Masters of Illusions

by Mary-Ann Tirone Smith

  “My father took good care of me. When I felt envy toward my friends and my cousins because they had mothers and I didn’t, I felt so disloyal.”

  “I know.”

  They drank their coffee. He always said that to Margie. I know. But he didn’t know. He didn’t know about the day on the sofa with baby Martha and the bubbles of resentment, and how more and more sprang up every day.

  Chapter Ten

  In all the years she was married to Charlie, Margie had liked to think that something momentous would happen. Captain Bart’s visit wasn’t as momentous to her as it was to her family, but she finally came to realize that his appearance was as momentous as things were going to get. She realized that the night she told Charlie about her first fire memory, suttee. She continued to humor Charlie, though, while she figured out how she might go about not humoring him without hurting him. How do you betray a person gently? And then, right when she was in the middle of her frustration, something momentous did happen, in the persona of a Bob Corcoran, who arrived at the front door unexpectedly.

  He was a man around Charlie’s age who had been to the circus. He had escaped the flames unhurt. Physically unhurt. He’d flown in from his home in Seattle, a home that was about as far away as he could get from Hartford, Connecticut. Margie took to him right away because he had an earnest look about him, the kind Charlie had had when she’d met him. The kind of earnestness Charlie had had when he’d asked her where her scars came from and she thought he was asking her where she’d gotten To Kill a Mockingbird. But that look was gone from Charlie now. With each passing year, Charlie’s look had become less earnest and more flinty. More a fireman’s look than a searcher’s. Margie felt alienated from that look, but Charlie didn’t notice because she hid her alienation from him behind a book.

  After Bob Corcoran had answered Charlie’s initial questions, Charlie didn’t ask any more. He didn’t have to. Corcoran was a gusher, and he didn’t start with happy memories like most did. None of that nervous hesitation in describing how exciting it was to be going to the circus. He didn’t speak of the heat of the day mixed with the thrill. The nervousness that was absent in him had always been immediately obvious in the other witnesses; it arose from the guilt they felt about their anticipation. With great pain and struggle they’d try to smile and they’d say: “I couldn’t wait for the circus to start… couldn’t wait.”

  Bob Corcoran placed himself on the Map—in the deadly area of Grandstand A, just a few yards from the main entrance, with the chute running between. Then he said that his eight-year-old sister and four-year-old brother had been killed by the circus fire. That was how he put it. They were killed “by the fire.” Charlie took note. Corcoran went on to say that his mother had been taken to the hospital, but her face was so badly burned that she couldn’t talk. “Which,” he said, “was why there was all that confusion about my sister.” Then he stopped, and then he whispered a name. “Louise.”

  “What confusion was that?” Charlie asked him.

  Bob Corcoran said, “Louise was Little Miss 1565.”

  Charlie’s eyes flickered over to Margie and back to Corcoran. Margie made sure the tape recorder was still going around and the reel wasn’t about to run out.

  Charlie said, “My uncle would be very interested in hearing what you have to say. He—”

  “I spoke to your uncle.” An anger rose. He checked it. “After the fire. He didn’t believe me. No one did. I was hoping you would. It’s taken me all these years to finally realize that someone might believe me. That I’m an adult now—why shouldn’t someone believe me, damn it!”

  Without skipping a beat, Charlie said, “I believe you.” The man looked up at him as if he’d heard an oracle speak. Charlie asked, “Why do you suppose no one believed you?”

  A hundred things went through the man’s mind all at once. Margie watched his struggle. But all that he could get out was another “Damn it.” Charlie said, “Take your time.” Corcoran leaned back and settled into the chair as if he were at the dentist’s and had finally resolved himself to the fact that he couldn’t escape the drill. He’d come too far.

  “I saw the picture and I identified her. But my aunt told them I was mistaken. They chose to believe my aunt and not me.”

  “Your aunt?”

  “yes.”

  “She survived the fire, too?”

  “She wasn’t at the fire.”

  Margie asked, “Can I get you a cup of coffee, Mr. Corcoran?”

  He said, “Yes, please. And it’s Bob.”

  The coffee helped all three of them. Puttering and pouring and settling back down softened the tension hanging about, suspended in the air.

