The School of Beauty and Charm

by Melanie Sumner

  It is raining here. It is something like a “rain forest.” It was very hot in Atlanta and warm here but not hot. Last weekend we went to the lake with Mary MacDermott and her husband, Phil (I always call him Bill), who taught you math at Bridgewater. He said that it’s not unusual for female students to have a math block. I don’t know if that’s prejudiced or not. He wore his socks the whole time we were on the boat. Maybe next time we’ll invite her when he’s out of town. They are new members of our church but don’t come regularly.

  “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.” Psalms 53:1. Try to make some Christian friends in the circus who will be a good influence on our morals and not lead you down the wrong path (premarital sex). Do you work on Sundays? See if you can get to a church service. Stick your neck out there. Smile. Fix your hair and your makeup. You can do it! No one wants to be around someone who is down in the dumps. You were very unhappy at home. I know you don’t like me to tell you this, but you have hardened your heart against JESUS CHRIST YOUR LORD. I’m sending you a hairbrush that Agnes recommends for fine hair. I’m back with her now.

  Mary thinks it’s wonderful that you are studying to be a “clown.” People are driving from Atlanta and all over to buy MacMe clothes. Her prices have gone sky-high. I bought a pair of socks from her that you can have if you want them—I can’t afford anything else. I know you don’t like her style, but these are real cute. She asked me if you got your sense of humor from me, and I told her no, you aren’t very funny at home, just around other people. You get that from Henry I guess. He mopes around the house now that you are “away.”

  I shooed our owl away last night. We think he’s the one who ate Puff. Then I had a bad dream about a big bird carrying me away. Got up at three and went back to sleep on the couch. Don’t know if we’ll get another pet or not. They’re more trouble than they’re worth, but now that you aren’t in your room, the house feels empty. Found one of your argyle socks behind the dryer. Do you have the mate? I can send it to you. I’m taking a painting class, but I’m the dumbest one in class. I may quit. Henry doesn’t like the mess I make.

  Remember all the good qualities you have when you make an effort and all that you have to be grateful for. Have you spoken to anyone at Ringling Brothers about your ambitions, desires, and goals? You know who to talk to better than I do. Put your best foot forward! Have a positive attitude! Let me know if you would like me to send you Billy Graham’s tape on that (the one I got for Mother). She never listened to it. Please don’t take any drugs if someone offers them to you.

  Love,

  Mom

  P.S. I saw Drew’s mother yesterday at a shower for Barbara Groche’s daughter (the fat one) who is getting married to a piano player from Cartersville. Barbara tried to discourage that but failed. She said Drew is working hard at Harvard and is running for vice president of her class. Drew has always been outgoing and bubbly. Have you talked to her lately?

  P.P.S. Dr. Frommlecker married and divorced a nineteen-year-old Vietnamese girl. People say he was mean to her. I don’t know what happened to the secretary, I guess she ran out on him. It just about killed Shirley (the marriage) but she went to a spa in Asheville, North Carolina, and is much better now. Henry says she took an arm and a leg off Leo in the divorce. She looks great! Skinny and tan with a manila frost in her hair. I’ve gained ten pounds right around my middle. I’m old and fat— not young and cute like you!

  I HAD BEEN with the Arthur Reese Traveling show for three weeks and was no closer to being a clown than I was when I stepped off the bus in Myrtle Beach. Each day, I lowered my standards. In Asheville, North Carolina, I accepted the temporary position of donniker manager. Donniker is the carnie word for toilet.

  “I have ESP,” I confided to Arthur Reese. “Let me tell fortunes.”

  “Fortunes, eh?” He rubbed his goatee. “I’ve been considering a mitt camp, but Eva’s our man for that. People appreciate a foreign accent when they’re being lied to. Softens the blow. It’s like sitting in a big velvet chair at the bank.”

  “I could be her helper,” I offered.

  “What? Oh yes, the mitt camp. Dear, I would never allow you to step foot in a mitt camp.”

  “I can read minds. Eva is teaching me. Let me show you.”

  “Don’t you dare read my mind. That’s rude. No, you wouldn’t do as a fortune-teller. The best thing for you to do is run on back to college. Don’t dillydally around with Shakespeare and such. Study genetics. Cloning, the future is in cloning. Oh, the lawyers and shrinks will have their hands full! Imagine: You could kill yourself and still be alive. No end to the entertainment.”

