Circus

by Claire Battershill

  The bagels turned out to be doughy in the centre even though they were toasted and crispy on the outside. Edna loved them. Her bagel was soft and seemed as if it could be chewed forever if you wanted, like a mouthful of cloud. This was no ordinary baked good. This was a kind of ecstasy. Calvin claimed he found them a heavy, unpleasant texture.

  “So, okay, once we’re done here we’ll head to Central Park, then we need to have late afternoon drinks, and then we have to get gifts for the girls,” she continued, pausing only when he reached over and wiped the corner of her cream-cheesy mouth with his thumb.

  Edna has been keeping track of the little boy as he wanders back and forth across the departure lounge, trying to get a closer look at the bird. The sparrow’s hops become increasingly frantic as it makes its way towards the corner of the room near the airline desk. Who could blame it? In the low-ceilinged room, it is well and truly trapped. Although each departure lounge is a separate glass box nestled beside other glass boxes on either side of a long open corridor, there are no windows to the outside to show the planes taking off or the light changing in the open sky. The most scenic view Edna has is of the Dunkin’ Donuts on the other side of the secure area. The miracle of man-made flight was just beyond the exterior wall and her only view was of unreachable French crullers?

  Alec approaches with his small, clumsy version of stealth, walking exaggeratedly on his tiptoes. As he gets closer, the bird hops farther away, and finally hides behind a metal garbage can. Now down on his belly, Alec crawls underneath the seats to spy on the bird, like a soldier infiltrating an enemy camp, and from where Edna sits she can see the bird twitch its head and look right at him for a second. As the boy crawls nearer, inching along the carpet towards her feet, Edna places her hand almost protectively on the small cardboard box sitting on the seat next to hers.

  Cancelling the return leg of his journey was the most complicated thing she’s had to do so far. The airline had refused to give her a refund because by the time she remembered to deal with his ticket there were less than 48 hours before the flight. Most of the other paperwork could wait, they said, until she got back to Canada. She was surprised to find that cremated human remains were an allowable carry-on baggage item. The airline’s policy made sense, she supposed. It could seem crass to relegate ashes to the hold. Still, what a relief to find them listed on the website as a permissible item, alongside strollers and small musical instruments. At least the cremation had been clear. Had been discussed. His wishes written down for the future. For a future more distant than now. When she read the guidelines on the airline’s website, she felt as though they had been written just for her: anticipating her need for instructions and rules so that she didn’t have to make any more phone inquiries. Sure, the real reason they listed it was probably to avoid having their employees deal with melt-downs. Not that she would have conducted herself that way. The airline staff were not to blame. She hadn’t told the girls anything at all yet. How could she do that over the phone? And it wouldn’t change anything, anyway. You can only do what you can do.

  After their bagels, they went to Central Park to take a walk, and Edna felt the familiar disappointment of the week set in. It was a park, and parks were lovely, but it was really nothing remarkable as far as she could tell, unless what was notable about it was that the trees were able to survive in the smog of Manhattan. Like in any park, there were teenagers kissing in the bushes, and there were young mothers with running strollers jogging endless loops around the place. There were ice cream stands and little plaques explaining the flowers. She was sick of nature. They had the best of that at home: show-off sunsets and old-growth cedars. And those rowboats! How ridiculous.

  “Maybe we should go and row one,” he said.

  Edna laughed. “What? Just so we can take pictures and the girls can make fun of us later? You’re just trying to mess with the itinerary.”

  “Touché,” said Calvin, pulling her in close and rubbing her shoulder.

  All the activities she’d planned for them to do had taken on a kind of sarcastic edge, as though everything Tourist Edna had once earnestly wanted to do was suddenly a kind of parody. As they continued walking along the gravel path beside the lake, passing up the rowboats, Calvin nodded his head and rolled his eyes in the direction of a couple sitting under a tree with a picnic packed in mason jars. The twenty-something lovebirds were wearing almost identical clothes: skinny jeans, plaid shirts, and large black plastic glasses. There was a fedora on the grass beside the boy. When they were a safe distance away, Edna and Calvin started in on their saved-up observations for each other.

  “Do you think we’re hipsters? Or are we a little too old for that?”

  “Definitely not.” He stopped and kissed her on the cheek. “I don’t get the whole hat thing.”

