The Circus in Winter (20 page)

As they drove into Indianapolis, Laura stared at the swanky cars purring alongside them. She wondered who the drivers were, these men in dark suits with lipsticked women, their faces empty but determined. Where were they going? Laura wondered; in Lima, she sometimes knew which way cars would turn before their blinkers came on. No one in Indianapolis knew that this was her birthday and she was on her way to a restaurant with her boyfriend who might propose. They couldn't care less, and instead of making her feel small and alone, this sudden anonymity made Laura so happy she scooted over next to Ethan and rubbed his thigh, not stopping until they reached the restaurant.

After dinner, Ethan placed a long jewelry case on the table, and she cried in happiness and relief when she saw the silver necklace inside. None of her prepared speeches would be necessary now. After dinner, they spent an hour in the Starbright Motel, a neon-lit room reeking of beer. Her mother waited up for her, of course, and when Laura showed her the necklace, Mildred sighed and said, "Well, I'm sure his mother helped him pick it out. The Perdidos don't like to show off their money, now do they?"

 

BETTY DROVE HER
back to the bank. She finished the day without looking a single person in the eye. After work, Laura went to the drug store and bought travel-size toothpaste, shampoo, and soap. "Going somewhere?" the cashier asked. Laura didn't recognize her, an elderly lady in a wash dress, and so she said, "Yes."

"Where you going then?"

Laura hadn't thought about it, but then she said, "Chicago."

The woman smiled and handed her the change. "The Windy City. I been there once. The World's Fair back in '33. It's a big, big place. Watch your purse, though. Mine got snatched."

"I sure will." She walked out, palming a tube of Very Cherry lipstick.

That night, Laura packed a small suitcase and snuck it out to the car. Then she wrote her parents a note. "By the time you read this, I'll be gone," it read, and the words came easily, as if she'd already written them before. She put the note in the book next to her father's chair. Tomorrow, she'd swipe a few bills from the till, and at five o'clock, she'd get in her car and start driving.

What would happen next? She ran through all the scenarios in her head. If she told Ethan about the baby, he'd ask her to marry him, and if she said yes, well, she knew that story. If she left now, before Ethan knew, she'd go to Chicago and get a job, an apartment. Then there was the baby, keep it or not, and having to think about this made her want to scream and cry. Instead, Laura tried to invent her new name, because surely Ethan and her parents would come looking for her. She saw Ethan crying, calling hospitals and morgues, but eventually, he'd give up and his life would go on just as it was supposed to. My god, Laura thought, so many things could go wrong, problems she could anticipate and name, and invisible ones buried like booby traps. Thinking about it all made her temples throb like timpani drums, so she stopped thinking. Laura sat herself down in the chair across the room and watched the body in the bed sleeping all night. A new moon rose outside her window, and she watched it hover in the air like God's thumbnail. The night hummed with crickets and cicadas, and her body hummed, too, electrical and alive, and the girl in the chair wished the girl in the bed would wake up and see her eyes glowing hot in the dark room.

 

AT FOUR O'CLOCK
the next afternoon, before she took the money, before the story Laura had half written in her head could begin, Ethan Perdido walked into the Lima Savings Bank. He got in Laura's line, and said, "I'd like to make a deposit," pushing a velvet ring box toward her. Then he jumped over the counter and got down on one knee. "Laura, will you marry me?"

The customers applauded and laughed, but she just stood there.

Betty said, "Why don't you two go in the break room?"

Laura led him there, shut the door, and took a deep breath, inhaling hairspray and ashtray and Ethan's Old Spice cologne.

"You look nice," she said, pointing to his chinos and white Oxford shirt.

He smiled. "I know about the baby, honey."

She felt like curling into a ball on the floor. "Betty told you, didn't she? She promised me she wouldn't."

He touched her stomach. "Betty? No, your mother called me this morning."

"My mother?"

"How far along are you?"

"I don't know," Laura said, then remembered the laminated diagram the doctor had shown her, the square containing a pink and red blob. "Over a month. Two."

"What do you say," Ethan said. "Will you marry me?"

