“See, Margie, Uncle Chick was in a patrol car on the day of the fire. The dispatcher called every cop on patrol to tell them something was going on at the circus and to get over there. So while he was heading toward Barbour Street, the dispatcher said, ‘The tent’s on fire.’ Chick got there five minutes later. The fire had began ten minutes before that so by the time he got there, the tent was gone.”
He looked at Margie and waited for her to ask a question. She didn’t. He answered the question he’d expected her to ask. “It didn’t take him very long to find them, thank God.”
He waited. He said, “Uncle Chick didn’t find Little Miss 1565’s mother, though. Not for a long time.”
Margie’s despair at Charlie was mixed with thoughts of Chick walking amidst the fire equipment, ambulances, and the cars driving up, and all the jeeps sent over from Brainard Field full of soldiers coming to help out. She knew that he probably spent a lot of time, himself, helping out, not knowing if Annette and his little girls were under the smoking ashes, as Louise Banks was. Then he found them. So that explained Uncle Chick. But that didn’t explain Charlie. Margie’s instinct was to jump up and call Martha and say, “Aunt Annette and Cindy and Ruth-Ann were at the circus!” But she didn’t. Because Martha wouldn’t comment on what those words were all about, or why her father never mentioned to her mother that piece of the fire puzzle. Instead, Martha would address the wound of betrayal in her mother’s voice. And Margie couldn’t face that.
“Margie, honey,” Charlie asked, “is anything wrong?”
“No.”
Aunt Annette and Cindy and Ruth-Ann arrived with a pan of lasagna from Palma. Aunt Annette said, “A little something to heat up after, Margie.”
Margie thanked her. “Stay and have some with us when we finish.”
Ruth-Ann said, “Yeah, let’s, Ma. Daddy’ll be okay. He’ll make a salami sandwich.” To Margie, she said, “When your father’s a policeman it seems normal when he’s not at dinner.” Then to her mother, “He’ll have his sandwich and a beer and listen to the Sox.”
Cindy didn’t say a thing. She never did. She was an introvert, the only introvert in Charlie’s family.
Aunt Annette agreed. Margie put the lasagna in the oven and went up to the war room after the rest of them. Before she could even click on the tape recorder, Aunt Annette was saying, “The Chief got fifty free tickets. He gave four to Chick. But he was on duty that day. You—”
Charlie said, “I need you to show me a few things first, Aunt Annette.” He’d interrupted her. He’d never interrupted his witnesses. Margie guessed he felt he could since this was his aunt.
But then Ruth-Ann interrupted. She was looking around, “You’ve expanded since last time I was here, huh, Charlie?”
“Yeah.”
She rolled her eyes. Ruth-Ann was not sensitive to humoring Charlie—she just did it. Family loyalty.
Right away, Annette started to say again, “Chick was on duty that day, so he couldn’t come with us. That’s why you…”
She took a Kleenex and looked down on it. Then she looked up at Charlie. She started wringing the Kleenex in her hands. She wanted him to interrupt her.
Charlie said, “Go ahead, Aunt Annette. It’s okay.”
She said, “Our extra ticket. We gave it to a little boy on Barbour Street. You…”
“It really is all right. You can tell me.”
“Charlie, I’m sure that boy didn’t…”
Margie said, “What little boy?”
Ruth-Ann said, “You want me do this, Charlie? Maybe I’ll remember something else.”
Charlie said, “I remember everything you told me on that day. Everything.” Charlie turned to Margie. “The girls and Aunt Annette came to stay with us that night. Ma didn’t want them to be alone since Chick couldn’t come home. Ruth-Ann talked half the night. Cindy was only four.”
Cindy’s eyes darted about. She didn’t like this.
Annette said, “Charlie, I came here to say something. I have to tell you the truth. I came, not because I thought I could help you find out who set the fire. I came to try to help you in… in other ways.”