  “How about Guess Your Weight and Age? I could do that.”

  “No, dear, you’d tell people the truth. We couldn’t have that.”

  I didn’t have the nerve to tell him I wanted to be a clown.

  One night after the show, while I was scrubbing a donniker, I looked into the sudsy blue water and thought about Lolli-bells. What compelled such a smart man to let people dump him in water night after night. They didn’t even know that he put ice in the water. It wasn’t even funny.

  Zane opened the door. “Why, it’s the donniker fairy!” He stepped behind me and put his hands on my breasts, kissing the back of my neck. “The door’s locked,” he whispered, taking the toilet brush out of my hands. “We have an hour before the show. Look at these fine hands—much too pretty for scrubbing. Oh, they’re cold! Let me warm them.” He unbuttoned his jeans and slid my hands into his crotch. I smelled the smoke in his hair, and the red wine he drank to clean the lighter fluid out of his body. His cock burned in my hands.

  “Why doesn’t Lollibells do a regular clown act?”

  “You wench. How can you talk about another man while I’m disrobing you?”

  “The dunking station is a cliché. It’s not even funny.”

  “Not even funny, says the donniker fairy.” He pushed me up against the cool concrete wall and looked into my eyes. His muscles were taut, and his breath was hot on my cheek. “Listen. Warren is a genius. He could do anything he wanted. Don’t believe that crap he tells you about dropping out of med school because he couldn’t pass chemistry. The man has a photographic memory. He reads a book, and Zap! It’s printed on his brain. You don’t find many bookworms who can do triple flips, flat on their feet, but Warren can. I’ve seen him jump off the merry-go-round, do a triple flip, and land in a handstand.”

  “Why doesn’t he do that at the ten-in-one?”

  “People have their reasons. Some of them are ugly reasons, and some of them are wrong reasons, but they’re reasons all the same. After a while, the reasons make a story. You know why Arthur Reese plays that Sinatra crap on the chaise volonte? Old Blue Eyes himself came to Arthur’s wedding. Art the rich old fart. He was in Who’s Who. Poured it all down the Arthur Reese Traveling Drain. Married some debutante who ran off with his brother—balled him right at the wedding, in the water fountain. She had her reasons.” Lightly, he stroked my nipples. “Some people might ask what a smart beautiful woman like yourself is doing in the john screwing a carnie.”

  “Am I screwing you?”

  “Oh, yes,” he said. “Very hard. Screwing me to death.”

  As we walked out of the donniker, I heard faint strains of “Send in the Clowns” coming from Arthur’s trailer. Tic Toc had convinced him that it was too depressing even for the chaise volonte. Ahead of us, Spencer, dragging his tie in one hand, kicked a beer can across the empty lot. One by one, lights clicked off; motors droned to a stop. The gates closed. Nothing was left of the screaming, surging, spending crowd except a few drunk girls, hanging around.

  “SO YOU WANT to be a clown,” said Lollibells, when I finally knocked on his door to ask for career advice. The garnet silk smoking jacket was tied around his slim waist, and he was smoking a Havana. “Please, have a seat. Fait comme chezvous.” He’d done a lot with his trailer. He’d pulled up the crappy brown carpet, painted the plywood floor a sof
t yellow, and hung the walls with tapestries. Somewhere, he’d snagged an oriental rug, which had to be folded in half to fit into the room. Shyly, I examined his book collection: Color Me Beautiful, Proustian Space, and the copy of King Lear I had loaned him. I was about to pull The Nine Lives of Marcel Marceau from the shelf when Warren pressed a smooth hand on my shoulder. Waving his cigar at the black-and-white portrait of Barbra Streisand on the wall, he said, “That is my mother.”

  “She’s beautiful. Your father?” I pointed to the picture next to Barbra—a photograph of Tony Curtis.

  “Uncle. My father left us when I was quite young. I didn’t know him. Now my sister—” he produced a framed photograph of Whoopie Goldberg—“she’s something else! We both decided to be black. A streak of rebellion. Please, have a seat.”

  I sat stiffly on the edge of his fouton, afraid to wrinkle the damask cover, but he sprawled across it, ashing his cigar into a wing tip oxford.

