The Trapeze Act

by Libby Angel

  Down came the Maserati posters off the walls.

  How my brother protested! But pointlessly. When he threw his Rubik’s cube at Leda’s head, she merely snatched it out of the air and cast it into the nearest garbage bag.

  Meanwhile, the owl in the banksia tree slept on.

  Our father came home one evening to find the few items of clothing he still possessed and that were not on his back sorted and neatly stacked on his side of the dressing room. (Much of his wardrobe still lay mouldering away in the garden.) He didn’t seem to notice the disappearance of his tyre-tread sandals (which my mother had never liked) and a few of his shirts. His most precious effects—his wig, his gown, his personal documents and most of his books—were safely stored in his office.

  If anything, the clean, bare surfaces around the house seemed to please him. He had never liked the lurid and germy obstacle courses of childrearing; to him, clutter was a disease. Please remove your shoes from under the table, he would say in a peeved way, as soon as I had slipped them off.

  Perhaps Leda had developed an interest in cleaning and tidying after all, he mused. How else to account for her appearance?

  But our father had no time to dwell on causes or consequences. Having barely emerged from his backlog of court appearances, he was preparing for the biggest case of his career. In a few weeks he would appear before the Privy Council in London. While the hand of Spartanism swept on around him, he carried on as usual, tying ties, reading briefs, and swearing at the traffic in the mornings.

  For a while at least, there was nothing more to be gained from pressing my ear to the wall at night than the drone of TV current affairs and the occasional pop of a wine cork.

  It wasn’t long, however, before even the most blinkered among us began reaching for familiar objects—which had been in the same place for as long as we had lived in the spaceship—only to find our hands flailing in thin air.

  Where are my running shoes? my father demanded one Saturday morning. Where is the transistor radio that had been on the bathroom shelf all these years? He wanted to listen to the news while he was shaving in the morning! And then—where the hell is the bottle opener?

  Great gaps grew inside the cupboards and drawers. Out went all but one of the saucepans, out went the electric kettle, the twelve volumes of children’s encyclopaedia. Out went most of the bed linen and silverware. A black hole in the shape of a bin bag threatened to swallow the familiar minutiae of our entire existence.

  All this stuff, my mother said, cramming load after load into the pale-blue Volvo, signifies nothing.

  Every night I checked to see that the pillowcase of journals was safely tied to the underside of my bed, the folding knife under my pillow.

  Once she ran out of things that fit into garbage bags and boxes, my mother ordered a Big Boy skip. Out went my doll’s house, the beanbags, the three-wheeled bicycle. Out went the microwave, the bar fridge, the patio furniture.

  Let the vultures pick over this lot at the dump, our mother said, bowling the greater part of our inheritance into the yawning metal behemoth in the driveway. There followed the sickening crunch of the fine bone china dinner set that had been in my father’s family for three generations. She even threw away the blackwood clock.

  A week later, a truck heaved its way up the hill, loaded the Big Boy onto its back then groaned away under the tremendous weight of it all.

  My mother clapped her hands together. Zo, she said. There goes history.

  That night the boobook owl awoke, spread its spotted wings, and took flight, disappearing forever into the irrevocable kingdom of the past.

  My mother only nodded her sparsely haired head and said, It is.

  So that I wondered who would be next.

  The following Friday evening, with my father late at work and my brother supposedly at Lloyd’s, I accompanied my mother to her rehearsal at the R Theatre, a small venue located on the main road that led to the old port. The play was to open in two weeks.

  While we waited in the foyer for the other cast members to arrive, my mother pulled the script and the seven silk veils from her bag and started running through her lines.

  I will not stay. I cannot stay, she began.

  I leafed through the pages of the script looking for the scene. Outside, a few drops of rain, the first in months, fell out of the sky, soon followed by a deluge like a thousand fists on the tin roof.

  My mother carried on regardless, though I could barely hear what she was saying.

  Wait, I urged her, scrabbling through the pages.

  Ignoring me she railed on, against the Jews, the Greeks, the Egyptians, the Romans…

  I looked up to see my father knocking at the glass doors of the front entrance, glistening wet like a shark, in his suit and the pair of house slippers Kingston and I had given him for Father’s Day several years before and never seen since. His mouth made a fury of shapes that read, Open the bloody door.

  I pointed towards the side entrance through which we had entered the theatre, while Leda rattled on: How good to see the moon! She is like a little piece of money…

  Gilbert squelched towards us, shedding water all over the carpet. You won’t believe what the little prick’s done now! He shouted over the rain.

  Two cast members, a man and woman of middle age, had followed him into the foyer and stood behind him, studying his moves, nodding their heads as if he were part of the production.

  Ah the prophet! My mother continued. He of whom the Tetrach is afraid?

  How the fuck am I supposed to pack? My father interrupted her. All my clothes have gone, the only suitcase I have has gone, everything has gone. The whole bloody house has been cleaned out! Half the roof is missing for Christ’s sake…

  My mother’s eyebrows rose like miniature curtains. Speak again! She said, turning to look at my father. Speak again, Jokanaan, and tell me what I must do.

