Touch of the Clown (6 page)

“Can I go, Barbara? I want to.” Livvy has turned this into a chant.

“I don't know, Livvy. Be quiet.”

Cosmo perches some glasses on his nose and
sinks back onto his cushion as he reads the form over. The room has darkened a bit and a floor lamp with a shade pleated like a fan casts a soft light on Cosmo's head. It makes his hair look like spun gold and turns the kaftan an even deeper sun-drenched color. The many shades of gold move as he shifts his position, takes the glasses off, rubs his eyes. For an instant he holds the glasses up against the light, and the long kaftan sleeves fall back, revealing his bandage and the dark bruises on both arms.

“Are those bruises sore?” I ask.

“What, these?” He looks at his arms. “Oh, they're not from the bike accident. It's a kind of skin cancer I have.”

Cancer. I can't believe I've made him think about something so awful. I think of the lady at Mama's funeral saying there was cancer running all through her. Sometimes, I guess, it runs along the outside. Is it going to kill you, I want to ask Cosmo, but I can't make my voice say anything.

“I've had it for quite awhile,” he says. “It's uncomfortable and sometimes painful, but you get used to it.”

I don't know what to say. Livvy has found some little mechanical toys on a shelf and is
winding up a pink plastic pig that does a little jig when you set it down.

She squeals with delight.

“Wilbur! Wilbur's dancing!”

“I'm glad you're giving him some exercise,” Cosmo laughs. “He likes to dance and he doesn't do it nearly enough.”

“Can I have him?” Livvy asks suddenly.

“Livvy!” I scream at her. “That's rude!”

Cosmo puts his index finger across his lips and smiles at me. “You could, Miss Olivia,” he says, “if it hadn't been given to me by someone very special. But, tell you what. Whenever you come to visit, you must remember to set him out for a bit of a jig.”

“All right,” Livvy chuckles.

I want to ask him who gave him the pig, but it's safer to say nothing.

I just listen to Livvy's happy squeals as she sets the pig dancing again, and the CDs of guitar music, and now a lady singing sad songs in a soft, scrapy voice.
God bless the child…
I look more closely at Cosmo's living room. Against the white walls there are shelves with books and knickknacks. Not the china birds and bouquets of flowers and old-fashioned plaster ladies that
Grandma has all over our house, but African animals carved out of wood, oiled and polished, and little boxes of all shapes, some carved, some inlaid with metal and something shiny and white.

One wall is covered with photographs that have frames decorated with patterns of triangles and circles, leaves and flowers. There's a photo-graph of a clown–it must be Cosmo but I can't be sure–and one of a man with black, curly hair, dressed like someone out of
Romeo and Juliet.
As I look from picture to picture, I realize that the man with the black hair is in most of them.

The pig has wound down and nuzzles its snout into one of the geometric diamonds on Cosmo's rug. Livvy yawns and pats her tummy contentedly.

“I'd better take her home,” I say.

“No, me wanna stay,” Livvy sighs.

“Books!” Cosmo claps his hands together. “The Kobleimer girls shall not leave, except laden with literature.” He disappears and returns dragging a large cardboard box. “I know the perfect one for you, Livvy,” he says. “Wilbur is not the only pig to be discovered between the covers
of a book. You need to meet Piglet.” He rummages and brings out a copy of
Winnie-the-Pooh.
Livvy loves the name. “Pooh, Pooh, Pooh.” She dances around, giggling.

“One would think,” Cosmo winks at me, “that Miss Livvy has particular associations with that word.” He has opened another book. “Oh, hey, you 11 like this one, Barbara.
Jane Eyre.
My aunt gave me this, part of a set of classics. I wonder what happened to
David Copperfield?”

Jane Eyre. I like the sound of it, and I think how wonderful it would be to have a last name like air or westwind or fire, rather than Kobleimer.

“I must warn you that parts of it are sad, and parts of it will make you angry. Do you like
The Secret Garden?

“I love it”.

“Then you'll like this one, too.”

We leave with a bagful of books.