Laura thought about the speeches she'd planned three months earlier, about the suitcase in her car, about the map she'd bought that morning at the gas station. She could get to Chicago, yes, but then there was everything after that, and it was just too hard, too much. And since the road to Chicago was closed, she turned around in her mind and headed for Cleveland, where the King and His Court were waiting. She saw Ethan driving a red, white, and blue Winnebago, the baby sleeping in her lap, the road unfolding over the Earth's curve

"Yes," Laura said, thinking,
It can still work out. We'll still get away.

 

THIS IS WHAT
happened instead.

When Laura got home that night, her good-bye note had vanished. Her mother crept up the stairs to Laura's bedroom. "I found this suitcase in the car. Thought I'd bring it in so it doesn't get wet or anything." Mildred unpacked it and smiled. "We'll have to go down to the lingerie shop and get you a little trousseau. Some real nice things."

When Laura returned to work the next day, Betty Pollard told her everything. "Sweetie, Mr. Vaughn at the bank called your mother to check and see how you were, and you were out somewhere, so she called me. I tried not to say anything, but she just kept at me. But you know, it's better this way. You can keep on at the bank until you start to show, and I've got a whole bunch of cute maternity clothes." She pinched Laura's arm. "It'll be fun, won't it?"

When they went out to dinner with both sets of parents to celebrate the engagement, Ethan told Laura he'd called Eddie Feigner. "I'm going to mortuary school instead, starting next month," he said on the way to the restaurant. "Gotta start thinking about my family." Laura cried, and Ethan said, "I know, I know. It's all happening so fast." At dinner, many toasts were made, and then the Perdidos and the Hofstadters fought over who should pick up the check.

When Laura went wedding-dress shopping, her mother said how grateful she was to Betty Pollard for confessing everything. "I called Ethan straight off and told him. He told me about that foolish idea about playing for those clowns that call themselves a baseball team. I said no daughter of mine is going to go traipsing all over the place towing a baby." Her mother touched her arm. "I just want you to have a nice life, dear. You're so lucky. You'll live in the nicest house in town."

The night before Laura's wedding, Ethan's mother, Mrs. Perdido, said, "I'm so glad your mother called me after she spoke with Ethan. We told him he could have the business right away. We've been wanting to retire early anyway. Got a nice little place picked out down in Florida." Then she whispered in Laura's ear. "My husband doesn't know about ... you know ... and your mother says she's not going to tell your father, either. This is a little secret between us girls." Mrs. Perdido squeezed Laura's hand. "After all, women make the world go round."

 

ETHAN PERDIDO
and Laura Hofstadter were married in a small ceremony at the Church of the Brethren in 1967. The bride wore a floor-length gown of antique white with an empire waist—a good choice since she was just starting to show. Ethan looked a little stunned amid the popping flashcubes, like a prom-night boy in a tux. Laura was the calm one, moving with grace and purpose, as if she'd been waiting for this day all her life. Throughout the ceremony and the reception, the opening of gifts and throwing of rice, she did everything by the book. But on the inside, she was flipping through another story, full of color and Chicago skyline. Laura saw a silver cigarette case and red lipstick on a cocktail napkin. She smelled coffee in an all-night diner. She heard heels clicking down a sidewalk, cars whooshing down a highway, and music tinkling from a piano bar. She saw the dark doorway, and Laura knew that someday—when she was ready—she would walk through it.

—or
The Gypsies Appear and
Poof!
They're Gone

EVEN WHEN IT
was all over—the money counted, the caravan disappeared, the carcasses rotted, the blacktop washed away in the rain—Earl Richards never spoke ill of the gypsies. He had been warned, after all, the day he'd gone out to sign the papers that made him the new manager of the KOA Kampgrounds in Lima. The owner, name of Altman, had run the place for twenty years and was more than ready to pass the torch. Altman showed Earl around in a campground golf cart, driving one-handed, pointing out what all needed to be looked after. The pinball machines and pool tables. The pH level of the pool. The warped and flaking picnic tables. The massive griddle for the Sunday pancake breakfasts. The goop on the maple syrup dispensers. The Frisbee golf course. The restrooms and showers. The coin-operated washers and dryers. Earl wrote down the list on the only paper handy—his pay stub from the railroad. Altman was still talking, still going strong, and Earl was running out of paycheck.

