Precious (31 page)

There was, in Sissy’s estimation, a sudden disruption at the Morrises’ house, after Mrs. Schultz arrived, her face blotchy, her pretty hairdo smashed against her thin face from running, and her hand resting on her chest. A distress rose in the neighbors and there was, subsequently a whispered conversation as the adults gathered in a circle, away from the children. Sissy strained to hear until Eva—Eva who was included in the conversation, who stood opposite their father—caught Sissy by her bony shoulder. Seeing Eva’s expression—suddenly blank, palpably shaken—Sissy became nervous, her foot tapping the ground. She scanned the circle and the empty tables. She ran around the house and searched for her mother. Then, breathless and more than a little beside herself, she pulled on Eva’s T-shirt.

“Eva,” she started, her voice quivering.

“Go. Go play” Her tone was like their mother’s was on that day she was in no mood, that day she left them all.

Within minutes the picnic ended, the men and women cleaned up, and a somber air seemed to settle over the once festive activity. The quoit game ceased, the hose was wrapped up. Broken pieces of balloons were collected and thrown into the trash, along with the empty beer cans and paper plates. On the walk home, both her father and Eva were oddly quiet. Eva teetered on the edge of the curb in a fine line, her mind elsewhere, her head down. Inexplicably, she held Sissy’s hand the entire way home, gripping it tightly. Sissy should have felt overwhelmed with newly found happiness when her father announced later that he was taking them to the circus that night, the outing itself that, in light of the picnic, she had all but given up on, and yet the entire arrangement had a conspiratorial air, the longed-for event no longer what it was the day before. It reminded her of the day she was sent to Mrs. Morris— exiled suddenly, cast off—even though she didn’t want to go there, even though she sensed something was very wrong.

Now in the car, her father keeps his eyes on the road, and Eva, her body turned toward the door, watches the shops that go by on the square. Sissy, alone in the backseat, finds the silence unbearable. Her mind unravels possibilities, all of which end up in calamitous ruin. “Eva,” she says again, frowning.

Eva looks back, tilting her head slightly, studying Sissy. “What?”

“She didn’t leave again, did she?”

“Who?” For a moment she pauses, her mouth open, as if she might say more.

“Mom?”

“For Christ’s sake, Sissy, no,” her father snaps, though Sissy doesn’t know what she’s done or said to make him out of sorts. She doesn’t know why he’s been brooding the entire drive, the vein in his neck throbbing. His voice sets her back against the seat again, and she knows enough to be quiet. The passing lights illuminate her arms and legs in strange, eerie ways, making her feel like a ghost. She watches her father, not knowing what he thinks—how his mind at this very moment is going over all the things that might happen to a girl, how violence can
be inflicted on the flesh. She does not know that, thinking about all this, he wants to kill the sonofabitch who would do something like that, whoever would hurt a child in that way. He wants to pummel the sonofabitch with blinding fists. Sissy only senses his fury—palpable, the energy of it shooting in all directions around the car, ricocheting off the windows, piercing into her heart. This, coupled with Eva’s lack of any further response, only confirms for her that she is accurate in her perceptions, that her mother is gone again, that what unfolds now is a lie constructed by everyone and meant only to appease. In the distance, she catches sight of the taunting big top, yellow-white against the darkening sky, a red flag flapping in the evening breeze. The Ferris wheel makes its spiraling descent, mocking her with idiotic motion, each chair outlined in lights and swaying when the ride is started and stopped again. Yesterday such a scene would have filled her with awe and wonder. Whatever oddities she found in the day would have dwindled against the bright musicality of the night. But now, for whatever splendor there is in front of her, the air is also tinged with something else. She will hear only a tenor of sadness against the music, and the contrast will make the world seem strange, inverted, everything hinting of something Sissy can’t quite see or touch. Is it always to be this way? Sadness lurking behind laughter? Something amiss in the appearance of perfection?

Frank scans the parking lot for a pay phone, eager to call Natalia and find out the news. His eyes follow the rows of cars in the parking lot, then move to the booths lined with banners and clicking turnstiles, the crowd of people funneling into the gates, the sudden noise.

“Come on, Sissy,” Eva says. She grabs her hand so that Sissy can feel the pulse in the space between Eva’s thumb and finger.

