Touch of the Clown (7 page)

Now I am crying, but I face the cupboard and won't let him see me. He wanders into the living room and I hear the television click on.

“What would you like to see, Mom?”

“Oh, you know me,” Grandma says. “Anything you like is fine with me. Do we have any Claudette Colbert? People used to say I looked like her.” I hear the sound of a cassette being sucked into the VCR and a swell of moviestudio music.

Grandma's check does come in the mail. Which means we will all be heading down to the bank in a taxi and then over to the grocery store and the liquor mart. I help Grandma into her goingout dress. It is a deep rose pink with a pattern of splashy flowers. I hook the buttons along her
back. It seems like each time I do it, her back has curved even more into a stoop. Livvy has changed into her party dress even though it needs cleaning. She spilled orange pop on the lace when Grandma's money came in last month.

“Pretty, pretty,” Livvy chants, twirling around.

“You got a change of clothes for her, Barbara?” Grandma asks.

Livvy and I squeeze into the back seat of the taxi beside Daddy, who has shaved and patted his cheeks and neck with after-shave. The layered smells of alcohol and perfume fill the car. Grandma sits stiffly in the front seat clutching her shiny black purse.

When we pull up to the bank, Daddy gets out and helps Grandma. It is hard for her to walk without her walker.

“I want to go in, too,” Livvy pouts.

“You kids wait in the car and be good,” Daddy calls back at us.

“Guess what I've got here.” I pat the survival bag. Livvy's attention is easily captured.

“Candy?”

“No. Nothing that will rot your teeth.” I
reach in and fish out
Winnie-the-Pooh.

“Oh, goodee.” Livvy claps her hands. She smiles and waves at the reflection of the taxi driver's face in the rear-view mirror. As I continue with the chapter where Piglet meets a Heffalump, she sighs and leans back into the seat, but it is hard to keep her attention with the radio crackling and bursting into messages.

“We got money,” she sings when Grandma and Daddy return.

“And we know who wants to spend it,” Grandma cackles as she struggles back into the seat. “You can take us to Mama Isabella's,” she directs the taxi driver.

“Goodee, goodee, goodee. Pizza! I want pineapple.”

“What do you want, Barbara?” Daddy asks.

I want to go to the clown workshop, I think, but I say, “I'll share Livvy's pineapple one. I like pineapple.” It will be good to have pizza after all the macaroni we've been eating, but at the same time I'm dreading the hours that stretch ahead.

Mama Isabella's is tucked in between the liquor mart and the Safeway. It is hard to get Daddy and Grandma away from a booth at Mama Isabella's. When we're finished the pizza,
I try playing hangman on the paper placemat with Livvy, choosing a really easy word to spell–DOG–but she decides to take over and draw the man on the gallows. Daddy and Grandma have finished the wine they've had with supper and are on their third Irish Cream when Daddy tells Livvy and me to go to the Safeway and load up the grocery cart.

Livvy has managed to spill tomato sauce all down the front of her dress. “I want to push the cart by myself,” she says. She has already banged into a pyramid of canned corn, and the man at the cigarette counter is watching us out of the corner of his eye.

“Okay,” I say. “But you have to be really careful, and you have to stay behind me.”

“Oh, bah. Baa, baa, baa.”

“Livvy.”

“It's not any fun.”

“Grocery shopping's not supposed to be fun.”

“Baa.”

“Are you a sheep?”

Livvy giggles.

We go up and down the aisles. Froot Loops. Milk. I have a hard time getting Livvy away from the bakery department. She piles a chocolate
cake and strawberry tarts into the cart.

“Grandma will get mad,” I tell her.

“Baa,” Livvy says. “Can we go home now? Me wanna play with Bingo.”

“Just a bit more.”

The cart is piled full and we have done two word-search puzzles, waiting on the bench by the door, when Daddy and Grandma finally come. They have been arguing. Daddy's cheeks are wet with tears, and Grandma's mouth is a tight, thin line.

“Daddee.” Livvy hangs onto Daddy's trousers. “I need to whisper something to you.”

“Did you have an accident?”

