Touch the Stars

by Pamela Browning

  Could just anyone do this? No. Not everyone knew how to stretch a cable. Not everyone knew about the exact placing of the cavallettis. Not everyone knew about turnbuckles and hoist hooks and pulley blocks. And was all this important? Why, of course! A wire walker's life depended on his equipment.

  They were with him now, all except for Juliana. Stephen despaired of this woman. Why didn't she trust him? The others did. What was it about Juliana that made her tremble when she thought about that night in New Orleans? It was eight years ago, after all. The others had overcome their trauma. Why hadn't Juliana?

  If only she would talk to him. But she tensed up whenever he raised the subject. What a waste it would be if Juliana continued to refuse to become a part of the new Amazing Andrassy act! She was a graceful, concentrated and controlled performer—he had seen that when he'd watched her demonstrate on the balance beam for her student.

  It wasn't lack of skill that kept her from joining the act. Perhaps it was lack of nerve. Some people simply couldn't think well in stressful situations; when something went wrong, they fell apart. Such performers would do well to stay off a high wire—too much depended on the ability to stay calm, no matter what. He had no idea if this was Julie's problem.

  He desperately tried to figure her out. It pained him that she was so obstinate about staying off the wire. Why wouldn't she see that he only wanted the family together again? And he would get the family together again, even if he had to bankroll such an operation himself.

  That was the sole reason he had taken the circus job. The money was important. He didn't want a car. He didn't want a lot of clothes or a fancy house. What he wanted was what he had always wanted—to walk with the Andrassys on the high wire.

  So he lived in Manhattan and he performed his exciting solo act high above the circus's one ring, and it was the highlight of the show. He rode a unicycle on the high wire and juggled as he rode. He performed somersaults on the wire. He did flips. He even cooked an omelet on the wire, and he ate it there, too. He walked the dangerous, blindfolded walk of death. As always, his strong presence as a performer impressed itself upon the audience, and he got wonderful reviews.

  There were lots of women with the show, all kinds of women—women who rode horses bareback and women who flew through the air from trapeze to trapeze, women with blond hair so long they could sit on it, and women with breasts so prominent they reminded him of trays of fruit.

  One of them took a special interest in him, and she filled what could have been lonely hours. Stephen was sure that she wanted their relationship to grow and deepen. Yet whenever he thought about letting that happen, he pulled back. He would not be with the circus longer than three months. And his thoughts were filled with visions of a pair of dark, snapping eyes and long curly hair wisped around a beautiful and appealing face. The woman to whom those characteristics belonged possessed a slim, fine-boned body with narrow hips and small breasts. Beside her, all other women paled in comparison. Juliana. Even her name was beautiful.

  He had no reason to think that she found anything special in him, and this made him sad. What good was the admiration of the world when that one special person in it seemed determined to ignore him?

  * * *

  Julie and Nonna read about Stephen in the newspaper. An Andrassy on the high wire was news in the close-knit community of Venice, Florida.

  "I saw that article about your cousin Stephen," said Julie's boss, who had once performed with a crack troupe of acrobats. "He's doing well for himself."

  "He's not my cousin," Julie said tersely before hurrying away to the dressing room.

  "Say, that cousin of yours is really something," said the seven-foot-four-inch manager of the convenience store where Julie bought milk. The manager was a former circus clown himself.

  "He's not my cousin," Julie said again.

  Nonna cut out every newspaper article about Stephen and his daring exploits on the high wire. "He is a grandson to make me proud," Nonna said, snipping away.

  "He is not your grandson," Julie protested faintly.

  "Ach," Nonna said, inserting the clipping into her photo album. "That is something I forget."

  Everyone accepted Stephen as a member of her family. Everyone, that is, except Julie herself.

  She thought about him much too often. She obsessed about the curve of his eyelids, the flexibility of his fingers. She could picture them tearing a piece of bread at dinner and holding a fork in the tines-down European fashion. She found Stephen's ways foreign and fascinating. He had not had time to become Americanized yet. He seemed exotic.

