The Lonely Hearts Hotel(67)

Later that night she informed Mimi that she was no longer going to work at the movie studio. “I’m starting my own touring company. Watch this, please.”

She picked up the eggs and began to juggle them. They spun around like the lights on a Ferris wheel. She withdrew her hands and suddenly all the eggs fell to the table and broke.

“Oh dear,” said Mimi. “You’ve completely lost your mind. But don’t worry. I’ll just scramble up all of these into a nice omelet.”

? ? ?

LATER, AFTER MIMI LEFT, Rose wrapped the baby up in a stained napkin with orange orchids on it that she had never liked. She put the wee parcel in the inside pocket of her coat. Feeling famished, she stopped at a restaurant to have something to eat. The waiter asked if she would like him to take her coat. She shook her head. She sat at a table in her coat by herself, sighing, with a bowl of soup.

When she was in possession of the baby, she felt people would find out about it. They would judge her entirely unnatural. They would say she was some sort of witch, and they would burn her at the stake.

When Rose got back home, she took the little girl wrapped in the colorful napkin and put the package in the garbage chute and then sat on the bed staring at its closed door. As though she were expecting to hear a knock from behind it.

Outside on a branch, a crow cawed suddenly, as if it had something very hot in its throat.





36


    THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY



Later that night Rose yanked on her dresser’s top drawer, the one that got stuck, until it jerked open. She reached in and pulled out the tin cigar box she liked to keep her condoms and money in. There was a barrette with a tin rose on it that McMahon had given her, which was the only one of his gifts the pawnbroker had declared absolutely worthless. And there was the plan she had made with Pierrot.

Every time she looked at the piece of paper, it distracted her because it was so whimsical and absurd. It amused her that she had come up with something so outlandish and impossible. She liked to think that who she was as a child was entirely different from who she was now. This is a common phenomenon. It’s because people don’t like themselves, but they believe they are inherently good and that it’s life that has made them wicked. So they look back at themselves as children in an idealized, unspoiled lovely state.

The crazier she found the plan as an adult, the more special she felt she had been then. However, this time when she looked at the plan, it seemed to make absolute sense. Why couldn’t she put together this plan now? If it was created by a thirteen-year-old, it should feel easier to accomplish, not harder.

? ? ?

THERE WAS A CIRCUS PERFORMING “Leda and the Swan.” She watched a girl in the circus leap off the strong man’s shoulders, do two flips in the air and then land back on his shoulders. There was no way any scientist could explain such a feat taking place on earth. The atmosphere was different onstage. It was that of another planet altogether. The atmosphere was not composed of oxygen, but rather it was composed of sadness. Sadness was dense—as if it were liquid. You could leap higher up into the air when you were onstage, and sometimes you were suspended there.

Most of us hide away when we are sad, Rose thought. But performers were sad in public. She liked how honest they all were. They opened up their hearts. They took out every emotion—no matter how small or pathetic or odd—and celebrated it. It was as though each trick they performed was an attempted suicide, proving that you could indeed survive the human experience.

They were much more naked than Rose had ever been in the pornographic films. That was for sure. It was much harder to look at. Rose knew she could create an even more provocative show of her own, as sad things can also have other sides, miraculous ones. If you don’t feel sadness, there are types of happiness and compassion and torture and insight you will never know. Sadness has all sorts of truths that allow you to experience joy. She remembered reading with Pierrot the flyers of visiting circuses. They came from faraway places—like Poland and New Orleans and Moscow and London and Bombay and Hong Kong. They brought stories of different lifestyles.

She wanted to create a group from Montreal. To make people wonder what it was like to live on the snowy island. Where there was nothing but crying pregnant girls. Where you could have sex with a girl wearing nothing but a fur hat and socks. Where there were churches and horses and too many babies and too much snow. Where everyone fell in love only once.

? ? ?

SHE WAS GOING TO FIND her partner. He must be performing somewhere because he couldn’t help it. He must be a sad clown in some smaller revue. Once she got that idea in her head, she couldn’t let go of it. She stepped out of the theater. It was hailing outside, as if a bottle of lozenges had fallen over on the shelf.





37


    ON THE FIRST DAY



In one week she saw seven different clowns. On Monday she went to a theater that had paintings of blue skies with white cumulus clouds floating on all the walls.

There was a clown whose act revolved around the use of a spotlight. The spotlight would turn off, and when it came back on, he would be doing something completely different with other props. He changed his clothes in the darkness. He sat on top of a ladder. He lay under a blanket, sleeping. He sat on a chair, reading a novel. He wore a chef’s hat and stirred a pot of soup. Rose found his routine almost miraculous. It seemed as if he were part of the light, like he completely disappeared and reappeared when it went on and off.