  She examined his faded slim jeans and his brown glasses and his hoodie. He really did dress like a hipster. Or they dressed like him. Edna ran her hands down her own belted sundress. She, on the other hand, would need some work, was not quite on the right side of cool. “I don’t know. I think maybe we liked all the things that hipsters like before that kind of person really existed. They seem to be affecting what we felt for real. I do love how they’re comfortable wearing animal tails under their jackets and disfiguringly large glasses. None of this worry about what’s flattering.”

  “You’d look cute in a tail. I’ll get you one.” He tapped her cheekily on the bum and his hand lingered so that she could just barely feel it. What she wanted was for him to reach up her skirt. No level of planning could prepare her for this need. Forget rowboats; let’s just do this thing. Go for a roll in the hay, maybe even get arrested.

  But instead of grabbing him and pressing him up against a tree and showing him what she really wanted, she looked up at his big, green eyes and gave the string on his hoodie a mischievous tug. “Where would you find one?”

  Alec’s sister has opened up her carry-on, and neon bracelets and tank tops spill out onto the floor like an endless multi-coloured scarf from a magician’s sleeve. In this way she is like Edna’s own girls, who seem to want to take up as much space as possible. She twirls her necklace around her fingers and stares up at the clock. “Seriously, what is going on?”

  “It’s just a delay,” her mother replies. “I’m going to try to email Grandma and hopefully she’ll get it on her phone. You know what she’ll be like, out there at Arrivals with her cute little sign for us, like we wouldn’t recognize her.” The mother swipes her finger across the screen of her iPhone. “You bought too much stuff, Lily,” she chastises. “I don’t even know how you did that in two hours at Filene’s. Are you going to be able to close that suitcase again?”

  “But we have receipts for everything so we’re fine, right? We might just have to pay some taxes or something?”

  “We should declare it all,” her mother says, quieter this time, “and you can take Alec’s share of the customs allocation. We’ll just put the upper limit, I guess. Seems like you basically just bought the maximum. That’s honest, in a way. The maximum.”

  Lily reaches down to untie her new Converse sneakers. “Hey, there’s the bird again!” Lily follows the sparrow with her bright blue liquid-lined eyes. “I hope it doesn’t shit on us.” She pulls out her phone and holds it up, seeking a signal.

  “Language, Lily. How many times?” The mother pauses. “Come to think of it, I’ve never considered robin poo before. Only pigeons. Or seagulls. Do you think it’s smaller?”

  “Probably.” Lily inhales loudly and exhales through her teeth, making a whistling sound. The bird chirps back.

  “Not a robin!” says Alec. “Robins are fatter and their tummies are red. Remember they had pictures in the bird book? Remember? Remember, Mum? Remember?”

  “Okay, Birdface. Show off your expert knowledge,” says Lily.

  “Mum,” says Alec, “why does she always have to be mean? Mum? Why?”

  “She doesn’t,” says their mother, glaring at L
ily.

  There is a colossal snort, and everyone in the lounge turns to look at Lily’s dad, who is sleeping with his mouth wide open. They’ve been waiting for nearly two hours now, and Edna’s interest in the family has not abated. She has lost sight of the bird, but as she turns around to take the measure of the room she knows there’s nowhere for the sparrow to go. How did it get in here in the first place? Edna traces the bird’s journey through the airport as though it were just another passenger, and sees it coming in the front sliding doors. Through the check-in gates. Entering the secure area through the metal detector (not making it beep, of course). Riding down the escalator. Flying through the airless tunnels with their moving walkways. Past the domestic departures area and up three escalators, then in through the door to the lounge, where it must have landed, exhausted, on the carpet. Perhaps it got here by tucking itself away in a pocket or by perching on a rolling suitcase. Unless this is one clever bird, able to actually retrace its hops back through the lounge door, it’s going to be stuck here with the rest of them.

  “Excuse me.” When she turns around again Alec is tapping her on the knee.

  Before he can ask his question, his mum is up and apologizing to her and grabbing Alec by the wrist, dragging him back to their seats.

  “Mum, I was just going to ask if we could borrow one of her puzzles so that you could do one to calm your nerves.”