“No,” Livvy scowls. He bends down, and when she's through whispering, he says, “Ask Grandma. It's her check.”

“Can we get a chocolate bar?” Livvy acts suddenly shy and looks as if she is going to burst into tears. “And can I get a Pocahontas coloring book?”

Grandma Kobleimer has eased herself into a chair by the door. “Get whatever you want. My money isn't my own these days.”

We stop at the video store and Livvy pulls six movies off the shelves before we notice what
she's up to. Daddy has already piled my arms full from the Classics section.

“Carnosaurs. Interview With a Vampire.
Are you out of your mind, child?” Daddy hollers.

“How come I never get to choose?” Livvy is sobbing now, more from fatigue than anything else.

“Child's Play 2.
Every one of these needs to be put back.”

“The children's section is over by the window,” I say. “Maybe you can choose a couple from there.”

“I want to go home,” Livvy cries. It's too late to get her to a bathroom, I realize. Daddy shoves Livvy's videos onto the nearest shelf.

“Oh, for crying out loud. Couldn't you have waited a few more minutes till we got home.”

Daddy's voice is rising all the time. I see people looking at us sideways. Livvy has broken into loud sobs. Daddy pulls some bills out of his pocket and tells me to pay for the videos while he gets Livvy out to the taxi.

“Looks like your dad took out the whole Classics section.” A boy with three earrings in one ear and two in his nose punches in the movies. “
Titanic.
Never knew there was an old movie of that.”

The taxi driver takes some more of Grandma's money when we get home. His nose is wrinkled up and he mutters, “There better not be any damage to my upholstery,” as Livvy climbs out of the back seat.

“You ever heard of a tip?” Daddy asks him, his voice tight.

“Whaddya mean?”

“I mean you aren't going to
see
one. Your precious upholstery is filthy to begin with.”

“That upholstery was shampooed…”

I start to lug the groceries out of the trunk.

It is close to an hour later by the time I've helped Livvy get ready for bed. She is so tired she barely touches the piece of chocolate cake she insisted on for a snack, and falls asleep before I can finish a page of
Winnie-the-Pooh.
It's hot in her room, and her curls lie damp against her face. For a time I sit and look at her. There is a faint smell of perfume from the soap she used in her bath and didn't do a very good job of rinsing off. That and the bathroom smell that is always in her mattresses, stronger in the heat. She sighs in her sleep and mumbles something about Bingo. From downstairs I can hear the drone of the television and Daddy's voice above it.

“No man was ever expected to put up with what I have to,” he is half-hollering, half-crying.

“Pipe down,” Grandma screeches back.

Raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens,
a voice swells from the TV as they both pause for breath.

I slip downstairs past the hollering and crying and
The Sound of Music
and get the clown workshop application from the top of the fridge. There are other forms there. Government welfare forms, a couple with Daddy's signature. I take them along
with Jane Eyre
and go back to my room.

This is the smallest room in Grandma's house. Mama used to do sewing in it, her hands guiding pieces of cloth across the work leaf, the chatter of the needle mixing with the sound of a little radio she carried with her from room to room, while I played with a doll or did a word search on the floor.

“This will be a blanket to wrap my baby bunting in,” she would sing softly. Livvy was curled up inside her, growing bigger week by week. “And this…” She would pull a piece of cloth out of a big cardboard box filled with odds and ends of material. “This will be a sundress for
your dolly, to match our own.” Mama liked to dress the two of us in matching outfits. Complete strangers would come up to us and say things like, “Aren't the two of you a picture,” and Mama would laugh and show all her crooked teeth.

“We are,” she'd say. “We are.”

The sewing machine has been broken for years, but with its work leaf closed over the top of the cabinet, I can use it as a desk. I work through the form: address, telephone (I put in a dash), annual income (I write “unemployed,” and then, with a slash, “welfare”). There is a place for additional comments. I try different ways of saying it on a piece of paper, and then I write:
My current financial circumstances make it impossible for my daughter to get into a program like this, but she has a strong interest, and we have always been a family interested in theater.
Daddy's signature is not easy to copy and I write it about thirty times before signing E. A. Kobleimer on the dotted line. My hand is trembling at this point, but the form is filled in. I fold it and slip it into the back of
Jane Eyre.

