Touch of the Clown (12 page)

Livvy doesn't say anything. She is shuddering so that it seems she will never stop. I get her into the house and tell her to lie on the sofa while I get Grandma's walker back out to the truck. Mrs. Perth is fast asleep in the truck cab. For a minute, as she struggles to get down, it seems like Grandma is going to collapse, too. If she does, it will look like something has come and killed everyone in their tracks, a terrible plague with instant, deadly power–like the green smog that drifted through the palaces of the Egyptians in that movie about Moses that Grandma and Daddy often watch.

But Grandma's hands curl around the piping of her walker, and I am able to get her slowly into the house. I help her into her chair. Livvy is asleep now on the sofa. I get a blanket off Daddy's bed and take it out to the truck, brush the potato chips out of his hair and put it over him. Somehow Crispy Dan and Mrs. Perth have managed to get across the road to Mrs. Perth's house.

When I look out my bedroom window, I can see the panel truck sitting at its odd angle, half on the road, half on the boulevard. Maybe sometime I'll be able to tell Cosmo about this day. We'll sit in a coffee shop with cups of cocoa and cappuccino in front of us, and laugh at Daddy with his crown of potato chips. But for now, I want to push it out of sight, forget it.

“Tomorrow,” the beautiful girl in
Gone With the Wind
is always saying. “Tomorrow.”

Tomorrow I will be back in the workshop again.

Each day we seem to be getting faster at walking the fifteen blocks downtown. Today we are a quarter of an hour early. Livvy has been grumpy ever since she woke up, close to noon.

“Do you want me to go in with you?” I ask her when we get to the art gallery.

“No. I can go in by myself.” She's already pulling the heavy outer door open.

“See you at break.”

Nathan is sitting at a picnic table in the park, smoking a cigarette.

He waves at me.

“H-Hey, we missed you yesterday. C-Cosmo said you went on an ou-t-ting with your family.”

I nod.

“A good t-time?”

I shake my head. “Mayfair Park with Crispy Dan the Potato Chip Man.”

“You're k-kidding.”

“It was okay to start with, but it went on forever,
and everyone got plastered except Livvy and me.”

“Everybody's idea of a p-picnic ain't the same, I guess.” Nathan chuckles softly.

“You get home okay when we left you at the bus stop?”

“Oh, yes.” Nathan does a little dance with his eyebrows. “B-But it didn't make any difference. No one else showed up. It was k-kinda nice having the house all to myself. Except I didn't know where anyone was, and when everyone d-did come crashing in, it was three o'clock in the morning, and my cousin passed out on my bed, leaving approximately thirty centimeters for me.”

“Were you able to get back to sleep?”

“T-Took awhile. I ended up reading for about an hour.”

“No kidding,” I say. “I read to put myself to sleep, too.
Jane Eyre,
this book Cosmo gave me–it's good for that.”

The noon sun finds touches of redness in Nathan's hair and face. He holds his nicotine-stained fingers over his chin to cover a new pimple that has a redness all its own.

“Wonder what Mr. Cosmo Clown has lined
up for us t-today?” He draws in smoke, hanging onto it inside for so long I think it must have seeped into all the corners of his body.

“You should try to quit smoking,” I say, feeling my own face turn red. I hear Grandma's voice, thick with sarcasm. “Barbara, I don't know what we'd do without you.”

“Just one of my bad h-habits,” Nathan smiles.

“Tell us about the other ones.” Cloud drops her backpack on the picnic table. She pantomimes lighting a cigarette and gestures at Nathan's pack. Nathan pushes it over to her.

“You wouldn't want to know.”

Cloud launches into a replay of her morning with her mother. “I finally told her that if she signed me up for anything more this summer I'd run away and live with Daddy and spend the rest of the holidays lying in the sun getting sun-burnt, eating junk food and getting fat. That nearly gave her cardiac arrest. Don't you hate it when parents try to just totally run your life?”

Nathan and I share a look.

I try to imagine Cloud and her mother in the morning, arguing over orange juice in crystal glasses on a table with a checkered tablecloth in
one of those kitchens with islands of appliances and copper pots and jelly molds on the wall, like in the housekeeping magazines at school.

