The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (53 page)

A minute went by, with me just watching the blood seep to the
surface of my arm, when I popped out of my trance. My head jerked
from side to side, to see if anybody had noticed, and a keen embarrassment set in. I unrolled my sleeve and held the material to the three red
lines on my arm. Every time I pulled the sleeve away, the wounds
looked like they'd stopped bleeding, but then after a few seconds blood
would start rising to the surface and I'd have to clamp the material of
my blouse to the skin again. It grew sticky and orange in spots, though
after a bit the flow was more or less staunched. I fast-walked back to our
Pullman suite and applied some carbol and when the whole thing was
clean and not bleeding at all I changed my blouse, throwing the other
away so there wouldn't be any evidence.

The rest of the day I went about my routine-caring for my cats,
doing a little training but only a little, riding High School in both
shows, helping to load the tigers onto the flat cars, and then lying down
beside Art in our darkened suite at the end of the day. I made sure I
undressed in the dark, and seeing as this was a policy I'd always had
anyway, Art didn't take any notice. As I cuddled up he started chattering away. "I've been giving some good hard thought about boys'
names, Mabel, and to my way of thinking I've got it pretty much narrowed to Michael, Thomas, Wesley, Jake, Leonard, Parker, James,
Cornelius, Beauregard, Pete, Julius, Richard, Lewis, Kenneth, Conrad
or Frank. Any of those reach out and grab you? Hmmmm, Mabel?"

I didn't answer, my mind a thousand miles away, Art having to
nudge me in the side and say, "You listening, Mabel?" Though I told
him I was, that all those names were fine, I was really thinking about
what I'd just done with Rajah, and how awful it is when life forces you
to confront the things that give you pleasure.

The next day, in a town called Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, I stayed
away from Rajah altogether, feeling guilty about doing so but figuring
I was punishing myself as much as I was punishing him. Two days after
that, May 8 and 9, we were in Pittsburgh, and during those dates I felt fine and rested and like I was getting back my grip on things, which
turned out to be a dangerous way of thinking for the very next day, in
a place called Morgantown, West Virginia, I allowed myself to visit
Rajah again, just to see how he was doing and give him a cuddle, never
stopping to think why it was I'd brought a clean towel along. We visited a good long time, enough that after a while I started thinking, Good,
there's nothing wrong with me. I barely feel tempted, so I stood and walked
out, giving Rajah a hug and a kiss and that's all.

(Which was not at all what happened the next day, May 11, in a
town called Clarksburg, West Virginia, an over-the-hill Mabel Stark
sitting down beside a dozing old tiger, and because she'd proved the
day before she didn't suffer from any sort of compulsion or obsession
she goes ahead and she pulls the same three tiger claws against the
underside of her arm, watching blood rise and fine mist sift and all the
while she tells herself, See, it was nothing, I didn't enjoy that, uh-uh, no
way, no reason anyone would.) May 12 and 13 we were in Charleston,
where a blowdown hit so fast we couldn't get the big top down in time,
meaning everything got blown all over hell's half acre and a fuming
Charles Curley left behind a team of workingmen to deal with the
mess, all of which involved hiring a private locomotive to pull the section of train he'd had to leave with the clean-up crew. May 14 we were
in Beckley and May 15 we were in Roanoke, two little towns where
there was nothing to do and if there's anything that'll make a person
succumb to their predilections it's boredom. On May 16 we pulled into
Waynesboro, where one of the High School riders got thrown from her
horse and broke her collarbone so badly she was howling and weeping
and bent as a pretzel when they took her out of the ring. May 17 and 18,
Richmond, where Lillian Leitzel got her plange count up to 184, John
Ringling telegraphing her afterwards with a message that must've
pleased her mightily, for the next day she walked around with her nose
lifted even higher than normal, and because this didn't bother me one
little bit I knew I was happy as happy gets and as a result God's unseen hands were just waiting to get me and grab me and squeeze the life out
of me and it was this knowledge that kept me fighting the inclination to
visit Rajah. May 19, Norfolk, and then on to Virginia Beach, the jump
less than an hour. Because the circus pulled in before midnight, the local
speakeasies, brothels and betting houses experienced a brief one-night
bonanza. May 21, Durham, North Carolina, and a little farm girl from
the tobacco end of Kentucky knew she had a problem, but because she
was her mother's daughter she refused to admit it to herself, meaning
she continued to put her head down and work and pretend everything
was like it was before Art's announcement she was going to be a mother this time next year. May 22, Raleigh, and it was there, late in the day,
just before the jump, that Art grabbed me in our Pullman and roughly
pushed up my sleeves, which I'd been keeping buttoned to the wrist
even though the weather had turned agreeable. We both looked down.
A silent, miserable few seconds passed. Art's eyes looked jellied.
Glancing back down, I saw the underside of my arms as he was seeing
them instead of how I usually saw them. Was no denying it. The skin
was swirled with scratches, like the swooping criss-crosses bugs make
on the surface of a pond.

