The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan

  Her mother turned to her in alarm. “It’s just a thought.”

  “How could you even think that? Sell the house?” Phoebe’s voice filled the car.

  “I haven’t sold it. Honestly,” her mother said, flustered. “I was thinking aloud.”

  They’d been idling at a curb, but now her mother reentered traffic as if to flee the subject. Phoebe felt wild. Selling the house was the wrong thing, the worst possible thing. “So I guess I can go,” she said, incredulous.

  Her mother looked blank.

  “To Europe.”

  “No, sweetheart. No. I meant that I understood the impulse.”

  “You can sell the house but I can’t go to Europe?”

  Her mother shook her head, clearly puzzled. “It’s a bad idea, Phoebe, isn’t that obvious? Of all things—that?”

  It was like yesterday, with the silver necklace. The hidden world was there, but suddenly her mother couldn’t see it.

  “You let Faith,” Phoebe said.

  Her mother glanced at her. It was a bad thing to say. A long silence fell while they pulled over at Oak and Masonic, where Phoebe got out each morning for work. Her mother wore a silk blouse with a bow at the neck, her Diane Feinstein blouse, she called it. In the Panhandle, purple-clad figures performed Tai Chi on the wet grass.

  Her mother rested her elbows on the steering wheel. “Just getting her out of this city seemed like a godsend.”

  Phoebe nodded, anxious to agree.

  “I thought Wolf could take care of her,” her mother went on. “But that was too much to ask, even of him.”

  Phoebe kept nodding, a jack-in-the-box. “That makes sense.”

  “Does it?”

  Her mother turned to her. In the bare morning light her face looked slightly swollen, large-pored, as if it had been bruised at one time and never quite healed. Phoebe felt the weight of her response.

  “It does,” she said, shaken. “Mom, it totally does.”

  The fog was beginning to thin. Houses emerged with colors replenished. Phoebe left the car, waving as her mother pulled into traffic. She watched the back of her pale head until the Fiat disappeared, then walked to work full of vague foreboding.

  The Haight-Ashbury intersection had vanished.

  Nostalgies were to blame, their zealous removal of the street signs having finally persuaded the city to stop installing new ones. From inside the café where she worked Phoebe often saw tourists traversing Haight Street with maps aloft, aware that they were close, so close, but unable to find the dead center they sought.

  Much remained of the sixties: whole-food stores with their bins of knobby fruit, head shops, an occult store full of shrunken heads and tinted crystal balls. But Milk and Honey, where Phoebe worked, had nothing in common with these places. It was a new café full of red neon hearts and white tile, owned and run by gay men. Being neither gay nor male, Phoebe of course was on the outside, but the feeling of this was easier, somehow, than being on the outside where she should have belonged. She listened with passionate interest to her colleagues’ tales of growing up in strait-laced American towns where they’d dated cheerleaders and made faggot jokes, bluffing their way through one life while they dreamed of another. And here it was. They’d found that promised life and nothing could take it away from them now, or so it seemed.

  A new guy was starting today, and Phoebe would be training him. She’d worked at Milk and Honey for over a year, finishing high school at noon, then riding the bus to the Haight. Except for the manager, Art, she’d been here longer than anyone.

  The new guy was good-looking, which explained Art’s more than usually high spirits. “This is Phoebe O’Connor,” he said, introducing them. “Phoebe, Patrick Finley. I suggest you talk about your Irish roots.”

  Phoebe and Patrick exchanged forced smiles. Patrick was tall, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt. Phoebe wouldn’t have guessed he was gay, but he must be—she’d never known a straight guy to work here.

  “Phoebe is training you,” Art explained to Patrick. “She’s our paragon of virtue, aren’t you, dear?”

  Phoebe blushed. “Not exactly.”

  “Well, no, not if you count all the bodies buried under your house,” Art said merrily.

  “They’re deep,” Phoebe said, trying to get into the spirit of it.

  But Art’s attention was entirely on Patrick. “She’s never smoked a cigarette,” he said. “Can you imagine?”

  “Not once?” the stranger said softly, meeting Phoebe’s gaze. She shook her head, feeling more than usually shy. His eyes were a bright, hungry green.

