The Circus in Winter (25 page)

After a while, Ollie heard a metal clank; the mail dropped through the slot into the hall closet. He retrieved the mail and stood there, looking at his father's bullhook standing crookedly in the corner next to one of Mildred's coats. Reaching down, Ollie took the bullhook in his hands—it sent an icy shock through his arm. He put his coat back on. The next thing he knew, he was in his car, driving out to the winter quarters.

He pulled off the road and crunched through knee-deep drifts down to the bank of the Winnesaw. The frozen river was topped with a layer of sugar-soft snow, and the skeleton trees swayed in the icy wind. He knew that in a few months the water would turn muddy with spring melt, and in the summer, the branches would form a green canopy over this spot. A good place to fish, to make love on a blanket, to sit alone and think. Ollie shivered, wishing he'd been born in June or July.

He walked onto the ice, bullhook in hand, then lay down. For old time's sake, Ollie made a snow angel, his laugh breaking the still of the afternoon. He looked up at the sky, a cloudless, robin's-egg blue. He waited for the bullhook to send him another message, to quiver like a divining rod, leading him to the place where his questions might be answered:
What was the last thing his father saw? The last thing he thought? What secret picture had he seen behind his eyes?

But the bullhook was just cold metal in his hand.

As he lay inside his snow angel, Ollie realized:
Someday I'm going to die.
He put his hand over his heart and wondered how many beats he had coming. Maybe, like his father, he'd die young in some unfortunate accident. A car wreck or lightning strike or druggist's mistake—anything was possible, really. Who would have thought that Hans Hofstadter would die in an Indiana river, drowned in the now-frozen water beneath Ollie? Or perhaps what had passed from father to son wasn't bad luck, but something else entirely. Maybe, like the bullhook and photographs and ivory, Ollie had inherited his father's unused heartbeats.

Ollie heard a car pass on the road above, and he stood quickly, embarrassed someone might see him. Near the bank, his shoes broke through the ice, and his wet feet ached with cold all the way home. Straightaway, he took a hot bath so he wouldn't catch pneumonia. Mildred walked into the steamy bathroom just as he stood up in the tub. "Oh. I'm sorry," she said, stepping back behind the half-opened door.

Her modesty annoyed, and then saddened him. Ollie sighed. "It's fine, Mildred."

"What are you doing?"

"What's it look like I'm doing?" he said, reaching for his towel.

"In the middle of the day?"

"I was cold." He wrapped the towel around his waist and opened the door, startling her again.

Mildred looked at his navel, down the towel, then flitted over to the stove. "What's that old elephant stick doing out?" she asked, pointing to the kitchen table.

"Nothing." Ollie padded into the living room and put the bullhook back in the hall closet. When he returned to the kitchen, Mildred stood with her hands behind her back.

"Happy birthday, Ollie." She handed him his gift, ten white handkerchiefs with the initials
OH
embroidered in gold. "I did that myself." Ollie kissed her cool cheek. "Why don't you go get dressed. You'll catch your death," Mildred said.

OLLIE KEPT TWO
employees: a colored woman named Verna, and a succession of white women. He tended to hire divorcees with children or women whose husbands had run off, leaving them desperate for work. Mildred said he was a good man to hire such hard-luck women, and each week, she sent him to work with casseroles for "his girls." He kept Clown Alley Cleaners open late on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. When he made up the schedule, he made sure Verna worked Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The other nights, after closing, he sometimes took his girls into his office where he kept his bottle of whiskey and a box of rubbers. Lois and Polly and Constance and Jane and Myrtle and Georgia. Ollie paid them more than he paid Verna.

If instead he'd hired young ones, high school girls, they might have thought it was a love affair, but Lois and Polly and Constance and Jane and Myrtle and Georgia were old enough, smart enough, to know better. "You and me, we're just lonely people with needs." That's what Ollie said, handing over a tuna-noodle casserole. After a polite peck good-night, Ollie went home where he knew Mildred would already be asleep.

OLLIE TRIED
"Stars Fell" again, hoping to awaken the other Mildred. She did not emerge, but the old Mildred obliged him without much of a fuss. Nine months later, their daughter, Laura, was born.

