The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(111)
BY SHIP INTO THE SEA
Three years after the stroke
Day 88 of The Trip
November 2013
I get an e-mail from Davy. They’ve recently boarded the ship that will bring them back to the States. Before that, though, in Florence, they were staying in an apartment with a window that looked out over a busy pedestrian street. Every morning, he says, in their pajamas, they have their coffee while they sit all scooted up against the window, setting the cup on the sill while they watch the world go by outside. There are a few photographs of my mom here. You can see only her back, her softest skin in the world beneath a nightie or a camisole, her silver hair wild and messy from sleep. She is in shadow because of the brightness of the window she’s looking out, a bright white building with turquoise shutters across the street, cars and motorbikes parked and in motion below, and people in light jackets walking every direction.
How does the recycling work here? Davy wants to know. There are these bins and it looks like they empty underground, but how could that be? How do the trucks pick them up? He posts photographs of the Italian police, the Carabinieri, writing parking tickets to a line of scooters. And the bakery that opens each morning with fresh hot bread. And the street artist setting up his paintings in the morning beside the used-book man opening his tarp top, and a photo of the two of them having one of their discussions they seem to have each day. I’d spent two weeks in Italy just after high school, so I wanted to imagine myself watching the daily street life with them, but I couldn’t. They were on their own journey.
Another e-mail from Davy follows just after, letting me know that their travel plans were messed up, delayed ships and work on the train tracks that they’d need to take back across the country. That they were panicked and didn’t know how all the timing for getting home would work out now, that the plans we all had to reconvene in California on Thanksgiving the day after we all ended our respective journeys might have to be tweaked.
I didn’t pay a lot of attention to the details in what he said, because I was too transfixed by the idea that they were returning at all. I had never asked, but they had actually made the plans to return, and were following through, boarding ships that needed to be boarded. The idea was miraculous.
TWINKLERS
Day 136 of 150
World of Wonders
November 2013
We’re headed deeper into the swamp.
For the season’s last gig, we’re playing the Volusia County Fair in DeLand, Florida. Three days of set up, ten days of performing, a day of teardown, and the season will be over. What does that even mean?
A bed in a room with a door. Clean sheets. Blankets. Toilets that flush. That fancy Trader Joe’s hand soap that I would lather my whole body in, rinse with hot water. And then sleep for weeks.
My muscles are sinewy and strong. My skin a deep bronze. My hair very blond. All the clothes I’d purchased on the road, a very few, all at Walmart, are black. I am tough. Dirty. Grizzled. I have never been more exhausted. My mother is on the open sea. I am falling apart.
We’d had a week stopover in Gibtown to appear on the reality TV show Freakshow. TV pays better than carnivals, so the bosses were game. Rash the Clown was delighted, and tried to be in as many shots as possible. Terrifying yet talented clowns are great for TV. Sunshine had a fire-eating nemesis to compete with, who turned out to be disappointingly nice. Spif was annoyed with how much more work we had to do than the TV cast. Tommy was happy for the money.
One night, to pass the time before filming started, we went to the Showmen’s Club. The big flat building is a private club for members of the International Independent Showmen’s Association, more than 4,500 people. Because we were with Tommy and Red, we went in with no hassle even though we were not all members. Ward’s and Chris’s pictures hung on the wall. They’re royalty here. We posted up at the carousel bar because there were only a few other people in the whole club. Red sidled up beside me, asked what I was drinking, and bought me one.
“This girl here is going to be a doctor,” he said to the bartender as he ordered our drinks. I had no idea he’d been paying attention to conversations I’d had with other folks about my plans for after the season—more grad school. Didn’t know he cared.
“I like when I see you reading,” he said, handing me the drink. “Good to have that kind of a mind. Ever read the mystics?”
We chatted for a while, about books first, then his plans to spend Christmas with his mom, who had even more kittens now, about the value of social media for reconnecting long-lost family. We toasted to my lack of sword-swallowing skills—I’d practiced here and there over the last few months with little progress, more seduced by the flashy whip acts. There were some people who took a few years to get it. Others just never did.
Eventually I sat beside Tommy at the bar. Tommy, who doesn’t drink, and me, who had a few. Tommy, the great road boss, the young sword swallower who figured out, at twenty-one, that this was the life for him and hasn’t left. Tommy, who works as a piano mover in New Jersey in the off-season, who performed as an amateur wrestler for a few years, who was infinitely patient with my screwups on the road, with the snake bringing me to tears, with the gasoline headaches, who called me Tessy right away as if I already belonged.
“I just want you to know,” I said to him. “You’re the greatest boss I’ve had. In any kind of job.”