The Family Fortuna by Lindsay Eagar

Author:Lindsay Eagar [Eagar, Lindsay]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781536231816
Publisher: Candlewick Press
Published: 2023-01-04T00:00:00+00:00

DID I REQUEST THEE, MAKER, FROM MY CLAY to —

“Keep up, hop-along, or you’ll be left here for the seagulls!”

Across the boardwalk, my father, oiled and beet-faced, peered at me with such impatience, you’d think me an untrained beagle, not his only son.

At fourteen years old, I was plenty used to Arturo’s inflamed manner of communicating with me, and truthfully it would likely startle me at this point to receive anything but contempt from him. My existence was a bur in his heel, and therefore my purpose was to make the raising of me as painless as possible.

I fumbled with my book, trying to wedge my mark in place before closing it, but I lost the whole thing to the reality of gravity, the hardcover tumbling upside down, crunching onto the salt-rotted slats of the boardwalk. A few passersby chortled at the scene. By the time I’d smoothed the bent pages and pressed my Milton against my chest, Arturo had sounded a gruff, annoyed gurgle and stalked on without me.

We were on the rare holiday. The Family Fortuna didn’t have an off-season; my father simply drove our caravan wherever there was sunshine. The sun came out, and wallets followed — and that’s where Arturo wanted to be, always, ready to give people a reason to let their coins roll. He’d have opened the gates and worked our crowds every day that ended in y if Mama hadn’t insisted on taking Sundays off.

And this year, she’d convinced him to take a proper rest, a week away at the beach. My father hated rest, and he was notoriously suspicious of the ocean and all people who delighted in gulping lungfuls of that fresh sea air. But Santa Cruz was cheap, the kind of place where a single dollar could be stretched to cover accommodations at an inn on the pier, hearty crab platters, and all the lemon ices your kids could gobble.

A real family holiday, all five of the Fortunas together in respite, yet splintered across the boardwalk, left to our own devices.

Mama stood in line to chase down vittles — boiled mutton with oyster sauce, baked trout, cups of clam chowder and stewed prunes — for when Papa got peckish, he became even more like a child.

Luna headed for the beach to watch the cloister of seabirds in the tide pools. Avita, bundled up in hat and veil like a mourning widow, followed Luna.

And Arturo, unable to abandon his inner ham for even a day of restoration, headed into Santa Cruz’s most lurid of offerings: Big Burp’s Waxworks and Mystifying Exhibition.

A dime museum.

A sideshow.

I was expected to nip at his heels, to jot down his ramblings as they spurted from his mouth, to translate them into something logical on the page. He loved to visit other exhibits, not as a fellow showmaker seeking inspiration to enhance our own acts, but as a god, coming down from the clouds to snicker at the mundane mortals attempting to display a pathetic fraction of his own prowess.

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