  “People don’t like to be bothered at times like these, Alec. Leave the nice lady alone.” Alec’s mum sits back down, still mouthing “I’m sorry” at Edna, and presses her index fingers to her temples. “Thanks for thinking of me, though, Al. That was a nice idea.”

  “It’s fine,” Edna starts to say, surprised at the hush of her own voice. She realizes she hasn’t spoken out loud since she woke up this morning. Checked in online. Put her suitcases through the X-ray at security. Alec doesn’t hear her. He sits and swings his legs beneath the chair since they don’t reach the ground. Now both his sister and his dad are asleep.

  “Mum, they’re taking a napportunity,” says Alec, and from the self-satisfied way he says it, Edna can tell that it’s a family joke. Dad takes any napportunity he can get.

  Alec’s mother is now pulling an Edna and watching the security guards who are bickering by the airline desk. Edna hopes that’s not how obvious she looks when she’s living vicariously.

  Alec is up and walking around again, searching for the bird. She considers getting up and helping him look, but she shouldn’t leave her luggage, especially the box, unattended.

  Alec suddenly stops and crosses his small legs theatrically. “I need to pee!”

  “Congratulations, genius,” Lily mumbles, her eyes still closed, “you’re aware of your own human needs.”

  “Don’t listen to her, Alec.” The mum stands up and walks over to grab his hand. “It’s good to think of it before we’re in the air.”

  Alec sticks out his tongue at his sister and he and his mum follow the sign to the washroom.

  Before Edna left on the trip, the boy from Brooklyn gave her tips for navigating the airport: “Just follow the signs. They have very good signage. The right kinds of signs are everywhere.” He hadn’t been able to explain to her what might happen if you were delayed like this. There was no sign to tell her how to spend these hours. Central Bus Station, yes. Baggage Claim, yes. Currency Exchange, yes. But why couldn’t there be a sign for where she was now?

  They carried on walking past the Diana Ross Playground where small children were learning to swing on the monkey bars, their patient teenaged babysitters holding tight to their chubby middles as their hands curled around the yellow metal bars.

  “I miss the girls,” said Calvin, watching the latest monkey bar student take her turn. “Now, but also when they were that age.”

  “Me too,” said Edna. “Emma was so good at monkey bars. She’d have swung herself up and be walking on top of the bars by now.”

  “And Liz’d be worried about her, standing below like a spotter with her arms open wide.”

  “Too funny. They’ve always been sweet to each other.” Edna watches as a small boy reaches his hands up to the sky, too little to quite grab onto the bars. “Okay, love, let’s go. We don’t want to miss our reservation!”

  “Just give me a sec,” he said, having moved on to reading a biography of Diana Ross etched in stone beside the entrance to the playground. “Just need a break here. You go on ahead. I’ll catch up.”

  Edna glanced at her watch and realized that if they didn’t hurry, all they would have done the whole day was stroll through Central Park and eat bagels, so she started to walk more briskly. She wanted to make sure that they’d be able to get to Tavern on the Green for a cocktail. She’d read in the guidebook that there were often celebrities there, so it was on her must-do list.

  As she speed-walked along, pumping her arms, she looked up at the canopy of leaves above the path, at the branches grown into one another, their separate limbs blurring into a thick ceiling of foliage. She had read on centralparknyc.com that there were over 21,000 trees in the park, coniferous and deciduous species alike. She had even browsed the Tree Database in preparation for their day and there were sample photographs in a folder in her purse. Above her the bark was gruff and black and the leaves a pure spring green.

  “American Elm,” she said aloud, before turning back to see if Calvin had taken the hint and was catching up to her.

  No, he had fallen back. Fallen.

  She’s disappointed when the family of four starts to pack up their things to catch their plane. The dad rouses from his snuffling slumber. He looks around for a moment, as if he’s noticing the lounge for the first time, and then stands and hoists Alec, who lets out a squeak of surprise at being lifted, up over his shoulder. The mum and Lily gather their personal belongings. For some reason, Edna had assumed that they were waiting for the same flight she was. But of course there would be other delays and there would be gate changes. Why on earth should they have anything to do with her? She has been watching them without worrying about whether they’d notice. Because they won’t. She knows this. They won’t look at her. Maybe if she was wearing a tail … No. They still wouldn’t look. They seem sweet in their impatience with each other. The way the wife nudged her husband to wake him without taking her eyes off the kids. She tells herself to stop. This is not the place. Not the place to be thinking about his snoring, how quiet the hotel room had been without it. You can only do what you can do. The little boy seems worried about the bird with the kind of intensity that only children or activists worry about animals. But she has been eavesdropping, and she has a terrible habit of not only listening in but staring as well. It had embarrassed Calvin, her lack of subtlety.

