The Invisible Circus

by Jennifer Egan

  “I think we’d better change the subject,” her mother said. “Because in about one minute I’m going to say something I’ll regret.”

  They eyed each other across the table. Their anger bent the air.

  “Go on,” Phoebe said. “Say it.”

  Her mother narrowed her eyes and sipped her wine. “How closely have you looked at your father’s paintings?” she asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Phoebe, they’re bad. He was a terrible painter. There was passion galore, it was sweet to watch, but he had zero talent. Why else do you think he never had a single gallery show or even sold any paintings, for God’s sake, except to my parents? You think he was the first painter in the world who had to work for a living?” She paused, breathing shakily. Phoebe listened in speechless amazement. “I would never have said this to you, Phoebe—haven’t, in all this time. But for you to blame me, blame our family for your father not succeeding as an artist, well, that’s just wrong. I can’t let you think it. He invented that myth to comfort himself.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Phoebe said softly. “I don’t believe he couldn’t paint.”

  “The proof is hanging on every wall of our house.”

  Phoebe felt a sudden, drenching wooziness. Something had begun that she felt powerless to stop. Her exhilaration leaked away, leaving her frightened—of her mother’s anger, of her own grinding urge to push things further, punish her. “Let’s go home,” she said.

  “Fine.”

  They sat in silence while her mother paid the check. The untouched meals were lifted away. Back in the car her mother fixed her gaze on the road, blue drop earrings leaping at each turn. Phoebe saw the pearlized gleam of her makeup—not for Jack, not for anyone but Phoebe—and was sick with regret at having wasted this night, tossed it away. What hope was there now of winning her back? Phoebe studied her mother’s sad face in the street light and felt only pity. Seizing this chance with Jack—why not? Taking Phoebe out to dinner to give her the big news, to celebrate. Now there was just the ashy disappointment of a ruined night.

  Phoebe longed to apologize. She opened her mouth more than once, willing the words to come, but a weight seemed to push them back inside her. Too much had happened; to apologize now would mean accepting the terrible thing her mother had said about her father. Impossible! If her father couldn’t paint, then where was the sense of his life? Even trying to imagine him in this new, shameful light left Phoebe dizzy. It couldn’t be. It simply could not be.

  Her mother led the way up the narrow steps from the garage, high heels jabbing the bare planks, the hem of her coat jerking with each step. Inside the house she turned to Phoebe. “Sweetheart …” she said.

  Phoebe moved toward her. They stood for some time on the dark landing, hugging in silence. Phoebe breathed her mother’s lemony perfume, her powder, the warmth of her skin.

  “What I said about your father,” her mother said, still holding Phoebe, “I’m sorry I said that.”

  “You mean it’s not true?”

  Her mother hesitated, and Phoebe’s arms loosened around her. “You’re not sorry,” she said.

  They withdrew from each other, but slowly. In the darkness Phoebe saw only the whispery outline of her mother’s face.

  “The apology is for telling you something you didn’t need to hear, because I was angry,” her mother said, hanging her coat over the banister. “But I’m not going to stand here and lie to you, Phoebe. Frankly, at eighteen years old I think you’re better off knowing your father was not a talented painter than believing he was some kind of martyr. I promise you, if the man had stayed a bachelor to his dying day, he’d have ended up an engineer. Because that—that!—was what he really did well.”

  She climbed the stairs to the second floor, Phoebe clambering behind her. “You don’t know that for sure,” she cried. “For all you know, if he’d stayed a bachelor, he might still be alive!”

  “Now what in God’s name is that supposed to mean?”

  “You know what it means!”

  They faced each other in the upstairs hall. Light fell at one end from her mother’s bedroom where Phoebe had left it on after borrowing stockings. “I haven’t the faintest idea,” her mother said. “Tell me.”

  “Because IBM made him sick,” Phoebe said, angry at the quaver in her voice.

  Her mother snorted, turning on her heel. “That’s ludicrous,” she said, heading for her bedroom.

  Phoebe charged after her. She felt crazed. How could it be ludicrous? That was the story of her father. With every move, every gesture—for years—her mother had confirmed it. “Mom,” she pleaded, “I can’t believe what you’re saying.”

