“It’s okay,” Mauro whispered, but he could not help me. I tried to stop my hands from shaking. A grief welled up in me, so strong I thought I might be dying. My loss overpowered me; the ache came from my blood and my bones.
It was the boy from Mary’s story. It had to be.
I looked at his face, and everything Mary had said came rushing back to me. It was crazy, how it could all return in an instant, no matter how much time had gone by, no matter how far away I was from all of it. Within one moment everything that had happened between then and now had been stripped away, and I was still that girl lying on the floor of Mercy Library, dreaming of a boy with eyes like kiwis, hidden away from the beauty of the world the way I had been.
“Forgive me,” he said. “I understand that you knew Marionetta. She was my mother’s sister, my aunt. I am on my way to Rain Village.”
I stared at him. It was as if Mary had stepped straight out of the past and found me in front of the courthouse once more. Even as we stood there I could see Costas walking with his father in the sun, see the flicker of fish out of the corner of my eye. I could hear Mary’s voice in my ear, talking about her sisters, their stone house, and the forest surrounding it. I could see her behind her desk in Mercy Library, weaving a tale about a boy who grew up in the middle of nowhere.
I felt Lollie’s hand clasp mine as she moved beside me. “Mary spoke of you,” I said then, trying to keep my voice from trembling. “She told me a story about you, about a boy whose father raised him without love, but I never imagined you were someone real, someone I would meet one day.”
“Who are you?” he breathed, looking into me. A strange, delighted smile spread slowly across his face then, and his eyes lit with recognition. “You are the girl from the library,” he said, “aren’t you?”
“Yes,” I said.
Everyone was quiet, watching us. More and more people filled the tent. Once the news began spreading that a stranger had shown up with the name Marionetta on his lips, not one soul stayed out on the lot.
He stepped forward. The camera dangled from his neck. “I had hoped to find my mother’s family,” he said. “She was dead, and I started searching for her sisters. I have traveled so long, searching for my family. For any link. I traced Mary to Oakley, and I went there to find her. I heard she had died some years ago, and then I heard about you and how you’d joined the circus.”
As he spoke, I thought he was the most beautiful person I’d ever seen, and then I realized: he looked just like Mary. I thought of him in Oakley, speaking Mary’s name and then mine. Walking through the town square, under the oak tree, past the post office and stationer’s. A longing moved through me, but I wasn’t sure what it was he was stirring.
“I am searching, too,” I said, and it was only in that moment that I realized it was true. “Everywhere.”
“Yes,” he said, looking at me. “Have you been to Rain Village?”
Silence drifted over the tent like a billowing sheet. I could hear Mauro breathing behind me then. Not one of us hadn’t dreamt of the rain and the river, heard the slap of fish on boat decks or the rapping sounds of rain pounding into mud.
“No,” I said, my heart pounding. “Do you know where it is?”
Even Lollie had admitted that she did not know whether Rain Village really existed, despite all she had heard of it from Mary and all she’d seen in visions, years before.
“Yes,” he said—just like that, as if it were the easiest thing in the world. “My mother wrote of it before she died.”
“We never knew where it was,” Carlos said, stepping forward. “In all our travels, we’ve only heard rumors about it.”
“Come,” Mauro said then, an edge in his voice that only I recognized, “let’s eat. Our guest here must be starving.” I looked back at him in surprise, but he didn’t meet my eye.
Costas looked at Mauro gratefully, and it was then that I noticed how dirty he was, how his hair was matted against his head and the skin on his hands dark with grime. Lollie stepped up to him. “Come with us,” she said, smiling.
Costas turned to Lollie and took her arm, bowing graciously. I stood there barely able to move as I watched them walk away.
“What are you doing, Tessa?” Mauro asked sharply, turning to me. I looked up and saw the hurt on his face. He could see right through me, the way he always had. “Aren’t you hungry? Let’s go.”
Mauro’s steps were heavy and quick as we walked. I could feel the words bursting at his lips.