I feel sick to my stomach.

When I crawl into bed and try to read, I can't
concentrate. Lies and forgery. I have told lies and committed forgery. What would Cosmo think?

Or Mama? I try turning off the light and going to sleep but that doesn't work either. I get up and get a glass of water and drink it sitting at the sewing machine in the dark. My window will only push up a little way before it sticks, but it's enough to let in a bit of night breeze. It feels good against my face, and I press the cold glass of water against my cheek.

The outside night is filled with little spots of sound. A baby crying a few houses away, and a cat yowling but far enough away you can barely hear it, a car with its radio on moving slowly along the street. There is enough light from the streetlight for me to see the photographs I have tacked to the wall by the sewing machine: Mama and Daddy's wedding picture, Mama smiling with her big teeth, Daddy with a moustache and his hair dark and shiny; one of Mama holding me as a baby; a family photo of all of us, Livvy a few months old on Mama's lap, already Mama's face looking thin and bones showing that you can't see in the other pictures.

“Oh, Mama,” I say, so softly it is just a little whisper in the night air. “I'm sorry.”

Cosmo is heading off on his bicycle when I take the form over after we've eaten break-fast the next morning.

“How's Mehitabel?” Livvy asks, bouncing Bingo on the sidewalk. She's getting so she can catch it on the rebound.

“Mehitabel is as good as…better than new. I treated her to a new coat of paint after I got the wheel fixed.”

“Pret-tee,” Livvy pats a shiny red piece of the frame and practices ringing the bicycle bell.

“Here's the clown workshop form. Daddy says I can go if I take Livvy along.” I can feel my face growing hot with the shame of the lie.

“Hey, great. Wonderful.” Cosmo gives me a wide smile and winks at Livvy. “My friend Bella can let her paint for the last part of her work-shop, and then she can come at break time and we'll find something for her to do.”

“I want to be a clown, too.”

“You're already a clown,” Cosmo laughs.
“See you guys on Monday.”

We watch Cosmo and Mehitabel disappear down the street.

“You'll like painting,” I tell Livvy. “Remember the ones you did at school and we had on the fridge?”

For Christmas last year, Livvy's teacher gave all of her students smiling Santa fridge magnets and Livvy began putting up the pictures she'd painted at school.

“My family,” she announced, pinning up a picture with four figures, including an almost-round man with a bottle in one hand and a TV remote in the other. It disappeared overnight once Daddy took a close look at it. That left the one with children and elephants playing together on the playground until Livvy decided she needed the fridge magnets to stick to the monkey bars at school.

“Mrs. Foster says I paint elephants really good.” Livvy talks nonstop as we walk down-town on Monday. “And I can do alligators better than Josh, most of the time. One time he did one better.”

I shift the survival bag to my other hand. It is fifteen blocks, and I switch it every three blocks.
In it there is a change of clothes for Livvy in a plastic grocery bag, some sandwiches, although we ate just before leaving, one of my school scribblers with its used pages torn out, in case we need to take notes, the new word-search book I slipped into the grocery cart at Safeway,
Jane Eyre, Winnie-the-Pooh.

When I take Livvy into the children's work-shop in the art gallery across from the theater studio, Cosmo's friend, Bella, gives her a big hug and I know she will be okay. Her attention has already been caught by the gigantic pieces of paper unrolled over the floor. Kids have begun to paint a mural of people parading along on bicycles and skateboards and roller-blades.

“You can work with Walden.” Bella gestures to a boy who says, “Hey, can you paint some people running? I want people running in front of these kids walking a dog.”

“I want to paint a dog,” says Livvy.

“Okay,” says Walden. “We need more dogs.” I give Bella the grocery bag with the change of clothes. “She might need these.”

“Yes, Cosmo told me. Now don't you worry–and I'll walk her over to the acting studio when we're finished.” Bella gives me a little
hug, too. She is a hugging sort of person with bright hair and lipstick, and a pile of jewelry. “Have fun.”