  My flight leaves in less than two hours, my father replied. You can start by giving me a lift to the fucking airport!

  Leda’s seven veils danced across the gearstick and onto my father’s lap as we sluiced along the old port road towards the airport, windscreen wipers on full speed.

  Do you think you can confine your theatrics to your own seat? My father snapped, swiping the fabric away.

  It wasn’t me, my mother said. I didn’t touch the roof.

  When at last we reached the international terminal, she swung the car into a No-Standing zone to let my father out. Leaving the car door open, he ran through the automatic doors, still dripping, ticket and passport in hand, without looking back.

  My mother caught my eye in the rear-vision mirror. You could sit in the front, she smirked, but the seat’s completely saturated.

  Turning into the driveway, it first appeared the front door of the spaceship had been left wide open, but it soon became apparent that all the doors and windows had actually been removed. As my father had stated, a great deal of the roof tiling was missing as well.

  Inside, we discovered the house had been almost entirely gutted. The beds, the piano, the dining table—all had vanished, along with the light fittings, the taps, the bath, the basin, the oven and washing machine. Anything not bolted down, even some things that were, had gone, right down to the toilet seat. There was no electricity or gas.

  It was tempting to blame my mother, of course—only, her surprise seemed genuine.

  Zo, she sighed, looking around in wonder, sweeping across the bare concrete floors, into and out of rooms, the scarves trailing behind her in the dark.

  The scenario reeked of my brother’s handiwork, the grandiose absurdity of it, if only because he was my mother’s son.

  I did not want to see what else was missing.

  Ma! I started, but I had nothing to say. I only wanted to fill the void, to know that I was not alone.

  Having completed her inventory, my mother stood before the paneless windows, a queen surveying her dominion. The lights of the godforsaken town glittered on
the plains below.

  It’s getting cold, she said. Let’s find some wood and light a fire.

  We carried on as best we could, or at least I did, while my mother remained unperturbed. She made no moves to contact the gas or electricity companies to have the power restored. She bought candles to see by after dark, and a bucket, preferring to haul water up from the rainwater tank rather than replace the taps. At night we slept on the floor in sleeping-bags borrowed from the neighbours, who knew better than to ask questions.

  I didn’t go to school that week, and, while I missed some of the other girls, I was at least saved the humiliation of having to explain what had happened to my uniform, books and bag. In the evenings I went with my mother to her rehearsals.

  For breakfast we had bread and cheese, and on the way home from the theatre we stopped at the Lebanese takeaway that was set up in a caravan in the local car park. We ate tabouli and hummus out of the tin-foil containers with plastic cutlery, which I saved in anticipation of my brother and father coming back.

  At first we did not mention my brother, and, in the absence of anything familiar, I even missed him a little. We couldn’t speak to my father because we had no telephone.

  Then one evening, after my father, in London, had contacted Mr Gore requesting his assistance, my mother and I arrived home to find the contents of the house laid out on the tennis court, the tiles back on the roof, the windows and doors replaced.

  There was the rifle in its greasy sack, resting in the armchair like a man.

  I soon located a box containing items from my room. Among my few remaining books, clothes and stuffed animals, and the Bugs Bunny alarm clock I had kept since I was five, were the pink satin pillowcase of journals and the ivory-handled folding knife.

  My brother, though, was still nowhere to be seen.

  Zo, my mother said, once we had taken everything that could be carried between us inside, I suppose we should bail him out of whatever situation he has gotten himself into.

  In the morning we drove to the local police station.

  You will have to move your car immediately, the policeman at the front desk demanded of my mother: you’ve parked in a Police-Vehicles-Only zone.

  He could find no record to suggest my brother had been recently apprehended.

  We drove around the block in silence while my mother thought about what to do next.

  He’ll be lording it up in some hotel, she said after a couple of laps, lounging around watching television, ordering room service, avoiding paying the tab for as long as possible, praying we rescue him before they kick him to the kerb. Then my mother made a plan. There were only so many hotels in the town. We would start at the cheapest joint and work our way up from there.

  It didn’t take long.

  Our first stop was the Lodge, a once-palatial hotel turned rooming house with crumbling façade, its front doors permanently chocked open onto the street.

  Don’t tell your father I brought you here, my mother said, as she led me through the dank halls, and try not to step on any needles.

  Our enquiries were met with blank faces, pinned eyes, unresponsiveness. On the landing, we passed a man sitting in a desk chair, his neck folded back, his mouth open, the tongue rested on the lower palette as if to receive communion.

  Watch your step, my mother warned me, pointing to a pool of vomit on the stair.

  On the first floor, a woman’s head popped out like a hand puppet from around the edge of a doorframe. My mother nodded in an empathetic way, as if she may have been familiar with her.

  We ventured up to the second floor and knocked on several doors, but nobody answered. A strangled sound like the cry of a chicken came from the floor above.

  None too soon, my mother steered me back towards the stairwell.

  Let’s go, she said. If he’s on the third floor he’s either a corpse or a lost cause.

  The Hotel Hotel was our next port of call, just a few doors up the street. It was here we found my brother, posing as Mr Gary Gore, watching daytime TV.