  “She’s training to be a nun,” Art went on. “Although I will say I’ve seen her drunk.”

  Phoebe looked at him in alarm. At the Haight Street Fair a few weeks before, she’d gulped down several glasses of sangria in the bright sun and started to cry while watching the motley parade of hippies—their worn-out faces and eyes that seemed bleached from one too many blinding sunrises. Art had put his arms around Phoebe and hugged her. “It’s a long life, kiddo,” she remembered him saying.

  “But why am I surprised? All Catholics are drunks,” Art went on, winking at her. “Even the priests.”

  “Especially the priests,” Patrick murmured.

  “What makes you think I’m a Catholic?” Phoebe said, relieved that her drunken tears had been kept a secret.

  “It’s written all over you, dear,” Art said, kissing her cheek.

  The morning rush began. Phoebe felt sorry for new employees, that bumbling, incompetent phase, but Patrick seemed used to it. She guessed he was in his mid-twenties. Phoebe taught him her forte, caffè latte, which she made with such consummate skill that the coffee and milk formed separate shifting layers inside the glass mug. Often these efforts went unnoticed by customers, who stirred her masterpieces without so much as pausing to admire their perfect layers.

  When the crowd ebbed, Patrick retreated to a nook outside the view of customers. He took a Camel from his pack and tapped one end against the counter. “Can I?” he asked.

  “Sure. Everyone does.”

  He lit up, eyes falling shut an instant as the smoke met his lungs. “You’re smart not to,” he said, exhaling. “It’s ugly.”

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” Phoebe said with feeling. “I love to watch people smoke.”

  Patrick burst out laughing. “Are you serious?”

  Phoebe nodded uncertainly. She hadn’t meant to be funny.

  Patrick took a deep pull on his cigarette, rolling the smoke from his mouth back into his nostrils. “I’m surprised you don’t just do it, then,” he said. “It’s not like there’s a waiting list.”

  “I promised someone I wouldn’t.” This was her usual line.

  Patrick stubbed out his cigarette, running both hands through his dark hair. “Well, they did you a favor,” he said.

  At two o’clock Phoebe hung up her apron, brushed her hair and left the café for her lunch break. On the corner a guitarist was strumming “Gimme Shelter” on a threadbare electric, an amplifier sputtering beside him. He wore a black leather coat tied at the waist, yellow bell-bottoms and grubby platforms. The clothing looked older than he did.

  Clustered at his feet were the vagabond kids who populated Haight Street. Now and then one of them would appear inside Milk and Honey asking for a lemon slice, which Phoebe had learned only recently they used to dilute heroin before shooting it into their veins. These kids were younger than she, far too young to have witnessed the sixties, yet Phoebe felt they were linked with that time in a way she was not, and envied them for it. She still gave them lemons whenever they asked, though Art had forbidden it.

  Phoebe continued walking to Hippie Hill, a hump of coarse grass just inside Golden Gate Park. She climbed to the top and sat cross-legged, unwrapping her bran muffin and coffee. Normally she read during lunch—she loved to read and did so quite uncritically, taking each book as a prescription of sorts, an argument for a certain kind of life. But today she
ate mechanically, staring down at the trees. Sell the house? Now, after so many years? It was crazy.

  And she wasn’t “cut off.” She’d gone with a group of people last week to The Rocky Horror Picture Show, where a piece of bread landed in her hair, then on to a Broadway disco where an eel-like man plied her with watery cocktails in exchange for the dubious privilege of wriggling opposite her on the seething dance floor. She wasn’t “cut off.” But try as Phoebe might to blend with her peers, it felt like bluffing, mouthing the words to a song she’d never been taught, always a beat late. At best, she fooled them. But the chance to distinguish herself, impress them in the smallest way, was lost. At her vast public high school Phoebe had felt reduced to a pidgin version of herself, as during “conversations” in French class—Where is the cat? Have you seen the cat? Look! Pierre gives the cat a bath—such was her level of fluency while discussing bongs or bands or how fucked-up someone was at a party.