  Charlie said, “Let’s start with the hardest part. Get it over with.”

  “It was all hard.”

  Charlie asked, “Then tell me how you survived the fire and how it was that Louise didn’t.”

  Bob Corcoran took a sip of his coffee first and then he began. He never mentioned the animal act or the Wallendas. He skipped that just as he’d skipped his anticipation and happy frame of mind. He went right to the fire. He said, “At first, we just stared at the flame for a few seconds. Everyone did, all at once. The whole sea of faces turned away from the top of the tent to the spot of fire. I think that was because the tent had become so dark—the lights had gone out and the beam of the spotlight made the rest seem darker. Then someone yelled, ‘Fire,’ but other people said, right away, ‘Oh, sit down. They’ll have that out in a jiffy.’”

  He took another sip, gingerly, as if it were too hot. Margie knew it wasn’t. He looked over at the Map. Corcoran said, “In the next moment it was as if the tent was a volcano. It became a live volcano erupting all over us. The tent erupted.”

  “And then?”

  “And then the fire spread faster than your eyes could follow. The heat was so terrible that the ropes caught immediately even though they weren’t anywhere near the burning canvas. People started to scream, and get up, and run down the grandstand. We were sitting halfway up. My mother said to me, ‘Take your sister and get out of the tent.’

  “My mother had my little brother in her arms. The last I saw of them was my mother’s back—she had on a flowered dress. A real pretty dress. Timmy’s legs were hooked around her waist, and his arms were wrapped around her neck so tight I don’t know how she breathed. Timmy was staring over her shoulder at me, but he wasn’t seeing me.

  “I grabbed Louise and held on to her, but people were pushing us down. Knocking us down. They kept stepping on us. So I figured, let them get by, then we’ll climb to the top of the grandstand, jump down, and get out under the tent.”

  When Bob said that, a glance from Charlie flickered over to Margie. Not a city boy. He knew a circus tent wasn’t a concrete wall. But why didn’t his mother? She’d headed straight for the entrance, even though it was blocked by an eight-foot-high tunnel made of steel bars.

  Bob talked. “By the time we got to the top of the grandstand, the side of the tent was already burned—gone. Sheets of burning canvas were flying all over. None landed on us. The heat hurt you, though. Just the heat. I told Louise we had to jump, but she got scared and wouldn’t do it. She just froze. I looked behind me. One of the three poles was starting to come down. The middle pole was swaying. The ropes holding the poles were almost eaten up.

  “There was a Negro man directly below us, looking up. He stretched his arms up into the air, up to us, and he shouted, ‘Jump, you children, jump!’ Louise came out of her shock. She looked down at the man, then at me, and just turned around and ran back down the grandstand. I screamed at her to come back, but she wouldn’t. So I closed my eyes and jumped. The Negro man and I fell on top of each other and then he got me up. He said, ‘Run, run!’ And he shoved me and I ran off.”

  Bob Corcoran had to put down his coffee, his hands were trembling so. Margie found that she was gritting her teeth.

  Charlie said, “Where did you run to?”

  “I
just ran. But right away I found a cop—there were lots of cops coming—and I told him my mother and my brother and sister were in there. The cop told me not to worry, that he’d find them. And then another cop took me to a truck that was shuttling children down Barbour Street to a church. It was a tobacco wagon. It was full of stalks of tobacco leaves. The police had commandeered it. I climbed in with all the other kids but Louise and Timmy weren’t there.”

  Now it was time for Charlie to divert the witness, no matter that he might be the brother of the Little Miss. To stop him in his tracks to learn what small thing Bob Corcoran might have seen that he’d never thought about. He asked, “Bob, was your father overseas at this time?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?” For once, it was Charlie who was diverted.

  “That’s right. I didn’t have any idea where my father was. Still don’t. He left when my mother was pregnant with Timmy. My aunt took us kids in, but she didn’t take my mother in because my mother didn’t want any more of her charity—she was just relieved that her kids would have a nice place. My aunt lived in Simsbury—on farmland. She was my mother’s sister. She and her husband had no children. My mother stayed in Hartford and worked to support herself. She was a cleaning woman at the Aetna. We spent one weekend a month with her. The lady she shared her apartment with would go visiting relatives on that weekend. The apartment had one room.

