Slightly nauseous, I continue through the hallway. I throw the four-legged Myrtle Corbin a nervous smile as I pass her, anxious to get on. Perched beside Myrtle is Violetta, a woman with no legs and no arms. I try not to stare and continue toward the exit. I pass the bearded lady, the tattooed lady, the fat lady, and Scalo the seal boy. One room sits barricaded and guarded by a barker, the sign on the door declaring the spectacle inside suitable for “men only.”
Just before the exit, a barker stands and advertises a show. “Five minutes,” he calls. “Come see our world-famous contortionists!”
I shiver ever so slightly as I pass him with a polite denial, and a woman standing nearby grins sympathetically. “You find it eerie, too? My husband and kids are in there, but I can’t bear to watch.”
I purse my lips. “It’s not that,” I admit. To spill my thoughts to a stranger is unlike me, but I am filled to the brim with secrets. My feelings now are the only piece of me safe to share. “The whole thing feels exploitative. Those poor girls—Pip and Flip? And Myrtle? Hardly older than your kids, maybe?”
The lady shrugs. “Perhaps. But what other fifteen-year-old girl could make her own living? God knows Myrtle couldn’t without the circus.”
I hesitate. The lady is right. Girls are hard-pressed to find real work as it is. I cannot imagine the difficulty of doing so with a set of extra legs.
The lady shrugs. “Way I see things, the circus is a haven for people like that. Yeah, maybe it’s dark and dirty and who knows how they’re treated, but they’d be left to die anywhere else.”
She’s not wrong. They would be left to die the same way sweet Margaret would have been. “But still.” I shake my head. “They shouldn’t have to come here. This shouldn’t be their only option.” Again, I’m thinking of Margaret. Of Cybil, and how she should have been granted a chance at Bellevue just as Margaret is here at Luna Park. And maybe I’m thinking of myself, all too aware of how hard it is for a woman to support herself in this world. “They should be allowed to work in the real world.”
The woman shifts uncomfortably. She speaks with less confidence now. “It’s not the circus’s fault they aren’t able to do anything else.”
“No.” I shake my head. “I only wish we could force the rest of the world to see these people, too.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Stella Wright, December 1950
Christmas break is a somber affair without my mom. Jack’s mother is a vibrant character, a cross between a movie star and a suffragist—she left Jack’s dad, a drunk, two decades ago and has made a way for herself and Jack ever since. I love her for having raised Jack to love a woman who is as uninhibited as a man. But I miss the steadying presence of my own mother. While Jack and his mom laugh beside the fireplace on Christmas Eve, I steal away to the guest room and pull out my mom’s worn copy of “The Gift of the Magi.” She always left it here so we could read it over Christmas, a tradition born when I was a child. Mom would sit in the armchair by the fire, and I would sit cross-legged and eager at her feet. Father, a number of years older, was never comfortable on the floor, but he sat beside me those nights. After Dad died five years ago and I met Jack at Vassar, Jack took that place beside me. Together, we listened to the story of Della and Jim: Della who sells her hair for Jim’s watch chain, and Jim who sells his watch for Della’s hair combs. I loved the story before I was old enough to understand it, when all that mattered to me was the soothing cadence of my mother’s voice as she read the prose like poetry. In primary school, I started getting suspicious. “Why does the writer say they were wise?” I asked my mom. “They can’t even use their gifts.” To me, that sounded like stupidity. But Mom smiled and stroked my hair.
“Stella, baby girl, it’s not about the gifts. It’s about the sacrifice.”
“What’s sacrifice mean?”
Mother hesitated, then slipped from her chair to sit on the floor in front of me. “Love,” she said. “Sacrifice means love.”
Now, I curl up on the guest bed and read the story through. Tears drip from my eyes onto the pages, and I can’t tell whether they’re tears of joy or of sadness.
Jack finds me wrapping my hair around my fingers twenty minutes later. He sees the book in my lap and smiles. “Thinking of selling your hair for me?”
“I would,” I tell him, forcing a smile. “But I was thinking I’d sell it—and anything else, everything else—to get my mom back. Even just for one night.”
Ever patient, Jack holds me as I sob. When I start to quiet, he strokes my hair the way my mom did so many years ago. “What do you say we start our own tradition?”
“Like?”
“Cookies for Santa?”
“That’s not very creative, Jack.”
“So?” He shrugs. “It’s fun.”
“Okay.” I untangle myself from his arms and stand. “You’re right. Let’s do it.”
Two hours later, we’ve baked and devoured two dozen cookies. Jack’s mother is asleep in the guest bed, and Jack and I lie with full stomachs in our own.
“That was even better than making cookies for Santa,” I say. “He gets enough cookies, anyway.”
“You deem it a worthy tradition, then?”
I laugh. “Yes.”
“Our kids will love it.”
I stiffen. “We don’t have kids.”
“We will, though.” Jack inches closer to me. “My mom asked about it again this afternoon. ‘When are you giving me some grandchildren?’ ” He imitates his mom’s voice exactly, but I don’t laugh.
