. “When I listened to you doing that reader’s theater part in Mrs. Femeruks class last year, I made a mental note to make sure you get into Ms. Billings’ drama class this year.”

  I am always surprised at how much he knows about me. Mr. Graydon keeps a little bowl of pretzels on his d
esk. He likes to give visitors to the counselor’s office a pretzel or two. In addition to the pretzels, he gives me compliments. When he starts, I count the church spires. You can see four in the winter, but only two in September when the leaves are still on the trees.

  “I understand you’ve read your way around the world,” he tells me. “A book for each of twenty different countries. Mrs. Mattingley says you take out three or four books a week. Do you do anything else for recreation?”

  “Watch movies,” I say. “Daddy and Grandma like movies.”

  “What about you?”

  “Sure,” I say. “Who wouldn’t?”

  Another time he asks me about Livvy. “Hows she doing at home? She’s been having lots of accidents at school.”

  “She has…a few accidents at home, too.” I feel my face going red.

  “Of course it helps that you’ve been keeping a change of clothes in the nurse’s office.” Mr. Graydon passes me the pretzels. “Take a few,” he says.

  Livvy’s problem is not one of my favorite subjects. Sometimes I wish she could have some-thing clean and simple like scoliosis or acute sight loss. I’ve read books where girls had these diseases. They were handicaps that everyone understood. Then I feel guilty. After all, there are times when Livvy can go for several days with no accidents at all, just as if she were a normal person. Just as if she’d never had one kidney removed, never had a bathroom problem.

  The doctors can’t seem to decide how to fix Livvy. They put her on special diets. They give Daddy bottles of pills for her to take and charts to keep. But Daddy loses track. I tried to make Livvy take the last bottle of medicine until it was finished. Livvy kept spitting the pills out, muttering, “Yuckee, yuckee.” For awhile we had diapers for her to wear, but Livvy made such a fuss about putting them on that we quit trying.

  Mr. Graydon watches me chew the pretzels.

  “And how is she getting along? Livvy?”