  “On Fourth of July weekend, we got to stay with her a few days extra. She’d saved up for four circus tickets.”

  Then Bob stopped. It wasn’t a pause, it was a stop. Margie had been wondering just what thing would make him stop. It was the memory of happiness. His last happiness, she knew. Behind the earnestness was despair. She recognized it. Margie may not have remembered the despair she’d felt as a baby, but the fact that she’d experienced it so terribly allowed her to see it clearly in him. And Charlie, of course, could look like that sometimes.

  Charlie said, “What happened next?”

  “Nothing.”

  Margie’s throat caught. Charlie said, “Did you see anyone set the fire?”

  She couldn’t believe her ears. Charlie had never come right out and asked that question directly. She got goose bumps. What was this? Did Charlie think this man set it? Little Miss 1565’s brother? Bob said, “No one set it. It was some kind of natural combustion because of the heat.”

  He said this with such authority that Margie could understand how taken aback Charlie was. Just for a moment, though. Charlie said, “How do you know that?”

  “I’m an engineer. The spot of flame everyone talks about was not just one spot of flame. It was the biggest of several and so, drew your eye. But bits of tiny fires were being created in several places, and then they all came together. Because of the high heat of the day. Because the canvas was coated with paraffin and gasoline. Because of the breeze. Like a farmer’s barn that just lights up on a summer night because the hay’s so dry. Spontaneous combustion.”

  And then Bob refused to say anything more on the subject, no matter that Charlie prodded. Dead issue. He saw things in terms of dead issues, but at least, now he had found the stamina to come back to Hartford and give his sister peace. The rest of the recording was her story: who she was, how old she was, the way she looked, and the bizarre set of circumstances that kept her identity secret. After he left, Charlie called Chick. Charlie said, “Uncle Chick. A fellow just left. He’s Little Miss 1565’s brother. Come hear the tape.”

  While they waited for Chick, Margie asked Charlie if Bob could have been right about how the fire started. Charlie said no, he couldn’t be. “He was believing what he wanted to believe. Fellow can’t handle someone deliberately wiping out his whole family. Who could? I know you can’t, Margie.

  “He was right about a farmer’s barn, though. The piles of hay in the loft, under a baking sun, become compost—bacterial debris in the center keeps heating up until it finally combusts. The core of the pile bursts into flame. But it can’t happen in a circus tent. People aren’t bacterial debris.

  “And he was right about that ring of fire everyone mentions. It was the first of many, lit by flying embers from the little bonfire the arsonist had set at the bottom of the tent, outside. Outside, behind Grandstand A.”

  Margie said, “At first, Charlie, did you think he was the one who set it?”

  Charlie looked away. “I thought I heard something there.…”

  And then Chick came through the front door like he was being chased by a pack of wild dogs. Breathless. Speechless. Didn’t shut the door behind him. Margie said, “Want a glass of wine first?”

  He gasped words at her as he rushed past to the war room, “I want to hear this.”

  They followed him in. He collapsed into a chair, the one Bob Corcoran had been sitting in. Margie turned the knob on the tape recorder. She and Charlie sat together and listened again with Chick, as Charlie took Bob through the rest of his story. The rest of his story held no business interest to Charlie, only human interest. Margie found Bob even more mesmerizing the second time around, her shock out of the way, replaced by clear images, like in a good book when you read it the second time.

  Bob said, “The police took me to my aunt and uncle, who were at a station house. They were so glad to see me. At first. But then, they wanted me to tell them where Timmy and Louise were. I didn’t know. My aunt became hysterical so a cop drove us—my aunt and me—back home while my uncle went to the armory. That’s where the bodies were. He wanted to do that first. Only when he was positive they weren’t dead would he go to Hartford Hospital. He was gone till the next morning. My aunt stayed up in the kitchen all night, smoking. I was with her when he came home. He said, ‘Timmy died an hour ago.’ And my aunt screamed, ‘But not Louise! Not Louise!’ A doctor had to come to our house to give her a shot.”

