Women & Other Animals (26 page)

my own body with such care that I cannot imagine losing touch with it—I am far more likely to lose my mind, something nobody notices. The man looks away as he straightens himself up, and a few minutes later he returns to his seat by a circuitous route.

In a thick accent, the Smallest Man in the World yells something to the table of showgirls, and at first they ignore him. "Brandy," he then shouts, several times, and I first think he is ordering a drink. "You looking pretty tonight." His voice is nasal and highpitched, sadly comical.

The redhaired woman turns and shouts. "Why'd you follow us here? Find your own bar, Shrimp."

"You are my loving, Miss Brandy." His strangelyaccented voice is far more sad than comic, I decide. The showgirl shakes her head and turns back to face her friends, who laugh. She lights a cigarette.

At the jukebox the two men who accompany the Smallest Man in the World stand near him so they form an equilateral triangle, as if this can protect him. They are heartbroken at what transpires between their small man and the showgirls. After all, they must love him; they have become attached to his smallness the way men become attached to my beauty. When a man is with me, he cannot forget my beauty the way he forgets everything else. Intimate conversations and promises are forgettable, as are meals created with attention to every detail of taste and presentation. Even the loveliness of naked breasts can mean nothing when the skin remains covered for too long. But his size is a constant reminder, as is my face.

I do not like to see my own face, because, despite my makeup, I look sad—sometimes as sad as that rouged old woman slumped over the bar opposite me. When I fix my face in the morning, it sometimes occurs to me to make myself up as a clown by lipsticking a massive smile onto my cheeks. Or exaggerating the sadness by painting a frown and a few shiny tears. I have heard that each circus clown must register a face with the national clown organization, that they cannot coopt the faces of others. Maybe women should have to do that, for we are famous for reproducing the full lips and long curving eyebrows of teenage runway models; perhaps women could be forced to be themselves, the way my sister is herself. This clown urge of mine becomes so overwhelming some days that I Page 176

even fantasize about becoming a clown, although anyone, including my sister and exhusbands, will tell you that I am not funny.

The Smallest Man looks away from the showgirls and over at me. He sways slightly, drunkenly, against the music. He whispers something to the black man, sending him to the bar. The Smallest Man then jumps down, walks over to the showgirls, and disappears from sight.

Martin brings me another drink before I have finished the one in front of me. He gestures with a nod toward the jukebox and says, ''The small guy sent this to you, says it's for 'the most beautiful woman'." From him the compliment means something, and it means something to me that Martin conducted the message. "Have you been to the circus?" Martin asks.

"I went tonight with my sister. That was my sister with me." My arms stretch out brightly on the bar, my skin a bronze color which makes unclear precisely what my race is. Some people assume I come from an island where all the women are beautiful.

"She looks like you," Martin says. My hair is swept off my face, twisted softly at the back of my head, so that my neck is bare. Martin's gaze sweeps over me; he never lets his eyes linger, perhaps out of respect or maybe because he doesn't trust me, having seen me leave the bar with dozens of men. Martin is about to lift his foot and place it on a shelf under the bar so he can lean toward me and say something privately. But the lookalike couple interrupts our moment by motioning to him.

They want a bag of nuts.

Shrieks erupt from the showgirl table, and I do not see the Smallest Man, but soon the redhaired woman screams, "You little pervert midget." The Smallest Man emerges from under the table on all fours, brushes himself off, and returns to the jukebox. He holds up a black platform pump and sniffs it, until the redhead marches up in bare feet and grabs it from him. Her skirt is short and filmy. The Smallest Man grins, but the two big men look worried.

Though there is no table service on week nights, Martin walks around the bar to the showgirls and brings them another round. The women must have been wearing wigs during the show, because all of them have closecropped hair. Their eyes are painted large. The redhead has long, muscular legs, the legs of an athlete, legs Page 177

smooth and strong enough to lure a bartender away from his post. Martin lets his gaze wander all over those legs, even after he returns to the bar. These are probably the kind of women he prefers: energetic, acrobatic, clever.