  She was not a presence at high school. If someone thought to include her, Phoebe was included, but if she stood up and left mid-party, as often she had, phoning a taxi home among the bright potholders and fruit-shaped magnets of someone’s kitchen, few people noticed. Handed a hit of acid once, she’d slipped it into her pocket (kept it to this day), but nobody caught the move. “Hey, were you okay with that?” they’d asked days later, for apparently it was powerful, someone had flipped out. Phoebe pictured herself in the eyes of her peers as half ghostly, a transparent outline whose precise movements were impossible to follow. During free periods she had no place to go. Often she simply wandered the halls, feigning distraction and hurry, afraid even to pause for fear that her essential solitude would be exposed. A glass case full of old trophies stood near the school’s front doors, shallow silver dishes from state swim meets, faded ribbons; they were dusty, inconsequential, no one looked at them. As an excuse to stop walking, Phoebe sometimes would pause before that case, pretending a trophy had caught her attention—I’m nothing, she would think, I could disappear and no one would notice—her face reddening in shame as she stared at the meaningless trophies and waited for the bell to class.

  But tortured as Phoebe was by her own irrelevance, deep within herself she saw its necessity. For all that surrounded her now was barely real. What about Faith? she would remind herself, walking the smudged halls or eating her lunch alone in the hospital-smelling cafeteria; what about the student strike of 1968? All that was forgotten. Even the teachers who had been there seemed barely to remember. What a nightmare, they would say, rolling their eyes; you kids are much better. But what about Faith O’Connor, who organized the strike and gave a speech in the courtyard? Well, maybe, they’d say. Let’s see … squinting at the window as they reached for some blurred memory to match Phoebe’s encyclopedic descriptions of her sister; but no, incredibly enough, no one remembered Faith, either. They saw nothing but the present. And sometimes even Phoebe would forget, dancing to the Tasmanian Devils or Pearl Harbor and the Explosions; for a moment everything but her immediate surroundings would slip from her mind. But something always brought her back—jerked her, like discovering she’d overslept—and Phoebe would remember that her present life was nothing but the aftermath of something vanished, at which point its details would simply shrink. Her life shrank even when she fought to hold it still—clinging to a boy named Daniel in his car during a school dance, watery music faintly audible from the gym as they lay across his front seat, fog crystallized like sugar on the windshield. She’d liked him all year. Daniel’s breath on her neck, ribs splayed beneath her like a fan, and suddenly a different world seemed to offer itself to Phoebe, bones and flesh, all she wanted was this—Yes, she thought, this was enough—but already it was starting to slip, she was slipping from Daniel even as she clung to him, something she needed to remember like distant footsteps in the corners of her mind. “Hey, you still there?” he asked, but Phoebe wasn’t, could barely make out Daniel’s startled face as she drew away, full of anger, feeling as if someone had robbed her.

  Afterward, as always, Phoebe was relieved she had escaped—even when Daniel avoided her eyes in the halls, for he was nothing, all of this was nothing. She had to resist. If Phoebe lost herself in her own small life, it would be like dying.

  At six-thirty Phoebe and Patrick hung up their aprons and left Milk and Honey together. The sun was low. Outside the door they paused. The street was empty, caught in the pause between day and night.

  “Thanks for the help,” he said.

  “You did great.”

  “I don’t know. The first day’s always a bitch.”

  “No, you did.”

  They stood in silence. Phoebe felt depressed, anticipating the empty night ahead. Her mother was busy.

  “I’ve got a car,” Patrick said. “You need a ride someplace?”

  “No, thanks,” she said, then wondered why she had. It would be better than taking the bus. But Patrick had already turned.

  “Okay. See you.”

  Phoebe was going the same direction, but felt stupid following Patrick when they’d just said good-bye. She lingered outside Milk and Honey, watching the night staff set up. When Patrick was out of sight, she headed for the bus stop at Haight and Masonic. There was a party on Ocean Beach that night, but those parties were always the same, surf toppling in, a wavering line of bonfires strung across miles of cold sand. Phoebe stopped at a pay phone and fished through her tip money for a dime. She dialed her mother’s office.

  “Sweetheart,” her mother said, “how was work?”

  “It went fast. Mom, I can’t remember,” Phoebe lied. “Are you busy tonight?”

