| Wooden Circus Lindsay Kaplan |
| part four |
| Henry woke up with the sun that morning, turning his head a little to face the fat yellow ball in the window. The storm had passed. The sun hung suspended in the green sky like a stuck pendulum. He wished he could take it with him somehow, tie a string to it and hang the sun against his throat, or put it in his pocket to jangle with loose change. Or else, he might squeeze it, strain it and drink it with a bagel. On second thought, maybe the pulp would be delicious. Maybe he would save the pulp in a jar and spoon feed it to Claire. He stretched dramatically, wrapping an arm around the pillow lying next to him. Claire was gone. "Hello?" Claire was gone. "Claire?" Claire was gone. "Hello?" Henry wiped the salt from his eyes and licked his lips. His heart began to beat furiously and he knew without looking that she hadn't left a note or her phone number or even her last name. The sun fixed itself squarely in his face, burning his eyes, mocking him. He gathered up his dignity and made the bed. That was the last time Henry allowed himself to entertain his idea of romance. He knew in his gut he would never see Claire again. = And it was true. For a stupid man, Henry Killbride had a fairly on point intuition. Henry never saw Claire again. He spent a few months sitting at the same bar, the same bartender serving him Coke after Coke every night. The man had no recollection of any drab-looking red head. Henry called 89 Claire's in the Yellow Pages before he gave up. He didn't even know if that was her real name. He began to think that he had imagined her, so he tried to recreate her in his mind every night before he went to sleep. He started with her eyes, then worked around to her lashes, her brows, her cheek bones and that freckle on the side of her chin. The crease under her bottom lip. Her collar bone and boney shoulders. She had such a small waist, and a good sized belly button. Her unpierced ears, hair tucked behind them, frizzing from the humidity. But already she had started to slip through his memories. He couldn�t remember her laugh, her what her hands looked like. She began to grow short, then to compensate, shot up to runway model proportions. He had no idea what her skin felt like. Eventually, his memory of Claire nearly faded away completely, and all he was left with was a faceless red head ghost with a freckle. = Henry took Wallace to the circus one chilly afternoon to watch the trapeze artists. He told Wallace that they were the closest thing to a god he had ever believed in. The two sat near the front, right up where it reaked like elephant shit. Henry bought a box of cracker jacks and shook out the surprise super-mood ring. It turned fusia, which decoded meant wild, which Henry wasn�t sure he was. He tapped it on his knees a few times before putting it in his pocket. "Wallace, do you ever worry that you'll never get married?" "Yes." "My mother told me once she thought I'd never get married." "Are you worrying?" "My mother's sister, Auntie Bette, used to always come to visit on holidays. She was old and unmarried, but very elegant looking. Not your typical old maid. But when my father heard she wasn't dating anyone, he immediately started going through a list of every single friend he knew to see if he could set them up. And Auntie Bette was great about it, always smiling and writing down numbers of men she would never call. But I... I would hate to walk into a room and immediately have people assume that something was lacking in my life." "People can be insensitive. I wouldn't worry it until your forty. Then, you can worry. I think it's natural, when you�ve made it big, to wonder. So long as you're not worrying. You know?" "Yeah, I feel pretty silly worrying about it, but why put off for tomorrow what you can make yourself crazy about today. Then it made me wonder if I'd wind up marrying somebody that I didn't like all that much just because I was afraid of winding up alone. And I'm not quite sure which would be worse. But then again," He paused to eat a handful of cracker jacks, "I suppose it is completely silly to worry about at this point." And maybe it was, but Henry was only six years shy of forty. When was he supposed to start worrying? Everything was going faster, time was slipping though his fingers faster than peanuts. He stared at the trapeze artist, watching her flip gracefully in the air, spin, circle, curl, dive and miracuously grab the swing and the last possible second before plummeting. "She's so close, so close." He stood up, tossing peanuts over the heads of children sitting in front of him. "Hey!" hollered a little girl in a deep scarlet sweater. Henry grabbed her by the shoulders, "There�s no net!" he yelled, smiling manically. "Henry!" Wallace stood up, alarmed, and tried to push his friend back down into his seat. "Hey, leddgo--" cried the girl. "Don't you understand? No net!" He was laughing furiously now, still grabbing the child and spitting carmalized popped corn in her face. He was causing a scene. The little girl began to sob wildly, and Wallace tackled Henry. The clowns had to help hold him down while the lion tamer called for help. Children were in hysterics and parents were sticky from their tears and cotton candy. Everyone was shouting. Even the elephants looked disturbed. "NO NET!" = After Henry received his first few royalty checks in the mail, he bought dinner, a Lincoln, its driver and a three story sub-mansion in Newton, Massachusetts. It was a huge, towering Victorian masterpiece fenced in wrought iron. Amber forsythia crept up around the snaking driveway and seethed against the fence. Pebbles lapped up to the overgrown crab grass, which stank more like skunk than any crab Henry had ever smelled. Henry felt more normal than he had ever felt in his life. "A house made you feel more normal?" Chuck Bradshaw asked Henry. "Less of an icon, and more of a human?" "Fear is what makes me human. Every action a man takes is motivated by some brand of fear. I bought a Lincoln because I was afraid people wouldn't take me seriously if I didn't have a nice car. I married because I was afraid of being lonely. I ate Cheerios because this morning because I was afraid of high cholesterol. I ate a donut afterwards, because I was afraid of being full of unfulfillment and self-loathing." "What are you afraid of now, Mr. Killbride?" "I think I'm afraid one day I won't have anything to trouble me. I wouldn't know what to do with my life." "What about when you grow old?" "Oh, I'll be dead long before I ever grow old." "You really think so?" "Sure. Dead pan is better than bed pan." |