Art eyeballed me, and I do believe it was the first time I ever saw
him look flustered or upset or just plain incapable of handling a situation. It took him a long time to talk, but when he did it came out like a
crackling. And though his words probably won't mean much to you,
understand they were one of the last things he ever said to me, and that
they still wound every time I think of them.

"Goddammit, Mabel," he said. "Can't you just be happy?"

Which brings me to yet another subject we need to hash out. Words.
Used to be they came to me in sentences, in paragraphs, in sequences.
Used to be they came to me in order. Now they come the way time
does, though with more of a vengeance. They come to me mixed up,
blazing, intending only to confuse, subtle as a hailstorm. They come to me hollering, and when they do it's only a matter of time before they
get reduced to those five old awful word s-can't you just be happy?and they repeat, over and over, till I want to hold my head and yell with
the shame of it, for if I'd dealt with those five words when Art first
posed them then maybe he'd be an old man today. Maybe it's my age,
or maybe it's my medication, or maybe it's me being so upset about the
way things're playing themselves out. All I know is my thoughts are a
maelstrom, that keeping them straight is exhausting me and that in the
centre of that maelstrom is a quiet plan, born on that valley ridge with
Roger Haynes. You tell me. How many words do you think I've used
in this little confession? Has it been ten thousand? Has it been a hundred? All I know is I've been at it for weeks now and the only thing
that's made any sense or given me any comfort is the idea of doing
what I'm thinking of doing to myself. Maybe the problem is I'm not
done talking yet, and when I finally get out this last little bit all my
words'll have added up and given me the things I was hoping to get out
of this damn confession in the first place, like calm, like peace, like rest.

Like ... absolution.

On May 23, 1927, the Ringling circus pulled into a place called
Laurinburg, North Carolina, a destination only because it broke the
jump between Raleigh and Charleston. Since the big top held the whole
town, Curley killed the evening performance, figuring it'd been a time
since everyone had had a night off that wasn't a Sunday. The matinee
went fine, and after doing my riding bit I went to the menage to visit
with Rajah and work my other tigers. Then I went back to the train to
have a bit of a read and a lie down. When I got up it was already close
to five, so I decided to go back to the lot and find Art and see if he
wanted to go into town for dinner, a practice customary on Sundays
and nights off. As I was pulling on my dungarees there was a knock on
my door. I opened up.

It was May Wirth's mother, frowning and wringing her hands and looking generally perturbed. When she spoke, it was in an
Australian accent that hadn't been weakened one iota by her time in
America.

"They say you used to be a nurse?"

"A long, long time ago."

"Then come. Please. Help."

I followed her down the line of rail cars. A strong wind had
picked up; it was ruffling my hair and swirling paper and when I looked
up I noticed the skies were darkening. As soon as we entered her
daughter's stateroom I could tell by the smell someone was seriously ill.
That someone was May, the riding sensation from Perth.

She was a pretty girl, May, much prettier than Leitzel and a far
sight nicer. Truth was, I admired her and wanted to help, particularly
when I saw how sick she was. Her face, which was pale at the best of
times, had turned the white of chalk. Her hands, which were gripping
her bedspread at her throat, had wizened, the skin wrinkly and the
joints enlarged. Next to her bed was a pan filled with greenish sick.

I sat on the bed beside her and could feel the sheets were dampened with sweat. Her forehead was hot as a grill. Meanwhile May lay
perfectly still, her eyes unfocused and at half-mast. Her breathing was
raspy, and a remnant of sick spanned the corners of her mouth. With
each slow breath it bubbled up and then popped messily.

