The Circus in Winter (26 page)

WHEN JENNY WAS
in second grade, she came down with a bad ear infection that kept her out of school for a month. Because her parents both worked, she went to her grandpa Ollie's house. They started watching
Days of Our Lives
together. After she went back to school, Jenny came over in the summers to get caught up on all she'd missed in the previous eight months. She said, "I can't believe you can skip so many episodes and still know what's going on. Nothing hardly changes."

"I wouldn't know," Ollie told her. "I watch it every single day."

ONE DAY
, Laura went missing. She'd gone out for a drive in Ethan's hearse and never came back. They found the hearse in a Chicago parking garage. The police said she had either been abducted or she'd run off, but they couldn't prove one way or the other. Mildred was certain her daughter was dead, and she prayed for a body for Ethan to bury, but none ever turned up.

A few months after her disappearance, Ollie found a letter from Laura in an old
Life
magazine:"
Dear Mom and Dad, by the time you read this, I will be gone.
"He took it to the police, certain it was proof she'd run away and was alive somewhere if they'd just get off their butts and look. The detective asked him, "How's your eyesight, Mr. Hofstadter?" Ollie told him it wasn't too good. "Well, I'm afraid this letter can't help us much, sir." It was dated 1967.

IN
1995, Ollie fell down and broke his hip. After the surgery, Mildred told the doctors she couldn't care for him at home, and they suggested she find him a bed at Sunset Village, a local nursing home that smelled of urine, mothballs, and talcum. He agreed on two conditions: that Mildred wouldn't sell the house to pay for it, and that he be allowed to take his bullhook with him. Mildred honored one of his wishes.

Once he was settled, Mildred sold their house and most of their furniture and moved into an apartment complex for senior citizens. She didn't tell Ollie this. On her Sunday visits, Mildred sometimes took him for a drive, and he often asked her to go past their house. One day, they went by and there was a little boy digging a hole in the front yard. Mildred told him it was the son of their new next-door neighbors. Ollie said, "Don't let him dig up the hostas. We paid a fortune for those."

THE NEW PASTOR
from Mildred's church came by. Reverend McCanliss or McCormick or something. He'd been pastor for over a year and was finally getting around to visiting the shut-ins. "Your wife tells me you've never been a churchgoing man, but that you might have some things you want to get off your chest," he said, smiling. Ollie laughed and sent the man away. Then he started thinking about all the things he wasn't too proud of. The lineups and the Cowboy and Indian act and the girls in his office. And Laura. Yes, Laura most of all.

Ollie picked up the bullhook next to his bed and held it in the air. A radio transmitter sending his regrets straight to God and to Laura, wherever she was. The bullhook quivered above him, and Ollie let himself believe this meant something. He kept his eyes upward—not seeing, ignoring, his shaking hands.

OLLIE ASKED
the nurses at Sunset Village when he was going home. At first, they were nice and said, "Oh, Mr. Ollie. You can't go home now. We like you too much." But he kept asking, every day his voice getting louder, so they lost their patience and told him the truth. "Your wife sold your house, Mr. Hofstadter. You've just forgotten." Maybe he had forgotten. He was forgetting a lot of things, sure, but never a whole house. He told Mildred what the nurses said, and she promised to send a complaint to their supervisor.

Every day was new because every night he forgot the day before. Instead, Ollie started remembering things he hadn't thought about for a long time: the swish of Mildred's taffeta skirt, his mother paring apples for her famous apple strudel, the way his friend Joe snored, his girl Lois hooking her bra in his office at the cleaners on Tuesday nights. Then Ollie began to remember things that he didn't even know he knew: the perfume his wife wore on their wedding day (Chantilly), his mother's strudel recipe (in German, unfortunately), the tune Joe was whistling as he applied his greasepaint the night he died ("Yankee Doodle Dandy"), the size of Lois's bra (36DD). Then the memories went farther back. He saw his father's wake—not from the photograph in the drawer next to his bed, but a real memory with a minister delivering the eulogy, people moving around the casket, and his mother crying. Then he saw his father's face peering down into his crib. Ollie was certain this was a real memory. In a fantasy, surely he would use the likeness he'd seen in photographs. But instead, this was the dark oval from his dreams, the sound of deep coughing, the smell of cigar on the breath.

The wheelchair-bound residents of Sunset Village formed a metal gauntlet down the hallway, and he made his way among them in his own chair, paddling along like a duck. Ollie tried to tell them about these visions, about the apples and the bra and the greasepaint, but nobody listened. They were too busy talking about socks and radios and Hawaii. Nobody cared that every night the nurses tried to take him to the post office and leave him there. He woke up scared, surrounded by letters and packages addressed to people he didn't know. When he yelled, "Take me home right now," the postman would come in and give him a shot, and by the time he woke up from its effects, they'd have taken him back to Sunset Village. Ollie tried to stay awake, to catch them in the act, but they put drugs in his food to make him sleepy. He tried not to eat, but they found his mother's recipe for apple strudel, and gee, he didn't know when he'd have the chance to eat it again.

The nurses taped gauze around the tip of his bullhook, but he still kept it next to his bed. The bullhook scared the angels away. At night, the light in the walls started out the size of a firefly, but then the light got bigger and brighter so the angels could get through. If he picked up his bullhook, the light always disappeared. The angels wanted to take him away, but he didn't want to wake up at the post office ever again.

The Lima Journal,
January 1, 2000

ELDERLY MAN ATTACKS EMT

Local EMT Scott Powers, 25, was treated for bruises and contusions today. His patient, Mr. Ollie Hofstadter of Sunset Village, was being transferred to King's Memorial Hospital when the attack occurred.

According to hospital spokesperson Peggy Richards, Hofstadter has been experiencing stroke symptoms, including slurred speech and dementia.

