Goldenland Past Dark (32 page)

At the end of the evening, as he performed one final time, Webern spotted Silly Billy out in the audience, slouched in one corner, smoking a post-show cigarette. Webern knew then that he had outlasted the other clowns, that he was still out on his humble stage as the big top darkened, as the bleachers folded up and the tent poles swooned to the ground. When Webern took a bow, he watched Silly Billy applaud. Then the Parliament cleared out, and almost at once, crewmen started dismantling the tent all around him.

Webern carefully unstrung his ropes and pulleys; he folded up his stepladder and wheeled his unicycle offstage. When he finally glanced up from what he was doing, he saw that Venus de Milo was standing on the sawdust right in front of him. She blew a pink bubble of chewing gum. Then she popped it and pulled it back into her mouth with one deft motion of her tongue.

“So that’s what you’ve been cooking up.” She nodded to the pile of ropes and pulleys. “I was starting to worry, seeing a guy like you stringing up ropes all day.”

“What do you mean, a guy like me?”

“You know. Heartbroke.” Venus took a step toward him and lowered her voice. “A girl doesn’t like fellas sneaking out in the middle of the night. Makes her feel cheap. But I’ll forgive you this time, on account of what you’ve been going through.”

“Get as mad as you want.” Webern coiled the ropes. “I’ve been busy, but I’ve never been better, Venus. You don’t need to make any exceptions for me.”

“Oh, sure. That’s why you’re dressed up as a Nazi boy scout, throwing yourself around like you want your skull cracked. When was the last time you ate at the cookhouse, Bernie?”

Webern tucked his thumbs in the straps of his lederhosen. “I eat.”

“You eat, maybe, but you sure don’t talk. Ask how somebody else is doing for a change, why don’t you? You might learn something.”

Venus’s heels left marks in the sawdust behind her, a trail he didn’t follow.

Webern walked back to the boxcar by himself. Even now that he was back down on the ground, he still felt weightless, as if he might lift off with his next step or find himself drifting in slow motion down a bottomless well. In the distance, he heard porters shout directions as they loaded animal cages onto the train and lashed tent poles and canvas to the flatbeds at the back. Despite the late hour, the air was hot and dense as steam. The sky was yellow, the eye of a storm.

Webern paused at the door of his boxcar. His hand rested on the knob. He felt an odd impulse to knock. The foreignness of everything—the worn wood of the step, the iron wheels of the train—swept over him in a wave.
I don’t live here. I don’t live anywhere.
He shook his head and went inside.

The boxcar was spic and span, the cleanest it had been in weeks. Laundry was folded up and put away, his clown notebooks made a tidy file at the back of his desk, and the ragged-edged rug looked like it had taken quite a beating. Marzipan had even set up the chess set on the coffee table. But the most noticeable difference was that every trace of Nepenthe had vanished. Her rock candy aquarium—turned cloudy and overgrown with crystals in her absence—no longer rested on the windowsill, and her stack of newspapers didn’t stop the door. Even her pink robe was gone.

Marzipan rose from the sofa and offered him a glass of Scotch. In the mirror, Wags was clapping his hands. He put two fingers in his mouth for a wolf whistle and punched the air victoriously with his fist.

“That was great, old buddy! Just like we practiced. You hit the mark every time. And that bit with the ladder—that was gold.”

“Where are they?” Webern asked. “All her things?”

“That old junk? I told Marzipan she could chuck it.” Webern looked at Marzipan, who shrugged. Wags’s tone grew serious. “I mean, I know you’re sentimental and all, but trust me, we need the space. Between the costumes and the equipment we’re getting—”

“Equipment?”

“Well, sure. Tricycles, bicycles—fake fruit, toy guns, a pair of rubber arms. Plus a coffin—you know how the kids love Halloween—a Tesla coil too—you name it, we’re gonna need it. Boy oh boy. It’ll be jam-packed.”

Webern started to say something, then hesitated. He took the glass of Scotch from Marzipan. Two ice cubes floated in the amber liquid. He sank down on the couch. It occurred to him that there was no reason he couldn’t be happy. He remembered the night he’d walked through Goldenland past dark with Dr. Show, how for the old ringmaster the shadows had restored everything to its former glory. At the time, Webern hadn’t understood that he was free to live in his imagination, too. But now he did. This was what it was to be a master—to be king of the clowns. He glanced at his wrist. The acrobat watch had stopped ticking.

“We’ll actually have some space for once,” Wags was saying. “And time. There’s time enough for everything, now—everything we ever wanted to do.”

“Yeah.” Webern sipped his drink. “Years.”