One showgirl holds her fingers an inch apart toward the jukebox, and when the Smallest Man looks over, all the women burst out laughing. Their mouths seem large enough to swallow his whole head. When the redhaired showgirl notices me staring, she narrows her eyes. I turn back to the bar. I am accustomed to the looks she and the other showgirls give me. They think I have cheated in order to look this way. Have I had surgery? they wonder. They assume that, one way or another, I have sold my soul to the devil.

And I understand why the Smallest Man in the World cannot leave them alone. For the same reason that I cannot resist beautiful new men who come into this bar, because desiring them is uncomplicated. It is not the showgirls' fault that the Smallest Man humiliates himself—their cruelty is ordinary, and they could not possibly know what it means to be tiny.

The showgirls were best at halftime, when all the animals and performers came out in a Wild West spectacular; the showgirls wore fake leather miniskirts with oversized pistols on their hips. I should have told my sister how much I liked the halftime show. My sister was right—the girl riding that sweaty rhinoceros practically had to do the splits as she bounced on its wide, slippery back. During this event, the Smallest Man in the World stood on top of a fancy horsedrawn wagon and waved. He appeared also in the grand finale, standing and waving from an elephant's back.

There is no separate sideshow tent in the circus anymore. You have to go to county fairs for that kind of grotesquerie, or else watch television. This July I traveled thirty miles and paid two dollars each to see the world's smallest horse, the fattest pig, the longest alligator. You must take for granted that they really are the longest, the smallest, and the fattest. Who is to say that the posted weight, height, or length is even honest? Who is in charge of freak show weights and measures?

Surely the man who bought me this drink is the true Smallest Man in the World; the Greatest Show on Earth would not lie so Page 178

boldly. Before I finish my second drink, the Smallest Man has ordered his third. He seems drunk already, the way a regularsized man would be drunk had he taken six or eight.

On my way to the bathroom, I look straight ahead, avoiding the eyes of the redhaired showgirl, but on my way back, I walk slowly enough to study their heads and shoulders and to smell their perfume, which is flowery and applied too heavily, perhaps to disguise sweat. Though they portray beautiful women, they are not particularly beautiful. Real beauty would be too quiet on the arena floor, and it could not compete with the menagerie of elephants and horseback riders. Beauty cannot transmit over long distances, could not possibly stretch into the upper tiers of a stadium; costumes do a better job than the real thing. Helen's beauty was transmitted by hearsay; how many of the men who died at Troy ever saw her? These showgirls are not as young and foolish as they seem in costume. They are actors and magicians, good with the sleight of hand, the sleight of face.

Even the Smallest Man in the World used a few tricks. When he appeared in the center ring at halftime, sitting and then standing on the seat of his circuspainted stagecoach, he wore a suit jacket that had been cut long so that his legs, which are actually in perfect proportion to his body, looked short. The horses pulling the wagon were draft horses, beasts that would dwarf any human.

A crack like thunder sounds through the bar, but the showgirls do not look up. They are accustomed to elephants stampeding, vendors hawking, cannons blowing humans across arenas.

"Off the jukebox," says the bartender. He says it quickly, directly, without sharpness, and he is already turning away to avoid a confrontation. Martin is a genius. The Smallest Man in the World has not taken offense. He holds out his arms, signaling to his friends that he wants to be carried.

A man in a dark suit approaches this end of the bar and catches my eye. He has not been in here before. He is perhaps twentyfive and has on his face a look of mild astonishment. If my attention were not elsewhere, I might nod to him and invite him to sit beside me. Instead, he leaves one empty stool between us and motions to the bartender. His jacket hangs from broad, straight shoulders.

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Perhaps I will see him tomorrow at the hotel desk, or later tonight in a hotel bed.

At the hotel, I mostly work behind a glass wall, filling out forms, designing staff schedules, and making phone calls, unless there is a problem. In that case, I walk on three inch heels from behind the glass, and I say in the most elegant voice you can imagine, "Is there a problem?" My mouth is perfectly darkened, and I do not open it again until the customer and the clerk have said all they want to say, and still I wait a little longer in silence. Only occasionally do I have to refund money.

Before I have an opportunity to speak to the man in the dark suit, the two men in coveralls carry the Smallest Man in the World to the bar. From here I cannot tell if the jukebox glass is cracked. Hank Williams Senior continues singing a very old heartbreak. The circus people have been playing countrywestern all night.