IN HER JOB
interview, Constance told Ollie that her estranged husband was in the army, fighting Japs in the South Pacific. He'd left without a good-bye. "I hope he gets shot," Constance said. A year later, he did—lost a foot and wrote her a long letter from the hospital, begging her to come to California. Ollie spent five months looking for a suitable replacement. "Women willing to work in a hot laundry aren't so easy to come by anymore," Ollie told his wife, "what with the war and all." Mildred offered to help out, but Ollie wouldn't hear of it.

During the prolonged job search, Ollie got desperate. He tried "Stars Fell," and again, Mildred obliged. Confusing her easy acquiescence for ardor, he approached Mildred from the rear. As they rocked together, he thought he heard her saying"
oooohh.
"Finally, he'd found the other Mildred. Afterward, she stayed quiet for a long time, then rose from the bed on shaky legs. "The baby," she said more to herself than to him. Ollie fell into a happy sleep.

Two months later, Mildred miscarried in the bathtub. The doctor said, "Give her time, Ollie. Let her be." So he took Laura with him to Clown Alley, kept her in a laundry basket on the counter while he worked. He told his customers that his wife was ill, "so I'm helping out until she gets on her feet again." Jane, his newest employee, wouldn't join him in the office, not as long as the baby was there. Going to Mildred for release was out of the question—she spent all her time in bed, carrying her baby's ghost to term. At first, Ollie resorted to long bathroom breaks, but eventually during his seven months of full-time fathering and laundering, his well of desire went dry.
Maybe this is what Mildred feels all the time,
he thought,
this nothing.
Ollie had to admit, however, that he appreciated the efficiency, the focus of that nothing.

On the day that her baby would have been born, Mildred rose, went to church, and resumed her life as if nothing had happened. She never spoke of those months.

With time and rain, Ollie's well filled again, and he tried "Stars Fell." Mildred said, "You can go to hell, Ollie Hofstadter."

He never bothered touching her that way again.

IN OLLIE AND
Mildred's living room, there was a set of shelves filled with Reader's Digest Condensed Books, the complete works of Louis L'Amour, dime-store paperbacks, and subscriptions to popular magazines. Pressed within the pages of these books and magazines were seventy years' worth of letters Mildred and Ollie wrote to each other. They left each other notes stuck in something they thought the other was reading or might read soon. They guessed wrong sometimes, and on more than one occasion, ten years passed between delivery and receipt.

On
[>]
of
Riders of the Purple Sage:
"Ollie, you have made my life a misery. If it wasn't for the fact that I believe God punishes those who divorce, I would leave you and take our daughter with me."

On
[>]
of
Gone with the Wind:
Advertisement for Dr. Drago's Female Passion Potion. "Guaranteed to increase a woman's libido or your money back!"

On
[>]
of
National Geographic:
"You are a perverted man, looking at these pictures of jungle women. Your seed is animal tainted. Our baby was conceived in sin, in the posture of dogs, and that's why we lost the child."

On
[>]
of
Good Housekeeping:
"Dear Abby, I love my wife, but I believe she is frigid. We no longer even sleep in the same bed. What can I do to save my marriage? Signed, Frustrated in Fresno."

On
[>]
of
The Hound of the Baskervilles:
"Dear Ann Landers, I think my husband is having an affair with his secretary. I don't want to follow him around because it's so unseemly, and I'm not even sure if I want to know. I'm so degraded. What do I do? Signed, A Devoted Wife."

On
[>]
of
Love's Wicked Ways:
"Dear Mildred, if I have made your life a misery, you have done the same to mine. You are a cold, cold fish."

WHEN THEIR DAUGHTER
, Laura, announced she was going to marry Ethan Perdido, heir to the Perdido Funeral Home, Mildred rejoiced. The Perdidos lived in one of the nicest houses in town. Ollie, on the other hand, wasn't too sure about the match. Laura seemed more bored than in love, as if she were marrying to have something to do. The boy loved her to death—that was clear. When Ethan came to dinner, he followed Laura with his eyes wherever she went, but Laura was aloof and distant, like her mother.

