Goldenland Past Dark (27 page)

Willow and Billow babysat Webern the night his mother died. His parents were going to a costume party, even though it wasn’t yet Halloween, and when they came out of their bedroom they were dressed so strangely he almost didn’t recognize them. Webern’s father wore his old army jacket over a pair of wrinkled khaki pants. When Webern asked him why, his mother cringed, but his father just said, “Because it’s the scariest thing I own.” His mother was dressed as a mermaid, with a green silk skirt and a bodice made of a million clinking seashells. Her heels, taller than the ones she usually wore, made her unsteady. She moved through the house slowly, moving her arms as though parting ribbons of seaweed. Before they left, she came to Webern’s room to kiss him good-bye. She had green glitter in her hair and for days, he kept finding it: on his cheek, his ear lobe, the palms of his hands.

His parents left in such a hurry they forgot to close the garage door. Webern came downstairs and stood at the living room window to watch their Studebaker drive away. This was the first time he’d been alone with Willow and Billow since before his accident. He was still wearing the brace that was meant to straighten his back, and it squeezed him like a vise. When he heard his sisters behind him, he felt it tighten around him even more.

“Bernie Bee, we have a surprise.”

“Come to the kitchen, close your eyes.”

Webern took a deep breath. His sisters took hold of him: Willow grabbed his shoulder, Billow his hump. He held his eyes shut as they steered him through the darkened rooms. In the kitchen, Webern expected to see a dead squirrel in a pizza box, or a pair of dead man’s shoes they’d dredged out of the lake. But nothing could prepare him for what actually greeted him when he opened his eyes.

His sisters had prepared him a feast. Candy corn and watermelon slices, a milkshake dusted with Ovaltine—orange marmalade spread on graham crackers and maraschino cherries dunked in hot fudge.

“Bernie Bee, we make you eat.”

“Nothing bitter, always sweet.”

Webern turned toward his sisters in disbelief. The twins wore newly dyed black aprons that left smudges on everything they touched. As Billow proffered a peanut butter and marshmallow fluff sandwich, he noticed the dark grease that lined the creases in her palms and knuckles, the undersides of her fingernails. She was taking an auto mechanics class at her high school, and she often came home in the evenings with complex, mimeographed diagrams that she pored over for hours while her sister desiccated cat bones with a hairdryer for biology. Webern thought of the coiled entrails of the Studebaker’s engine, Billow’s tools laid out on his father’s workbench like the scalpels and forceps of a messy operating table, and as the wind howled outside, he imagined dead leaves whispering along the concrete floor.

“I’ll be right back,” he whispered.

In the garage, pliers and cranks lay scattered everywhere, and in the centre of the room a discarded bolt lay in a puddle of black motor oil. Webern pushed the button on the wall, and the automatic door clanked down, one heavy panel at a time. Later he would remember how dark and empty it had looked, how sealed up, like a walled-off, unheated room that has outlived its original use.

When he came back into the kitchen, Willow and Billow clamped their hands around his arms and steered him to the sofa in front of the black-n-white TV, where they waited on him as he uncomfortably watched cartoons. The twins stood behind the couch, holding hands, breathing down his neck.

“Eat it all—all that you can.” Willow poked him with a Pixie stick.

“Here, have another ginger man.” Billow nudged him with the tray.

“Thanks,” mumbled Webern. On the TV, a cat in a convertible crashed into a barn, leaving a car-shaped hole.

At nine o’clock sharp, Willow and Billow dragged Webern up to bed, then stood over him watchfully as he climbed under the covers with all his clothes on. Cautiously, he folded his glasses and set them on the nightstand, but still the two didn’t budge. A long moment passed. Then they linked arms, and, without opening their mouths, began to hum a lullaby. It was more a kind of buzzing through their teeth, but Webern recognized the tune. It was a song his mother had made up for him. He hadn’t heard it since he was very small. When they finished, the twins smiled at each other.

“Now go to sleep, our little prince.” Billow switched off the lights.

“Or we’ll cut your cheeks and make you wince.” Willow closed the door.

Webern got out of bed immediately and changed into his pyjamas. Then he lay back down. His teeth felt grainy with sugar, and his hump throbbed in a way it hadn’t since just after the accident. He rubbed his hand over it gently.

“Wags?” he called softly. No one answered.