“This gitano, I don’t trust him,” he said, finally, in a low voice.
I didn’t speak. My world collapsed and broke open at the same time. The life I had built—with Mauro, with the circus—seemed unreal suddenly, less real than the memory of the riverboat moving up and down the pink-fished river, the rain that never stopped falling over it. I stared at Costas’s body ahead, watched the fluid way he moved, the way he stepped back and guided Lollie into the cookhouse.
When we walked inside, Costas looked up at me and smiled. His eyes were beautiful. Casually, as if it were part of his body, he lifted the camera, adjusted the lens, and snapped a picture of us walking in. Mauro didn’t even notice. We sat across from Costas, and Carlos and Lollie brought back heaping plates of roasted pork and rice for all of us. I couldn’t even look at my food.
“You’re a photographer?” I asked, shyly. I could feel Mauro tense beside me.
“Yes,” he said. “Back in Athens, I worked for a newspaper. But I take many kinds of pictures. People, landscapes.”
“Do you have any here with you?”
He looked around self-consciously.
“Yes,” said Carlos, setting down his fork. “Please show us.”
Costas looked back at me, then lifted his bag to the bench beside him. He reached in and felt around, and brought out a small, thick folder.
“Here are some,” he said. “I just carry small prints with me. I have rolls of film in my bag to develop when I get the chance.” He smiled. My heart was pounding as he handed the packet to me. I opened it excitedly, pulled out a stack of photos.
I spread them out like a deck of cards on the table. The images were vibrant, bright: a beautiful Turkish woman with a starry scarf wrapped around her head, a lime-green parrot sitting on her shoulder; two young men smoking at a café, a sign behind them like a prophecy, written in thickly slanted letters; an old Hispanic man standing next to an elaborate wrought-iron cage filled with doves, his smile crinkling across his face; waters so blue and perfect the photos themselves seemed to be wet.
“These are wonderful,” I breathed. But piercingly sad, too. I thought of the poems Mary had read to me, the thick novels that had left me gasping and in tears.
It seemed like everyone started talking at once. Costas was quiet, eating his pork and watching us.
After a few minutes he reached into his bag and set another packet in front of me. These were black-and-white, swirling photos filled with light and dark. I saw sun-bronzed fishermen hauling up nets filled with salmon, women and men dressed in flared skirts and pants whirling across an outdoor plaza, a group of dirty children standing in front of a squat building, men pushing carts of vegetables through crowded streets.
“All different places I’ve been to,” he said, “in my travels. I haven’t been home for three years.”
Lollie leaned over me, picking up a photo of a man surrounded by hanging sausages. I studied the photos, enthralled. What kind of vision would you have to have, I thought, to see these things? I flipped one photo over and almost gasped.
“Oakley,” I said, looking up at him. I turned to Mauro next to me, glanced back to find Lollie. “Oakley,” I repeated. “The town square.” In the photo I could see the hanging trees, the tavern in the background. The park benches.
Mauro picked up the photo and looked from me to Costas. “This is where you grew up?” he asked.
“I went there,” Costas said. “Trying to find Mary.”
“Yes,” I
said to Mauro, and then looked to Costas. I felt unmasked suddenly, after so many years, as if they could look into the photograph and hear the kids calling me freak, see my father hunkered over me. “I used to eat lunches with Mary in that park, every once in a while. I passed through it every day. I practiced hanging from the branches of that tree, the one on the right.”
Mauro laughed, but as he studied the photo and Lollie leaned in to look over his shoulder, part of me wanted to yank it from his hands and rip it to pieces. Mauro was so separate from all of that, I thought; everything in the circus was. My head spun. Before I could really process what was happening, Costas sifted through the photos and pulled out a second one, pushed it toward me. “This is what used to be the library,” he said.
