The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(117)

*

The crew drops me off with all my bags at a discount car rental office in a strip mall in the Florida suburbs. Most of the other performers are flying home the same night or the next day. One is heading to the bus station. They’re dropping me off first, quickly, on the way.

Before we’d left the carnival fairgrounds, I’d walked over to Red, who was sitting on the ground and had just been delivered a Styrofoam container of Chinese food by some old-time carnie friend, and waved goodbye.

“Thank you,” I said, giving him a bit of a bow. He set the food down and, in a few stiff maneuvers, got to his feet. He wrapped his arms around me.

“I wasn’t sure about you at first, Tess,” he said. He let go and kept his face close to mine. I could see all his human pincushion divots. “But I want to know about all the things you do next,” he said. He had never asked if I’d be back for another season, but he knew. “You’ve got it, girl,” he said. I had no idea what it was for Red, but I wanted to tell him that I’d do everything I could, really, forever, to try to keep having it.

Instead, I squeezed his forearm. “It has been a great, great honor to work with you, sir,” I said. He made a fart noise and sat back down to his Chinese food.

*

There’s a rush as I get out of the van, haul out my bags, and give quick hugs. I was hoping for some sort of wrap-up conversation, or parting words of wisdom, something, anything, but all the goodbyes happen fast and then everyone is back in the van, ready for the next destination.

I hug Tommy last, and as I do, he whispers, “MVP,” into my ear. I laugh. It’s something he’s taken to calling me, and even though it’s probably a lie, I feel a glow at even the suggestion that what I did out here was useful, and maybe even, dare I dream it, significant. “Keep in touch, Tex,” he says.

*

It’s hard to believe that this van is about to drive away and permanently separate me from the crew. Their lives will carry on, maybe back in this van in seven months, maybe not, but I won’t be here. It’s hard to believe that I’m headed to see dear friends in Tallahassee for a few days, and then home to California to meet my parents—I’ll arrive the day before Thanksgiving, two days after they get back, and we’ve decided we’ll eat together—probably something Chinese, my mom, Davy, Sam, and I. It’s hard to believe that time even exists past this moment, because the last five months have felt like five years, so packed full, so many days inside days inside days. Maybe time is starting over again.

I don’t cry. I’ve wondered about this last moment of the season so many times, about what I’d do first once I had control over where I could go and what I could do, whether I’d weep. But I don’t do anything except stand there in the rental car parking lot, struck still.

Tommy drives the van away. I watch it go, the big white beast. Those fuzzy dice still dangling from the rearview mirror. Our lost comrade’s teeth still rattling in that cup. All their sounds traveling farther and farther from me.

*

“Last time I’ll sign this thing,” Sunshine said right before we began teardown on closing night. It was the final moment the back end of our truck—our home, our backstage area, our living room for twelve fairs and a week of TV filming, the epicenter of five months of our lives—would be empty. In just a few moments, we’d begin the careful stacking and strapping, stuffing it full again for another winter.

“Still think it’s the last time you’ll come out?” I asked.

“Yes, if I can help it,” Sunshine said. She handed me the Sharpie. “But who knows,” she said. “I mean, if they’re desperate, I’ll come help.”

I looked at the semi’s wall, where she’d written 2013, the seventh year recorded beneath her name. It was hard to picture the show without her.

Spread across the wall were other names I recognized, Red and Rash the Clown and Short E and Cassie and Tommy and Big, Big Ben and Spif and Lola Ambrosia and Pipscy, and interspersed between the names I knew, there was a whole world of names I didn’t know, people who had come before me for a season, maybe two, maybe ten. Names that stretched back the full twenty years that the show had had this semi container, and then, of course, names that stretched across other walls before that, on older trucks and trains, people who knew what fire felt like in their mouths and swords in their throats, who knew how to transcend the limits of their fragile human bodies twenty-five, thirty times a day.

I opened the pen. Found a spot on the wall, and signed my name. Signed the year.

There was nothing to write below it. I had hacked it.

My name was indistinguishable from the rest as I walked out of the truck and looked back once more, just one smear on the wall among many who’d said yes, I am alive, and I am not afraid to show you how.





EPILOGUE: WHERE YOU WILL FLOAT ELECTRIC

July 2016

My mom and Davy leave for another trip two and a half years later. This time, a few months into their adventure, my brother and I fly to Greece, to the island of Rhodes, to meet them. We spend five days there all together under that bright sun.

On the last day, we help my mom into Bubbles. We search for a beach with the most gentle slope into the ocean, and, through the crowds tanning outside their resort, wheel her to the water’s edge. We inch the chair in. Slide her off the side. Her body lies across Davy’s arms, my brother’s arms, my arms. She is swimming. This is her first time in the ocean since her stroke. We wade farther out, the three of us with our feet on the ocean floor, her body floating between us. Then she is just in Davy’s arms. She is beaming. She is looking up at the sky and then her eyes close and her skin glows and she is just singing and singing and singing. The sun is on her face and the ocean is very blue and we all watch her there, smiling at her, at each other.