  “I can’t believe what you’re saying,” her mother replied. “You’re telling me your father got leukemia, a blood disease, from working as a manager at IBM? What, from chemicals or something? What are you saying?”

  “No! You know!” Phoebe was shouting. “Everyone knew, because he—” Explaining felt useless. “Not chemicals, but—”

  “What? Radiation?”

  “No, no! Because he hated working there.”

  “Oh please,” her mother said. “Spare me.”

  Phoebe felt as if she’d been struck. Her mother sat on the bed and pulled off her pumps. She set them side by side on the polished floor.

  “This is crazy,” Phoebe said. “Everyone knew. Dad knew it, Faith totally knew …”

  “What Faith knew is meaningless,” her mother said with a sad, bitter laugh. “She believed whatever he wanted her to, poor thing.”

  She rose from the bed and hung her shoes on a rack inside the closet door.

  “Faith did not,” Phoebe said, “believe everything.”

  “Oh, I’m not blaming her,” her mother said, unzipping the side of her dress, “not for a second. Children always think their parents are gods—what else do they know? It’s our job to keep the truth in perspective, otherwise you end up loving your kids because of how they make you feel about yourself. And that’s not love, that’s egotism, pure and simple.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I’m saying your father used Faith to bolster all kinds of myths about himself—it was her main function in his life.”

  Phoebe stared at her mother. She was aware of the two of them sliding, drifting somewhere dangerous. She was lost, yet each unfamiliar step had its own eerie logic, and against it Phoebe felt powerless. “Dad loved her more than anything,” she said, shaking her head.

  “No question. But if he’d loved her less, he’d have been a better parent.”

  “Why?”

  “He made her responsible for his happiness. It was too big a burden—for anyone, much less a child. Not that Faith didn’t try, God knows, sitting for him hours on end … Sometimes I’d think, He’s not painting Faith at all, he’s painting himself—Gene O’Connor, the great unrecognized artist—directly onto her brain. And that he did very well, I must say. When all was said and done, she was his masterpiece.”

  Phoebe felt panic closing in. She looked around the room, but the familiar objects of their lives appeared tainted now, unrecognizable. Even her mother seemed altered, a stranger, like the naked woman in her father’s paintings.

  “If he’d lived, I’m sure everything would have been fine,” her mother was saying. “Faith would have rebelled eventually, and she and your father would’ve found each other again on different terms. But Faith never had that chance—she was completely dependent on him when he died, completely, utterly unable to cope without him.”

  Phoebe’s head throbbed. A wild, animal urge to defend herself rose in her. “It made you jealous,” she said instinctively, “how much he loved Faith.”

  There was a pause. “That’s true,” her mother said, in a different voice. “It did.” And this seemed to sadden her, tire her somehow.

  “You were jealous.”

  “Of course I was. Neurotic love is so powerful, at times it eclipses everythi
ng else. Yes, I was jealous, Barry certainly was. You were, too, I think, although you don’t seem to remember it.”

  “Not me,” Phoebe said.

  “Fine,” her mother said. Clearly she was sick of talking. She sat heavily on the bed in her terrycloth robe, as if waiting for Phoebe to go. But Phoebe wasn’t leaving, not until she’d found a way of fighting back. There was something she needed to remember, some moment of weakness in her mother, recently—then it came to her: yesterday in the car when they’d talked about Faith’s going to Europe. Her mother explaining herself to Phoebe, then asking if she understood. The unnatural weight of her answer.

  “You let her go,” Phoebe said.

  Her mother looked up, startled.

  Goosebumps rose on Phoebe’s scalp and traveled down her spine. “You let her go.”

  Her mother lifted her hands to her face. And Phoebe knew she’d found it, her worst fear. Found it and said it aloud.

  “You did,” she said, amazed. “You let her.”

