The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (47 page)

THE THING THAT SCARES ME THE MOST? THE THING THAT
makes me jittery, that makes me dart for one of Dr. Brisbane's
pills, that makes me contemplate rash actions? What if neither God nor
luck has anything to do with it? What if we make our own luck? What
if everything that happens to us happens because we wanted it that way?

I need you to understand this totally, so just this one time back up
with me and recall that head doctor in Hopkinsville, the one who used
three slightly bent fingers to push away a wet spindle of hair when a
single straight one would've done fine. Before, I described him as one
of the kindest men I've ever come across, it's true, but as I dig deeper
and deeper into this thing called my confession it's starting to occur to
me maybe he wasn't. Fact is, the more I think of it, the more I start
thinking he was the cruellest of the lot, for there was this one tubbing
when I was complaining bitterly about all the bad hands fate had dealt
me and wondering what I'd done to deserve it all and feeling as sorry
as sorry gets for myself in the process.

"I swear, Doctor," I told him, "if it weren't for bad luck I'd have
no luck at all."

Here I expected him to say something encouraging, like he usually did, like "Don't worry, Mary, you're an intelligent young woman
and once you put all this behind you, your life will work out fine."
Instead came the sound of him breathing heavily through his nose, a
sign he was going to tell me something I might not particularly want to
hear. What he said was "It's true there is such a thing as bad luck and
there is such a thing as good luck. But there is also a third type of luck,
Mary. There is also the sort of luck we create for ourselves. There is
also the type of luck we think we deserve."

I didn't pay much attention to what he'd said then, answering
with my usual, "Yes yes, Doctor, I see what you mean." Still, what he
said stuck with me, and it's starting to make more and more sense, and
as it makes more and more sense, one particular thought concerning the
good Dr. Levine keeps bubbling to the surface.

How dare he?

How dare he make me understand that?

The answer, of course, is he loved me, and there's nothing like
love for turning you mean. There's nothing like love for picking you up
and turning you crazy and in that craziness there's a loss of control and
when people lose control?

Well. They're capable of pretty much anything, has been my
experience.

After six months of drinking warm beer, of deciphering Cockney
accents, of visiting crown jewels and famous bridges, of writing letters
every day no matter what, of suffering from the emptiness spurred by
homesickness, of getting used to my food either deep-fried or baked
into the shape of a pie, of riding on the top deck of buses for the sheer
novelty of it, of almost getting run over every time I stepped off a curb
because traffic all ran the wrong way, I turned around and came home happy. My return was to a greeting of flowers, tears, embraces, a homecooked meal and a dose of affection that veered toward the frantic and
maybe even beyond. Afterwards, Art announced he needed a walk, and
he left me lying in bed. About a half hour later, there was a commotion
outside our stateroom, so I pulled back the curtains on the Pullman
window and had a look. Couldn't believe my eyes. One of the gold
Roman chariots used in the opening spec was hitched to a pair of
Friesians. Inside the buggy was Art, holding a whip and wearing a top
hat, livery boots and white cotton jodhpurs. People were milling and
mulling, gawking and chattering. Poodles Hannaford was standing on
his hands. Bird Millman's parrot announced it wanted a cracker. I even
saw Leitzel on the sidelines, smoking and trying to look unimpressed,
which wasn't easy given Art had highlighted his cheeks with a powder
that could only be described as sparkly.

"Your chariot," he said with a sweep of his right hand, "awaits."

So I got in, giggling, and he clicked his teeth and the horses trotted us away and down a country lane leading from the rail yards. Art
stopped by a creek he must've scouted out earlier that day, for it was
lovely and moonlit and trickling. He jumped out and went around the
other side of the chariot and helped me down by taking my hand. He
led me to a tree stump and motioned for me to sit. He went down on
one knee, though not in the way you're probably imagining, for instead
of facing me straight on he knelt sideways, such that I was looking into
the side of his face.