"May," I said, "it's Mabel Stark. Can you hear me?"

She nodded weakly, and I was beginning to plan a course of
action when she came off the bed, the muscles in her neck and face distending, poor little May leaning over the side of her bed and releasing
a torrent of pale green waste into the already filled pan. When she was
finished, she collapsed back on her pillow and gave a long, pained
moan. She pulled the blanket back up to her chin and I decided to have
a look at the whole of her, so I took the bedspread from her weakened
hands and, bunching it with the bedsheet, pulled it down. Just as I'd
thought, she'd soiled the bottom half of her as well.

"How long's she been this way?" I asked May's mother.

"Two hours, maybe three. It started with pains in her stomach."

I put a cold compress on May's forehead. Her lips trembled for a
second and she closed her eyes. If she was any more comfortable, she
sure didn't look it.

"I guess it's some sort of flu," I said. "It's best we get her cleaned
up

Again I pulled down her bedsheets, though this time I pulled
May's arms and got her sitting, something that inspired another round
of convulsions and vomiting. With her mother's help, I pulled off her
nightgown and changed her into something with flannel in it. As her
mother held her, I cleaned up the lower half of her bed as best as I was
able and then covered the wetness with towels and we laid her back
down. May took a deep breath and closed her eyes and seemed to fall
asleep, though I could see from the droplets on her upper lip and forehead it wasn't so much sleep she was having as the stupification caused
by fever. Every twenty seconds or so she'd give the meek, shuddering
groan that indicates a person's insides are aching and aching fiercely. I
felt for her, I really did, though I wasn't unduly worried for I'd seen lots
of people with bad flus back at St. Mary's, and knew it was a rare one a
healthy young person couldn't recover from.

"Well," I said to May's mother, "she's sick all right but so long as
she gets enough liquids twelve hours from now you'll see improvement. I'm not saying it's going to be pretty, but keep giving her water
and she'll pull through."

I stepped outside and was about to pursue my plan of finding Art
and having some dinner when one of the elderly Concellos, long past
his flying years, came bustling along the train, his old face a mask of
worry. Spotting me, he took my hand and pulled me along the train
while saying, "Please. Hurry. Please. Is-a Antoinette."

The Concellos were a big family and they occupied a row of
staterooms that could be opened up to make one long Pullman. The old Concello pulled me inside and again I was greeted with the smell of
sickness. A whole group of people, flying Concellos all, were huddled
around a bed no doubt occupied by the ailing Antoinette. No one
turned to acknowledge me, they being too busy fretting and arguing in
Italian, so I stood there not knowing what I was supposed to do.

The old Concello took my wrist. "Come," he said. "Dis-a way,
please." When he spoke, the other Concellos turned and, seeing I was
there, backed away from the bed so I could look at poor Antoinette.
Even from across the room I could tell she was suffering from the same
pallor, convulsions and ungodly stains. I moved closer. If anything,
Antoinette was even sicker, for the smells were fouler and her eyes had
loosened in the sockets and were pointing toward her nose. Plus when
she vomited she didn't even have the energy to lift herself off the bed,
the evil greenness just gurgling out of her mouth and down the side of
her neck. Someone handed me a damp cloth and I wiped Antoinette's
face. It was then I noticed her lips were so cracked and dry that every
time she groaned flakes of dead skin flapped and wavered. This made
me sufficiently impatient I turned and barked.

"For Christ's sake, can't you see the girl's drying up? She's got
the flu!"

This inspired a hubbub, the Concellos who spoke English explaining what I'd said to the Concellos who didn't speak English. When
everyone understood, my diagnosis was met with grim expressions and
mutterings. The men turned their backs as I had the women clean up
Antoinette, who hung limply as she had her clothes changed and her
body sponged. Then I had the women change the sheets and put down
towels and return Antoinette to bed. She was shivering and clutching
her torso and saying in English how much it hurt and how cold she was.
I kept dampening her forehead and mouth, water seeping through the
cracked dried crevices of her lips. It was a hell of a flu, this, and though
I told the Concellos I'd seen lots of cases like it back in my nursing days,
the truth was I was beginning to question whether I really had.