The Book of Speculation (26 page)

*   *   *

They were to leave that day, following the banks of the Rancocas, but they did not. Whether it was in hopes that Ryzhkova would return, or out of respect, Amos could not say.

“One day more or less shall make no difference to those who don’t know to miss us,” Peabody said.

Amos stayed inside her wagon, running his fingers over where she’d draped cloths and hung portraits, looking for the soot stains from burning sage. He kicked the straw-filled sack that served as her mattress and threw himself upon it, only to knock his head on a sharp corner. There, tucked away beneath the edge of her bed, lay Ryzhkova’s card box.

She’d left them for him.

He lifted the lid and the orange backs smiled at him. He touched them to his chest, feeling their smoothness, feeling Ryzhkova in the paper, cackling, teasing and scolding, kissing his cheeks when he’d done well. Teaching. His heart both broke and mended; he would not be lost. He tucked the cards into his shirt and sought Peabody.

Peabody sat with his book, drawing thick black lines through a long column of figures and names. Near the bottom of the page he had begun a sketch, a wagon perhaps, too vague to yet tell. Upon seeing Amos he cleared his throat. “Apologies,” he said. “Terrible. A great and terrible thing, but not your doing. I had recently conversed with the woman.” He drew a small flourish in the air with his quill. “It was less than pleasant. We shall see the right of it, I promise.”

Amos threw his arms around the man, embracing him.

Peabody coughed. “Yes, well. Quite right.”

Amos pulled the deck from his shirt and nimbly moved through the cards. One following on top of another, he showed Peabody Cups for communication; Pages for a great journey; the High Priestess for her, Ryzhkova, and how they must find her; the Fool for himself, as it was his fault that she’d left.

Peabody’s expression shuttered. He sat at his ciphering chair, looking every one of his years, and smiled with regret. “Darling boy, I cannot glean what you are trying to say.”

Amos cried out, the sound an unnatural grunt. He searched for the Hermit and presented it to Peabody, pushing it to his chest, where buttons pulled at velvet.

“I am sorry,” said Peabody, quieter than Amos had ever heard him. “Deeply sorry, but I’ve no idea what you mean.” He set down his quill, capped the inkpot, and rested his hands on the bulge of his stomach. “I can try,” he gently promised. “But I am old, it will take time.” Seeing Amos’s distress he said, “We’ve managed well enough, have we not?”

Amos began to weep. Peabody patted him, but his ministrations were of little solace. He let the young man curl up on the floor. For long helpless moments he watched as Amos quaked.

“She may yet return. We’ll wait the night and sort out the season. If she does not, well, then we must adapt.” He glanced at his ledger. Ryzhkova’s loss would slow their money; they couldn’t afford to keep a man without trade, no matter how much he liked him. He scratched his beard. The best thing for Amos would be to keep him valuable, to reevaluate him. Yes, Ryzhkova was gone, but where there was money lost there might also be money gained. He pondered a small sketch he’d done earlier of a horse.

“Did you know, Amos, that I was once a student of Philip Astley? When there was less of me I rode horses. In London, though I’m certain the name means nothing to you. I sat a fine seat. Astley was a marvelous man. Powerful voice. In my better moments I fancy myself like him; he taught one to swing from a saddle, stand atop it, and how to balance plates and teacups on one’s fingertips while galloping about a ring. A fine time, surely.” He paused to write a few lines. “But one cannot ride forever. I was vaulted over the front of a disagreeable brown mare—Finest Rosie was her name, though she was quite a tart; threw me flat on my back in the middle of the amphitheater with half of London looking on, kicked me in my stomach and back so I was never to ride again. It might have killed me, but I mended. A ship across the sea finds me here, in this place where they’ve never seen one such as Astley, or one such as me. It would be a lie to say that I don’t miss riding, but in many ways this is better. Here I may be Astley, rather than his paler shadow. You see, my boy? I have adapted. As will you.”

When Amos calmed, Peabody helped him to stand. He straightened Amos’s shirt, picked the straw from his hair, and dusted his shoulders. He looked the boy up and down, eyed the soiled spots on his shirt, the frays in his pant legs—no gentleman, but passable. He gave Amos a solid grin that tipped his moustache.