“I’m tired, Jack.” I turn away. Having children would force me to accept that I don’t have a job anymore to keep me out of the house. And Jack and I . . . we aren’t ready. Not with his fears and episodes. I suspect that it’s only the presence of his mother that keeps them from happening with as much regularity over the holidays, and I’m both grateful and perversely jealous that she can soothe my husband in a way that I can’t.
But she will return to her winter home in Florida soon, and Jack will fall again into his patterns. We’re not ready for kids, and I’m not ready without a mother to teach me how to be a mother myself.
I lie awake as Jack’s breath flattens in sleep. It’s an odd reversal; usually, he’s the one whose anxiety troubles him in the nighttime.
I cringe to remember the first night I brushed up against it.
“Jack . . .” I had been uncharacteristically unsure of myself the morning after our one-week wedding anniversary. “Do you regret marrying me?”
I was scrambling eggs over the stove, and Jack’s horrified shock made me grateful that he was not the one beside the hot stovetop.
“How could you ask me that?”
He sounded wounded, and I rushed to clarify. “You didn’t sleep. Not a wink.”
“Maybe I was too deliriously happy.”
My husband is not an evasive man by nature, but I knew there was something he wasn’t telling me. His words did not carry their usual direct certainty. “Jack, your eyes were scrunched so tight you wouldn’t have seen the flames if I burned down the house. You were not ‘happy.’ In fact”—I give the eggs an aggressive whisk—“you looked like you were being tortured.” At least I knew better than to mention the tears that seeped from beneath his closed lids in the early morning, or the ones I silently cried in response.
“Oh, Stella.” He rubbed his forehead. “I’m sorry. It didn’t have anything to do with you. I swear.”
“What was it, then?” I asked because I didn’t believe him. I was afraid he regretted marrying me, wished he’d settled with a sweet-natured girl who listened more than she talked and didn’t insist on working after marriage. Looking back, I should have expected his answer. My father had been affected by the First World War. I knew from his years of silence that combat and its effects plague men in ways we don’t yet understand. Back then, they called the
men shell-shocked. Now, the term is combat fatigue. But those weren’t things I’d ever associated with ebullient Jack, and I was surprised when the word fell hard from Jack’s lips like a stone.
“War.”
“Oh, Jack.” I abandoned the still-runny eggs and slid into the chair next to him. “Jack, darling, tell me.”
Tell me. A year and a half later, I recognize the naivety in such a demand.
He had stiffened. “No.”
“No?”
“No.”
“Jack. I’m your wife.”
“There are some things that should never be told.”
Even to me? His words stung.
I remember the frustration mounting in me like panic. He’s my husband. He’s supposed to know me, and I’m supposed to know him. I’m supposed to comfort him when he needs me, but how can I do that without knowing the demons he battles?
I couldn’t put any of it into words back then, so I merely stared at my husband. “I don’t agree.”
“Stella.” His voice became eerily calm. “It’s not something you’ll ever understand.”
“Well, I won’t, if you don’t tell me!”
At that, Jack had left the room. He’d gone to work without a bite of the eggs or the bacon I’d made, and I kicked over the chair he’d vacated. Later, he confessed that he had left not to spite me but to keep from doing something he regretted. “I saw a lot of violence,” he’d said evenly. “And I don’t want you to.”
I love Jack. I love his laugh and his face and his skin and his jokes and his thoughtfulness, so different from mine. But sometimes I hate him, too, for not letting me see these parts of him that mean so much. Maybe if it only happened in the nighttime, I could learn to live with it. But he falls apart in public, too, and he pushes me away. I want him to turn to me when he is frightened by a car starting or John Wayne whipping out a gun in an old western. But he closes in on himself instead, and I’m left alone on the outside. What am I supposed to do besides ask him what is wrong, what he’s seeing, how I can help? What am I supposed to do when he doesn’t answer?
Now I pull the sheets over my eyes, Jack soundly sleeping beside me. Can I love a man I don’t really know?
Of course I can. I do. But can I have a baby with him?
That’s the question, Stella.
I just wish my mother were still around to help me answer it.
* * *
—
Christmas Day passes without note, but I grow restless as the days blend together before New Year’s. I miss my kids. I imagine going to visit each, bringing homemade play dough as a peace offering, but I know it will just confuse them further. It would be selfish; I’ve already hurt them enough.
Jack does his best to lift my spirits, and going to the movies and puzzling are welcome moments of escape from my otherwise dark and dizzying thoughts. But those escapes only go so far. When Jack goes back to work after the New Year, I imagine my students back at school with their new, better teacher while I’m left listless and alone. The housework is time-consuming enough to fill my days: cleaning, dusting, cooking, shopping—but my mind is left to wander. I cycle through guilt and grief and fear in equal measure. I’ve left my students alone, I’ve lost my mother, I don’t know how to reconcile my husband’s and my ideas on marriage and children.
I’m restless; worse, my mind is a cage. I need something to do. Something that matters.