Hofstadter attacked Powers with a metal rod hidden under his blanket. "When I tried to wheel his stretcher into the hospital, he started beating me with this thing," Powers said. "He was obviously confused. He thought I was taking him to the post office."

Hofstadter was unharmed in the incident, but was admitted to King's Memorial Hospital for observation.

Hofstadter's wife, Mildred, said that the rod is an elephant hook, probably used by her husband's father, who worked for the circus. "My husband hasn't been himself," Mrs. Hofstadter said, adding that January 2 will be Hofstadter's one-hundredth birthday. "Plus, he was up late at Sunset Village, ringing in Y2K."

Mr. Hofstadter is a lifelong resident of Lima. He owned and operated Clown Alley Cleaners for thirty years, and for a short time was a clown in the Great Porter Circus.

A FIREFLY FLICKERED
on the wall opposite Ollie's hospital bed. He reached for his bullhook, but it was gone. "Where is it?" he moaned.

Mildred rose from her chair. "Where's what, Ollie?" He tried to roll over, but he was tangled in tubes. "Oh that. I've got it somewhere so you can't hurt anyone else with it." She held the
Lima Journal
in front of his face. "We're the laughingstock of town. Thank you very much."

The light on the wall glowed brighter. Ollie pointed—he wanted Mildred to see the angels coming for him. "Look," he said.

Mildred crossed the room to a bouquet of Mylar balloons. "Aren't they pretty? I got them for your birthday. Was just bringing them to you when I got the call that the ambulance had come." Her voice wavered, and she looked away.

The light shone in his eyes now, but Ollie had no way to make it stop. Panicked, he prayed. "My father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name."

"It's
Our Father,
dear. And you'd know that if you ever spent a day in church."

"Forgive me my trespasses."

"Debts," Mildred said. "Debts."

He saw them now, struggling to get their wings through the opening. "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil because you are with me."

"Ollie, are you all right?"

"Please, Mildred. It comforts me."

She looked at him for a long moment, and then touched his arm. This was an old, old Mildred, the kind-eyed girl he'd met out at the winter quarters. Ollie wondered where the hell she'd been all these years. Mildred reached into the large shopping bag at her feet. "Here," she said, handing him the bullhook. "Are you happy?"

He gripped it in both hands. "Amen." He shut his eyes.

"Ollie! Wake up." When he didn't respond, she pushed the call button next to the bed. "No. No. No."

He felt Mildred lean over him. She was saying something in his ear, something that made her cry, but he couldn't hear her over the squeal of his hearing aid.

Then the angels were there, fussing with his tubes. Ollie looked out the window at the scalloped snow clouds, the sun trying to shine. And then he wasn't in the room at all, but standing on the Winnesaw River, brushing away snow until he found his father's frozen face looking back at his own. Ollie lay down over his father's body and flailed his arms and legs. And then Ollie was gone, leaving a perfect angel pressed into the snow.

—
or
WLMA, Your Hometown Music Station,
1060 on the AM Dial

A LONG TIME AGO
—before French fur traders came to cheat the Miami Indians, before it belonged to anyone or even had a name—Indiana was a vast forest, but the land was scraped bare, first by ancient glaciers, and then by pioneers with axes and mouths to feed. There are hills in southern Indiana, but everything north of Indianapolis is so flat that sometimes, especially in winter, it is difficult to tell the difference between the earth and the sky. My mother once told me that if she had to draw a picture of loneliness and despair, it would be Indiana in winter: a wash of gray, a stand of naked trees, and a line of electric poles disappearing into infinity.

When I left for graduate school, I knew one thing: I needed a horizon that wasn't horizontal. Eventually, I got my wish—a job teaching history at a little college in Pennsylvania. A year later, I bought my first house, a hundred-and-fifty-year-old stone farmhouse in the middle of an apple orchard. Where I live now is a Grandma Moses painting, a rolling valley in the shadows of South Mountain. That's where I am the day after New Year's Day 2000, the day the world didn't end. I'm trying to write a syllabus but staring outside at the snowy hills instead when the phone rings. "Grandpa Ollie just passed, sweetie," my dad says. "The funeral's the day after tomorrow. Can you come home?"

"One hundred," I say. "He made it."

Dad sighs. "Sort of."

It's January, the snowiest month of all in Indiana. Most flights into Indianapolis are canceled, but I manage to get one into Midway, and my dad manages to get there to pick me up. When I hop in the car, Dad sings in his best Jim Nabors."
Back home again ... in Indiana ... And it seems that I can see
..." We drive thirty miles an hour on the way down to Lima. Snow blows across the highway, gathering along fence posts like thousands of ghosts. "It's drifting pretty bad," he says, his voice as solemn as the sky.

"Yeah. It is."

He punches at the radio, tuning in a weather report. "How's school, Jenny?"

"Fine," I say. "Classes don't start for another week, so this is a good time. I guess." I clear my throat. "How's Nana?"

"Mildred's more upset than I thought she'd be." He sighs, then touches my hand. "It's good to see you, Jen. How was that conference you went to?"

"Fine. San Francisco was great."

He sings again, his way of telling jokes."
I left my heart ... in San Francisco.
"

I didn't come home for Christmas because I had to go to the conference. Actually, that's a lie. I
could have
come home, but didn't. I flew to California early to visit a grad school friend—and went to the beach every day—then I went to the conference. It was the first time in my life I hadn't woken up on Christmas morning under the same roof as my father, and even though I convinced myself at the time that I deserved the trip, that it wasn't a big deal, I still feel guilty just thinking about it. But I don't let my voice betray that guilt—in fact, my tone sounds a tad exasperated. "You know I'm sorry I couldn't be here for Christmas, Dad."