The Circus in Winter (14 page)

Her parents invited Wayne to Sunday dinner. After the meal, Wayne and her father went outside to smoke. From the kitchen sink, Stella's mother gestured out the window. "Now, he's got a good head on his shoulders," she said in such a way that made it clear she thought her daughter didn't. Stella nodded and continued scrubbing the casserole dish.

By Valentine's Day of her senior year, they were engaged. Even though she was a good student, Stella had never considered college—and no one thought to encourage her to consider it, either. By June, they were married. By the next Halloween (they went as Roy Rogers and Dale Evans), she was pregnant with the twins.

 

FROM THE WINDOW
above her own kitchen sink, Stella watched her boys play cowboys and Indians. Ray yelled, "A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust, and a hearty Hi Yo Silver!"

Ricky waved his hat in the air. "Hi Yo Silver, away!" The boys whooped and hollered, firing their toy guns in the air.

She liked for them to play close by. If they didn't, Stella saw them in the back of her mind, drowning in a pond, walking down the middle of a busy road, taking candy from a convict escaped from Pendleton. When they were babies, she'd slept in the nursery so that every few hours she could make sure they were still breathing. Wayne indulged her at first, but then insisted she stop. "You'll make them nervous with your worry. They'll be fine." He was right, Stella knew, but that didn't stop her from imagining the worst. She did the same thing whenever she left the house. By force of will, she kept herself from going back into the house to check the pilot light on the stove or to make sure she'd unplugged the old lamp. Worry was like a fire inside her that required constant tending to keep it from flaring out of control.

Stella was making a new recipe for dinner: lasagna. Assembling the layers took most of her attention. Then, from outside, she heard a faint moaning. She ran to the window and saw Ricky writhing in pretend anguish in the grass, holding his belly wound as Ray stood over him and continued firing, sounding out each shot between his lips.

Stella yelled out the window, "Ray! You've killed him. Let him die in peace."

It occurred to her then that Ray always played the hero (Red Ryder, the Lone Ranger, the Cisco Kid) leaving Ricky the role of trusty sidekick (Little Beaver, Tonto, Pancho).
Always a pecking order,
she thought. She wondered if this was why she preferred Ricky, because she always rooted for the underdog. Stella handed them two cookies out the window. "You know, the cowboys didn't always win."

Ray munched. "How do you know, Mom?"

She smiled. "I learned it in school. Indians got the better of cowboys sometimes."

"Really?" Ricky asked.

"Sure," Stella said. "They just don't show that on TV."

Ricky ran toward the barn, Ray following close behind. She yelled for them to come back, but they ignored her. She returned to the lasagna—she'd check on them in a while.

Lately, they spent all their time in the barn. Even Wayne. He joined them in there after work and became a boy again, surrounded by Western props and circus costumes. Wayne and her boys thought the barn was a magic portal to Arizona circa 1890, but Stella knew Tony Colorado wasn't a real cowboy, just a slicked-up imitation, a counterfeit gunslinger who died, not from bullets or arrows, but from choking on the toothpick in his martini. She'd read that in her magazines, too.

Stella put the lasagna in the oven, humming along to Glenn Miller on the radio to keep her mind off the boys, but finally, she couldn't take it anymore. Inside the barn, she saw Ricky sitting on a hay bale with Ray behind him, a flash of silver in his hand. Moving closer, Stella noticed Ricky's face—wet with tears and a bit of blood dripping from a cut at his hairline.

"What are you doing?"

"Playing cowboys and Indians," Ray said. "I'm the Indian."

"He's scalping me," Ricky said quietly, staring at his shoes.

"What?" Stella cried, then took a breath. "Give me the knife, Ray." He placed his pocket knife in her hand, and she held her apron against Ricky's forehead.

That night in bed, Stella told Wayne, "I want you to talk to them. They think it's all make believe, but it's not."

Wayne rubbed her back. "Don't worry, Stell. They're just boys."

"Boys with knives."

"It was just a little cut. You're overreacting."

Stella turned to face him. "No. I'm not."

Wayne didn't like it when she raised her voice to him. "I'll talk to them. No more scalping. Stop worrying so much. You know how you get."

"What if I'd come a few minutes later?" Stella whispered, but Wayne didn't answer. In her mind, she saw Ricky's face, his eyes, his chest, all covered in blood.

