Night-Bloom (6 page)

The calliope wheezes sad little tunes into the torrid air. The lion roars and paces its cage. The gorilla with its gray-green human eyes sucks grapes and picks its nose. Monkeys jabber and vault about on trapeze bars. A row of elephants tethered at stakes fork bales of straw into their mouths with swaying trunks.

The menagerie was particularly good that day. Festive Sunday crowds jammed into the big hall of the Pittsburgh Sports Arena. Squealing, laughing children wolfed frankfurters and cotton candy in a warm haze of sawdust and fresh manure.

Watford sauntered through the holiday crowds, a look of dreamy abstraction on his boyish face. The little girl beside him clasped his hand and edged closer to his leg. She winced as the shriek of a cockatoo rent the air.

“Shouldn’t we go in and sit down now?” she asked. She held in her hand an untouched paper cone of pinkish cotton candy.

“Not yet. The show doesn’t start for another twenty minutes. And, besides, we haven’t seen the freaks yet.”

They entered a large room adjoining the menagerie. It had high ceilings and long galleries down which people slowly ambled. By contrast to the menagerie, this room was quiet. People moved through a wide aisle and tended either to stand silent or to whisper before the exhibits.

Watford had always loved the freak show. For him it had some special draw, an opportunity to relish a slight dread along with a sense of awe he could not quite articulate. About it all was an air of reverence. He walked like one in a church. There was the curious divinity of freaks. He could see the face of Christ in all the tired deformities. The infinite sadness of the fat man’s eyes. The armless, legless lady, an unappendaged torso propped up on a crate draped with black imitation velvet, a marble bust of immobile torment. The tattooed man, stigmata stenciled over every inch of his pelt. And the self-immolation of the fire-eater staging hourly the bogus miracle of an auto-da-fé.

They paused for a while amid a sweating, jostling crowd to watch the human torso do tricks. She lit cigarettes and signed autographs by means of a pencil tucked beneath her chin. Illuminated by a single klieg light, her frizzy, carrot-colored hair, her thickly rouged and lipsticked face transformed itself into a ghastly maquillage.

“How does she go to the bathroom?” someone whispered behind them and there was giggling.

Wide-eyed and visibly uneasy, not certain whether to laugh or close her eyes, the small child pressed closer to Watford when the red gash of the torso’s mouth cracked into a smile and greeted her in a shrill harpy voice.

“Can’t we go now?” six-year-old Millicent Rhodes whispered, her eyes still fixed on the grinning torso nodding at her.

“We’ve got time. We still haven’t seen everything. Don’t you want to see the fire-eater?”

At last she succeeded in steering him away from the freaks to out under the big top where the overture and promenade were just starting up.

Tubas, drums, xylophones, glockenspiels, the trombones and the clash of cymbals swelled the tent. Colored floodlights swerved dizzyingly round the triple arenas.

Up above the silver-threaded guylines and high wires, trapeze bars awaited the aerialists and tightrope cyclists. Clowns and midgets tumbled on the cinder footpath circling the main arenas. Behind them came a man on stilts, followed by the elephants, a dancing bear, and a brace of prancing Lippizaners with bright red feathers in their ears.

And always the clowns, sad and ludicrous, and the hobos with their baggy pants collapsing round their big, floppy shoes, cakewalking through the promenade.

Watford observed the small child beside him, twirling the little pencil flashlight he’d bought her outside at one of the concessionaires. As he watched the floodlight reflected in her glowing eyes, he was suffused with such a sense of tenderness that he had to choke back tears.

They watched the aerialist scramble up the ladder and into the labyrinth of silver wires strung like cobwebs at the peak of the tent. The child watched intently a young girl, no more than seventeen or eighteen, with the face of a quattrocento Madonna, effortlessly ascend a rope, then step outward onto a tiny platform one hundred and fifty feet above the roaring, taunting crowds. Fearless, imperturbable, she spread her arms out sidewards as though they were wings. There was a gasp as she stepped outward into space.

“You’ve got some hell of a nerve, Charley. Edgar’s furious. Fit to be tied.”

“It’s only nine-thirty.”