Now she brought the Kleenex up to her eyes. Ruth-Ann snatched another Kleenex from the pop-up box and gave it to her mother so she’d have a Kleenex for her other hand. Charlie started to speak. Annette waved her new Kleenex at him.
“No, no. I have something to say. Something to explain to you. I was so angry, Charlie. I was so angry by the time we got to the circus, I couldn’t see straight. I wanted to kill your father. And I was even angrier at your mother for not standing up to him. But that boy we gave your ticket to… Charlie, after all these years, I went and looked at the names of the boys who died. I was always so afraid to know if he’d died. But I had to know before I could come to you.
“None of the dead were from the neighborhood. And that boy definitely was. I saw him come out of his house on Barbour Street. He didn’t die. And… I felt so much better to know… he’d been so happy to get the ticket. So happy. The way you’d been, too. He kept saying, ‘Oh, thank you, lady, thank you, lady.’ He was not killed by the fire, thank God.”
The day Margie met Charlie, he told her he’d had a ticket to the circus but didn’t go. Now she was finding out that he hadn’t been joking after all. He really had had a ticket. But he’d told Margie the truth back then in such a tone that he knew she would think he was joking.
Margie said, “Let me get this right. Charlie, you had a ticket to the circus, but your father took it away.”
“I thought you knew that, Margie.”
Margie wondered why he would lie. She said to her aunt, “Do you think Charlie is trying to find the arsonist because he feels guilty about the boy you gave the ticket to? That the boy might have died?”
“Yes, oh, yes. That’s what I came here to say. I finally found the courage to see if a boy from Barbour Street died. But he didn’t.”
Aunt Annette’s theory wasn’t right, Margie was sure of that. Margie tried to catch Charlie’s eye but couldn’t. Charlie said, “Aunt Annette, I’ve checked, too. I checked a long time ago. I know the boy didn’t die in the fire.”
“You checked?”
“Of course.”
“Then why are you doing this?”
Ruth-Ann said, “I told you, Ma. Because he’s Charlie. Because our Daddy is really his Daddy. His own was a dud. He’s a chip off the old block—our Daddy’s block, not his Daddy’s block. The brilliant Martha would tell us that, right Margie?”
Ruth-Ann was always jealous about Martha because her own children were such a disappointment to her. Cindy touched her mother’s arm. She said softly, “Tell Charlie what you saw at the circus. If you want to help him, then just tell him what he’s asking you to tell him.”
Annette refocused on the Kleenex. “I didn’t come to encourage him.”
Charlie said, “Aunt Annette. I know you worry about me. I’m all right, though. Some people believe the fire was an accident. I don’t. I just want to prove I’m right.”
She sighed. “Okay then. You always want to know where people were sitting, isn’t that right?”
“Yes.”
“But you know where we were sitting.”
“Yes.”
Margie looked at the Map. She interrupted. “I don’t know where. Charlie, why aren’t their names on the wall?”
He said, “I know their seats. One of them was supposed to be mine.”
Annette said, “We were way over at the end of the tent—the opposite end from where the fire started. Near the bandstand. The music was very loud where we were, but I didn’t care. All I knew was that I wanted… I wanted to strangle your father, Charlie, for not letting you come with us. I can still see your little face.…”
“What did you see from your seat near the bandstand?”
She breathed heavily. “First, I heard people yelling: ‘Fire, fire!’ And then everyone began to stand and point. I saw the little circle of flame. It
seemed little because the tent was so big. But when I saw it, the circle must have been three or four feet across. The band stopped what they were playing and went into the ‘Stars and Stripes.’
“Just before you heard someone yell fire, what did you see?”
“I watched the lady getting the lions and tigers out of the cage and down the chute. She was a little bit of a thing, but the lions and tigers jumped off their stools one at a time and ran right through the chute. And the big spotlight went on, aimed at the top of the tent. The center peak of the tent. The Wallendas had already climbed up their ladder. The sun was so bright that day that the Wallendas didn’t have shadows. The way they do at night. At a night performance, the big spotlight makes huge shadows of the performers against the tent. I used to love the circus, Charlie.”