“It's my life, after all,” Cloud continues as we head over to the theater. “I told her she should check to see if they were offering any summer courses on how to parent.”'

We are inside for only a few minutes today as Cosmo tells us about our assignment before leading us out onto the street. We are supposed to create characters that will be out of place in different spots downtown.

In a grungy alley, we are high society people; by an exercise gym, we are couch potatoes barely able to move; in a posh shopping district, we are street people.

“Don't need to pretend for this,” Nathan whispers to me.

Cosmo is having a great time. He seems to bound with energy, gathering us to him wherever there's a parking lot or a small park. “Your greatest source of material,” he tells us, “is the world around you. Did you notice the little boy, determined not to go a step farther with his mother on their shopping expedition? The little old lady in her Sunday hat, passing out leaflets?
Or the tattooed biker with the parking ticket on his motorcycle?” Suddenly Cosmo looks at his watch. “Oops,” he says, “we'd better be getting back or Miss Olivia will be wondering what's happened to us.”

It is five minutes until her class lets out.

“We'll go ahead.” Nathan grabs my hand and we jog along the sidewalk back to the theater.

“Livvy,” I call as we head back inside, “we're back.” There is no answer. I have a feeling inside of me that something has gone wrong, a kind of empty feeling except for my heart pounding. A car screeches and slams on its brakes as I race across the street to the art gallery workshop. Everyone is gone from Livvy's class except for a strange woman rolling up papers.

“Livvy!” I call.

“I think everyone's gone,” the lady says, snapping a rubber band around the papers.

“But Livvy waits with me.”

“Oh. The little girl with a…bathroom problem. She said she had to go and see you about half an hour ago. She said her sister's across the road.”

“Where's Bella?”

“She was sick. Couldn't make it in today.
Didn't your sister find you? I thought she knew just where to go.”

“Oh, God.” I hear my voice coming out, a little moan, the sound finding its way past the dryness in my mouth, my throat.

“Isn't she h-here?” says Nathan.

“I think she's gone home.”

I'm out on the street again, running, Nathan just behind me. “Livvy,” I cry. It seems to help to call her name as my feet fly over the cement. At the red lights I hop up and down.

“We'll catch up,” Nathan says, his own breath coming in huffs and puffs. But we don't. She is nowhere along the fifteen blocks home. And then I am outside the house. The front door is open, like a rectangular scream, and the windows on either side seem to stare at me.

“Livvy,” I shout, “are you home?”

It is Grandma who appears at the door, pushing her walker in front of her.

“Barbara Kobleimer,” she shrieks, “you get in here. This instant!”

“Is Livvy…”

“She's inside,” Grandma hollers. “And you better hightail it in here this instant.” I see she is giving Nathan the once-over.

“You want me to w-wait?”

“No, you'd better get back to the class. Cosmo will be wondering what happened to us.”

“Missy…” Grandma is still shrieking.

“Can I call you later?” Nathan positions him-self in front of me, his back to Grandma.

“We don't have a phone.”

“Well, let me give you my number. Maybe you can call me from a pay phone.”

“Barbara!” Grandma is beside herself. I can hear her actually lifting her walker and slamming it down. Nathan searches for a slip of paper, pulls the flap off his cigarette box, finds the stub of a pencil in a pocket.

“Your father will hear about this!”

Nathan squeezes my hand, leaving the slip of paper. “I'll look after your bag,” he says. “Call me.” I watch him retreating down the block.

I tuck the paper in my pocket and head for the door. I have to squeeze past Grandma's walker.

“You deceitful girl.” Her words seem to be hurled at me. “You can thank your lucky stars that Livvy got home by herself. Lord only knows what might have happened to her…”

“Where is she?”

“Her daddy is attending to her upstairs.”

As I make my way up the stairs, I can hear Livvy's muffled sobs. The door to her room is open and she spies me as Daddy pulls a clean T-shirt over her head. She stares at me for a second.

“I couldn't find you.” She is really crying now. “Where were you?” The words will hardly come out.

Daddy whirls around.