The knock came then: one, two. One, two, three. Webern didn’t move from the couch.

“Whoever could that be at this time of the night?” Wags strained theatrically to see around the frame of the mirror.

“I told you they would come,” said Webern.

The knock was louder the second time. One, two. One, two, three. Marzipan got up and answered the door.

Willow and Billow did not look the way that Webern remembered. They wore their dogcatching uniforms, blue denim with cursive names embroidered on the pockets, not stained white shirts, and their hair no longer hung long and tangled with weeds. Billow’s bob, short and black, curled tightly as Bo-Bo’s once had done, and she stood with her legs wide apart, her short thick arms crossed firmly over her broad chest. Willow moved with the peculiar grace very tall women possess; her neck ducked and swerved, her pale chin-length hair tossed in the light. They were opposites still, as they had ever been, but time had softened this opposition, touched it with a sisterly resemblance. Both had the same Bell nose, small and upturned, and their eyes were wide spaced and pale: the same windows in two different houses.

“Bernie Bee,” said Willow. She held a paper bag. She set it on the floor.

“Bernie Bee,” said Billow.

Webern finished his drink in one swallow. The half-melted ice cubes slid down his throat.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

The twins looked at each other. They spoke into each other’s eyes.

“We came to bring you salvation,” they said.

The train rolled like black fog through the night.

Willow and Billow sat side by side on Webern’s bed, picking dog hair off of each other’s clothes. They did it without thinking, the way he would scratch his elbow. He remembered the way they had played as children, how they gibbered in a language only they could understand, then shrieked in fits of laughter, how they held tight to each other’s hands and spun and spun until their own force tore them apart. But this was not the play of a child mesmerized with the perfect toy of her twin. It was something ragged, something clutched and cherished beyond all reason: a kind of nostalgia, a tragic stubbornness. They stopped their grooming and grasped hands together, a single prayer.

“I’m not scared of you anymore.” Webern’s words hung in the thick air of the boxcar.
Someday they’ll be the only family you’ve got left.

“Bernie Bee,” said Willow. “God the Father knows what’s in your heart.”

“Lord Jesus gives a brand-new start,” murmured Billow.

Willow turned to him. Her pale eyes, open unnaturally wide, pierced him.

“Will you make a brand new start?” she asked. Billow’s lips moved to the rhythm of her words. “Will you drink the blood of Jesus? Will you suck the marrow from his bones?”

“I don’t remember that being in the Bible.” Webern looked at Marzipan, who sat beside him on the couch. Her hands were folded, but the expression on her long rubbery face was skeptical.

“Will you die on the altar of his Word, and be born again?” Willow drew a cross in the air. They were picking up speed. The train screeched as they rounded a bend in the track.

“Hell’s no,” Webern said. It sounded like something Nepenthe might say. He said it again. “Hell’s no.”

Billow stood up. She took a boxcutter from the pocket of her coveralls.

“Lord Jesus didn’t fear the cross.” Willow shook her head. “The saints didn’t fear the lion’s jaws.”

Billow reached for one of the pillows on the bed. She used the boxcutter to slice a deep gash in the centre of the pillow, then thumped it. White feathers snowed down.

“When you die, your soul falls out, cracks to pieces on the ground.” Willow plucked a feather from the air. “Only God can take a million things, piece them into angel’s wings.”

“You know a lot about things falling down and breaking. What does that make you? The devil?”

“Bernie Bee, tell Lord Jesus what you’ve done.”

Webern put his feet up on the coffee table. He bumped the chess set. Little kings fell to the floor. “Can’t He see all that on his magic TV?”

Willow touched her finger to her own lips, then to Billow’s. Billow spoke as though her sister had given her voice back to her.

“He wants to hear it from you,” she said. Webern had almost forgotten how deep her voice was. It sounded as if she was speaking from inside a drum.

“I haven’t done anything.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Yes, you have.”

“Okay, then what? What have I done?”

The wheels churned beneath them like a pulse. Willow raised her voice again.

“Thieving.”

“What?”

“You stole grandma’s monkey.”

Marzipan blinked. Webern snorted.

“Dad gave her to me. If you want to take her, by all means, go ahead. I’d like to see you try.”

Marzipan cracked her knuckles. Her lips pulled back in the expression that was anything but a smile. Willow and Billow hesitated. Their linked hands raised a few inches, then dropped heavily onto the Mexican blanket again.

“Confess the burning,” Billow said.

The strap of Webern’s lederhosen pressed uncomfortably into his hump. He loosened it with one hand.

“Which burning is that? The toast or the eggs?”

“Lord Jesus knows what’s in your heart,” Willow repeated.