  She admired the timbre of his voice. It was a gentle voice with deep overtones and unusual inflections. It didn't twang or burr but glided smoothly over the English language like a water over stones. His mouth was wide and well formed, with an upper lip that was a bit too long. It gave him a look that was decidedly sensual. Why had she noticed that?

  Julie went on coaching in the gym, and she continued taking care of Nonna, making sure that Nonna ate properly, didn't work too hard and got enough rest. She spoke occasionally with Eva on the telephone, and with Albert, who had traveled to Texas to visit Michael and his family. But they didn't talk about the act. Everyone knew how she felt about it; to touch the stars indeed! She didn't want to touch the stars; the ground was good enough for her.

  Things almost settled down to normal, or at least to what Julie had recognized as normal before the arrival of Stephen.

  Then, when she had forgotten about the curve of his eyelids and the flexibility of his fingers and the length of his upper lip, Stephen returned.

  He was waiting for her outside the gym one afternoon in the first week in June.

  "Stephen!" she exclaimed, her heart flipping over.

  He pecked her cheek in a brotherly fashion. She pulled away. She still wore her leotard, and she was sweaty from her workout on the beam.

  "Aren't you glad to see me?" he asked with a merry twinkle in his eyes.

  "Well..." She smiled back at him. He hadn't changed at all. He was still one of the best-looking men she'd ever seen.

  "I took a cab over here just to meet you after work. I hope you have your car?"

  "Yes, of course," she said, leading the way to the parking lot. A tiny frenetic poodle on a chain leaped toward them as it was being walked on the sidewalk; Stephen had to move closer to avoid stepping on the dog. For a moment she thought he was going to take her arm, but he didn't.

  As they got into her car, Stephen said, "I've learned to drive. I have a license now."

  "Oh?" Julie said. "How did you manage that?"

  "One of the women I met in the circus taught me," he said. "We'd rent a car and go for rides in the country when we had free time."

  Julie had no reply. She wondered how far the relationship between Stephen and this woman had progressed.

  She nosed the car into the traffic on the highway. "What brought you down here to meet me?"

  "I wanted to see you. What else?"

  She eyed him suspiciously.

  "You haven't asked me to join the Amazing Andrassys on the high wire, and we've been together ten whole minutes. That's a record."

  "Have you changed your mind?"

  "No."

  He looked crestfallen. "That's too bad."

  "The others are still with you?"

  "Yes. I'd hoped you would be, too."

  She shook her head so vigorously that her ponytail dusted both shoulders. "It's still no, Stephen. But tell me, when do you start practicing?"

  "Next week. It is all arranged. I leave tomorrow."

  "Leave? You mean you're not staying in Venice?"

  "Paul has offered the use of his farm. So we are all going there."

  "But that's in Georgia!" Julie was astonished at this news. She had supposed that the Andrassys would train here, in Venice, where so many circus acts practiced. She had not dreamed that they would leave.

  "Financially it is the only way. His wife Claire has welcome
d us. They have a big farmhouse with several bedrooms and an unused barn where we will practice. There is a mobile home on the farm where Michael can live with his family. Paul does not want to be part of our act, but he wants to help."

  "I—I'm surprised," was all she could say. A truck horn blared behind her, and she switched lanes so that the truck could pass. All she could think of was that Stephen—and the others, of course—would be leaving.

  "Nonna wants to go with us, Juliana."

  "What? That's impossible!"

  "But it is what she wants. After all, this is a family reunion. The only Andrassy who will not be there is Bela. And I want to make it possible for Nonna to go."

  "Nonna isn't well! Her blood pressure—I have to remind her to take her medicine! And—"

  "She could go if you went along to help her," he said quietly.

  Julie turned her car down the peaceful palm-lined residential street where she and Nonna lived.

  "I can't," she said firmly. "I have my job."

  "Nonna said you are due for a vacation. She said you had suggested taking her somewhere this summer, somewhere she would like to go."