Their father walks behind them. He tucks his shirt into his shorts. He pays at the turnstiles and ushers in the girls. The smells assault them: buttery popcorn, steaming hot dogs, oil from funnel cakes. Around Sissy there are gleaming faces, bright with perspiration, some of whom she knows. Foreheads shimmer under the strings of light that are thread
unevenly from stand to stand. Children, hoisted on their fathers’ shoulders, peer over the crowd, strings of balloons trailing behind them, bumping against one another gently. In the distance Sissy sees two balloons drift above the faces and heads, above the lights, carried westward by the breezes.

“Stay close,” Eva tells her. “You hear me?”

“Is Mom coming later, then?” Sissy yells this above the din, but Eva says nothing, and it’s impossible to guess whether Eva hears her and chooses to ignore the question or whether Eva hasn’t heard Sissy at all.

Frank watches Sissy, her startling silver suit catching every bright bulb, reflecting them like a prism. Even this angers him tonight and makes him think that this is exactly the type of thing the eye is drawn to—the play of light—this is exactly what makes a girl stand out and makes her suddenly vulnerable. He imagines Vicki that day in the park, how appealing a lonely girl might have seemed to whatever sonofabitch who watched and waited and sensed an opportunity in the quiet, placid day. He looks from side to side, past the faces, past the rides. His face pinches. He already has it in mind that, in this mood, he won’t be able to stand this for long—the blaring noise, the flashing lights, the screams from children, people packed like sardines, the smells of their bodies intermingling: sweat and perfume, grease and dirt. The more he dwells on events of the evening, the more he thinks of the things that could happen. (A man attacking a girl, forcing her down.
My God,
he thinks,
what if she were kept alive? What if her death were slow, spanning across days, or weeks?)
When he first heard the news at the Morrises’, his mind went utterly blank. He felt numb and distanced from everything, pushed back into a void that contained only oceans of dumb silence. But now he is slightly dizzy, hot in the crowd. His body tenses.

“Hold up!” he yells.

To his surprise, Eva obeys. She turns and waits, still gripping Sissy’s hand. Frank pulls out his wallet and gives her the last of his money. Eva releases Sissy. She counts the bills and shoves them into her shorts pocket. Eva and Frank’s eyes meet. And there is something that is shared
between them—doubt, guilt, regret. Something seems to register in her face for a moment—he imagines forgiveness—but then it disappears entirely. “The ticket booth is over there,” he says, pointing. “Take Sissy on what rides she wants; get something to eat, too. I’ll be back; I’ll find you.”

“Where are you going?” Eva says.

“I want to see if your mother is home. I need to find out what happened.”

Sissy takes this in, a panic rising in her again. It is true, she realizes. What is gone and comes back is surely destined to go again. All her thoughts, all her worries. She grabs Eva’s hand and squeezes, but Eva doesn’t look down to reassure her.

“I’ll find you. If an hour passes, meet me right here,” he says, pointing to the ground. “And Eva, you watch Sissy, do you hear me? You keep your eye on your sister.”

With that, Frank leaves the girls to weave through the disorienting crowd. As they walk, they bump elbows and push against people, and the ground changes from a paved surface to dusty grass, worn thin from traffic. The air is tight, stale. Concession stands and game stands lined with red-and-white canopies are to the left of them, the prizes—stuffed animals and plastic blow-up toys and dolls—strung along the tops, hanging precariously by arms and legs. The shooting gallery. The ring-toss. The water guns. The hoops. Lights flash, like a disco, pulsing in time with the loud music. They pass the big top, where a wiry-looking man takes tickets from the line of spectators. The woman on the wire; the wolf boy; the bearded lady; the woman balancing plates—they were all true, Sissy realizes. All of them. Away from this, a carousel turns in circles, like Eva’s dancer in her music box turns—slowly, with a measure of caution. Creamy horses lope up and down on their poles; the pipe organ in the center plays by itself, the keys pressed down by a phantom. A house of glass spins on a metal platform lit with green lights. To the right, a fun house lined with mirrors towers up, a painted figure—a monstrous woman with beer steins in her hands and Heidi braids—
looks curiously though absently down on the crowd. Behind this structure is a petting zoo, metal pens with llamas and horses and goats, and then the field, the parked tractors and RVs, and the stationary train, the boxcars emptied, the flatbeds vacant.

A pulse, a beat. Music. A hum.

All the people. What do they wish for?