After an hour or two, Webern finally fell asleep reading comic books by flashlight. He dimly heard the storm door slam when the girls slipped out for their usual late-night walk. But a few hours later, he jumped up, wide awake, when he heard the collision outside.

He ran to the window and threw back the curtain. The Studebaker was in the driveway, slammed snout-first into the heavy panels of the closed garage. Smoke poured from its engine, and on the passenger side, his father struggled with the jammed car door. Webern’s mother was in clear sight, her head and shoulders and arms extended like a diver’s through the hole where the windshield had once been. Her face rested on the crumpled hood of the car. Later, Webern would say the metal had squashed like a Coke can, but in that moment, he saw its rippled surface as waves, and the bits of glass that sparkled around her as diamonds and rubies, ancient treasures or lost cargo that could have been found at the very bottom of the sea.

Webern lay under the apple tree
, the core of the purple fruit still in his hand. Up above, the leaves whispered in the breeze. He felt empty, as if the wind had been knocked out of him, and for a moment it occurred to him that he could just lay there, under the crisscrossing shadows of the branches, forever. Then Marzipan poked him with her toe. Abruptly, he stood up. She grasped him by the wrist and led him back toward the camp.

Marzipan and Webern walked together, past the donnikers, their antiquated half-moon doors squeaking in the breeze atop a flatbed car, and through the maze of folded lawn chairs, bottles, and discarded cellophane that was the performers’ campground. It wasn’t until they had passed the fortune teller, who shuffled and muttered to herself amidst several milling cats, that Webern noticed that a line had formed outside his own boxcar.

It was like a freak show in reverse. The Skeleton Dude stood near the front; the delicate calligraphy of his shadow zigzagged on the dusty ground. Behind him, three pinheads carried useless gifts: an empty, flapping cardboard box, a tennis shoe, and what looked like a makeshift doll, styled out of horsehair and a Mrs. Butterworth bottle. The giant came next, in his ten gallon hat; he led the Shetland pony he kept near him at all times to give his audience an exaggerated sense of scale. The others stretched on behind in single file: the albino girl, her pink eyes flashing, her blinding white hair avalanching down her back; the Elastic Man, his distended arm-skin hanging in two drooping folds like fleshy wings; the Missing Link, his thick fur coarse and bristling, tangled with lint and old popcorn kernels.

Sitting on an overturned crate in a one-piece bathing suit, Nepenthe greeted each of them in turn. She hugged the Skeleton Dude and exclaimed over the pinheads’ gifts. She stroked the Shetland pony’s mane and leapt up to shake the giant’s hand. She crossed and uncrossed her legs, her smooth thighs shone in the sun, and when the albino girl leaned toward her to share a confidence, her laughter rang out like the first notes of a melody. She had never seemed so happy, so completely at ease with the other freaks as she did now that medicine had proved she wasn’t one of them.

Webern thought of the storybook princess who dropped her golden ball into the mossy well where the frog king made his home, the way her cries had summoned him, malformed and web-footed, into an unwelcoming realm of palaces and light. As the Human Torso poked Nepenthe’s shoulder blades with a riding crop he clasped between his teeth, Webern slipped past the crowd unnoticed, up the steps into the boxcar.

For a long time, he lay on the bed, watching rock candy grow in the windowsill aquarium; he squinted his eyes till he believed he saw the crystals forming. He didn’t move until Marzipan finally returned from the errand he’d sent her on, with a bottle of Scotch and two Dixie cups. Then they sat on the bed, Indian style, and facing each other proceeded to drink. Marzipan’s eyes, large and brown, glowed with a warm amber light that Webern could only identify as understanding. As she poured him another glass, he began to appreciate why Bo-Bo kept her around; she was everything pleasant about a human being, without the mess and confusion of words.

Nepenthe came inside about an hour later, carrying a bottle of cheap champagne and two Mickey Mouse juice cups Webern had sometimes seen the pinheads using. Venus followed close behind, dressed in a slinky red dress with the armholes sewn up, and a pair of strappy sandals that showcased her red, glossy toenails. Venus’s eyes were done Elizabeth Taylor Egyptian style, with two small black tails curling away at the corners.

“Hey, Pluto.” Nepenthe waggled her Mickey Mouse cup by one of its ears. She flung herself down on the bed between Webern and Marzipan, then made a grab for him, but Webern backed into the pillows at the head of the bed. His legs jackknifed up against his chest.