“Nine-thirty? You’ve been gone the whole day, for God’s sake. Where the hell have you been?”

“I told you I was going to take her to the circus, didn’t I?”

“The circus? Are you mad?”

“Didn’t I tell you? I told you—I know I told you.”

“About three weeks ago you mentioned something about taking her. But, of course, you neglected to tell us what day, or when. We wake up this morning. You’re gone. She’s gone. How the hell are we supposed to put all that together? We called the police.”

“The police?”

“We thought she was kidnapped. We thought she ran away. God knows what we thought.”

“Well, for Chrissake, if that isn’t the dumbest— now don’t—for God’s sake, go and start bawling.”

Watford made a motion toward his younger sister—a raised hand, a gesture half warning, half placatory—“Now don’t, Renee—Please. There’s no need for that. I can’t stand when you do that.”

Almost imperceptibly, his hand prodding gently at the small of her back, he nudged the child forward to plead his cause.

“Don’t cry, Mommy. I’m fine. Uncle Charley and I had so much fun.”

“Never mind the fun, young lady. Your father is nearly out of his mind with worry. He’s been calling from the office all day.”

Her taut, tired body was suddenly shaken with sobs. “You go wash up, Millicent. Get ready for bed. I’ve got to call your father.”

Together, they watched the little girl walk out. “Jesus, Charley. God damn you, anyway.” Watford flung his hand up in despair. “Well, what the hell did I do that was so gosh damned awful anyway? Will you kindly tell me that?”

“Charley Watford—you are a thoughtless, stupid—”

“I take a kid to the gosh damned circus—big deal—”

“It’s not that you took her. It’s how you took her. You stole her. You sneaked out of here at six a.m. like a thief, while everyone was still asleep. Not so much as a call all day, or a by-your-leave, to let us know where you are. What are we supposed to think? It never crosses your stupid mind that we’d be worried sick …”

“It was supposed to be a surprise,” Watford whined pathetically. “Not only for her but for you, too. I thought I was doing you a big favor, taking her off your hands for the day. Giving you a vacation. I thought you and Edgar would be delighted. I thought you’d find it funny. A big joke. Ha, ha.”

“Oh, God,” she blanched and covered her mouth with her hands. “I still haven’t called Edgar.”

She bolted from the room, and in the next moment, he could hear the hasty, clicking sound of the dial, and her low, husky voice speaking rapidly into the phone. When she came back she looked ashen. “Look, Charley—”

“Renee—Don’t …”

“Please don’t interrupt me, Charley. Just let me get this off my chest. Edgar’s about ready to wring your neck. He’s furious. He has been for months. How long has it been now? Eight months? Nine months?”

“Sissy, look. Just …”

“No Sissy stuff, Charley. Not now. Please.” She backed away as he slowly approached her, that look of puzzlement and hurt on his face. “I didn’t mind taking you in after the hospital. You were recuperating. You were still weak. Also, I didn’t want to see you go back to the house all by yourself.”

“Listen, Renee. I wasn’t going to say anything until it was certain. I think I’ve got a job lined up …” She paused, hooked in midsentence, her head cocked to one side. “How long?”

“A couple of days. A week at the most.” He watched her closely, dangling more bait before her wary eyes. “It’s a traveling job. Sales. Hardware. Machinery. That sort of thing. This guy, the manager … he’s just got to clear it with home office.” Sensing her growing skepticism, Watford’s speech quickened and grew slightly frantic.

She wavered a moment, indecisively, torn between loyalty to both brother and husband. At last she shook her head back and forth, first slowly, then with gathering momentum. “No. No—Charley. Not this time. We’ve been down this road before. The last time …”

“I couldn’t help that, Sissy.”

“No Sissy stuff, I told you.”

“Irene— You know yourself I couldn’t help that. The guy promised me. It just fell through. I can’t help that.”

“I can’t help it either, Charley. Not anymore. You’ve got to go now. It’s not only your welfare that’s at question. It’s now a question of my family, my marriage, my life. Edgar simply won’t stand for another day of this. We’re all stretched to the …”

“Well, for gosh sakes,” Watford laughed bitterly. “I take my niece to the circus, and for that I get tossed out into the cold.”