Eva pulls Sissy as she might a piece of hesitant thread, walking toward the ticket stand. Sissy glances up and sees a man high above her, as tall as the woman with the Heidi braids, but thinner and in animated movement, a stick man dressed in long blue pants, a white-and-red-striped jacket, a top hat. He looks down at her and waves happily. Sissy squeezes Eva’s hand tighter and looks away. She searches the crowd of Gypsies.

The lines snake from the booths, uneven, noisy. A pale girl about seven or eight passes alone and seems to float along with the crowd. Above her head, she holds a large crimson flower—delicate, airy, made of tissue paper pulled apart from a tight center. As she moves, the flower inches up higher, as if it is bouncing along the faces before being swallowed up entirely.

Not noticing any of this, Eva unclenches Sissy’s sweaty hand and lets it slip away. Her mind is elsewhere entirely. For the first time she allows herself to think that in one regard, her mother was right, that she’s been negligent, that Sissy was left by herself all summer, even on that day when Vicki Anderson disappeared and something terrible happened. Sissy was left to do as she wished while Eva met Peter in his van, while they talked about silly things and fucked on the floor, Peter undressing her slowly, peeling off her clothes, lifting her skirt and rump, putting his mouth to her, his smooth hands running over her thighs, his moist lips on her waiting skin. Sissy was left to everything, and Eva didn’t even think to ask about her day, about what might have happened. The nagging sense of
what if
consumes her now, and her mind mulls out possibilities that leave her feeling sullen and slightly ill. To think she wished it might be Sissy who’d disappeared, Sissy and not the
Anderson girl—that she actually had that thought of coming home to find herself blissfully alone—that she could be so self-centered, so cruel. And how she tried to scare Sissy with tales of death, not caring if they were true, all without really thinking it might have been Sissy who was grabbed, sending a shock wave through the world. She shudders to think of this, yet it hits her forcefully like a fist. Her remorse cuts to the bone.

“I could win you a prize,” Eva says. She tousles Sissy’s hair. “We have some money.”

Sissy follows Eva to a stand where dolls are left hanging, one after the other, blondes and brunettes and redheads all in pretty blue dresses with too much frill. “I don’t want those,” Sissy says, folding her arms. “I thought you didn’t want to come, to the picnic or here.”

“I didn’t,” Eva tells her. “But I wasn’t going to leave you alone.”

“Dad’s mad.”

Eva stands on tiptoes and glances around. “All the more reason,” she says, “to not be alone.”

“Why’s Dad mad?”

Eva says nothing.

“Mom left, didn’t she?”

Eva looks down at her. “No.”

“Are you tricking me? Are you lying?”

Eva bends over and untwists the strap of Sissy’s swimsuit. She straightens Sissy’s shorts, pulling them up to her belly button. “I wouldn’t lie to you,” she says. Her face remains serious and somber.

Sissy registers a doubt. Why else would her father be so angry, why would he suddenly go off and leave the two of them if not to search for their mother, if not to try to bring her home? She gnaws at her cheek, the soft flesh. All the clues make perfect sense. Lost in the haze of the day, the confusion of noise and hoopla, Sissy thinks all this makes sense about the world and more. She remembers that this is the place of Gypsies, that this is the world of a doomed people. And after the Gypsies have taken what they want, they will recede into the woods again and disappear in the darkness. They will vanish into the mists, taking
with them a few unsuspecting children. She sees her mother there, too, with all of them—a woman lost and disenchanted, running wildly in the night, telling stories of how she knows only strangers—and Sissy sees Eva and her alone again, tending to themselves, living off scraps of bread.

“I’ll get you a balloon, then,” Eva says, righting herself

Sissy stares, waiting for something else entirely. Hot tears come too quickly, again.

“What is it?”

Involuntarily, she moves from foot to foot as if she might pee. “You’re lying,” she says in a desperate whisper.

Eva pulls Sissy away from the crowd, to the side of a nearby tent. Inside there are men’s voices, a faint smell of cigars. The air settles. In the distance, traffic whizzes past and lights spot the road.

“Listen,” Eva says, in a way that makes Sissy’s head pop up. “It’s not mom. Mom hasn’t gone anywhere except with Mrs. Anderson to the police station. I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise to be okay, do you understand?” Eva holds Sissy’s waist tightly, in a way that makes her wince. Her bathing suit scratches against her skin, making it raw. Above them another balloon drifts into the air. “Sissy?”