  Two weeks later, having won his landmark case, my father returned home, his spirits greatly improved. The roof had been repaired, the carpet relaid, the curtains rehung, the few remaining items of furniture restored to their places, the beds back in the bedrooms. The piano was tuned, the single saucepan was set back in the kitchen cupboard. The rifle was back on the top shelf of the wardrobe. The gas, electricity and telephone were reconnected. My brother and I had returned to school.

  But the age of bring-a-plate tennis parties had long passed, the pecan flans, the Gruyere cheese, the French champagne. No more did visitors in white shoes clamour at our door; they were no longer invited.

  Our cupboards were like Mother Hubbard’s. We continued to dine from the Lebanese takeaway. And eat tuna out of tins.

  Without quilts and blankets stored beneath it, the built-in bench seat in the TV room made a hollow sound when I sat down. There was no more Fred and Ginger, no Bogie and Bacall. Out of habit I stared at the empty space where the screen had once been.

  Learn to play the piano, my mother said with a royal wave. Climb a stobie pole. Read about the pillaging of Troy.

  There was no more turntable, no slim wall-mounted speakers, no records with covers depicting chimneystacks or cows.

  We had only the transistor radio, reinstated in the bathroom, so that every morning while he shaved, my father could listen to news about the arms race, sometimes emerging with a small piece of tissue stuck to a nick on his face.

  At night I slept as before with the folding knife under my pillow. And, having regained possession of the journals, I continued to read them, even as they fell apart like ashes under my gaze.

  I lay under my single blanket, listening to the rain on the roof and the pine tree branches scratching the window. I held my breath, waiting for the bomb to fall.

  …

  ice, rock, moon. I lie shivering on the earth

  …

  with only the faithful camel, Mrs Smith, beside me.

  …

  through stench and gritted teeth

  …

  I am laid up, a helpless being, for I have gradually sunk under the attack of scurvy which has so long hung upon me.

  …

  Still the sand hills ripple, the sun hammers down, and the sky is clear as ether.

  …

  I could calmly lay my head on the desert, never to raise it again.

  …

  yet I know what I saw; the scat of a mammoth, the tracks.

  …

  and every description of shell with the teeth of sharks and other animals found in the upper parts of the bed.

  …

  What, I will ask, am I to conclude from these facts? It is difficult to lay down on paper all that crowds my mind on this subject.

  …

  for, as I ascended, I saw a magnificent stretch of water in the distance. The pelicans, ducks, seagulls and cockatoos had all returned from the North. I had unwittingly followed the line of migration.

  …

  What would I not give for the powers of those swift wanderers of the air? Parrots, calodera, pigeons, crows, etc., all made that solitude ring with their wild notes.

  …

  I watched, astonished, as an elephant—Loxodonta africanas—walked into the sea, the sagacity of the ancient, the innocence of a child in her eyes, and in the centre of her forehead, a large emerald.

  …

  with gleaming tusks, embroidered silk robes edged in tassels, and a jewelled head-dress.

  …

  ears undulating in the moonlight as she waltzed to the rhythm of the spheres, her feet as big as dinner plates, moved with practiced grace.

  …

  until at last the dance unwound

  …

  she reared up on her hind legs

  …

  bathed in the shallows, using her trunk to blow water over her back. Fishes flashed in the evening light and nibbled at her toes. Turtl
es hovered near.

  …

  until the sky was vibrant with dawn.

  …

  A tableau of kangaroos was arranged on the banks. Even the cockatoos held their din, while the camel stood beside me, awed.

  …

  she raised her trumpet to the Heavens and filled the hollow sky with praise

  …

  the sun swelled over the hills, until, at last, the Beast ambled away.

  …

  and I wonder

  19

  ON THE opening night of Salome my mother refused to wear the wig the costumier had sourced for her, or any head covering at all.

  Two days later a review penned by the sole arts reviewer in the town appeared in the local press. Leda’s dramatic abilities were as impressive as always, he wrote, but her physical appearance was a distraction. If the production had intended to make a statement on the nature of beauty and femininity it was lost on yours truly.

  After reading the review my mother rolled her eyes and flung the newspaper aside. She would pay no heed to the opinions of halfwits. The only reason she refrained from cancelling my father’s subscription, she said, was because we needed the paper to light the fire.

  Whereas once my mother’s beauty had startled crowds, now, when they looked upon the truth of her, the townspeople scuttled into corners. In shops or on the street they stared at her with curiosity or pity, then, when she boldly met their eyes, turned away, ashamed.

  My father said nothing, even as my mother’s head became as smooth as a newborn’s. Neither my brother nor I mentioned it, whether because it was too trivial or too fearsome a subject, I can’t say.

  On the closing night of the play, after the performance, my mother left her seven veils on the dressing table, gathered her few belongings into a string bag and walked out of the theatre without saying goodbye to any of the cast or crew.

  She was finished with magic and metaphor, she said, and pretence of any kind.

  One night several weeks later, I go to bed as usual, the knife under my pillow. I read the journal fragments, its shivered sentences, then fall asleep.