Margie said, “My mother loved the circus. My father told me.”
And now, along with his aunt’s and cousins’, Charlie’s eyes shifted to Margie’s. Cindy said, “We love you, Margie.”
Cindy had said those same words to her the day Charlie told his family he had broken his engagement to Sylvia and was marrying someone else, and then introduced the someone else. Cindy, who never talked, made sure she let Margie know that everything was all right. Now Cindy’s eyes and Charlie’s bore into one another’s. Ruth-Ann said, “Jesus, Cindy, you’re still some kind of hippie.”
Cindy’s eyes shifted back down to her feet. Annette ignored this. There was nothing she could do about having two children who were opposites. Charlie said, “Go ahead, Aunt Annette.”
Little shreds of Kleenex were spread across her lap. “The Wallendas looked so tiny up there. Like little toy soldiers. One of them was a lady. The men were dismantling the animal cage. The cage took up the whole ring. When the last tiger was into the chute, the men were already taking the cage apart.”
Margie said, “Leopard.”
Annette said, “Whatever. The men took the cage down as fast as the Wallendas climbed their ladder. The first thing I thought when I saw the fire was that at least the animals wouldn’t be trapped in the cage. I never dreamed it would be the people who were trapped.”
Charlie filled in the pause. “So people began to point.”
“Yes. At the little circle of fire. For those few seconds everyone waited for someone to put it out. But no one had a chance to put it out. In the next second, the circle turned into one big long pillar of fire straight up the whole side of the tent. Like a streak of lightning, only straight, and then the band broke into the ‘Stars and Stripes.’ They played it real loud. I grabbed the girls’ hands and ran around the grandstand. We were in the front row because we had the police tickets. When we got around the grandstand, the whole top of the tent was one big sheet of fire, and at that point, the pieces of canvas—burning pieces—began to come down. To this day, I don’t know how the Wallendas got out. But they did. I didn’t see anything. Someone had cut the tent behind the grandstand with a jackknife. We slipped through the cut. Then I ran with the girls.”
“You were one of the first to get out.”
“Yes.”
“And what did you see?”
“People running. Just like us. We ran to the edge of the lot and then I had to sit down. I held the girls’ heads in my lap and I watched the circus burn to the ground. It looked like the newsreels. Like a whole street in London, firebombed. Except it was daytime and it was a circus tent. And the band kept playing and playing. The music made it seem like the whole thing was a terrible nightmare; as long as the band played it couldn’t be real. That’s what I kept thinking: This is just the newsreel; in a minute, the movie will come on. Isn’t that so foolish?”
Charlie said, “A lot of people told me they thought of it as a newsreel. Aunt Annette, did you see any people near the tent who were not acting the way everyone else was acting?”
Now she looked up. “No, Charlie. I never saw what you’re wanting someone to see. I couldn’t take my eyes off the tent, though. I couldn’t look away. Everyone else was looking away, but not me. Maybe because I hadn’t been enjoying the circus. Your father saw to it that you missed out on everything. Everything! And your mother, God forgive me, she—”
“What happened next?”
“Next? The tent began to sway. The two ends of the tent disintegrated, but the center pole swayed for what seemed like such a long time and then it came down. Just before it fell is when the music finally stopped. The musicians all ran out of the tent and ran to a place right near where we were sitting. They set up their instruments and they started playing again. They had their drums and cymbal stands with them and everything. The backs of their red uniforms were all black. I said to the girls, ‘See, everyone got out okay’”
Cindy’s little voice arose. “But that wasn’t so.”
“No, it wasn’t. Then the pole fell and what was left of the tent fell with it. Everything was flat and black and smoldering and the only thing left standing was the Wallendas’ platform. It was way high up against the sky and I knew then how dangerous their act was. All alone, against the sky, the platform seemed a mile high. But then it toppled, and when it did all the screaming and the music, too, was drowned out by the sounds of sirens. So I told the girls that their Daddy was coming to find us, that he would have to do his duty first, though. He did. He did his duty and then he found us.” She looked up. Her face was covered with tears. “That’s everything I remember.”