I looked down, and the words “Grady’s Grocery” stared out at me, printed on that same creaking sign out front that used to say “Mercy Library.” The front door, the steps—all of it was the same as I remembered, except for the men and women walking out with brown paper bags full of food. I wondered what had happened to the thousands of books and papers Mary had kept track of so carefully. I thought of her room and her boxes downstairs, the leotards and the trapeze, all the trinkets scattered over her front desk, and I felt such a tremendous sense of loss that I almost couldn’t stand it. She had deserved better, I thought.
“Yes,” I said weakly. “The sign is changed, but other than that it’s the same.”
“How long did you work there?” he asked, as Mauro leaned down and picked up the photo. I looked away. I didn’t want to study the photo. I could imagine my mother, maybe at that exact moment, walking out of the store with a bag full of beef for a stew or roast. I could see Mary returning to the library with her basket filled with papers and herbs, asking what had happened to her books, her overflowing file cabinets. My head was pounding. I felt as if my heart had just been ripped open. It all still matters, I thought. Underneath everything, there was always this.
“Four years,” I said.
“I missed you both by a while.” Costas smiled.
“Yes,” I said, sitting back, letting my breath go from ragged to almost normal. “You did.” Mauro handed the photos back to him, and Costas slid them into their packets and back into his bag. I watched, helplessly. He looked straight at me and I could feel Mauro’s hand grip my knee, but I could not look away. His face so like Mary’s but his own, too. The set of the jaw. The determined air underneath the gypsy clothes.
It was Lollie who broke the tension. “Where do you come from, Costas?”
Everyone waited expectantly for Costas to tell us about Rain Village and Mary and the rest of his life before, the way most travelers sat back and found relief in the telling of their tales.
“I come from Turkey,” he said. “I’m going to Rain Village to find my family’s past, my mother’s past.”
“Your own,” I said.
He looked at me in a way that made me blush, and I looked away quickly, flustered.
“But please,” he said, turning to Lollie, “tell me about Mary, when she was here. I want to hear everything about the circus,” he said, glancing over at me, “and Oakley.”
I looked down at my plate, determined to stop blushing. Lollie didn’t seem to notice. Speaking in her animated way, she told the story of Mary coming to the circus, back when she had followed Juan Galindo like a dog after he’d come upon her in the barn, covered in ice. She moved her arms through the air and slapped her thigh for emphasis. It was a story we’d all heard a thousand times and could listen to one thousand times more.
“I wish I could have known her,” Costas said afterward. “I wish I could have seen her perform.”
I could almost feel the longings in the air: for Mary and for all the people and places that had dropped away. I held tightly to Mauro’s hand.
Suddenly I was dying to speak. I had really only spoken of Mary to Lollie and Mauro, in private, but a new feeling passed through me that night. For the first time I wanted to announce my story, fill the air with the sound of my voice speaking Mary’s name, and so I did: I told of the day in front of the courthouse and my first visit to Mercy Library. I told him how we had brewed tea and shelved books, and practiced the trapeze in the quiet afternoons. I spoke of the last day I saw her, how her body had floated in the river like a child’s.
“Did she drown herself?” Costas asked then.
“Yes,” I said. It was the first time I’d said it out loud.
At that point Mr. Velasquez entered the tent, looking wan and tired. He too had succumbed to the illness that had afflicted us, following us in on the breeze. We sat at attention as he surveyed the cookhouse.
“I hope you’re all planning on performing tonight,” he said abruptly. “Because we need the goddamn dinero.” With that, he turned on his heel and left.
We had been so swept up in stories that we hadn’t seen how dark it was or heard the sounds of the Ferris wheel and the crowds that now filled the air.
“Let’s go,” Mauro said. He stood, dumped his half-eaten food into a trash can, and stalked off. I followed.
Outside, the midway was alive and bustling with movement and laughter. We could see it past the big top. I was surprised that any time had passed since I’d emerged from the train, my sickness. Other performers and concession workers and roustabouts raced around us, muttering about sinuses clearing and fevers suddenly breaking.
Mauro and I raced back to get ready, I at my vanity and he by the bed. He was quiet, angry, and I knew better than to say anything in the mood I was in. But as I slipped off my clothes and pulled on my new sequined leotard, I could think only of getting back out there to Costas, as if he were a mirage that could disappear at any moment.