  “Marital problems?” he asked, plumping his pillow. “Is Smokey misbehaving? Or have you come to ask for a vial of my special Sunny poison? I brewed it up last month when she destroyed my curling iron. Never lend anything of value to these people. They have no respect. They live in abysmal squalor. Hair in sinks, skid marks on shorts, yesterday’s lunch under the fingernails. Tic Toc is filthy. Just filthy.” He ashed his cigar on the floor. “Now what is it you came to ask for, darling— money? Or have you decided that you’re an alcoholic?”

  I took a deep breath. “I don’t want you to think I’m competing with you—” He grimaced. “I admire your talent, Warren. You’re a clown, and a genius, and of course I’m not either one, not yet—the clown part anyway, I mean—do you have a drink?”

  “Splendid idea.” He poured cognac into two shot glasses. Exhaling a luxurious stream of blue smoke, he said, “Charlie Chaplin defined comedy as Knowing Who You Are and Where You Came From. He added that it has to be perfect. Perfect, that’s the key. In comedy, there is no room for error. Now in tragedy, you can fuck up all over the place. No one notices. Once you get a good boo hoo going, it’s hard to stop it. But to draw laughter from the fickle human heart—ah, that is a delicate operation. You strike me as the tragic type. Religious, almost moral.”

  “I’m an atheist.”

  “And I’m a straight white man. Don’t look so disappointed. If I may quote Reinhold Niebuhr, ‘Humor is a prelude to faith and laughter is the beginning of prayer.’ Now tell me about your deepest religious experience.”

  “Brief stint as a missionary. Second grade at Pruitt Elementary. I set out to convert Robert Robertson, who was electrocuted last year—double murder. After I converted him, he thought I loved him, so I gave him a bloody nose.”

  “Was he a black boy?”

  “No, he was white-trash white, like Sunny. Bluish skin, pinkish hair. One brown eye, one blue eye. Frazzled genes.”

  “Sunny Boudreaux! I thought we’d never get to her. Now, she should be a clown! Funny name, big funny feet, thinks she’s married to your lover.”

  “She’s deluded.”

  “You know what they say: There’s always three in the bed.”

  “You should try your wit on the dunking stand. Maybe you wouldn’t get so wet.”

  “Louise wants to hear something funny from the clown. Let’s see . . .” He rubbed his chin then snapped his fingers. “How about this one? Uncle Lollibells hears it from the grapevine that Madge washed Jungle Jim’s gorilla suit.”

  “Washed it?”

  “She and Jim used to be married. Joined the show together. Either her snake got tangled around his monkey, or his monkey got tangled around her snake, but they split. She wants nothing to do with the man, but when it’s laundry time, she’s after him with the clothes basket. You’d think she’d know by now that the man was born dirty. He’d fall down and die in a clean house. Eva swears his grandmother was an ape. I guess they do that in Italy. I wouldn’t know.” His cigar had gone out; he tapped it in the shoe and relit it. “But,” he said, taking a long drag, “that’s not the funny part. The funny part is . . .” He began to giggle. “The thing I wanted to tell you is . . . the gorilla suit shrank in the dryer. It’s a teeny weeny little gorilla now. Just your size. Arthur thinks it’s perfect. Of course it would also fit Sunny, but she’s busy being the Most Beautiful Teenager in America.”

  “I am not going to be Sunny’s goddamned gorilla!”

  “Disappointing! I thought you would be excited. But that’s right, you came here to be a clown, didn’t you?”

  “You fucking faggot! You did this. You shrank the suit. I hate you!”

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk. Why you wanna talk so ugly to Uncle Lolli-bells?” He put on a giant pout. “You wanting to call me a nigger, too, I bet. That be coming next. Ugly, ugly, ugly. And I thought you was a sweet girl. You sounding just like a big mean ugly old gorilla!” He burst into a cackle as I threw my glass against the wall and ran out of the room.

  In the morning, I wrote Florida and Henry a letter, informing them that I had been promoted.

  The gorilla suit was unbearably hot. It was as heavy as a shag carpet and so rough on the inside that I had to wear long underwear and a knit cap. Sweat poured down my face, back, arms, and legs. It was hard to move around, and when I fell down, as I did often at first, someone had to help me to my feet. The mask was too big and would shift around on my face until I was blind and choking for air. Inside the big hairy mitts my hands were useless.