“Then Lord Jesus knows that I’m not sorry. So what’s the point of confessing?”

Billow reached for the other pillow on the bed. She held her boxcutter threateningly.

“Go ahead. Hold my bedding hostage. I’m not afraid of you anymore.” Webern placed his empty glass on the trembling coffee table. “But I was then. Anyone would’ve done what I did.”

“Bernie Bee, you made us take the blame. For your sin.” Willow wagged a finger at him. “You let them catch us, call us insane.”

“You
are
insane.” The boxcar was so warm, he could almost see the red-hot iron rails through the vibrating floor. “I
wanted
them to take you away. I still can’t believe they let you out.”

“You bore false witness,” said Billow.

“They saw the fire, they drew their own conclusions.” Webern leaned over Marzipan. He picked up the bottle of Scotch by the neck. “Everyone thought you were crazy. Even Dad. Especially Dad. Having you in the asylum, that was like heaven for him. Better than sending me to Bo-Bo’s, even, since it was paid for by the state.”

Willow lay back on his bed. She crossed her arms over her chest like a corpse.

“He is a sinner. You are a sinner,” she told the ceiling.

“The last time I checked God didn’t accept not guilty by reason of insanity.”

“When did we sin against you, Bernie Bee? When did we sin against God?” Billow squeezed the pillow to her chest.

Webern poured himself another glass of Scotch. Some slopped onto the knee of his lederhosen. “You know what you did. You should be the one to confess it. Isn’t that what Jesus likes? To hear it from you?”

“What did we do, Bernie?”

“What did we do?”

“You mean before you put me in a body cast? Or after?”

Billow leaned back on the bed. She and Willow silently conferred.

“After,” said Billow.

Webern looked at her steadily. Billow used to wear a thick brass ring in one ear, like a pirate; it had appeared there one day after school, in a hole still crusty with blood. The ring was gone now, but the hole was still there, half-healed, asymmetrical. Light shone through it like a sliver of moon.

“You know what you did. To the car.” Webern raised his glass. “You killed Mom.”

Willow sat up, her arms still crossed against her chest.

“Bernie Bee, you take it back.”

“Take it back.”

“Take it back.”

Webern swallowed all the Scotch in a single gulp. It tasted like sea and fire, mixed together. He wiped his mouth.

“You tell me what happened, then,” he said. “You mean you didn’t fuck up the car? All those afternoons you elbowed around in there, after auto mechanics class, you didn’t snip a wire? Loosen some screws? I saw the grease on your hands, Billow.”

“My name is Betsy.” She touched the embroidery on the pocket of her coveralls.

“Bernie Bee, accidents happen.”

“Funny how they only happen in this family when the two of you are around.” Webern stood up unsteadily. His arms described circles in the air. He thought of all the falls he’d practiced that afternoon, how much closer the ground seemed to him now. “I’m sick of you playing innocent. You ruined my life. I want you out of my room.”

“Bernie Bee, we know why Mom died.” Willow leaned close to Billow—Betsy? Their embroidered names were too blurry to read. Thick black outlines formed around their heads. “We
all
know why Mom died.”

Webern tripped over the coffee table. He hit the floor face first. Marzipan sprang up from the couch. She tried to grab Webern’s arm. He pushed her away and raised himself up on his elbows. He touched his face. His nose was bleeding.

“Bernie Bee.” Willow’s voice was gentle, almost kind. “Bernie Bee. You shut the garage door.”

Webern pushed aside his glasses. He dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Stop lying. I hate how you always lie, how it’s always—”

Billow pressed the flat of the boxcutter blade against her hand. She shook her head. “Bernie, Mom died that night because of you.”

“And the tantrums that you threw.”

“—how it’s always two against one with your stupid, stupid lying.”

Willow and Billow linked arms. They stood up together.

“That party night, you cried and cried.” The girls stepped toward him.

“You said you fell; you wished you’d died. You wouldn’t get up to say goodbye.”

“She had to go up to your room. We listened outside.”

“Your back hurt from the brace. You wouldn’t look her in the face.”

Drops of blood stained the rug. It felt like Webern’s face was melting. “Why won’t you leave me alone?”

“She couldn’t wait to get away. She drank before she left the house. When she came back, she hit the gas—”

“I
didn’t
throw
any
tantrums.”

Marzipan leapt onto the mattress, hooting. She jumped up and down. Willow and Billow towered over him. Billow rested her foot on his hump.

“The car hit the garage door and crashed.”

“I didn’t throw any tantrums.” Webern hit the floor with his fists, once for each word. “You break my back, and then you accuse
me
of throwing tantrums?”

