Lives of the Circus Animals: A Novel by Christopher Bram

Author:Christopher Bram [Bram, Christopher]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: # Paperback: 352 pages
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

into a dingy electric brightness. People quietly gathered their things.

The train ground to a stop.

Molly slipped the strap of her purse snugly over her shoulder. She

followed everyone out of the car and up the ramp.

And she entered the city of her childhood. Back in the days when

everyone wore a hat, Grand Central was its gateway. The ceiling was

still painted with an aquamarine sky full of constellations. Molly

marched through the enormous room, feeling more confident, like she

L I V E S O F T H E C I R C U S A N I M A L S | 2 5 7

was young again and her whole life was ahead of her. Then she noticed

the people talking to themselves.

They weren’t the crazy black men of twenty years ago. They were

white people, corporate men and women talking on those tiny new

phones. The things looked like transistor radios or sometimes just a

wire. And people talked at them. They talked, talked, talked, talked,

talked. What could they possibly be talking about? Did they really have

so much to say to each other?

Molly snorted at their foolery. And before she knew what she was

doing, she stuck a finger in her own ear and said out loud: “Hello? I just

got off the train. I’m in Grand Central Station. You wouldn’t believe

how crowded it is here. Why, it’s a regular Grand Central Station.”

Nobody noticed the crazy lady talking to her hand.

“What the heck were you afraid of?” she told her palm. “This city

is a riot. This city is a hoot. And you, Molly Doyle, are a nut.”

She dropped her hand and laughed. She stepped more briskly. She

couldn’t wait to see the faces of her smart-aleck son and daughter

when their scaredy-cat mother showed up at their big-deal party.

56

I

You love your wife and daughter, don’t you?” said Dr. Chin.

Kenneth hesitated. “Well, yes.”

“I didn’t mean to suggest you don’t,” Chin gently added. “I’m just

trying to establish what are the things you truly care about.”

It was five o’clock on a Friday and Kenneth was back at West Tenth

Street, sitting on the sofa, a pair of cold hands in his lap.

“I do love my family,” he said. “I’m not always the best husband or

father. But I try.”

“You do things for them? You do things with them?”

“Absolutely. Yes, well, I’m not the chief breadwinner anymore.

Gretchen’s law work brings in a bit more than I make. And Rosalind

is at an age where she no longer wants to do half the things we used

to do together: go to movies or shoot hoops at the gym or even play

chess. Her friends told her girls don’t play chess.” Yet he was never as

good a father as he wanted to be. “But I’m hardly one of those art or

theater types who has no other life. How does the Yeats poem go?

‘Players and painted stage took all my love / And not those things

that they were emblems of’? That’s not me. No. I love the real

things.”

“William Butler Yeats?” said Chin. As if there might be another.

“Yes. From ‘The Circus Animals’ Desertion.

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