  Her mother opened her mouth to speak. Then something broke in her face and she began to cry, leaning into her hands. Phoebe watched her coldly at first. Fine, she thought, let her cry, but her mother’s despair soon awoke in her a queasy guilt. “Mom,” she said, hovering uselessly a few paces away, afraid to go near. Her mother wept and wept. Phoebe remembered how she’d looked at the beginning of the evening, that overflow of high spirits—gone, forever, it seemed—Phoebe had stamped them out. She thought of Claude, years ago, big, laughing Claude, how her mother had laughed when he was there, laughed and laughed, and then Faith had died and the laughter, too, had died. When she thought of Claude, Phoebe had to remind herself that he was still alive somewhere.

  “Mom,” she said again, and moved closer. She felt a terrible pressure in her chest. Everything was broken. And now the person who had broken it was broken, too.

  Her mother raised her head, tears and makeup staining her face. “Go away, Phoebe.”

  Phoebe didn’t move. There had to be a way of undoing this, of going back.

  “Please go,” her mother sobbed, waving Phoebe away with her face half hidden, as if she were ashamed to be seen. When Phoebe didn’t move, her mother rose suddenly from the bed and pushed her, trembling hands on Phoebe’s shoulders. “Please go,” she said. “Leave me alone, please.”

  “Wait,” Phoebe said. “Mom wait—”

  She held up her hands, but her mother kept pushing, a confusion of shaking arms. “Why won’t you leave?” she sobbed. “Is there more you want to say? Did I do something else? Please, just say it and go.” Talking made her choke. She began to cough, covering her mouth with one hand, finally turning her back to Phoebe out of some automatic politeness. A wave of nausea rolled through Phoebe at the sound of her mother’s helpless coughing.

  When finally her mother rose straight again, she seemed to have coughed away fear and hysteria both. She faced Phoebe calmly. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re right, I let her go. But it wasn’t then.”

  Phoebe listened in dread.

  “I let her go when I let him crush her. Because that’s what he did.”

  She looked at Phoebe evenly, a kind of strength in her face.

  “I watched it happen,” she said. “It started as soon as she was born. He loaded her down. I knew it was wrong, all that time. But she seemed to thrive. Still, I should have stopped him.”

  She paused, gazing at Phoebe, full of calm. “Do you hear this?” she said. “Are you listening?”

  Phoebe just stared.

  “Well, there it is,” her mother said, breathing deeply. “There it is.”

  But Phoebe felt nothing. Only when she found herself outside in the hallway, her mother’s white door shut behind her, was she conscious of having left the room.

  eight

  All morning Phoebe debated whether to leave a note. She debated while mailing her letter to Berkeley, then waiting in a pink-and-orange booth at Zim’s in Laurel Village for Gibraltar Savings to open; she debated while walking home in the soft gray fog with the entire contents of her bank account—$1,538, saved from a year of work at Milk and Honey—in traveler’s checks. The round-trip Laker Airways standby ticket would cost almost $500. How long could you manage on a thousand dollars? Phoebe wondered. Well, as long as possible, and after that maybe she would find a way to get her $5,000.

  Phoebe had lain awake for much of the night. At times she’d considered calling someone, asking to borrow money. Barry had plenty, of course, or her friend Celeste, who worked at a travel agency. But everyone seemed at such a distance, as if Phoebe had known them years ago and had no claim on them now. As if she’d already left.

  Her mother slipped from the house well before seven. From her bed Phoebe listened to her faint steps, the front door swinging softly shut. Her mother wanted only to escape her. She would get her wish.

  Finally Phoebe did write a note, on a sheet of her mother’s thick, creamy stationery. Dear Mom, she wrote:

  I’m sorry.

  I love you.

  I’m going away now which is the best thing.

  I will be careful.

  Love,

  Phoebe.

  It was done. Everything was done. She had only to get to the airport.

  The shuttle bus left from O’Farrell Street, in the Tenderloin. Phoebe called De Soto Cab, which lately had edged aside Veteran’s in the hierarchy of her affections. She’d been calling cabs for years from parties she wanted to escape, foggy phone booths above Ocean Beach. But she was always headed home. It felt strange, giving the address as her departure point.