“You can't tell Daddy we have these,” I tell Livvy as we walk home, night beginning to soften things in the distance. It is good to be careful of the places where shadows are beginning to pool.

“I want to,” Livvy pouts. She is doing a little
dance, and I wonder if she'll get home in time, or if we should have used Cosmo's bathroom before we left.

“If you do, I won't read you any of
Winnie-the-Pooh”

She considers this threat solemnly. “Okay,” she says, “but hurry, I gotta…”

“I know,” I say. “We're almost there.”

The brochure on the clown workshop marks the place where I left off reading
Jane Eyre.

Harlequin. Cosmo has told me the name of the clown in the picture on the cover of the brochure, an old picture of a figure in diamond patchwork clothes and a mask.
Find the inner clown, touch base with the vital force of creativity, discover the basis for building future experiences in theater and dance
it says beneath the picture. The cost is $125. There is a boxed-in square that says “Funding Subsidy Request.”
It is the aim of the Clown Council that its workshops be available to all interested candidates…
It goes on for several lines of small print, followed by a place for a guardian or parent to sign.

Would Daddy ever sign it?

I read a bit
in Jane Eyre,
but my mind stays on the workshop. I want to go so badly I feel a kind of pain across my chest, making it hard to breathe. With the house quiet, it would be nice
to laze in bed, but the tightness makes me restless.

I get up, stopping at Livvy's room. She has had accidents in both of her beds and lies curled up on some pillows on the floor, a blanket half over her. Window squares of light fall on the opened, face-down copy of
Winnie-the-Pooh,
which I read aloud to her until she fell asleep.

I strip the beds and let her sleep. Then I take the bedding and her discarded pajamas down into the basement to the soaking sink. Back up in the kitchen, the morning light shows how dirty the room is. We are out of dish detergent, but I get some laundry soap and tackle the dishes that have piled up over the last couple of days, wiping down the cupboard counter, scraping crumbs out of the cracks, washing the cupboard doors, finally sweeping the linoleum and using what's left of the dish water to give it a wash.

I imagine that I am Cosmo and wonder what he would do at this point.

Flowers.

There's not much in the back yard, but there are patches of daisies along the fence, a bit beaten down from midnight thunderstorms and dust from the alley. But I cut a bunch, wash
them in the sink, and find one of Grandma's vases to put them in.

When I check, the coffee canister is empty, but I put the kettle on. Tea will have to do, and Grandma actually prefers it. There is enough of a loaf of bread left to make some toast. I open the tray at the bottom of the toaster, freeing a small mountain of crumbs, add this to the bags of garbage under the sink and then tie these and take them out to the alley.

There are no sounds yet from either Daddy's or Grandma's bedrooms. I make some tea for myself. I let it cool beneath the daisies on the kitchen table, tuck the clown workshop application into the back of
Jane Eyre
and ease into chapter two.

I was a trifle beside myself; or rather out of myself as the French would say. I was conscious that a moment's mutiny had already rendered me liable to strange penalties, and, like any other rebel slave, I resolved, in my desperation, to go to all lengths.

Jane's words seem stiff and heavy, like carved furniture in a museum, but they are powerful and strong, too. I read the lines over again and sink further into the chapter.

I don't even notice Daddy until he's at the kitchen doorway.

“Pull that shade, Barbara, will you?” He squints against the sunlight. “My eyes have always been too sensitive.”

“Morning, Daddy,” I say. “Is that why you used to work in theaters?”

“You got it.”

I scramble up, pull the blind down, add some hot water to the teapot.

“Angel,” he says, settling himself into the other kitchen chair. I put a mug of tea in front of him. He takes it with shaking hands. “Your mother could tolerate the harsh light of day. I never could.”

“She liked the sun.” I busy myself with the toast.

“I think we'll just turn this into a bit of Long Island Tea.” Daddy heaves himself out of the chair and checks the bottom cupboard where he and Grandma keep their bottles of sherry. There is only one left and it is mostly gone. “Oh, well,” he sighs. “Maybe Short Island Tea.” He pours the last of the bottle into his teacup.

I put the toast in front of him.

“My goodness, such service. And flowers. To
what do we owe all this?”