  Not long ago, Julie had suggested a vacation to a destination of Nonna's choosing, thinking that it would be good for Nonna to get out of the house and have a good time. But to travel to someplace in rural Georgia—that was not what she'd had in mind. She'd considered taking Nonna to Key West, where Nonna had friends. She'd thought Nonna might enjoy a summer-bargain four-day cruise to the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico, and they could catch a cruise ship right out of Tampa. But rural Georgia?

  She eased her car into the driveway and switched off the engine.

  "Stephen," she said wearily, "you haven't been in town twenty-four hours yet, and you're already stirring up trouble."

  "I wish you wouldn't look at it that way," he said unhappily.

  Julie got out of her car and slammed the door hard. "Well, I do," she retorted.

  Nonna met her at the door, all smiles. She reminded Julie of nothing so much as a little brown wren chirping and fluffing her feathers. "Did Stephen tell you?" she asked excitedly. "Did he tell you that he wants me to go with him and the others to Paul's farm?"

  "Nonna," Julie said as gently as she could, "you can't go alone. And I have to work."

  Nonna's face fell pathetically. "But I do want to go. I have not seen my family all together in so long."

  Stephen loomed behind Julie. "If Julie does not go, I'm afraid it's not possible, Nonna. The rest of us must spend long hours working on the wire. We might forget to remind you to take your medicine, or—"

  Nonna sniffed. "I am just an old lady that no one has time for," she said, burying her face in her hands. She seemed to deflate before Julie's eyes.

  "Nonna, that isn't true," Julie said, her throat tightening.

  "Yes, it is. For so long I have dreamed of having my family around me again, and now I cannot go. I might as well be dead."

  Stephen lifted his shoulders expressively.

  "But, Nonna," Julie pleaded, feeling as if the world were ganging up on her. She didn't want to go. She wasn't sure she was emotionally ready to be with so many Andrassys. They hadn't all been together since the accident.

  "You said we could go anywhere I wanted for vacation this summer," Nonna said, letting her hands fall away so that Julie could see her face crumpling like a paper bag. "And I want to go to Paul's farm. It's mean of you not to take me."

  "I thought you'd want to go to Key West, or on a cruise, or someplace nice," Julie said desperately. "I didn't think you would want to go to Peaceable Kingdom, Georgia, for pity's sake." Thank goodness, Nonna hid her face in her hands again. Julie couldn't stand her disappointed expression.

  "If only I could go to Georgia for a little while," Nonna said, with a surreptitious peek through her fingers to see what effect she was having on her granddaughter. "If only I could go for a week or two."

  Julie saw the peek through the fingers, but she wasn't strong enough to avoid being manipulated by this crafty woman. What if she refused to go with Nonna, and then Nonna did die without ever seeing her family together again? What if they didn't go, and Nonna made her life miserable forever afterward, blaming Julie because it was all her fault that Nonna had missed this longed-for reunion?

  Julie sighed. Years ago, she had made Nonna her responsibility. It appeared that there was to be no shirking it.

  "Tomorrow I'll ask my boss if he can spare me for a couple of weeks," she said in weary resignation.

  Nonna's dejection faded miraculously in two seconds.

  "That is what I hoped you would do," she said.

  "And I, too," Stephen said, daring to look hopeful.

  * * *

  Peaceable Kingdom, Georgia, lies northeast of Atlanta. It's the county seat, which means that a red-brick white-pillared courthouse sits smack in the middle of town, surrounded by a courthouse square where various town characters shelter under the tall, leafy trees and comment on the passing parade.

  One of the things they found to jaw about that summer was the Andrassy family.

  "You reckon them folks is gypsies?" one old geezer said to another after Albert Andrassy came out of the Lion & Lamb Grocery carrying a big watermelon, stowed it in the trunk of his car and drove away.

  The second man took time to transfer his tobacco from one cheek to the other.

  "Reckon they might be," he allowed.

  "I hear they got this big wire strung up out there at Claire Murchison's place."

  "You mean Claire Andrassy."

  "Well, Claire Murchison that was."

