Every night for the next four weeks, I made a similar prayer.
But then on the first Friday in April, my father didn’t come home at seven in time for supper. He didn’t come home while I was cleaning up the kitchen or climbing into bed. It was nearly midnight when I heard him pull into the drive. Parting the curtains, I saw his truck parked at a forty-five-degree angle with the headlights still on as he weaved his way to the door. I heard him walk past the supper I’d left out for him and stumble up the stairs.
They say the Lord answers all prayers, it’s just that sometimes he answers no. And I guess he answered no to mine. Because the following morning, when I took his shirt from the hamper, what it smelled of was whiskey instead of perfume.
* * *
Finally, at quarter till two my father found the bottom of his coffee cup and pushed back his chair.
—Well, I guess I’d best get going, he said, and I didn’t argue.
Once he’d climbed in his truck and pulled out of the drive, I looked at the clock and saw that I had just over forty-five minutes to spare. So I did the dishes, straightened up the kitchen, and set the table. By then it was two twenty. Taking off my apron, I mopped my brow and sat on the bottom step of the stairs, where there was always a nice little breeze in the afternoon, and from where I’d have no trouble hearing the phone when it rang in my father’s office.
And that’s where I sat for the next half an hour.
Standing up, I straightened out my skirt and returned to the kitchen. With my hands on my hips, I looked it over. It was neat as a pin: the chairs tucked in; the counter wiped; the dishes neatly stacked in their cabinets. So I set about making a chicken pot pie. When that was done, I cleaned the kitchen again. Then, even though it wasn’t Saturday, I took the vacuum from the closet and vacuumed the rugs in the living room and den. I was about to carry the vacuum upstairs to see to the bedrooms when it occurred to me that with all the racket a vacuum makes, I might not be able to hear the phone from upstairs. So I put the vacuum back in the closet.
For a moment I stood there just staring at it, all curled up on the closet floor, wondering to myself which of the two of us was designed to serve the other. Then slamming the door shut, I went in my father’s office, sat in his chair, took out his phone book, and looked up the number for Father Colmore.
Emmett
When they emerged from the station at Carroll Street, Emmett knew he had made a mistake in bringing his brother.
His instincts had told him that he shouldn’t do it. Townhouse hadn’t been able to remember the exact address of the circus, so it was probably going to take some legwork to find it. Once Emmett was inside, he was going to have to find Duchess in the crowd. And once he found Duchess, there was the possibility, however remote, that Duchess wouldn’t hand over the envelope without raising some sort of nonsense. All in all, it would have been smarter to leave Billy in the care of Ulysses, where he’d be safe. But how do you tell an eight-year-old boy who has wanted to go to the circus all his life that you intend to go to one without him? So at five o’clock, they descended the steel staircase from the tracks and headed for the subway together.
Initially, Emmett took some comfort from the fact that he knew the right station to go to, knew the right platform, knew the right train, having already made the journey to Brooklyn once, albeit in error. But the day before, when he had switched from the Brooklyn-bound train to the Manhattan-bound train, he had never left the station. So it was only when they came out of the Carroll Street stop that Emmett got a sense of how rough this part of Brooklyn was. And as they worked their way through Gowanus into Red Hook, it only seemed to get worse. The landscape soon became dominated by long, windowless warehouses abutted by the occasional flophouse or bar. It hardly seemed the neighborhood for a circus, unless they had raised a tent on the wharf. But as the river came into view, there was no sign of a tent, no flags, no marquees.
Emmett was about to turn back when Billy pointed across the street to a nondescript building with a small, brightly lit window.
It turned out to be a ticket booth occupied by a man in his seventies.
—Is this the circus? Emmett asked.
—The early show’s started, the old man said, but it’s two bucks a head just the same.
When Emmett paid, the old man slid the tickets across the counter with the indifference of one who’s been sliding tickets across a counter all his life.
Emmett was relieved to find the lobby more in keeping with his expectations. The floor was covered in a dark, red carpet and the walls painted with figures of acrobats and elephants and an open-jawed lion. There was also a concession stand selling popcorn and beer, and a large easel advertising the main event: The Astounding Sutter Sisters of San Antonio, Texxxas!