One night in bed, Ollie heard Laura creaking up the steps. He checked the clock—it was after two. Since the engagement, they'd moved her curfew from eleven to midnight, but she broke it regularly. That night, she'd gone to one of Ethan's baseball games, but that was hours ago. Mildred stirred next to him. "Was that Laura?"

"It was nothing," he lied. "She's already in bed."

"She'd better not have been at the Perdido's house on Yellow Lake." Mildred yawned. "Her hair smelled like fish the other morning."

"Well, I hope they
are
going up there. To see if they're suited for each other. Good for them."

"Oh, you would say that." Mildred rolled over. "Well, I'm sure she's a good girl. We raised her right."

Ollie wasn't sure if he'd raised his daughter right or not. He couldn't remember anything specific he'd ever taught her. Truly, Laura mystified him. He looked at her one morning standing at the sink and thought,
Who is this?
He wondered what a father was supposed to do, to feel, but he had no idea. For a while, he made a conscious effort to touch her once a day—her shoulder, her hand—but she always flinched. Ollie stopped that the day she called him a creep and Mildred gave him one of her withering looks.

Now, Laura was grown-up and getting married, and he'd never gotten to know her at all. For this, Ollie was ashamed, so he spent too much on her wedding.

Six months later, Laura gave birth to his grandchild, Jennifer. Mildred tried telling folks the baby was premature, but the
Lima Journal
published birth announcements complete with all the details, including the fact that Jennifer Perdido, daughter of Ethan and Laura Perdido, granddaughter of Ollie and Mildred Hofstadter, weighed in at almost eight pounds. Mildred was mortified—everyone in town would know!—but it amused the hell out of Ollie.

FOR A WHILE
, every birthday after Ollie's thirty-fifth had felt like a gift, but now he was tired of presents he hadn't asked for, didn't deserve, and couldn't return. Already, his friends were dying—at least once a month, he recognized someone on the obituary page of the
Lima Journal.
Ollie figured he'd live to see seventy, exactly twice as long as his father had lived, and that would be that. Surely, he'd almost used up his father's unspent heartbeats. Against Mildred's wishes ("You're in perfectly good health," she said), he sold Clown Alley and retired. He would spend his remaining time in peace.

On his birthday, Ollie celebrated by visiting Mount Pleasant Cemetery. He bought a plot and had his headstone engraved, including a quote he remembered from when he trouped with the circus, the last thing the ringmaster said at the end of the show.

OLLIE F. HOFSTADTER
1900–
MAY ALL YOUR DAYS BE CIRCUS DAYS

Then he went home and rummaged around the hall closet for a while until he found it. Despite Mildred's objections, the bullhook stood sentry beside his easy chair while he waited for death to walk in the door to claim him.

HE ROSE AT FIVE
or six and drank coffee alone in the dim kitchen, waiting for the sun to rise. As soon as he heard Mildred stirring upstairs, he left the house; in the winter, he went to the garage to smoke a pipe, and in the summer, he walked. By the time he returned, Mildred would be gone. She'd told him she couldn't stand to share the house with him all day long, so she volunteered down at the Lima County Historical Museum four days a week, collecting admission fees and giving tours. "Why don't you donate that old stick to the museum?" she asked, pointing behind his chair. "Round out the collection. We've got a nice display set up with that old elephant's head." Ollie thought that was just about the meanest thing she'd ever said to him, and that was saying a lot.

In the afternoons, he watched soap operas while Mildred went to her meetings: Flower Club and Women's Circle and Circle K and Book Circle and the Ladies' Prayer Auxiliary. At four, Ollie napped and Mildred came home and started dinner. At five, she woke him by letting the oven door slam shut or rattling the pots on the stove. They ate in silence on TV trays in the living room, watching whatever was on.

At nine, Mildred would yawn, run her bath, and go to bed. Ollie would stay up another hour or so, smoking his pipe in the dark room, listening to his house. Finally, he'd slide into bed beside Mildred. Long ago, Mildred had insisted they
not
get separate beds because she didn't want her friends to come over, see the brother-and-sisterish twin set, and start talking about her.

There's not much else to tell, really. Whole days went by just like this. Days. Weeks. Years.