  At dress rehearsal, Tic Toc tried to pep me up. “You’re a hell of a lot better in there than Jim was, even if you do trip now and then. Jim wasn’t quick. I’m not trying to criticize, but that’s the truth. Plus, he’d get to coughing. You ever heard a gorilla cough?”

  Behind the curtain, Sunny screamed, “Eat my shit! I did not take your razor. I bought this one with my own goddamned money, motherfucker.”

  Lollibells replied, “White trash, White trash, born and bred! Beat up yo mama, take yo daddy to bed! Welfare, welfare, give me some bread!”

  Sunny flung back the curtain and stomped on stage mumbling, “Mother-fucking coon.”

  Tic Toc smiled at the sight of her in her bikini and said, “If Sunny weren’t so goddamned beautiful, with every guy in the stands goggling at her, Jim would have tripped us up every time. Course nobody really looks at the gorilla.”

  Sunny took the compliment in stride. Straddling a stool beside Tic Toc, who sat cross-legged on the stage, she removed Lollibells’s razor from her pocketbook and began to shave her legs. Inches from Tic Toc’s nose, she began to work her bikini line. He was tortured.

  “I was just telling Louise that it ain’t so bad in the gorilla suit, once you get used to it,” he said, dipping his head to hide his red cheeks. “It might be good luck that Madge shrunk it in the dryer. Louise is a damn sight better at it than Jim, and I don’t mean to criticize.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” said Sunny, smoothly drawing the razor around her thigh.

  “What did you hear?”

  “Oh nothing.” She rubbed some lotion on the edge of her crotch. “I didn’t hear a word, did you, Rufus?”

  Tic Toc looked confused. After searching unsuccessfully for the right answer, he glanced at Sunny and said, “Don’t that sting?” Then, realizing that he’d been staring, he motioned toward the gorilla suit piled at my feet.

  “This here is a good one,” he said. “Some of ‘em stink pretty bad, but Arthur got this one brand new for ya.”

  “Whoops,” said Sunny. “Cat’s out of the bag.”

  Tic Toc pulled the gorilla mask over his head.

  “THE GORILLA IS a clown, Louise,” said Eva as she walked across the stage with me. “A very big hairy wonderful clown. “The gorilla is funny, no?”

  “I guess,” I said through the mask.

  “Your voice is muffled; speak out. Now, tell me what do a clown do to be funny?”

  Wrenching off the hot mask, I faced her and said, “He knows who he is and where he comes from.”<
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  “Same as Spidora! Spiders, gorillas, people, all the same. So, tell me. We practice.”

  She sat on a stool with her legs sprawled around her, while I stood before her, unable to sit down in my suit.

  “Who are you?”

  “I am a gorilla.”

  “No, no, no. Who are you . . . never the mind. Who is your mother? What does she teach you?”

  “Don’t wear white before Easter or after Labor Day, say your prayers before you go to bed in case you die in your sleep, and always ask to see the manager.”

  “Good. Good mother. Your papa?”

  “He taught me how to whistle.”

  From behind the tattered curtain, I heard Sunny snort.

  “Ignore her. Whistle.”

  I wet my lips. I tried Henry’s whistle for Puff, two long blasts followed by a short one, and then his whistle for Roderick—a referee’s staccato call for foul play. He did not whistle at ladies, at least not to my knowledge, but when he was really angry, he whistled hymns. I had a good start on “A Closer Walk with Thee” when Sunny stuck her head out the curtain and broke into raucous laughter.

  “Talent,” she said, snickering behind her hand. “Real talent. You’ve come a long way for a rube. Most of the little sluts Zane picks up never get past donniker cleaning. And look at you!”

  I saw myself in one of Tic Toc’s distorted mirrors: sweaty red face, hair on end, huge, bulky, hairy body.

  Then I looked back at Sunny’s pale rat face and screamed. It was a shrill rattle that hurt my own ears, burned my gut, razed my throat. And still, I hollered. Other carnies stepped up, poked their heads through the curtain, moved their mouths, gestured with their arms, and finally left. Only Eva remained on her stool, watching me with the dispassion of a music teacher. When I was finished, she nodded her head and said, “Now we are ready.”

  That night, the Most Beautiful Teenager in America was so beautiful and the Gorilla was so beastly that the rubes gave us a standing ovation. We drew such a crowd that Arthur decided to spend an extra night in Asheville before moving on to Johnson City, Tennessee.