The Electric Woman: A Memoir in Death-Defying Acts(49)

“Where’s Red?” she finally asks.

We look around, but he has not made it into the bathrooms. Someone with a weather radio says the tornado has touched down a mile from our carnival. We push past the other carnies standing in the doorway and peek our heads out the bathroom’s mouth, craning our necks toward our big tent down the midway. It’s almost impossible to make out what’s what, but I’m pretty sure I see Red just outside our tent, two of the center ropes wrapped around his hands as he throws his body back against the wind, fighting that tornado himself, a battle—anyone would say—that there is no way he could actually win.

I can see him there, openmouthed, laughing up at the sky.

*

Half an hour later, the wind has slowed and rain lightened. A few breaks in the clouds let some dim sun through, and one by one the rest of the bathroom huddlers decide the danger has passed and leave the building. One of the women has been on her cell phone much of the time. “Oh lord, oh Jesus,” she’d said to the line, “I just wanted to talk to you, honey, one last time.” Another was chewing gum with a rhythmic grind and stood at the edge of the bathroom door with her phone out in front of her as if it were a mirror, though instead she had it recording the rest of the world outside. A man stood beside her, chewing and spitting sunflower seeds onto the tiled floor.

“I’m going to check on Thomas and Benny,” Sunshine says, shouldering her way out of the bathroom. We follow her, stepping over torn branches and wet leaves and a smattering of game prizes—soggy stuffed cats and inflatable baseball bats strewn about like forgotten toys. Though it was unlikely there was carnage back at the tent, I pictured our comrades’ bodies tossed onto an upturned tent stake, impaled in a stack of floppy flesh like speared fish. Or knocked over the head by the fallen giant. Decapitated by a plane of glass.

When we reach our lot, Red is sitting in the front seat of his van reading Facebook. Tommy is inside the tent, whistling and sweeping water off the stage. Big, Big Ben is in the truck.

Time stills. We are standing on a precipice between realities—the fear and drama of the last hour, which is keeping my throat tight, the top of my chest hot, and the regular, much-rehearsed motion of what we’re about to do again.

We open the mummy cases, shaking off the leaves and rain. Spif checks the electrical. Within fifteen minutes, Tommy yells that we’re opening back up in five minutes, so for those of us with smeared makeup and blood-and mud-covered legs, we should do our best to fix it, quickly, and get back onstage. “The show must go on” trope can’t ever have felt more true.

Once I climb the bally stage, I see the rest of the carnival squeezing itself out as well. Crazy Craig the Clown gets back on his unicycle, tries to juggle, and falls off. It’s hard to tell if his struggle is sincere or performed. A honk comes from down the midway and some of the thin crowd parts and Buffo, the World’s Strongest Clown, emerges, smooth and straight on his Segway, honking horns and ringing bells, his face clown white with a large kidney-shaped red mouth. Where had he been hidden to preserve his makeup? And who had been working out in the rain to make sure his show didn’t blow away? He leaves a small white smear against his overripe biceps after he kisses them, those little pythons sticking out of his American-flag-printed denim vest. The engine in his Segway purrs its high-pitched whine.

“Did you know the inventor of the Segway just died by accidentally riding his Segway off a cliff?” Cassie whispers over to me.

I snortle.

“Well, kids, this is just a reminder that Buffo’s next show is at six this evening,” Buffo says to the crowd. Crazy Craig still hasn’t managed to climb back onto his unicycle. He’s looking at Buffo with half-lidded eyes, three juggling clubs in his hands.

“Everybody gather round and listen to the weirdos!” Buffo says into his megaphone, pointing at our stage. His style of mockery is predictable in the boring way a jock mocks an outcast in the high school cafeteria.

And the rest of the day continues on as usual.

*

Later, I call Devin to report on the tornado and because I am scared, though not from the tornado. I mention the tornado, assure him all’s okay, and move on quickly. I am trying to remember things about my mom from before she got sick, and I keep finding long gaps in my memory.

“I don’t remember her at all,” I tell him.

“Sure you do,” he says. “You have to.”

“I keep trying, but she’s always just in the corner of the room as my memory sweeps through the house. I can see her for a moment, but most of the time she’s gone.”

“You don’t just lose a person like that,” he says. “Twenty-five years of memories don’t just get deleted.”

“I think maybe you do.”

We are both quiet a few moments.

“She was authoritative,” he says. “Commanding.”

“She was commanding,” I parrot, catching, for just a moment, some memory of a stern arch in her eyebrow.

“She laughed a lot,” he says.

“That sounds right.”

“Remember the bricks? She was going to make special bricks.”

“No.”

“She had just seen bricks somewhere with animals or patterns printed into them, and she decided she was going to make some. She was sure she could do it. How to make the mold, pour the mix. She was just going to do it.”