I wonder if the Smallest Man in the World thinks about growing the way I think about growing less beautiful. Perhaps he and I could live together, drink less, entertain in our home. I know how difficult it would be to really know the Smallest Man in the World, to see beyond his height, and I would work for us not to be strangers.

Along the stairway leading to our bedroom, beside the studio shots of our children, would hang photos of our old deformed selves. Thirtyfive is not too late to start a family. My second husband, who already had two daughters, said I was too selfish to be a mother, but I could change. My own lateborn children would have an easier time than his girls. When my girls looked at photos of me they would say, "You were so beautiful, Mommy," and that past tense would be much easier on them at thirteen than, "You
are
so beautiful." My husband would say, ''I used to be the Smallest Man in the World until I met your mother."

You might suggest that if I genuinely look forward to growing plain, I should skip the facials, the weekly manicures and the constant touchups for my auburn highlights; I should let my hair hang in an easy style like my sister's, or cut it short and convenient as the showgirls have done. Well, you may as well suggest to a tall man that he slump; for me to neglect my beauty now would feel like a denial of the facts.

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Though I try to ignore the stranger beside me, my body moves toward his the way a flower bends toward the sun. I close my eyes in an attempt to resist, but when I open them, he is looking into my face. He smells musky and a little smoky, and his eyes are cocktails with tiny black olives. I would continue to slide closer, except that the Smallest Man in the World is making a fuss. He has jumped onto the bar and is standing with his hands on his hips, like the most outrageous, arrogant child in the world. Perhaps Martin has refused him a fourth drink.

"You're going to have to get down," says Martin.

The Smallest Man shouts in a language that I have never heard in the hotel—Hungarian, perhaps. He is angry and hurt, but his two big friends continue to man the second and third corners of his triangle. They love him too much to encourage him to get off the bar. He is not a child after all. He wears what looks like a boy's sneakers, but his pants are tailored, and his safaristyle jacket is cut to his figure. He stands tall on the bar, enraptured in hostility toward the bartender, and I hope I do not have to choose sides. The showgirls have finally noticed, and they are watching too—everybody loves a spectacle.

The Smallest Man in the World turns and looks across the room, not at them but at me. "Beautiful Lady!" he shouts. "Help me!" He hands his drink to his white man, and he starts down the bar toward me. The old woman with rouge clings to her drink at the other end. The Smallest Man leaps over most of the glasses between himself and me but knocks over both drinks of the pale lookalike couple. They lean back from the bar, Siamese twins, both mouths limp in one expression of confusion. The man beside me jumps up and gets out of the way. The Smallest Man in the World holds out his arms to me, and without hesitation I put down my drink and open my arms. With my beautiful but sad eyes I promise that if he reaches me, I will protect him. I will hold and shelter him like my own first child, embrace him as my blood brother, honor him as my true husband. He crushes a bag of potato chips and kicks loose peanuts into the air. I stand and step slightly back from the bar. If he is brave enough to jump, I will catch him.

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Bringing Home the Bones

Like hundreds of times before, Charlotte had lifted the eightquart canner off the stove, only this time she'd lost her grip on one of the handles. Gallons of nearboiling water cascaded over her lower leg. For a stupefying moment Charlotte had stood rigid, listening, as if waiting for her name to be called, and then the pain began to boil in her skin. Before she lost her nerve, she had wrapped the blistering, slippery tissue in bandages made from a torn sheet and smeared with salve. Ten days and ten throbbing nights later, she opened the bandages and discovered the flesh had turned gray. Still, she had waited before phoning her daughter Andrea. She didn't even remember arriving at the hospital, but now, when she looked down, it became all too clear. Her left leg ended bluntly just below her knee, a stump wrapped in beige bandages, the butchered aftermath of these people's human body experiments. She shook off the smooth thin hand that touched her hand and threw aside a bed sheet the color of skimmed milk. Each attempt to focus on the limb was like falling off a cliff, like being dragged over a waterfall in a current of thinned pigments. She dropped her head back onto a foam pillow and stared up at ceiling tiles.