Finally, Altman turned the cart back toward his house (soon to be Earl's house), a two-story split-level a hundred yards from the KOA A-frame. "Oh. Almost forgot," Altman said, pulling his Titleist hat over his eyes. "There's the gypsies, too."

Earl nodded, clicked his ballpoint, and wrote "Gypsies" without thinking. Then he thought about it. "Gypsies?" he asked.

"There's a band of them show up every year in late summer, about a hundred of them or more. They pay cash. Tell me they travel around blacktopping and roofing. You gotta keep your eye on them, especially when they come in the store," he said, "or they'll take everything in sight." Earl's pen wavered over his check, but Altman clapped him on the back. "Don't worry about it. They pretty much take over while they're here, but they're good people, mostly. They just don't see things our way."

Earl knew the railroad paycheck in his hand wouldn't always be there. Altman's deal meant he'd be able to give his wife, Peggy, and their fourteen-year-old son, Joey, more than they'd ever had or even dreamed of having: a two-story house in the country with a fireplace, more bedrooms than they needed, an in-ground swimming pool, pinball machines, a pool table, foosball, even a Frisbee golf course. Earl figured if he saved every penny he earned over the next two or three years, he could buy Altman out. The idea of owning a franchise, of owning land, amazed him. Earl was descended from a long line of milkmen, firemen, and factory workers who'd never owned their houses outright, let alone the acreage they sat on.

The contract was waiting on Altman's dining-room table. Earl signed it, shook Altman's hand, and accepted the beer offered. They clinked cans.

***

EARL WAS
nineteen years old when he hired out as a clerk on the Chesapeake & Ohio Railroad. A good job, back then. Every year, the head office in West Virginia sent boxes of C&O windbreakers and baseball hats to its yard office in Lima, one for each man, and no one, not even Earl, took more than his share. Then came the so-called prosperous 1980s. The C&O merged with the ailing Baltimore & Ohio and became the Chessie System, and from the new head office in Baltimore came boxes of coffee mugs and plastic pens. Earl stared at these gifts and knew, somehow, that hard times were at hand. He took eight mugs and stuffed thirty pens in his coat pockets.

Five years later, VTX Transportation bought the Chessie System, and all that came from the new HQ in Jacksonville were key rings and College Boys, business majors who didn't know dick about trains. For one, they didn't know that on the railroad, you call a man by his last name, not his first. College Boys wore Dockers and polo shirts, slicked their hair with styling gel, and, worst of all, drove foreign cars and never even bothered to explain why. Their job was to lay off any man with fewer than fifteen years seniority.

That's when the men at the yard office started stealing, openly and earnestly, taking whatever could be smuggled out without the College Boys noticing. Typewriters. Chairs. Lanterns. Coffeepots. Flashlights and batteries. The old C&O logo, Chessie the Sleeping Cat, became a collector's item, and some of Earl's friends swiped Chessie calendars and clocks and sold them to nostalgic railroad buffs for a tidy profit. A memo appeared on the bulletin board: "VTX
RECOGNIZES THE NOSTALGIA FELT BY EMPLOYEES OF ACQUIRED
SYSTEMS, BUT URGES SAID EMPLOYEES TO DESIST FROM PILFERING MEMORABILIA.
"

Underneath, someone had written,"
Translation: Quit stealing our shit. Signed, VTX.
"

A disgruntled brakeman named Ellis rerouted three covered grain hoppers to an abandoned siding and hired semis to come unload the corn. A pissed-off clerk by the name of Warren fixed the waybills and entered the cars into the computer as empties, a somewhat complicated scam that made them $30,000 each. That is, until VTX figured it out and brought criminal charges against them, state and federal. Afterward, Earl realized that if one of those men had come to
him,
he'd be the one in prison, and it scared him more than a little to think how easy a man can be driven to lawlessness. Earl didn't hate VTX. He simply felt no loyalty to it. Whatsoever. VTX was just three letters that sounded good together and didn't stand for anything.