I shake my head.
She takes both my hands in hers. They are warm and firmly fleshed. “You said nothing to be embarrassed of, Mr. Jankowski. You’re a fine gentleman and I’m honored to know you.”
My eyes fill, and I drop my head so she won’t see.
“Mr. Jankowski—”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“About the circus?”
“No. About . . . Oh hell, don’t you understand? I didn’t even realize I was talking. It’s the beginning of the end. It’s all downhill from here, and I didn’t have very far to go. But I was really hoping to hang on to my brains. I really was.”
“You still have your brains, Mr. Jankowski. You’re sharp as a tack.”
We sit in silence for a minute.
“I’m scared, Rosemary.”
“Do you want me to talk to Dr. Rashid?” she asks.
I nod. A tear slips from my eye and into my lap. I hold my eyes wide, hoping to contain the rest.
“It’s another hour before you have to be ready to go. Would you like to rest a spell?”
I nod again. She gives my hand a final pat, lowers the head of my bed, and leaves. I lie back, listening to the buzzing lights and staring at the square tiles of the dropped ceiling. An expanse of pressed popcorn, of tasteless rice cakes.
If I’m completely honest with myself, there have been hints I was slipping.
Last week, when my people came, I didn’t know them. I faked it, though—when they made their way toward me and I realized it was me they had come to see, I smiled and made all the usual placating noises, the “oh yesses” and “goodness graciouses” that make up my end of most conversations these days. I thought it was going just fine until a peculiar look crossed the mother’s face. A horrified look, with her forehead scrumpled and her jaw slightly open. I raced back over the last few minutes of the conversation and realized I’d said the wrong thing, the polar opposite of what I should have said, and then I was mortified, because I don’t dislike Isabelle. I just don’t know her, and so I was having trouble paying attention to the details of her disastrous dance recital.
But then this Isabelle turned and laughed and in that instant I saw my wife. This made me weepy and these people whom I didn’t recognize exchanged furtive glances and shortly thereafter announced that it was time to leave because Grandpa needed his rest. They patted my hand and they tucked my blanket in around my knees, and they left. They went out into the world, and they left me here. And to this day I have no idea who they were.
I know my children, don’t get me wrong—but these are not my children. These are the children of my children, and their children, too, and maybe even theirs. Did I coo into their baby faces? Did I dandle them on my knee? I had three sons and two daughters, a houseful indeed, and none of them exactly held back. You multiply five by four and then by five again, and it’s no wonder I forget how some of them fit in. It doesn’t help that they take turns coming to see me, because even if I manage to commit one group to memory, they may not come around again for another eight or nine months, by which time I’ve forgotten whatever it was I may have known.
But what happened today was entirely different, and much, much scarier.
What in God’s name did I say?
I close my eyes and reach for the far corners of my mind. They’re no longer clearly defined. My brain is like a universe whose gases get thinner and thinner at the edges. But it doesn’t dissolve into nothingness. I can sense something out there, just beyond my grasp, hovering, waiting—and God help me if I’m not skidding toward it again, mouth open wide.
COLLECTION OF THE RINGLING CIRCUS MUSEUM, SARASOTA, FLORIDA
While August is off doing God knows what to Rosie, Marlena and I crouch on the grass in her dressing tent, clinging to each other like spider monkeys. I say almost nothing, just hold her head to my chest as her history spills out in a rushed whisper.
She tells me about meeting August—she was seventeen, and it had just dawned on her that the recent spate of bachelors joining her family for dinner were actually being presented as potential husbands. When one middle-aged banker with a receding chin, thinning hair, and reedy fingers showed up for dinner one time too many, she heard the doors of her future slamming all around her.
But even as the banker sniveled something that made Marlena blanch and stare in horror at her bowl of clam chowder, posters were being slapped up on every surface in town. The wheels of fate were in motion. The Benzini Brothers Most Spectacular Show on Earth was chugging toward them at that very moment, bringing with it a very real fantasy and, for Marlena, an escape that would prove as romantic as it was terrifying.
Two days later, on a brilliantly sunny day, the L’Arche family went to the circus. Marlena was standing in the menagerie tent in front of a string of stunning black and white Arabians when August first approached her. Her parents had wandered off to look at the cats, oblivious to the force that was about to enter their lives.
And August was a force. Charming, gregarious, and handsome as the devil. Dressed immaculately in blinding white jodhpurs, top hat and tails, he radiated both authority and irresistible charisma. Within minutes, he had secured the promise of a surreptitious meeting and disappeared before the L’Arche seniors rejoined their daughter.
When she met him later, at an art gallery, he began wooing her in earnest. He was twelve years her senior and glamorous in the way only an equestrian director can be. Before the end of the date, he had proposed.
He was charming and relentless. He refused to budge until she married him. He regaled her with stories of Uncle Al’s desperation, and Uncle Al himself made pleas on August’s behalf. They had already missed two jumps. A circus could not survive if it blew its route. This was an important decision, yes, but surely she understood how this was affecting them? That the lives of countless others depended on her making the right choice?
The seventeen-year-old Marlena gazed upon her future in Boston for three more evenings and on the fourth packed a suitcase.
At this point in her story, she dissolves into tears. I’m still holding her, still rocking back and forth. Eventually she pulls away, wiping her eyes with her hands.
“You should go,” she says.
“I don’t want to.”
She whimpers, reaching across the divide to stroke my cheek with the back of her hand.
“I want to see you again,” I say.
“You see me every day.”
“You know what I mean.”
There’s a long pause. She drops her gaze to the ground. Her mouth moves a few times before she finally speaks. “I can’t.”
“Marlena, for God’s sake—”
“I just can’t. I’m married. I made my bed, and now I have to lie in it.”
I kneel in front of her, searching her face for a signal to stay. After an agonizing wait, I realize I’m not going to find one.
I kiss her on the forehead and leave.
• • •
BEFORE I’VE GONE forty yards, I’ve heard more than I ever wanted to about how Rosie paid for the lemonade.
Apparently August stormed into the menagerie and banished everyone. The puzzled menagerie men and a handful of others stood outside, their ears pressed to the seams of the great canvas tent as a torrent of angry screaming began. This sent the rest of the animals into a panic—the chimps screeched, the cats roared, and the zebras yelped. Despite this, the distraught listeners could still make out the hollow thud of bull hook hitting flesh, again and again and again.