That night I performed on the silks, wrapping and unwrapping my body in sheets while the band played wistful violins. I moved more beautifully that night than I ever had before. The air seemed to reach out and embrace me, pulling me through itself and sliding down my skin. When it came time for my swing-over routine, I went and went and reached two hundred and fifty, the audience still chanting out each turn.
I was too obvious, trying to impress him. Look what I can do, I might as well have shouted. Look how beautiful I am, in the air.
When I dropped to earth and bowed, my white-slippered feet digging into the sawdust, I looked straight into the front row and at his face. I reveled in the power my body gave me, in its effect on him. I smiled and bowed, then left the ring.
Later, when we all gathered in front of the fire, Costas strode right up to me and put out his hand. His face was shining with excitement, and he was looking at me with something like awe. “That was amazing,” he said, taking my hand and shaking it, then bringing it up to his mouth for a kiss. “You were brilliant up there. So powerful.”
I blushed and smiled, and a moment later Mauro was there beside me.
“My wife is the best in the world,” he said, gripping my hand in his. I was annoyed, and then guilt washed over me. I loved Mauro; he was my husband. I tried to convince myself that it was the lure of Rain Village, of Mary and her secrets, that stirred me so strongly. Nothing else.
“Thank you,” I said, to both of them.
Mauro didn’t leave my side for the rest of the night.
Everyone crowded around Costas. The fire flickered on our skin. Mauro kept his palm pressed into the small of my back as we talked and laughed with the others. I tried not to look over at Costas; whenever I glanced up at him, it seemed our eyes met within seconds and I had to look away. Even if I wasn’t looking at him, even if I was deep in conversation with Ana or someone else, I was aware of exactly where his body was, its relation to the fire, and to me.
But more than that, I had the strange feeling that Costas knew me. Knew the dark places that lay burrowed inside me, the absence and loss that were always there. I wanted so badly to ask him about Rain Village—how much he knew, where it was, how long it would take him to get there.
Later, when everyone
began drifting off to bed, I heard Lollie offer Costas her empty compartment or Geraldo’s car, which he almost never slept in.
“No, thank you,” Costas said. “I prefer to set up my own tent. I’ve been sleeping in it for weeks now.” I heard him laughing and thanking her, thanking everyone. I heard Lollie direct him to the sideshow camp where most of the other tents were set up.
“Let’s go,” Mauro whispered, and pressed my skin with his hand.
“Okay,” I nodded. I looked up again at Costas. “See you tomorrow,” I said. “I would like to hear more of your stories.”
“Yes,” he said, and smiled.
“Good night,” Mauro said curtly, and we turned back to the train. I resented him so much at that moment it was like a tangible thing burning inside me. Stop it, I thought. I threw my arms around him and kissed him before we went to bed, trying to reassure him, trying to block Costas out of my mind.
“I love you,” I whispered.
That night I could not sleep. Mauro pulled me into him and I lay with my head against his smooth chest, watching the moonlight that streamed in through the slats of the window shade, illuminating the room. His skin was warm under my cheek. I could hear him breathing, knew he was still awake, lying there watching the light like I was. Keeping my eyes closed and pretending to sleep, I rolled over onto my side and hunched up with my knees to my chest and my back to him. The minutes and hours passed.
Finally, late into the night, when I was sure Mauro was asleep and when I couldn’t bear the silent car any longer, I slipped out of bed as quietly as possible, inching my way off the mattress and to the floor. I leaned over the bed and put my face close to Mauro’s to make sure he wasn’t awake. I pulled on a shirt and skirt, then ran out of the car and into the empty moonlit lot.
I was just taking a walk, I told myself. I stepped lightly over the candy wrappers, cups, and programs that littered the ground. The Ferris wheel loomed over the lot like a monster from the sea. I had forgotten how eerie the circus could be, how quiet and shimmering.