“There now, young master. Powder or a wig would improve you, but we cannot make silk from flax. It strikes me that you are in need of comfort best provided by the fairer sex. Go to your lady. I’ve always found that the sorrow of a departure is best remedied with a greeting—onward to romance!” Peabody pushed the door open, ushered Amos through, and watched as he shuffled from the wagon. A mute fortune-teller was a draw when working with a partner; alone, therein lay difficulty. Without Ryzhkova the accounts wouldn’t balance; he’d lost not one but two of the troupe. In the interim they could hang curtains in the Wild Boy cage, but the thought troubled Peabody; he could not place the moment when Amos had become his second son, but there it was. He thought of his time with Astley, and how it had not been his back that had pained him most, and for the first time in his long life, Hermelius Peabody felt old.

*   *   *

In the wagon with the small horse, Evangeline waited. “It is true then. Ryzhkova is gone,” she said when he climbed in.

She’d been crying, he saw the redness in her eyes, the spots staining her cheeks. When she tried to embrace him he pulled away, reaching for the cards.

“At least she left you that,” she said.

Amos did not listen; he was desperately tired of listening; he wished to speak. Working through the deck, he showed Evangeline card upon card, building thought from image. The Fool over and over again, the High Priestess, then the darker cards. Amos set them all before her, his life in mosaic, his thoughts, and more than before, his fears. Evangeline tried to keep pace, speaking his thoughts as she saw them, but he moved with furious speed. The pictures flashed, slid, and blurred until at length his hands slowed, and he began to repeat a sequence of cards, one she remembered. In the lesson he’d used two cards—one for him, one for her. Now he used just his, the Fool. He began matching it with another, the solitary old traveler that was the Hermit. No, not Peabody—how layered their language was—in the lesson he’d used the cards to ask, “Are we alone?” Now the variation.

She knew it. “Am I alone?”

He repeated.
Am I alone? Am I alone?

She layered her fingers over his and touched her lips to his forehead. “I am here,” she said. She repeated the words, but he did not hear. She searched for her card, the Queen of Swords, then for another with which to pair it—one they’d settled upon to mean home, place, wherever they dwelled. The Six of Cups. Children at play in front of their home. She placed her cards on the wagon boards, touching his in answer.

Am I alone?

I am here.

Am I alone?

I am your home.

19

JULY 21ST

In the carnival parking lot I shuffle the pieces, rearrange things until they line up. My father loved my mother, he told me so. Love at first sight. Enola is not sick; she’s fine and we don’t die.

Except that we do.

The red and white awnings of Rose’s Carnival crest over the lot next to the brick box that is the Napawset Fire Department. Inside are rides and ride jockeys, rigged games, a fun house with shifting floors and mirrors, a sideshow, and my sister. I’ve parked by the torn banner proclaiming this the “45th Annual Firemen’s Carnival and Fair,” the carnival Enola and I went to as kids; after all the money I spent trying to win her goldfish that died in a night, it’s hers now, hers and Doyle’s.

I hobble down the midway—a wide walkway of trampled-down grass lined with booths, fried food, and blinking lights—in search of a card reader’s booth. A man calls the tin horse races through a megaphone. Whack-a-mole, a shooting gallery, and the ring toss are manned by teenagers, or a peculiar breed of thin person with sunken cheeks—pockmarked and hungry, but intriguing. The air is heavy with kettle corn and cotton candy, and pop music blares. This is Enola’s home. The grounds teem with sweating faces, and children dart between parents’ legs. I can almost feel my father’s hand gripping my shirt to keep me from running to the coin toss to try to win a live frog. I stumble, roll my bad ankle, and the pain tastes like metal.

Towering over the carnival is the swing ride—a classic model Chair-O-Plane, candy cane–striped yellow and purple, the top adorned with mirrored panels that catch the sun. I remember Dad buckling Enola into a seat. I remember sailing in the chair next to his, watching the wind plaster his hair to his forehead. Even then he hadn’t smiled; he was too busy looking for a piece of Mom in the place where they’d met. The next year Enola and I went alone. Laughter streams from the swings as chains tighten and chairs ascend, careening in centrifugal grace. I limp to the end of the line. A higher vantage should help me find Enola.