* * *
—
I’m going into the city,” I tell Jack, the half-formed idea flying from my mouth as he walks in the door one evening the second week of January.
“What?”
To his credit, he doesn’t panic. He knows me well enough to wait for an explanation.
“Not tonight,” I clarify unnecessarily as I take his coat. “But I’ve decided I want to be the one to clean out my mother’s place before it’s sold next month.”
Now, Jack glances up with dismay. “We’ve already hired people for that.”
“I know,” I say, “and I appreciate your help.”
Help is an understatement; Jack had arranged everything for me. I’d been too grief-stricken to do it myself. “But things have changed. And it feels wrong to let strangers go through my mother’s personal things.” I think of her copy of “The Gift of the Magi,” her favorite blanket, her well-thumbed books of poetry.
Jack shakes his head, uncomprehending. “What are you hoping to find?”
“I don’t know, but I know I need to do it.” I need my mother, and this is as close as I can get. I’m hopeful that the rummaging, sorting, cleaning, and selling—work with a finish line, unlike housework—will alleviate my restlessness. And that it will distract me from my grief and guilt, too. Dare I hope Mary Ellen’s “I love you” and Robby’s fat tears will forget me there in the city?
I don’t know how to tell Jack that here, I begin each morning with a spray of forget-me-not guilt. A morning bouquet of free time to remind me that, after suffering the loss of my own mother, I’ve left my students the same way: alone. Bereft.
I cannot go to my mother for comfort or advice. I can’t call her like I did in college to help me sort through these feelings that hit me all at once. I can’t call her to vent about Jack and roll my eyes at her conciliatory suggestions before taking them anyway. But I can go back to the world we shared. I can drape myself in the clothes hanging in her closet and run my hands along the walls she painted. I can imagine myself closer to her. Imagine myself a tiny bit less alone.
Supper is quiet and stilted. Jack and I retire to bed early, but I can’t sleep. Not because I’m having second thoughts about my decision to go to the city, but because Jack is. He lies awake next to me and twitches the whole night long. For the second time in a month, I’m kept awake with memories of that first night I witnessed his episodes after our marriage, and I am as sleepless and agitated as my husband when we rise the next morning.
We stand across from each other in the kitchen, the setting eerily similar to that long-ago day I asked him if he regretted our marriage.
“I’m still going.” Though I don’t mean for them to, the words reverberate like a slap. Exhausted, I can’t think clearly enough to be gentle.
“And I’m still against it,” Jack says. “Stella, I’m just worried about you. A woman alone—”
A woman alone. I nearly scoff. “My sweet, timid mom who didn’t work a day in her life lived in that apartment building on her own for five years after Dad died. I think I’ll be just fine as ‘a woman alone.’ ”
“Okay.” Jack lets a smile slip through. “You’re right. You’re too strong to be an easy target.”
I give him a begrudging smile in return, appreciating his effort.
“But I’m just worried about you. I don’t think it will do you any good to be rummaging through the past when you could focus on the future here. On what still matters.”
Of course. The “future,” also known as “having kids.”
“My mom isn’t ‘the past,’ ” I say. “And you know we aren’t ready for children.”
I regret the words as soon as I say them. Jack didn’t mention children explicitly; I shouldn’t have brought them up. Things are complicated enough as it is.
“Your mom was twenty-four when you were born,” Jack points out.
“Jack. It’s not about our age. If we have a baby, that baby deserves to understand both his or her parents.” I’m near tears now. My mother was my rock for so many years, my constant supporter and quiet strength. Who else would have understood the way I felt when I first found out about Jack’s night terrors? Who else would have intuitively grasped the love I have for my students? I don’t know how to survive without her. And I don’t want to have a child who cannot rely on Jack and on me the same way. And yes, I admit it—I don’t want to have a child when I cannot rely on Jack the same
way. When I am forced to question how well I really know him.
“Okay.” Jack shakes his head. “I’m sorry. It’s not the time.”
He uses that apology an awful lot, but I bite my tongue before I say something snappy in return. “Thank you,” I say instead. “And you’re right. We’re talking about the city, about me cleaning out the old place.”
But that’s the problem, isn’t it? Jack and I aren’t good at talking about one thing at a time. I love him, but I can’t help bringing all my fears and worries into every discussion we have: Do I know Jack as well as he knows me? How will we ever find ourselves ready for children? What if I never think he’s ready; then what?
I take a deep breath, trying to focus. “I know it’s hard for you when I go back.”
He nods once, quickly. “You know I dislike the city.”
I know he’s afraid of it. The cacophony of car horns, the boring and drilling in the streets. But Manhattan is my hometown, and Jack’s fear cuts deep. I am the city, with all its hustle and noise.
I force myself to stay calm. “It’s where I grew up, Jack. I need to go back.”
“Stella, please reconsider. There’s no use reliving the past, Stell, not when you have a life here—”
All my efforts to be gentle dissolve, and I snap. “Do I have a life here? Without a job and with a husband who can’t—or won’t—confide in me?”
The Light of Luna Park Page 7