And then Margie waited for Charlie to ask his aunt what she remembered before the fire. When she and the girls had arrived. They’d skipped that part. But he didn’t ask. So Margie did. She said, “Aunt Annette, before the fire, was anyone walking around the tent? Someone acting strangely? Carrying something that seemed not to belong?”
Cindy excused herself and left the room. She’d been four years old. What horrible things did she hold inside? Annette lifted her head. “No, honey. Just everyone all excited about going to the circus.” She turned to Charlie once more. “You’ll never find him. Six thousand people were there. Another couple hundred performers and hands. You won’t do it, and what if you do? The dead will stay dead and Little Miss 1565 won’t come back to her mother.” She turned to Margie. “And your poor dear mother won’t come back to you. It’s a long time now. A long time.”
Charlie said, “You’re married to a cop, Aunt Annette. What’s the time limit on justice?”
She said, “Don’t you dare lecture me, Charlie. I do believe in justice. I do. But I also believe that if there was an arsonist, he was caught when he went and set another fire. Besides, arsonists are sick people. They can’t really help what they’re doing. Finding a mentally ill person is not justice. Justice is seeing that circus tents don’t get waterproofed with gasoline ever again.”
Charlie didn’t address that. Never had. That was not justice. He said, “People know right from wrong. Especially after they’ve killed a hundred and sixty-nine people, and scarred a couple thousand more.”
From Charlie’s face, Margie could see that he wanted to argue some more, but he had too much respect for his family. And Annette hadn’t said anything important to him, anyway. As far as what she’d seen at the circus, there was certainly nothing new. Of course, there wouldn’t be. It was just the same thing over and over again. Palma was right. It was time to get him to stop. Margie realized that, and Annette could see it. Maybe Palma had spoken to her, too. Margie thought: And I’m no goddamn different from Palma. Margie felt as if she were just like the wife of any alcoholic, putting up with abnormal behavior out of some sort of screwed-up version of love that looked like, and felt like, and smelled like loyalty, but was something else. Margie had no idea what.
Margie was not a manipulator. She got no pleasure from power struggles. She would not connive to get Charlie to stop; she would not pussyfoot around. She had no interest in saying one thing that really meant another thing. Margie was able to admit to herself, though, that thoughts of making Charlie’s favorite dessert and buying a special bo
ttle of wine did enter her mind, but she kicked it all out and left her mind clear.
So when she and Charlie went to bed that night, she said, “Charlie, I don’t want you to do this anymore. I don’t want to hear the words circus and fire next to each other again. I want all this to be over. I want to turn your room into a guest room for Martha—something pretty for when she comes back on her breaks.”
“Martha has a room.”
“She’ll need a bigger one when she’s got a husband. And her room can be for the babies.”
Charlie, the great compromiser, mentioned to his wife that she was getting ahead of herself. Margie said, “But I can’t wait anymore.”
“For me to find him?”
“No, Charlie. For you to stop trying.”
So he said, “Give me a year, Margie.”
Margie said, “Sure.” She’d hoped there’d be a compromise, as there had always been, and she leaped at this one. What’s a year compared with all that’s gone before? Then she said, “Tell me what it is you’re after. Tell me. And if you say justice, I’ll spit in your eye.”
“You don’t believe I’m after justice? Since when?”
“Since Louise Banks was identified. That’s enough justice to go around. That’s all anyone needs to close the book.”
“There’s one more chapter to this book.”
“And if the arsonist’s dead? If you find him and he’s dead, what are you going to do? Dig him up and have him arrested? Electrocuted?”
Margie felt Charlie turn toward her in the dark. She waited, but he didn’t say anything. She said, “Charlie, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be sarcastic. I was trying to make a point.”
Masters of Illusions Page 13