It’s a tight fit, my knees are almost in my mouth, but then we lift. I rise, spiraling outward, and see houses looking out from the walls of the town—a place where neighbors steal mothers in the night and drown them. At the top of the arc I can see the Sound beyond the rooflines that somehow contain my house—correction: Frank’s house. The water is dull, not smooth as glass or angry and thrashing as in books. It’s gray, calm, and dead. I hate it, hate that’s hard like a shell. She drowned herself in a second-rate water.

I swing my foot, bend the ankle, and the sting feels pretend, just an idea of what pain is supposed to be. The carnival looks like a toy with a windup key. There, the concession with the pink lemonade. There, the Wheel of Fortune everybody plays though it’s universally known to be rigged. Voices are fading shouts, laughter, cries at nothing.

Toward the back I see it, a purple tent with a line of people. Yes, that’s her.

When we swing to the ground in loping waves, things are different. This is no grand carnival, but I would run away with it.

I need Enola. Three days left and I need her.

An enormous man in a Hawaiian shirt lumbers by; a scraggly braid dangles down his back like a possum tail; he heads toward a striped tent and ducks under a flap—the sideshow. This must be George the Fat Man, the one with the weed. I search around for Doyle, but he’s nowhere.

I walk toward the small purple tent, past the shouting and the funnel cake, French fries, and zeppole, each with its own fry-oil perfume. The back of the grounds is marked by the Zipper, a rotating conveyer belt that whirls riders in spinning cages in the sky. I took Enola on it when she was too small; the lap bar didn’t lock right and she knocked herself out. For weeks she had a goose egg with the dark purple imprint of waffled chain.

Dunk the Freak has a short line of people waiting to throw softballs. The Freak is a skinny guy in a dirty tank top who shouts that I throw like a girl. Behind him is Enola’s tent—purple velour and duvetyn, spangled with gold moons and stars, hand painted. A sandwich sign leans against the tent corner, a picture of a hand floating over a crystal ball with the name
Madame Esmeralda
written in Gothic style.

Esmeralda. Really.

The interior is lit by a lamp covered in a red silk shawl. At a card table draped with paisley cloth, Enola is a child’s idea of a fortune-teller—head wrapped in a purple scarf, gigantic gold hoops in her ears. She’s got two clients, a couple of teenage girls; twin ponytails, blond and brown. And there is Doyle beside her, his tattooed hands slithering over the table.

Lifting the curtain lets in light, making the girls turn their heads. Doyle squints. Enola glares at me through rings of black eyeliner. In a thick accent she barks out, “Outside! Esmeralda will be with you.”

“Enola, I—”

“You. Out. Now.” She smacks her palm against the table. Doyle eases from his chair to usher me out.

“Five minutes, okay? Chill.” He pulls the tent closed.

I push a fold of drape to the side, enough for a peephole, and watch as Enola rocks in her chair, speaking in a low voice to the ponytail girls, who huddle in close.

“You want to know of love, yes?” Enola asks. The blonde starts to speak, but is shushed by my sister’s hand. “Not to me, darling.” Dah
link.
“Tell the Painted Man,” she says. “The Painted Man keep your secret. He hold your secret. I fix it. Future has two doors, yes? One to open, one to close. Painted Man closes.” She touches a fingernail to a sucker on Doyle’s forearm, then touches her chest. “Esmeralda opens.”

It’s crap, but there’s something about her eyes; they’re different, not hazel like Mom’s, more black—someone else’s. The blonde leans over and whispers in Doyle’s ear, her ponytail brushing his arm, tentacle meeting tentacle. He nods and puts his hand over Enola’s. There’s something disturbing, something that reminds me of a notation:
Wild Boy promoted to apprentice fortune-teller.
I’m not looking at Enola, but Madame Ryzhkova, mixed with Mom, echoing through my sister’s body.