  “I am, unfortunately,” her mother said, lowering her voice. “We’ve got a director in from Germany.”

  “Does it go late?”

  “No, just cocktails, although I don’t know, we may go on to dinner. Why, are you at loose ends?”

  “Not really. There’s a party.”

  “Well, that might be fun. Why not go?”

  Phoebe said nothing, remembering her mother’s worries about her.

  “Well, you’re welcome to join us,” her mother said. “Would you like to?”

  Phoebe declined. An evening with Jack Lamont she could do without. Besides, it was probably dressy.

  “All right then, I’ll see you later on. If I’m back early, we can watch some TV. Oh, but you’re busy.”

  “But I might be home though. Kojak’s on.”

  Her mother paused. “Sweetheart, is something wrong? Your voice sounds funny.”

  “I’m outside.”

  “Okay. Well, have fun at your party. And please be careful—promise you’ll call a taxi home. I’ll reimburse you.”

  “But Mom?”

  “Yes?”

  “How late will you be back? Maybe I won’t go.”

  “I’m not sure, honey. I wish I could tell you, but I just don’t know.”

  Phoebe could think of nothing else to say. “Okay,” she said.

  “Bye-bye. I’ll see you tonight.”

  “Bye.”

  Phoebe continued slowly toward Masonic. Abruptly she stopped, turned back around and headed for the bus downtown, to her mother’s office. She wanted to see her. Just see her, just for a minute, then she would go home.

  The bus came quickly, floating on its electrical wires. From the crest of each hill Phoebe glimpsed the East Bay blinking across the water. Torpid planes floated overhead.

  She got off downtown. The air was linty, opaque. Her mother had warned her repeatedly that cars crashed more often at dusk than at any other time, and Phoebe crossed the streets with care. Nearly a block from the office she was startled to see her mother standing outside the building. Just waiting there, in her white suit. Phoebe stopped. The sight of her mother alone on the street, unaware of her own presence, was strangely compelling. She felt a childish urge to hide—it had been a favorite game of Faith’s, positioning herself and Barry and Phoebe in different parts of a room to eavesdrop on their pare
nts; the wild hope of hearing things they weren’t supposed to know. Of course, their mother and father heard their sniggering, the rasp of Barry’s asthma. “Where are those kids?” their father would growl, causing a leap of delicious fear in Phoebe’s stomach. “Where are those kids, so I can hang them out the window by their toes?”

  Phoebe flattened herself against a wall. Her mother’s back was turned. She faced downtown, where a soap-bubble moon had risen between two buildings. Her mother tipped back her head to look at it. This was strange, watching her watch the moon. Phoebe felt a little guilty.

  Someone else came outside—Jack, Phoebe thought at first, then recognized the bouncing, tentative stance of Marty, her mother’s new intern. Phoebe had met him twice—very eager, determined to make his own films. His ears stuck out.

  Typical Jack, Phoebe thought, making everyone wait. She could see him now, telephone wedged between shoulder and jaw, flapping them out the door as he lit a cigarette. She heard her mother’s and Marty’s voices, but not their words. It began to seem absurd, skulking here while her mother made conversation with a boy hardly older than Phoebe. She longed to leave her hiding place and join them, but how to explain her arrival? Say she’d changed her mind and wanted to come with them, in her torn jeans and berry-spattered T-shirt? She could imagine Jack’s reaction.

  A car pulled up alongside her mother—their own boxy Fiat. To Phoebe’s surprise, Jack climbed out. He wore a dark blazer, shiny buttons catching the glare from the streetlight.

  The three stood talking for several minutes. Phoebe’s mother’s voice was high, silvery. Jack kept laughing, which seemed unlike him. Phoebe began to feel desolate, stowed away in her corner, furious with all three of them for leaving her out. She wished she’d just gone home.

  Finally Marty handed Jack a folder and went back inside the building. Jack and her mother waved. Then her mother turned and looked right in Phoebe’s direction—Phoebe’s heart contracted like a fist. But her mother hadn’t seen. She turned to Jack, who caught her hands in his own and swung them. Then Jack took Phoebe’s mother in his arms and kissed her mouth.