Then from outside her sleep, Stella heard wailing. A she-cat, she dreamed, sore with heat. The cat's crying reminded her of the years she'd spent listening for Ray and Ricky's cries, and then suddenly the sound was not a cat, or a memory, but a real cry—loud as a late-night phone call, stopping her heart cold. The boys never cried out like that, not anymore, so she rushed down the hall, inching along blindly in the dark. Reaching the boys' room, she found Ricky sitting up in his bed. He'd dreamed something, something he wouldn't talk about, so Stella rocked him in her arms, staring at the equestrienne tarts on the walls, wondering how they rode horses with their bosoms hanging out like that.

Ray woke up finally. "What's wrong," he mumbled.

Stella said, "Nothing. Go back to sleep."

"Did the baby have a bad dream?" Ray's voice was sneering.

Ricky pulled away from Stella, embarrassed.

"Don't talk like that to your brother."

"I only asked if he had a bad dream," Ray said. "Geesh."

Ricky crawled back under the covers, and Stella considered picking him up and carrying him back to her bed. But then Ray would want to come, too, and there wasn't room anymore for all four of them, so Stella left the room, pausing outside the door to listen. In a few moments, she heard them struggling with each other in the dark, skin scraping sheet, fists pummeling flesh and pillow. It reminded Stella of the last weeks of her pregnancy. She could barely breathe, barely sleep. The baby in her womb struggled, tumbling and turning within her. At night, it kicked her ribs, her lungs, her back. She tried singing, stroking her belly, warm baths, anything to calm the child down so she could get a moment's peace. When she delivered twins, the doctor joked, "Two nations were in thy womb."

She wanted to stop her sons' quiet war immediately, but made herself wait to see if they'd end it on their own.
I'll count to ten,
Stella thought.
Then I'll go in and turn on the light and they'll stop.
She stood in the dark hallway, counting slowly to herself. Stella remembered the Bible verse she'd memorized in church long ago:
Two manner of people shall be separated from your bowels and the one people will be stronger than the other people.

 

THE BOYS STARTED
school in the fall, and for the first time, Stella faced the house alone. One afternoon she decided to walk into Lima, just to see if she could. But she'd started too late. By the time she got there, the sun was going down, and she had to call Wayne to come get her. She cried all the way home. "I need something to do," she told him. Stella begged him to let her paint over the murals, but he refused, saying they needed the money for real improvements: the roof, the boiler, new shutters. "Maybe you just need a hobby," he suggested.

"What?" Stella asked, unable to think of anything she'd want to add to her day.

"What about the piano?" Wayne said. "I'll get a tuner to come out. Would you like that?"

She sighed. "I don't know."

"Well then, what do you want?"

Stella paused. "I have absolutely no idea," she said quietly.

The next day, the tuner arrived, an elderly gentleman in overalls. "Ephraim Miller, at your service, ma'am," he said, tipping the hat he wasn't wearing. While he worked, the house filled with notes straining to find their correct pitch. Stella served him lemonade, and his eyes scanned the walls. "I've heard about this place," Mr. Miller said.

"Yes, it's..." Stella tried to find her own word, but couldn't. "Different," she said flatly.

"It is indeed," he said with a laugh. "Mind if I check out the barn?"

"You must be a Tony Colorado fan, too."

In the barn, Mr. Miller stood with Stella in front of Bullet's old stall. "Back in the day, I used to drink with him, you know."

"From a trough?" Stella joked, surprised at her quip. Normally she didn't have much of an edge, but lately, it popped up when she least expected it.

But Mr. Miller, a stranger, simply thought she was being funny. "Yep, me and Bullet put back a few." He laughed. "No, I mean me and the cowboy. I had a room at Robertson's Hotel. Played piano in the bar there some nights. He was quite a fella."

Stella looked at Mr. Miller's big knuckles and thick fingers, trying to imagine them spanning the keys. They looked like the hands of a farmer. "Is it true that he had a high-pitched voice? That's why he couldn't break into talkies?"

"Yep, that's right. Poor guy." Mr. Miller took a drink of his lemonade. "Ladies still buzzed around him like june bugs, though. Didn't have no trouble there."

"Really?" She remembered his photograph from the magazine. The Lone Star Cowboy hadn't struck her as particularly handsome. "How so?"

Mr. Miller looked around, as if someone was watching. "Well, I shouldn't speak of things like this to a lady, but in his room, he kept track of 'em. Said he made a tally mark for each one on the wall behind his bed. When he checked out for good, I went in there and saw 'em all."

