* * *
In the wagon with the small horse, Evangeline waited. “It is true then. Ryzhkova is gone,” she said when he climbed in.
She’d been crying, he saw the redness in her eyes, the spots staining her cheeks. When she tried to embrace him he pulled away, reaching for the cards.
“At least she left you that,” she said.
Amos did not listen; he was desperately tired of listening; he wished to speak. Working through the deck, he showed Evangeline card upon card, building thought from image. The Fool over and over again, the High Priestess, then the darker cards. Amos set them all before her, his life in mosaic, his thoughts, and more than before, his fears. Evangeline tried to keep pace, speaking his thoughts as she saw them, but he moved with furious speed. The pictures flashed, slid, and blurred until at length his hands slowed, and he began to repeat a sequence of cards, one she remembered. In the lesson he’d used two cards — one for him, one for her. Now he used just his, the Fool. He began matching it with another, the solitary old traveler that was the Hermit. No, not Peabody — how layered their language was — in the lesson he’d used the cards to ask, “Are we alone?” Now the variation.
She knew it. “Am I alone?”
He repeated. Am I alone? Am I alone?
She layered her fingers over his and touched her lips to his forehead. “I am here,” she said. She repeated the words, but he did not hear. She searched for her card, the Queen of Swords, then for another with which to pair it — one they’d settled upon to mean home, place, wherever they dwelled. The Six of Cups. Children at play in front of their home. She placed her cards on the wagon boards, touching his in answer.
Am I alone?
I am here.
Am I alone?
I am your home.
19 JULY 21ST
In the carnival parking lot I shuffle the pieces, rearrange things until they line up. My father loved my mother, he told me so. Love at first sight. Enola is not sick; she’s fine and we don’t die.
Except that we do.
The red and white awnings of Rose’s Carnival crest over the lot next to the brick box that is the Napawset Fire Department. Inside are rides and ride jockeys, rigged games, a fun house with shifting floors and mirrors, a sideshow, and my sister. I’ve parked by the torn banner proclaiming this the “45th Annual Firemen’s Carnival and Fair,” the carnival Enola and I went to as kids; after all the money I spent trying to win her goldfish that died in a night, it’s hers now, hers and Doyle’s.
I hobble down the midway — a wide walkway of trampled-down grass lined with booths, fried food, and blinking lights — in search of a card reader’s booth. A man calls the tin horse races through a megaphone. Whack-a-mole, a shooting gallery, and the ring toss are manned by teenagers, or a peculiar breed of thin person with sunken cheeks — pockmarked and hungry, but intriguing. The air is heavy with kettle corn and cotton candy, and pop music blares. This is Enola’s home. The grounds teem with sweating faces, and children dart between parents’ legs. I can almost feel my father’s hand gripping my shirt to keep me from running to the coin toss to try to win a live frog. I stumble, roll my bad ankle, and the pain tastes like metal.
Towering over the carnival is the swing ride — a classic model Chair-O-Plane, candy cane — striped yellow and purple, the top adorned with mirrored panels that catch the sun. I remember Dad buckling Enola into a seat. I remember sailing in the chair next to his, watching the wind plaster his hair to his forehead. Even then he hadn’t smiled; he was too busy looking for a piece of Mom in the place where they’d met. The next year Enola and I went alone. Laughter streams from the swings as chains tighten and chairs ascend, careening in centrifugal grace. I limp to the end of the line. A higher vantage should help me find Enola.
It’s a tight fit, my knees are almost in my mouth, but then we lift. I rise, spiraling outward, and see houses looking out from the walls of the town — a place where neighbors steal mothers in the night and drown them. At the top of the arc I can see the Sound beyond the rooflines that somehow contain my house — correction: Frank’s house. The water is dull, not smooth as glass or angry and thrashing as in books. It’s gray, calm, and dead. I hate it, hate that’s hard like a shell. She drowned herself in a second-rate water.
I swing my foot, bend the ankle, and the sting feels pretend, just an idea of what pain is supposed to be. The carnival looks like a toy with a windup key. There, the concession with the pink lemonade. There, the Wheel of Fortune everybody plays though it’s universally known to be rigged. Voices are fading shouts, laughter, cries at nothing.
Toward the back I see it, a purple tent with a line of people. Yes, that’s her.
When we swing to the ground in loping waves, things are different. This is no grand carnival, but I would run away with it.
I need Enola. Three days left and I need her.
An enormous man in a Hawaiian shirt lumbers by; a scraggly braid dangles down his back like a possum tail; he heads toward a striped tent and ducks under a flap — the sideshow. This must be George the Fat Man, the one with the weed. I search around for Doyle, but he’s nowhere.
I walk toward the small purple tent, past the shouting and the funnel cake, French fries, and zeppole, each with its own fry-oil perfume. The back of the grounds is marked by the Zipper, a rotating conveyer belt that whirls riders in spinning cages in the sky. I took Enola on it when she was too small; the lap bar didn’t lock right and she knocked herself out. For weeks she had a goose egg with the dark purple imprint of waffled chain.
Dunk the Freak has a short line of people waiting to throw softballs. The Freak is a skinny guy in a dirty tank top who shouts that I throw like a girl. Behind him is Enola’s tent — purple velour and duvetyn, spangled with gold moons and stars, hand painted. A sandwich sign leans against the tent corner, a picture of a hand floating over a crystal ball with the name Madame Esmeralda written in Gothic style.
Esmeralda. Really.
The interior is lit by a lamp covered in a red silk shawl. At a card table draped with paisley cloth, Enola is a child’s idea of a fortune-teller — head wrapped in a purple scarf, gigantic gold hoops in her ears. She’s got two clients, a couple of teenage girls; twin ponytails, blond and brown. And there is Doyle beside her, his tattooed hands slithering over the table.
Lifting the curtain lets in light, making the girls turn their heads. Doyle squints. Enola glares at me through rings of black eyeliner. In a thick accent she barks out, “Outside! Esmeralda will be with you.”
“Enola, I—”
“You. Out. Now.” She smacks her palm against the table. Doyle eases from his chair to usher me out.
“Five minutes, okay? Chill.” He pulls the tent closed.
I push a fold of drape to the side, enough for a peephole, and watch as Enola rocks in her chair, speaking in a low voice to the ponytail girls, who huddle in close.
“You want to know of love, yes?” Enola asks. The blonde starts to speak, but is shushed by my sister’s hand. “Not to me, darling.” Dahlink. “Tell the Painted Man,” she says. “The Painted Man keep your secret. He hold your secret. I fix it. Future has two doors, yes? One to open, one to close. Painted Man closes.” She touches a fingernail to a sucker on Doyle’s forearm, then touches her chest. “Esmeralda opens.”