"Mabel," he said, "it's about time I explained my theory of life,
love, animal training, the pursuit of happiness, the reason we choose to
be alive and last but not least what we mean when we yammer on about
God. You might call it Art's Theory of Absolutely Everything, or you
could call it a damn fool's take on things-that's up to you. Either way,
it goes like this: I believe if you see something and it immediately
strikes you as the most beautiful thing you've ever seen it probably
ain't. What you're seeing is flash or dazzle or razzmatazz, or even more likely what you're seeing is what everybody around you figures is beautiful. And while there's nothing wrong with that it doesn't mean what
you're seeing is beauty of the truest sort. Beauty, and I mean the real
McCoy, sneaks up on you. It bushwhacks a fellow. It's the sort of thing
you don't notice at first, until one day it appears in the corner of your
eye and you turn to look and you say, by gum, why didn't I notice that
in the first place? You understand, Mabel? You see what I'm driving at?
Mabel Stark, I do believe you're the most beautiful person I've ever
seen in the whole of my life, and I'm not talking about your blond curls
or your shapely figure or your natural pluck. I am talking about what's
inside you, and what allows you to do the things you do with tigers."

Here I swallowed, which was no easy feat as my voicebox was
swollen to discomfort.

"Will you marry me, Mabel Stark? Will you be my wife forever?
And before you answer, I encourage you to consider that forever is a
long stretch of time."

He finally turned his head toward me, looking as hopeful as a
child wanting seconds on dessert.

Mostly I answered by blushing. Blushing and folding my hands
between my knees. Art rose and went to the buggy and with his back
turned said, "Mabel, close your eyes, I have a surprise." I did as he
asked and listened to him rummage around. When he neared he said,
"All right, now, hold out your hands," and when I did I guess I was
expecting him to drop in a ring of some sort.

Instead I felt something square and cardboard, about the size of a
box of chocolates though heavier, lowered into my hands.

"All right," Art said. "You can open it."

What I had was an album of some sort, covered with two pages
of decorative cardboard, the whole thing bound with yellow ribbon.
My stage name was inscribed on the front.

I looked at Art, mouth agape.

"Open it," he said. "Go on. Have a look."

I opened the cover. On the first page was an old Billboard article.
It was small, maybe four paragraphs on a single column, surrounded by
stretches of white border, and it was reviewing that first mixed act I did
on the Barnes show way back when. I turned the pages. There were
articles, reviews and write-ups from Billboard, White Tops and local
papers, recounting every step of my career. All the highlights were
there-my balloon act with Samson, my being the first to train
Sumatrans, my debut with Rajah, my battle with Nigger, along with a
hundred lesser moments.

I closed the album and held it to my chest and felt myself go
weak.

"Thank you, Art," I said.

Seemed he wasn't out of surprises yet. Instead of saying you're
welcome, he reached out and slid the album from my grip and walked
back to the buggy.

"This," he said, "is not for you. Leastways not yet."

It was all so utterly confusing I didn't even ask him what he
meant. Instead I contented myself with watching him walk back to the
chariot and return the album to a canvas sack, handling it the whole
time like it was treasure. When he came back, he knelt and plucked a
dandelion from the earth. He pulled off the flower and twisted the stalk
into a little ring. I held out the right finger and he slipped it on.

"Mabel Stark," he said solemn as a judge, "with this ring I
thee-"

He couldn't continue, my arms being around him and our lips
pressed firm.

We decided we'd hold out till winter quarters in Bridgeport. Art suggested mid-November as a date, specifically his birthday, and as I figured this was as good a day as any, I agreed.

Hearing this, Art got so pleased he hopped up and down, those
big hands doing an air dance in front of him. After that, his spare time was busied with preparations, even though there was precious little we
could do before getting to winter quarters. Still, in every town he'd go
downtown and look at dress shops, florists and male clothiers. Ideas,
was the way he justified these outings. "I'm just getting ideas, Mabel.
I'm getting the creative juices flowing. By the way, what do you think of
lilies of the valley?"