“It’s not cold, Charley. It’s May. Spring. The lilacs are blooming outside in the yard.” Her voice suddenly went soft and she spoke very slowly as though she were cajoling a child. “You can stay here tonight, but that’s it. Tomorrow, out. Go home. Go back to the house. It ought to be lovely up that way now.”

His fingers fumbled with a jacket button and he started to speak. But before he could she waved him to silence. “Don’t, for God’s sake, say another word, Charley. Don’t try to play on my feelings ‘cause I’m just about ready to bust.” Her eyes were red and glistening.

“But I don’t have …”

“Don’t worry about that,” her hands fluttered at him again. “I’ve got a few hundred stashed away. You can have it all. But you’ve got to go.”

She watched him slump down into a chair. “Don’t think I enjoy kicking my only brother out. I’m sorry, sweetie. I’m sorry for everything. I’m sorry about Mom and Dad. I’m sorry about you. You’ve had nothing but rotten luck. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. But I can’t help it. I’m trying to make some kind of life for myself out here, and I’m afraid it just doesn’t … can’t possibly include you.”

She blew her nose into her apron, then cocked an ear at a sound coming from the direction of her daughter’s bedroom. “Coming, honey. Mommy’ll be right up to tuck you in.”

Her scrubbed, girlish features appeared suddenly hard and pinched. “Tonight, Charley. That’s it. Tomorrow, out. And for God’s sake, stay out of Edgar’s way.”

She started out, then turned abruptly. “Charley. Edgar knows all about those pills you take. What the hell are they for anyway?”

“For my headaches. They’re pain-killers.”

“I realize that. But why so many? Every day, like that? And what in God’s name are you doing with that doctor’s bag with all those instruments?”

“Things.” He looked away evasively. “It’s for my medications. Would you prefer I live with this hammer banging around in my skull all day?”

“No. Of course not.” She was suddenly contrite. “If you need it, you need it. It’s only that Edgar …”

“Disapproves.”

“Of course he disapproves of things like that. Wouldn’t you?”

“Things like what?”

“Like that. You know. Pills. Drugs. Things like that. Edgar doesn’t like that.”

E. K. SHAVERS, UROLOGY, M.D., P.C., F.A.C.S., DIPLOMATE AMERICAN BOARD OF UROLOGY
, the directory in front of the building read. Along with it were listed the names of a dozen other physicians all with interminable rows of letters following their names.

Above the directory on a thin plaque of marble and indited in imposing typography was a sign reading
GRAMERCY MEDICAL ARTS BUILDING
. Watford had found the place in the Yellow Pages. Though it was seven o’clock of a Saturday evening and at that hour no self-respecting physician could expect to be found there, he had still made a point of coming personally to the address. He wanted to be certain that it was a medical group he had not had recourse to in the past. And he’d had recourse to many.

One block from the Medical Arts Building he found precisely what he needed—a large, late-night pharmacy. The Gramercy Drug Mart’s proximity to the Medical Arts Building virtually assured him that the group there wrote many prescriptions and consequently enjoyed special privileges with the pharmacy.

The place was crowded. People at the soda fountain were drinking coffee and malteds; shoppers moved up and down the crowded aisles purchasing cosmetics and toiletries. In a corner of the store, not far from where the pharmacists worked behind a large glass counter, Watford found a public phone booth and quickly let himself in.

Closing the accordion glass doors behind him, he thumbed deftly through a badly frayed Manhattan directory and found the telephone number of the Gramercy Drug Mart. He dialed the number and asked to be connected to the pharmacy. With a small shiver of delight he watched the young pharmacist, no more than thirty feet from where he stood, reach for the phone.

“Hello—This is Dr. Shavers—”

“Good evening, Doctor.”

“I’m calling from out of town. On a fishing trip. I’m sending over a patient of mine. Mr. Charles Watford. I’m admitting him to N.Y.U. Medical Center tonight with a renal colic. He’ll be needing something for the pain until we can do urine stains and a blood workup. I think about seven hundred milligrams of meperidine ought to do him till I get back.”