  "Old man Murchison be spinning in his grave if he knew a bunch of gypsies was camped out on his dairy farm."

  "Camped out? They're living in her house!"

  "You don't say."

  "And like I said, they got this big wire strung out across the far pasture."

  "Weren't that guy with the funny accent some kind of tightrope walker?"

  "Sure was. In a carnival or somethin'"

  "Mmm-mmm! I declare. A bunch of gypsies is settin' up to walk a tightrope across old man Murchison's dairy farm! What is the world comin' to, I wonder?"

  They settled down to contemplate that and other such important questions while somebody slapped a checkerboard down on a sawed-off nail keg, and somebody else dug the checkers out of the pocket of his denim overalls.

  Life would go on as usual in Peaceable Kingdom, Georgia.

  At about the time Junior Bodine was capturing Bobby Joe Cabbagestalk's last king, Julie drove her sedan onto the shady main street.

  "Which way now, Nonna?" she asked anxiously, seeing the town's only stoplight looming ahead.

  "Left, I think. No, right. Oh, I don't know. I don't see so well these days."

  Eva, riding in the back seat, consulted the GPS in her Blackberry. "Looks to me like you turn right, Julie."

  Julie negotiated the turn, then glanced in the rear-view mirror. "Where do I go now?"

  "You drive about five miles out of Peaceable Kingdom, then look for a subdivision called Andrassy Acres. Another mile down the road we'll see a rural mailbox with 'Andrassy' printed on it."

  "Nonna, are you all right?" Julie asked anxiously.

  "Of course. I'm going to see my family together again." Nonna smiled, and her eyes sparkled behind her glasses.

  They passed Andrassy Acres, a development of nice-sized brick houses on wooded plots of land bordering several small lakes. Eva craned her neck to look.

  "It's a pretty subdivision," she commented, facing front again.

  "It was smart of Paul," Julie said, "to think of selling off Claire's cows and dividing the land up for building houses."

  "He had a bit of luck, too," Eva reminded her. "If it hadn't been for that new semiconductor plant starting up about ten miles from here, there wouldn't have been a market for the lots. Also, he told me that retirees are moving here in droves."

  "Paul is one Andrassy who has found a way to earn a l
iving without risking his neck on the wire every day," observed Julie, unable to resist.

  "Oh, look," Eva said, eager to divert any argument with Julie about the wisdom of her own decision to go back on the wire. "There's the mailbox."

  The driveway to the house was long and curving, and it wound through gently rolling hills dotted with trees. It was hot in midafternoon, and the air was humid. Grasshoppers sprang out of the way of the car, and cicadas buzzed in the underbrush. Soon they saw in front of them a two-story house of time-blurred brick.

  "This is it!" Eva said excitedly.

  Julie never had time to worry about the reunion being awkward. They were caught up in the outpouring of people: Paul, swarthy and heavyset, and Claire, his wife, little and bursting with energy and excitement; bearded Albert, walking slowly along the dirt path from the barn; handsome, curly-haired Michael and his red-haired wife, Lynda, with their children, Tonia and Mickey; and little Gabrielle, the youngest cousin, shorn of her pigtails and all grown-up at twenty.

  And finally, when Julie thought he wasn't there, Stephen appeared suddenly.

  He had been down in the meadow testing the cable. When, on his way back, he heard the popping of gravel under the tires of the car, he had broken into a run, hoping that it really was Julie. As the car passed the path through the woods he saw Julie's profile, and he was filled with happiness. He had been so afraid that she'd decide not to come after all.

  Julie stepped out of the car, tossing her long ponytail back from her face in a characteristic gesture. She laughed at something Albert said, and the melodious strain of her laughter tumbled through the air. Stephen hurried toward her.

  "Let me help you with that," Stephen said, moving to take Julie's duffel from her hand.

  "No, I can—"

  "Juliana," he said teasingly, "you must learn to give in once in a while."

  She was so glad to see him again! "On little things," she said, letting the handle slip from her hand to his. "Only on little things."