“The class was just out for a little while downtown. I didn't mean–” I'm not sure what I'm going to say, but I don't have a chance to say any more.

In three giant steps, Daddy has made it from Livvy's room and across the hall to the top of the stairway. He grabs my arm, pulling me away from the stairs. With his free hand, he slaps me across the face. I can hear the smacking sound and the pain bursts a second later. I think my head is going to fly away. He lets go of my arm and then the freed hand explodes against the other side of my face.

“Don't, Daddy!” My voice becomes a cry mixed with Livvy's shrieks.

With both hands, he grabs my shoulders and shakes me. I am screaming one big scream and the sound rattles around me. He lets go and I feel another slap against my cheek. There is a pause and then the other cheek, a horrible smashing into my eye.

“You think you can defy me.” He is yelling at the top of his voice. I roll onto the floor and hold my hands over my head. The slaps stop but the voice rages on. “You think you can just go ahead and do what you damn well please when-ever you damn well please. Well, not just yet, Miss Uppity. You're not of age, and until you are, you will do what I say. You hear? You hear? Answer me.”

“I hear.” I cry softly, not wanting to cry, my tears dampening the rag rug on the landing.

“I think you better apologize to your sister.”

“I'm sorry, Livvy.”

“Edwin.” I can hear Grandma's quavery voice from the bottom of the stairs. “Son?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You come down and rest yourself before you have an attack.”

“Rest! When do I ever get any rest with one child handicapped and the other a delinquent!”

“Edwin. Your blood pressure.”

I am afraid to move. I can feel the rough sur-face of the rug against my stinging cheek, the smooth linoleum against my fingertips.

“You get to your room now, and don't come out.” Daddy is still shouting.

“I want Barbara,” Livvy howls.

“You leave her be,” Grandma calls up. “She's been a deceitful, wicked girl.”

“I want Barbara,” Livvy is chanting as I get up and make my way past Daddy, standing there, his open hand shaking. I ease the door closed and then crawl onto my bed and hide my face in a pillow. A pain shoots along the inside of my ear. I am crying like Livvy cries, as if every-thing inside me is broken and will never get fixed. I cry until it seems like there is no more moisture in my body. In the quiet time that follows, I keep my eyes closed so that I am in a kind of velvet blackness, a cocoon of darkness.

It is dark when I wake up. The ache in my ear is still there and my face feels hot and puffy. I ease myself off the bed and pull the light cord. For a minute, I'm afraid to look at myself in the little oval mirror on the wall across from my bed. I run a comb through my hair first, let the night air brush against my face from the window. The street is quiet. An old man walks a scruffy little dog, white with black spots. Under a streetlight, a woman with rhinestones on her shoes shifts from foot to foot, smoking a cigarette.

When I look at myself in the mirror, I see the sides of my face have begun to darken with bruises. In the movies, beaten women wear dark glasses. I will need to wear a sack over my head.

I wonder where everyone is. I can hear the hum of the refrigerator from downstairs, adding a kind of throb to the rise and fall of television talk. Where is Livvy?

She's asleeep in her room, curled into a quilt
on the floor, her thumb in her mouth, Bingo ball rolled off into a corner. She stirs as I watch her, and makes a little moan, like a kitten. I think of her trudging the fifteen blocks home from downtown, frightened, crying, her clothes soiled. In a way, my sore cheeks make it easier to think about this.

Downstairs, Daddy has fallen asleep, spilling the sherry that was left in his glass down his shirt. His mouth is open. When I look at his hands, resting palms up on the couch, I feel something hot and acidy rising inside me. For a minute I think I am going to throw up, but I close my eyes and it goes away.

Grandma is asleep in her chair, too. A cigarette on her ashtray has burned itself into a complete ash-ghost of itself. She snores softly, her head fallen to one side. On the TV, an old blackand-white movie flickers.

It is the Barbara Stanwyck movie about the
Titanic.
We watched it a couple of nights ago. I sit down for a minute on the edge of the sofa, very carefully so as not to wake anyone. The ship has already hit the iceberg and the captain is telling Barbara Stanwyck's husband, “I'm ordering all women and children into the boats.”