“So where’ve you two been?” he asked. The strap of Nepenthe’s swimsuit had slipped off one shoulder.

“Haven’t you heard? Your girl works for the ball toss now. She just stands there and the dopes all win her prizes.” Venus smiled slyly, uncoiling on the sofa.

“Shut up!” Nepenthe shrieked. She laughed a little too loudly. Marzipan got up and, glancing over her shoulder surreptitiously, put the Scotch away in one of Webern’s desk drawers. She pulled out the desk chair and sat down. Nepenthe went on, “We were right outside, kiddo. Didn’t you see us?”

“I saw some kind of crowd. I dunno, I was tired. I
am
tired.” It was true. Right then, there was nothing Webern wanted more than to close his eyes.

“Poor fella.” Venus kicked off her shoes and flexed her long toes. “Needed his little naptime, huh?”

Nepenthe ran a careless hand over her knee. The curves of bone moved visibly, languidly beneath her skin. “Well, you should’ve stayed. It was my retirement party.”

At the word “retirement,” Webern pulled off his glasses and pressed the heels of his hands to his face.

“What’s wrong with him?” Venus asked. Papers crinkled as she paged through one of Nepenthe’s underground newspapers with her feet.

Webern felt the springs of the bed quake beneath him as Nepenthe rose.

“Let’s put on some records,” he heard her say. A minute later, the record player’s needle scratched into the well worn grooves of her Question Mark and the Mysterians album.
96 Tears
.

“You know, this guy had a vision that he’d be singing this song in the year ten thousand?” Nepenthe’s feet padded across the rug. “I heard him on the radio.”

“He’s smoking stronger stuff than you, hon,” said Venus.

Nepenthe flopped onto the couch. “The weird thing is, he actually sounded happy about it. If I thought I was going to keep living the same thing over and over, I’d probably kill myself. Then again, he also said he came here from Mars back in dinosaur times, so I guess he’s already used to it.” She raised her voice a little. “Hey Bernie, what do you think? You think Question Mark knows what’s up?”

Webern opened his eyes slowly. Nepenthe was stretched over the cushions, her legs crossed at the ankles, her arms folded behind her head, just like a pin-up girl. She knew exactly what she was doing, and Webern hated her for it—for all of it. He hated her for the bathing suit, for the Polaroids, for the box of scales, dead and dried out and sold to strangers. He hated her for letting another man rub her skin, for letting the giant and the skeleton gawk and prod her. But most of all, he hated her for the way she was smiling at him now, as if he were any other rube she’d seen on the midway, some stranger she could test her powers on.

“I think he’s stupid,” he said. His voice sounded tiny and childish, even to him. “Like all these stupid bands you listen to.”

Nepenthe’s smile faded; she tossed her hair and drew it loosely into a ponytail, then got up off the sofa. “Start the record over, Venus. I want to dance.”

Venus raised an eyebrow, but obediently reached one foot over and moved the needle to the beginning. Nepenthe got up and began to punch the air. Her hips swivelled like a hula hooper’s. With a sidelong glance at Webern, Venus joined her, her whole body swaying in lithe, serpentine motions, her feet describing tiny circles on the rug.

“Move around a little, shortcake.” Venus jerked her bouffant in his direction. “Might do you some good.”

“Aw, Bernie doesn’t want to. He hates this band, remember? But you know who just might.” Nepenthe turned her back toward him and sashayed toward the desk. Marzipan saw her coming and jumped up on the chair, but Nepenthe grabbed her hands before she could get away. “C’mon and cry, cry, cry, cry,” she crooned. She moved Marzipan’s shaggy arms up and down through the air. “Let me hear you cry now.”

“Stop it!” Webern sat up.

“Mellow out! Look at her. She likes it.”

Marzipan glanced desperately at Webern, her rubbery lips stretched back to expose her teeth. She twisted, but Nepenthe held on tight.

“Leave her alone!” Webern jumped up. He grabbed Nepenthe by the elbow and tried to pull her away.

“Let go of me.” She shook him off. “You’re freaking her out.”

Marzipan shrieked; she yanked backward as hard as she could, and Nepenthe let go all at once.

“Damn it!”

The chair fell over, and Marzipan toppled onto the floor.

“What did you do to her?”

“What did
I
do? What the fuck, Bernie! You care more about that goddamn ape than you do about me. She’s fine!” Nepenthe stomped her foot. Marzipan got up and rapidly swung on her knuckles out of the boxcar. “See? She’s completely fine!”