  Phoebe set her backpack inside the front door and sat on the love seat to wait. From the kitchen she heard the ringing phone: Art, no doubt, calling to find out why she hadn’t shown up for work. All morning it had rung. But finally it stopped, and as Phoebe waited for the taxi she began, for the first time since seeing her mother with Jack, to feel a sense of hope. Finally she was going, heading into the world. Phoebe stood, anxious to take a last look around the house, fix it in her mind. She circled the living room, gazing at an ostrich egg on its onyx stand, a hand-blown glass horse, the marble eggs from Florence—and all at once she felt a faint pulse from deep within the house, beneath the floorboards, beneath the earth below, and it came to Phoebe that she wasn’t leaving after all, she was merely sinking deeper within this house, entering its hidden world. As if, after years of nudging and prying and tapping, a wall had at last swung wide and she were stepping through.

  part two

  nine

  London felt tropical. Dense, steamy air filtered the sunlight to watery yellow. The sound of church bells was everywhere.

  With a map she’d bought at the airport, Phoebe guided herself through the tangle of streets. She was exhausted. She’d arrived this morning on the overnight Laker flight, after her second night in a row without sleep.

  She’d had trouble finding the youth hostel, in part because it was tall and white like every house in Kensington, gleaming with wet-looking paint. When she finally discovered it, at 11 A.M., the hostel had closed for the day. But a man let her come inside to leave her backpack and use the bathroom, where she’d splashed water under her arms and brushed her teeth.

  Phoebe’s exhaustion made things blur and run. She liked it. There was a clovery scent to the air, an intoxicating smell of flowering trees. It made her feel drunk.

  The streets of Kensington curved; she had to keep checking her map. Phoebe did this furtively, not wanting to look like a tourist. In her dark sunglasses she felt incognito. She carried Faith’s postcards in her purse, along with her sister’s photograph, a small notebook in which to document her progress, her passport, more than twenty English pounds, a thousand dollars in traveler’s checks and the hit of LSD in its small white envelope. Tired though Phoebe was, a manic energy coursed through her as she walked. The taxicabs looked like limousines. Tiny oval-shaped parks were tucked in the middle of city blocks, encircled by locked gates. Peering t
hrough the brambles, she caught the glint of wet grass and long crimson branches. Once she heard the gentle thock of tennis balls and glimpsed someone’s white leg.

  In Knightsbridge Phoebe stared through sparkling window-panes at silk handkerchiefs arranged into fans, neckties and smoked fish, old ladies still in their overcoats drinking tea, their hair faintly blue, like skim milk. It was all England. Everywhere she looked—England. Tabloid salesmen bellowed headlines around wet stubs of cigars, red double-decker buses sailed past. You could get on a plane and get off in England. It was miraculous.

  What amazed Phoebe most, though, was the light. It seemed to pour from all directions at once, forming gleaming points on every window and leaf, heightening colors to surreal intensity. She felt she could see for the first time in months, as if the fog that engulfed San Francisco each night had enshrouded her mind, too, obscuring her thoughts, and now had burned off. What remained was this light, a mesmerizing clarity that made Phoebe feel she had arrived in a different land. It was just as she’d hoped.

  Dear Mom, Phoebe and Barry, The first thing we did was we went to Harrod’s like you said Mom what a trippy place!! You re right those Food Halls are so intense. I bet they haven’t changed from the 50’s when you and Dad came. Wolf and I got some funny looks I can tell you that. People in London are pretty uptight they dont like jeans with patches but when I took off my poka dot jacket they were nicer. We ordered you a cake maybe you already got it. I hope it’s not stale they promised it would stay fresh. It has raisins. Love, Faith

  Inside Harrods Phoebe found herself searching the crowds for a familiar face. She felt welcomed, expected, if not by a person, then by the city itself. Her own presence so rarely seemed momentous to Phoebe that the sensation electrified her. She felt almost high entering the Food Halls, lush columned rooms that gave the impression of being glass-rooved and flooded with sunlight. The walls were of glazed tile, orange, green, turquoise. Meats were displayed on marble slabs, stuffed with herbs, tied in string like precious bundles, huge gleaming livers and pale veals, lamb shanks, lamb legs, venison, crimson steaks, guinea fowl with loose velvety skins folded sumptuously around each breast and wing. The very food seemed to give off light. Men in straw hats stood behind each counter, holding long knives.