“Hooo! Hooooo!” screamed Marzipan.

Willow stooped over him as she whispered. “It started when you had to learn to walk again. They sawed you from your body cast. You yelled and kicked and rolled around—”

“You’d run and hide.” Webern squirmed, but Billow’s foot pinned him in place. She went on: “Sometimes she’d knock and knock on your door ’til she didn’t believe you lived there anymore. She’d drink with dad, or in her room—she’d drink after dinner, but she’d never get mad—”

“Stupid, stupid! Don’t you know anything?” Webern finally rolled out from under Billow’s boot. He slammed the back of his head against the floor. An almost pleasant ringing filled his ears. “You weren’t even paying attention. I never threw a tantrum. It wasn’t me—”

“Eeee! Eeee-eeee-oooh-ooh-ah!”

“Bernie Bee, you must make right with God.”

“You must confess.”

Webern smashed the back of his head into the floor again. He thought of the star-shaped scar at the base of his skull: the pain he felt there scored the insides of his eyelids with a million whirling constellations.

You must confess
. But to what? What had he ever done to deserve this? His sisters had terrorized him—he had only been a child. They had been the ones to throw him from the tree; they had set off this whole chain of events.

What can I do?

A voice inside his head answered decisively:
Jump
.

But even if they hadn’t pushed him, literally pushed him with their grubby hands through the treehouse window, they had pushed him into jumping with their torment; they had left him no other choice. And wasn’t that the thing? They had goaded him into jumping, laughed at him as he nursed his wounds, broken him up and put him back together like some monstrous doll. He still remembered the long days in the body cast, when they’d come and gone from his doorway at odd hours, when he’d been powerless to shut them out. What had they meant, anyway, with their odd combination of malice and tenderness—the daddy long legs they placed on his nose in the morning, the warm milk they spooned him at night? If they were learning the language of affection, they were like deaf children singing, imitating sounds they had never heard.

Bernie Bee, we bring you treat.

Nothing bitter, always sweet.

Maybe they hadn’t had the same childhood he had, toy shopping with his mother, or feeling her thin arms grasp him back to safety as he dangled from the monkey bars. Willow and Billow didn’t have their so-so report cards taped up to the fridge, or hear their names inserted in familiar songs (“Hush little Bernie, don’t say a word, Mommy’s gonna buy you a golden bird”). But that was no excuse for how they’d acted, was it? Hadn’t they seen how crazy they looked, how frightening, when they came home with their mouths smeared red from what he hoped were berries, when they wiped their noses on the tablecloth? Hadn’t they ever learned to see themselves as others would, to sense when what they did was wrong?

Webern had always thought of his mother as long-suffering as she mutely observed the girls digging doll-graves with her silver soup ladle, or thwacking bloated earthworms on the sidewalks with a stolen baseball bat. It had never occurred to him that the kinder and more difficult thing might have been for her to intervene. As his mother’s favourite, the girls seemed like animals to him, a destructive force, and the two possible responses to them had always appeared to be pity and repulsion. He had never thought to wonder, without his mother’s guidance, how they were supposed to know any better.

His mother had been a delicate woman, nervous and frail; his own earliest memories were of trying to please her, to find the thing that would bring a flitting smile to her pale face. On days when she lay, listless and teary in bed all morning, he made her pancake faces with blueberry eyes and a bacon smile; it had been for her he had learned to juggle, to pinch his mouth into a fish face pucker and cross his eyes. Before Wags even, she had been his audience, the colourful clothes she chose for him the costumes for his acts. But she hadn’t expected these things from him; she hadn’t grown distant and mournful on the rare occasions when he misbehaved. She hadn’t turned to alcohol because of him. Or had she? It was difficult to remember. They had gotten along so well—always—those other occasions had been very rare. And the tantrums—well, that had been Wags—

“Bernie Bee?”

“Bernie Bee?”

Here in the boxcar, Webern felt Willow and Billow’s hands—Marzipan’s too—patting his face, his wrists and eyelids. He didn’t open his eyes.

Yes, the tantrums—those had been Wags. He remembered how it felt to walk in those early days, just after the cast had come off, how stiff and off-balance he’d felt. And how, each time as he approached the mirror, he had been almost relieved to see Wags approaching from the other side. How nice it had been to switch places, to let someone else take over for awhile, even someone who left fist marks in the pillows and Webern’s mother in tears. Webern remembered looking at his reflection: sometimes it had taken a moment to see Wags there, but if Webern was patient he always emerged, that smile cutting across his face like a knife.

You said you fell; you wished you’d died.