“Nothing.”

But he looks at me sideways.

Livvy, by this time, has wandered downstairs. Like Daddy, she is not a morning person. She stares distrustfully at the bouquet of flowers.

“How's my sweet sugar?” says Daddy.

“I'm tired,” says Livvy.

“Maybe we should take her to the doctor again,” I say.

“Doctors,” Daddy snorts into his tea. “When have they ever been able to help her? Give her a million tests. Give her medicine that won't work. Write down fancy names.”

I hear the toilet flushing. Grandma is up. I put more toast in the toaster. “You want some toast, Livvy?”

“I want Froot Loops.”

“We're out,” I say. “And we're out of milk.”

Livvy begins to sob quietly. “I want Froot Loops.”

“Well, I want a million dollars.” Daddy slams his mug down. “But that doesn't mean I'm going to get it.” Livvy puts her head down on the table and cries.

“It's good toast,” I say. “And there's some marmalade.”

Daddy is eyeing my book.
“Jane Eyre.
Now that was a wonderful movie. Your mother and I saw that when we both worked at the Varsity and they did a series of Orson Welles pictures. Joan Fontaine played Jane Eyre. If we'd had a third daughter, I think we would have called her Joan Fontaine. You know something, pumpkin?” He pats Livvy's snarled hair.

“What?” Livvy inhales between sobs.

“It would have been like real life because Olivia de Havilland and Joan Fontaine were real sisters.”

“I want a sister called Pocahontas.” Livvy is determined to continue her crying.

I can hear the squeaking of the wheels of Grandma's walker as she makes her way from the bathroom, across the living room to the kitchen.

“Why is that child weeping?” Her voice is full of cracks. “You'd think when I have a migraine…”

“We're out of Froot Loops,” I say.

“Don't you cry, Olivia.” Grandma fishes her cigarettes out of her bathrobe pocket. Her hands are shaking. She has trouble lighting it, but finally gets the cigarette going, sucks in the smoke. “My check should be in today. The first
thing we'll get is Froot Loops.”

“Can I have the prize?” Livvy's voice quavers. She knows how to play a scene. It's been years since we quarreled over who got the prize in a package of cereal. I'm surprised she even remembers.

“Of course you can, honey.” Grandma darts a look my way. I shrug.

“You want your tea in the living room, Grandma?” If there's one thing Grandma likes, it's to be waited on. She maneuvers her walker around and heads for her armchair.

“I want marmalade toast,” Livvy decides.

I make toast for the two of them, scraping the marmalade out into equal portions. Grandma even smiles a bit through the cloud of cigarette smoke as I set a little tray on her end-table, with her tea in a bone china cup and the toast cut in triangles.

“This is lovely, Barbara.” She says my name with three distinct syllables. It sounds exotic.

“You go to the bathroom,” I tell Livvy when she has wolfed down her toast. “And stay there for five minutes. I'll time you.”

“I don't have to.”

“Then we can have a game of catch.”

“You do what your sister says.” Daddy drinks the last of his tea, his hands less shaky.

With just the two of us in the kitchen, I slip the application form from the back of
Jane Eyre
and put it in front of Daddy.

“What's this?”

I tell him about the clown workshop but I don't tell him anything about Cosmo.

“Where'd you get this?”

“At the library.”

“You know we don't have any extra money. For God's sake, we don't even have cereal and milk for the baby.”

“But you don't have to pay if you sign this part.”

He looks at the boxed-in paragraph more closely. “Lord,” he says. “They want to know everything from your annual income to the color of your socks.”

“Please, Daddy.”

“We'll see, hon. I'll have a look at it later. Put it on top of the fridge.”

“But it has to be in soon. It starts next week.”

“Oh, pee-ardon me. You seem to forget that we have a handicapped child to look after. How many hours a day is this workshop?”

“Three.”

“That's a long time for Livvy to go untended if Grandma and I are busy, or not well, or something.”

“Maybe Livvy could come along.”

“You know she can't be far away from home.”

“Why–”

“Barbara, I will look at this later. Now put it away. I think Grandma wants some more tea.”