He'd also poke around in churches. Neither one of us was particularly religious, so Art figured we'd marry into a faith with, as he put
it, "an appreciation of grandeur." Roman Catholic, Anglican,
Presbyterian, Lutheran, United, Seventh Day Adventist, Methodist,
Jehovah's Witness, Evangelical, Buddhist, Confucian-he even went
to the odd Baptist service on the wrong side of town, the only white
man in a congregation of heavy-bosomed black women speaking in
tongues. In the end he said he favoured the Catholics because of all the
stained glass and expensive wood. I told him no way any priest worth
his salt was going to marry a non-devout circus performer about to take
her fifth husband. This made Art pout for the rest of the day, though
the next morning, in Athens, Georgia, he got up and went church hunting with renewed vigour. That day he started hinting Unitarian might
the way to go.

Was one other thing he started work on. Though he knew about
my first two marriages, he considered them mistakes made long ago
when I went by a different name and besides I'd never even screwed
James Williams so that one didn't count. Albert Ewing was a different
story. Ewing was known on circus lots, and it was known I'd been married to him. Marrying Art without divorcing Albert would be bigamy
pure and simple, if only because everybody would know about it.

Problem was, Albert had dropped off the face of the earth. No
matter how many people Art talked to he always heard the same thing:
the last recollection they had of the man was watching him dangle from
a mail gantry, his privates pointing at his chin. Art sent letters to all the
major circuses and a few dozen smaller ones besides. The answers all fell into one of two categories. The first was "Heard about what he did
to the Ringlings, no way he's working here." The second was "Who?"

After two or three weeks of this fruitlessness, Art decided we
should run a small ad in Billboard. It read:

$100 Reward!

One hundred dollars paid to anyone able to furnish
information regarding the whereabouts of one Albert
Ewing, former Ringling accountant. Cash upon location, all information confidential, no questions.

Turned out this didn't work either, not because we had no
responses but because we had thousands, every last one from hysterics,
the Ringling postmaster coming to our stateroom one morning and
hinting he wanted cherry pie for handling all our mail. Looking into all
the leads was going to be impossible, so we didn't look into any, Art
deciding we'd best talk to a private eye. Charles Curley helped out by
calling up Pinkerton's, the agency Mabel Ringling used when she
thinned the grift on the circus back in the earlier part of the decade.
They sent someone over, and we all met, and two weeks later we had a
second meeting.

Seemed my husband was living in a hotel above a betting parlour
in Cincinnati, Ohio. He no longer had anything to do with circuses, and
was now going by the name Al Driven.

(Me: So how's the little bastard?

The Pinkerton's agent, a small mountain of a man with tiny eyes
and a nose flattened to one side and ears like flaps of romaine lettuce
and a chin as big as a lunchpail: Hmmmmmmm.... Not so hot.)

There was one other critical piece of information. Albert would
grant me a divorce if I gave him a cheque for $1,000. Hearing this, my
thought was no blessed way, Albert Ewing being a sneaky little cheat,
and if anyone was going to get a thousand dollars it by all rights should be me, considering all the grief and embarrassment his shenanigans had
caused me. Truth be known, I was getting all worked up, though when
I looked over at Art he gave me a soft, raised-eyebrow expression that
could've only meant one thing.

Consider it sideways, darling.

With that finally settled, Art sat down and got a nib and ink and drew
himself up an invitation, one festooned with curlicues and hearts and
cupids firing arrows at one another.

"Art," I said, "who're we going to send the invitations to? Neither
one of us has much in the way of family, and we're not exactly crawling with friends here on the show."

This made him puzzle. But you could tell he was looking for solutions instead of reasons to have a drink or a hand of cards, and if you
want a reason for my loving Art Rooney that could be it right there.
After a few seconds, his eyes brightened.

"The workingmen," he said, and it was the sort of thought that
makes you recoil before the reasonableness of it sinks in.

I said, "Well, they're thieving and unwashed and most of them are
on the run from something, but it's true they're the only ones I seem to
see eye to eye with these days. Plus you're an ex-workingman so it seems
fitting. We'll give them a ham-and-potato-salad buffet. They'll like that."