  There was a click and a pause, and scratching. Chick looked up from the tape recorder. He’d been staring at it. He said, “What happened?”

  Charlie said, “He broke down. Margie cut the tape till he could talk again.”

  Bob Corcoran’s voice returned. “Louise was my aunt’s favorite. She always tied ribbons in her hair and dressed her in lacy clothes, even for school. So my uncle told my aunt that some family had found Louise—they were taking care of her while they tried to find out who she belonged to. My aunt was so relieved. I watched her. She kept saying, ‘Yes, yes. Some other family had her for the night.’ She never mentioned Timmy. Or my mother. Now, I would guess, my uncle saw Louise’s body at the hospital, but didn’t identify her. He worshiped my aunt. He couldn’t give her children. And so he wouldn’t take away the one she favored.

  “A couple days later a policeman came with a picture of Louise’s face. He apologized first. Told my uncle and me that the little girl in the picture was dead. I said it was my sister, and my uncle kept saying I was mistaken because I was just a child and I was so upset. He told them it was definitely not Louise. He wouldn’t let them show the picture to my aunt. He kept telling them she was too distraught and that she was under sedation besides. Then he sent me to my room. That’s when he must have told the cop that he’d found Louise, and probably that she was dead. He’d buried Timmy. He must have said he buried Louise, too—that the girl in the picture was someone else.

  “For weeks, my aunt repeated the same thing over and over again: The other family was taking good care of Louise. She’d go on and on about how the people were probably from out of town and were having trouble finding us. That they were a well-to-do family who knew what was best for children. So after a while—I guess after I couldn’t take it anymore—I started to think that maybe I was wrong. Maybe I’d made a mistake. And, of course, I did want to believe that Louise was alive. My mother had told me to get her out—to save her. But I didn’t. Maybe someone else…“ At this point Bob Corcoran put his head in his hands. Margie thought she saw mist in Charlie’s eyes. When the man looked up again, he said, “We moved to Massachusetts. Then we
moved again, to Maine. Far away.”

  Charlie asked him, “But what about your mother?”

  Bob said, “She died in the hospital, too. I didn’t want to be the only one left. I wanted my sister to be alive, too.”

  “Did you ever get to visit with your mother before she died?”

  Bob said, “No, I didn’t.”

  A loud voice from out of nowhere boomed, “Turn it off.”

  That was Chick. Margie had never heard that tone from him. Charlie said, “Jesus. You sounded just like my father. What’s the matter?”

  “Rhoda Banks.”

  Charlie waited. And then Chick told his story in a voice that was just like Bob Corcoran’s—cracking and shaking. He started with, “Corcoran’s mother didn’t die. His mother survived the fire.”

  Charlie said, “How about taping this, Margie.”

  Margie put on a new tape. Chick told them that Bob Corcoran’s mother and his brother Timmy had been found alive, just like Little Miss 1565, at the bottom of the pile of bodies up against the animal chute. Margie thought, Louise did find them. Mother and son had been fused together by their burned flesh. They were taken to the hospital that way, given shots of morphine, and separated by a surgeon.

  “Surgeon told me he didn’t believe either of them would live. The boy died a few hours later.” He closed his eyes for a few seconds. He said, “Bob Corcoran’s mother, Rhoda Banks, was in the hospital for eight months, her face so badly injured that her lips couldn’t move. Her eyes were bandaged.

  “When she gained enough strength—this is months later—she wrote on a piece of paper that a Mr. and Mrs. John Corcoran of Simsbury were her closest relatives. I checked the records and told the nurses to tell her that her younger two children had died. If one of the men reported that the Corcoran boy identified his sister as the Little Miss, the guy never said anything. Uncle must have been pretty convincing. Jesus.”

  Charlie and Margie watched Chick wipe his forehead with his handkerchief “I’ll tell ya, I felt bad for that woman. Anyway, we couldn’t find the Corcorans. They’d moved. The nurses went bullshit, but there was no way we would have followed those people up. We kept trying to find them, but it turned out, they’d moved again. To Maine. No forwarding address. I expressed my apologies to Mrs. Banks, told her we’d keep looking. We did. Nothing.