Stella paused, considering. "Twenty?" she asked.

"More like a hundred."

She laughed through her nose. "Where'd he find a hundred women in a little town like Lima?"

Mr. Miller couldn't look her straight in the eye. "This town used to be hoppin', Mrs. Garrison. All sorts of women come through here at one time or another."

That night, Stella played the piano for hours. She'd found the sheet music to some Cole Porter songs in the abandoned piano bench, and the boys requested "Don't Fence Me In" over and over. They knew all the words, and pointed to the walls—the winter fields and trees and horses and giraffes—as if the murals had been painted just for them, just to provide a backdrop to their song. After a while, Stella knew the notes well enough to play by heart. Although her eyes remained fixed on the sheet music, she wasn't in her living room anymore, not even in the landscape of the murals. She was walking down the streets of the old Lima alongside the aerialist painted on the wall upstairs, Miss Bloody Wrist, who wore a red feather boa. Stella kept her eyes on the plank sidewalk, feeling hard and plain in her wash dress. Every time they passed a man, Stella could feel his eyes following Miss Bloody Wrist. They paused outside the old Robertson Hotel to watch Ephraim Miller bent over the piano, playing ragtime. Tony Colorado sat at a table surrounded by stockinged legs and red lips. Miss Bloody Wrist sauntered up to Tony Colorado, who rose from his chair and kissed her hand. The other women faded away, but Stella stayed, watching the two of them walk upstairs together.

In bed that night, Stella didn't wait for Wayne to touch her first. She kissed him deeply, running her hand down the length of his chest. Afterward, Wayne lay quietly. "What's gotten into you, Stell?" He sounded a little scared.

"Nothing," Stella said, staring at the blank walls of her bedroom glowing blue with moonlight.

 

THE MURALS
, Stella decided, must have been painted in winter. The windows and walls showed almost the same picture, as if she wasn't even inside her house at all. The stark landscape around her hadn't changed much in fifty years. Same yellow and white animal barns. Same snow-stubbled fields. Same dirty river. Same naked trees. Only the circus animals were gone, replaced by simple milk cows, horses, and the occasional deer. She wondered who painted the walls, a man or a woman. Sometimes Stella imagined a woman, someone with an empty heart and long winter hours that needed filling. But what woman would let such ugliness into her house? Stella decided the artist was most certainly a man, one with too much time and, like her, too many dark thoughts.

That winter, once Wayne had driven into Lima for work and the boys were at school, Stella played Cole Porter songs. She remembered her father's piano lessons as a child, and her mother's warnings after. "A woman plays piano for her family," she'd said. "A happy home is filled with pretty things. Good smells. Nice music. Doilies under every lamp." Sitting on the piano bench by herself, filling the empty house with music, was a guilty pleasure. Stella never played "Don't Fence Me In" when she was alone. She preferred the plaintive songs like "Night and Day," "Ev'ry Time We Say Goodbye," and "Miss Otis Regrets." Underneath the words and the notes, Stella felt a great sadness that made her heart hurt. Stella sang the same songs over and over, as if they were written in a code she needed to break.

When she tired of playing piano, Stella knit. Actually, she watched a great deal of television, which seemed less wasteful and wanton when it produced an abundance of sweaters, blankets, and scarves. Always, Stella flicked the television off fifteen minutes before the boys got home, and always, the first thing they did was turn it back on.

"Why don't you guys play in the barn today?" She almost hated herself for suggesting it.

"Too cold," they said in unison.

That winter, Ray and Ricky fought constantly. She found them locked in closets, tied to their bedposts. They rose each morning for school with hollow eyes and fresh bruises. Stella tried separating them, putting Ricky's bed in the Japanese acrobat room, but in the morning, she found him curled up next to Ray in the narrow bed, bandannas tied over their mouths like bank robbers.

Her worry for them flamed a bit higher, but Wayne didn't want to talk about it. He'd started working extra shifts, and even when he was home, he delayed going to bed as long as possible, watching television or listening to the radio alone with his cigarettes. In the mornings, he rose before sunup and walked the fields hunting rabbits in the underbrush. Stella's only proof that they occupied the same bed was the smell of aftershave and cigarettes on the pillows. He said it was work, the new house, and new bills to pay. "And it's winter, Stell," he said. "You know I hate winter."