  “One of these days,” he’d say, “someone is going to notice you.” Used to say.

  But how could she not pay attention to everyone else when she was on her own? She isn’t ready for it all to be real yet. Isn’t, in fact, prepared to even get on the plane. More to the point, to descend, to land. To walk down the gangplank to the Arrivals terminal, to see the girls waiting amidst all the drivers and anxious lovers at the gate. To say … what? They would have spent these last few days picturing her and Calvin in New York as she herself had once done: Just imagine! Mom and Dad in front of the Empire State Building, or rowing in Central Park. She should have bought the Yankees jersey for Emma. But there hadn’t been enough time. If only she could just stay inside this other family’s life for a little while longer. Or take herself back further, to the two of them standing in the park by the rowboats. But she isn’t in either of those situations. Staring up at the fluorescent airport lighting, she feels as if she has fallen out of time altogether. Isn’t it funny, she thinks, that this suspended animation is as much a part of life as every other day. Somehow, waiting here feels like it shouldn’t count towards her time in the world, like it should come for free. Edna is a thoughtful purchaser. A keeper of receipts. She should be able to return these minut
es and get her time back. Their time.

  She closes her eyes for a moment too long and feels her seat begin to wobble. She might lean to the side and not be able to right herself.

  She should do something, maybe get back to the puzzle, but sudoku is strange. Why a numbers game with no arithmetic? She counts instead, first in integers, then through the primes, then the squares and square roots, cubes and cube roots. What is the cube root of nine? Too easy. “Comprehensive” had been the doctor’s word for the stroke. Like a study guide. An exam. Like the lessons Edna gives on trigonometric functions. In the corner of the room, the bird takes off: a shock of wings. It balks and flutters at the glass divider between one departure gate and another. Like that. Just like that.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  To everyone at McClelland & Stewart and Random House of Canada, especially my editor, Anita Chong, for giving so much time, energy, and enthusiasm to the book. To the CBC Literary Prizes and the Canada Council for the Arts, to everyone at PEN International and PEN Canada, and to the Canadian Authors Association. To Nelson Adams for hosting the Random House team at the Massey College Press, and to Andrew Roberts, who came up with the inspired letterpress-style book design.

  To the wonderful colleagues and students with whom I’ve had the pleasure of working over the past few years at the University of Toronto, the University of Reading, the Ontario College of Art and Design University, and the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. To Massey College, where much of this book was written. To John Fraser and Elizabeth MacCallum, for their unending generosity.

  To my dear friends, especially those who cheered my writing on in various ways: Adele Allen, Tony Antoniades, Richard Bedell, Charlie Boss, Peter Buchanan, the Cherries, Alex Chester, Laura Christensen, Jimmy Clowes, Fiona Coll, Sarah Copland, Amy Cullen, Kellie Davis, Michael Dewar, James Dufton, Lindsey Eckert, Sarah Fornace, Ingrid Frater, Paul Furgale, Jeremy Hanson-Finger and everyone at Dragnet and the EW Reading Series, Letitia Henville, Eneli Holmes, Heather Jackson, Heather Jessup, Katy Knight, Thea Loberg, George Logan, Susan MacDonald, Jennifer McDermott, Nick Mount and the Lit for Our Time 2012–13 crew, Dan Newman, Shona Patterson, Rebecca Payne, Alex Peat, Harriet Phillips, Chelsea Phipps, Erin Piotrowski, Laura Potter, Zani Showler, Anne Simpson, Sean Starke, Robyn Uhl, Tom Wells, Michael Winter and the chip butty crowd, and Terence Young and the Writing 12 class at SMUS. To Aidan, Marjorie, and Gráinne O’Hogan for welcoming me into their family. To Jim Battershill and Dennis Barnard, who live on in these stories.