Webern sat down on the desk chair. As much as he tried to hold them back, the tears wouldn’t stop; there was a kind of relief in such complete humiliation. Venus glanced back and forth between him and Nepenthe, then followed the chimp outside.

“Come find me later, sweets,” she called over one shoulder. It wasn’t clear which one of them she was talking to.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Webern bent over the marbled cover of his clown notebook and held his head in both hands. Finally, Nepenthe put her hand on his hump. He didn’t shake her off this time. Her fingers burned there.

“Listen,” she said. “Venus and I are going to a party tonight. You can come if you want. I’d like you to come.”

Webern flipped open the notebook. He imagined himself cartwheeling and tumbling into the colourful pages, vanishing into a landscape of sawdust and spotlights and painted cardboard towns. He shook his head.

“I didn’t mean to ignore you,” she told him. “Earlier, I mean, when everyone from the Parliament came by. I just figured I’d let them all get a good look. I owe them that much, at least. It gives them—I don’t know—hope or something. If that’s not too cliché.”

“Sure.” Webern thumbed past clowns in fire trucks, clowns sitting in front of malfunctioning typewriters or haywire hair-growing machines.

“You’re sure you don’t want to come out with us? It might be fun. You could juggle. People love it when you juggle.”

“I just got back. I have a lot to do.” He stopped at an old drawing—the clown followed by a rain cloud he just couldn’t shake. He still hadn’t figured out how to make it work onstage. Dry ice? Lighting tricks? Some sort of projection? He traced one finger over the small, stooped figure he’d drawn in for himself. “Have a good time, okay?”

“Okay.” Nepenthe let go. “I will.”

That night, Webern watched the big top show from the stands. One of the acrobats sprained his wrist during a handspring—Webern saw him later, holding ice against the swelling—and the timing was off all night: the elephants had hardly finished lumbering through their tea party when a team of men wheeled out the motorcycle cage, and a pair of trapeze artists collided in midair with an audible thwack.

Webern dreaded the clowns, but they were even more awful than he expected. Happy Herbert had replaced the Martian’s tinfoil suit with a boxy costume that made him look like a walking TV: it was ugly, but even worse, it restricted his movements, so he could only turn at right angles and couldn’t even bend his elbows. Webern fixated on that costume. He promised himself that it would be the first thing to go when he started performing with the other clowns again. He pictured himself lighting it ablaze, preferably with Happy Herbert still inside.

He went back to the boxcar by himself. Marzipan sat on the couch, knitting. The window was ajar, and a faint breeze, along with the incredible jumble of clothes, records, clove ash, and magazines strewn on the floor, gave Webern the unpleasant sensation of walking into a home that had just been ransacked. For a minute, as he stood in the doorway, he pretended to himself that he really had been robbed—his girlfriend kidnapped, his fortune stolen!—and that, when he found Nepenthe again, tied to the railroad tracks, maybe, or shackled to a chair, she’d fall into his arms, sobbing with gratitude. But he couldn’t make the daydream come into focus: Nepenthe’s scales wouldn’t stay in place, and she kept stepping back, away from him, to link arms with her captors, a pair of broad-chested radicals whose cause she had recently joined.

Webern shoved a few wrinkled costumes into a scarred trunk and rubbed at a sticky patch of dried Moxie with an old T-shirt until Marzipan grabbed him by the wrist. He was cursing loud enough for his neighbours to hear. It was no good anyway. The place was still a mess. He sank into his chair. After a long moment, he opened the drawer of his desk.

Behind the box that held the Great Vermicelli was a smaller one, with pictures of individually wrapped coffeecakes printed on its top and sides. It was the box he’d gotten almost five years earlier, the day he’d gone to the Lemon City morgue to identify Dr. Show’s body. Inside were the contents of Dr. Show’s pockets. Webern set the box on his knees and opened the top. He sifted through the ticket stubs, the brightly coloured handkerchiefs, the photographs, until, down at the bottom, he found what he was looking for: Dr. Show’s watch.

On its face, an acrobat pointed her cartwheeling arms at the min-utes and hours; on the back, the engraved words GOLDENLAND 1923 were almost rubbed away. Webern set the watch by his alarm clock, wound it, and put it on his wrist. It hung there loose and heavy, and he stared at it, thinking of the night when, like him, Dr. Show waited up for performers who were never coming back.