The Final Confession of Mabel Stark: A Novel (An Evergreen book) (45 page)

"All right, mister," I said, "that is it."

I stood up and got his leash and snapped it on his collar and barked,
"Let's go!" He must've known what I had in mind, for he whimpered and
cocked his face to one side and made his eyes go round and blinky.

I started to pull on Rajah, something that didn't work fir he centred himself on his haunches and dug his forepaw claws into the floor
beams and refused to budge. The collar dug into his jawbone.

"Goddantmit Rajah!" I said, and to show him I meant business I
let the leash go slack and socked him hard on the nose. I yanked again
and this time got somewhere, Rajah taking little tiny steps toward the
stateroom door. Once he got outside he blinked into the sun and
became more agreeable, letting me gilly him down to the lot, though he
whimpered and arfed mightily throughout the ride. When I dragged
him into the menage he really started complaining and spinning his
paws against the tanbark and generally pleading with me to reconsider.
The fact I was starting to weaken made me even madder, so I closed my
eyes and got the job done, heaving Rajah into the empty cage next to
the twolings Boston and Beauty.

I slammed the cage door shut and suddenly felt guilty as hell.

"Come here," I said, and when Rajah did I cradled his gorgeous
face through the bars and said, "Now this isn't permanent, sweetheart.
Soon as you figure no man is ever gonna replace you, well, you can
leave the menage and live in the stateroom again. So I recommend you
spend this next little while doing yourself some thinking. Maybe I'll do
the same."

Rajah burped and I walked away, feeling those green, green eyes
on me.

That afternoon, between the matinee and evening shows, I
caught up to Art Rooney. He was sitting beside Rajah's cage, turned
sideways, reading a newspaper, while Rajah lay panting and eyeing Art
venomously. I asked him what lie was doing.

"There's no reason this can't be worked through, Mabel. Rajah
and I, we got off on the wrong foot, that's true, but I've always found
some of the best friendships can start with some pretty serious
dust-ups. Sometimes a good locking of horns will actually lay a foundation of respect and mutual admiration, and I figure once old Rajah gets used to the idea of me that's what'll happen. We're going to be the
best of friends, just you wait and see."

I looked at Art. With him it was always the same: you didn't
know whether to laugh or shake some sense into him or say, Gee, now
that I think of it, you may be right.

Instead, something else blurted out of me: "Have dinner with me
tonight, Mr. Rooney."

The evening show went a little over that night, so when I rushed back
to the train I found him having a smoke by my stateroom door. Inside,
I made him a vegetable fry on my gas cooker. I even served supper with
lacquered chopsticks bought in San Francisco, it not surprising me in
the least that Art knew how to use them and use them well. (He said
they were better for the health, as they slowed eating and promoted
digestion.) We ate by candlelight and drank red wine that Art had
brought, though I noticed he had no more than a few sips himself.
Afterwards, he had himself a smoke, and when he offered me one I
helped myself. I suppose you could say everything was right out of a
romance novel, what with flowers on the table and violin music playing
on my cylinder, the only difference being Art wore lavender fingernail
polish and rouge highlighting his cheekbones.

But the best thing about having a private meal with Art Rooney
was I knew he wasn't going to be much in the way of manly desire
afterwards, meaning I didn't have to worry so much about what was
going to happen next. I relaxed totally, and the next thing I knew I was
starting to feel desirous, something I never expected and surprised me
so much that for the first minute or two I thought maybe my tingling
was the result of something yeast related. But there was no denying
what was happening. My cheeks flushed till they were as rosy as Art's,
and my pulse quickened and I could feel my groin complain, much in
the way a stomach does when empty.

So instead of getting dessert, I stood and said, "Well, Mr. Rooney, you might as well understand the situation. I'm keen on you
and that's something I've never felt for a man before, which maybe
explains why I've been to the altar so many times. Now I can't have
babies, you might as well know that, seems my womb isn't quite where
it oughtta be, though at your age I'm hoping your impulses toward
fatherhood might be dulled somewhat. So there you have it. Cards on
the table. I'm a direct person and getting directer every day. How's
about giving us a kiss?"

He nodded, so I went over and sat on his lap, wrapping my arms
around his head and clutching him to my heart and feeling his warmth
and damn it if a safe, happy feeling didn't set in. We kissed softly, and
it wasn't at all bad, so after a bit more smooching I took his hand and
led him to the bed. He was trembling and his skin was clammy, so I sat
him on the edge and asked him if he was sure he wanted to have a go at
this. He said he did, badly, so I said, well fine then, and after necking
like teenagers we got to seeing what was what.

It took about ten minutes before I realized no amount of touching or tugging or caressing or stroking was going to get us past half
mast. So I said to myself, Well, if that's going to be it, there's no point in
complaining, so I sort of climbed on top and stuffed him in like sausage
into a casing. Art was looking pleased with himself, and to make what
we were doing feel more authentic he reached up and caressed me and
said something loving.

Was when I started to move I realized we had ourselves a problem. With any decent-sized buck or canter Art tumbled out, and I'd
have to stop and stuff him back in again, something that began to lose
its novelty after the third or fourth time. Plus Art was getting flustered,
I could tell as he was wincing and the ends of his moustache were
quivering and the rest of his face had gone the colour of his cheekbones. So I reverted to plan B, which was to slide myself back and
forth rather than ride up and down. After a while this presented its own
problem, namely that it felt like a pale imitation of the real thing and therefore silly. It didn't take long before Art was as soft as an oyster.
So we stopped. I lay down beside him and told him I didn't care, that
I'd never been much for fornication, that what I really needed was a
closeness and just laying side by side with the feeling I had at that
moment was fine enough for me. After Art mulled this over for a few
seconds, I added that I could easily do without the sex, especially since
I knew a baby wasn't going to come from it.

Art smiled, looked over and held up the arm that wasn't in a
bandage. For a second, I thought he was picking that moment to show
me his anchor-with-rope tattoo.

"You know," he said, "there is more than one way to skin a cat."

Well.

I've heard it said that necessity is the mother of invention. I'd say
it's more the mother of improvisation, and believe me we had ourselves
some improvising that night. The things that man could do with a
stretch of arm-was as though the ropes popped out of his tattoo and
lassooed themselves around my interior, refusing to let go until there
was a whole symphony of sounds undignified. Suffice to say I straddled that arm until late and the train was running. We both lay back and
listened to the clacking of the wheels. For the longest time we didn't
talk, the sounds of lovemaking conveying information far more important than is generally handed over with words.

Nevertheless, the train had been moving for about forty minutes
when Art blurted out something confessional.

"You know, I shot a man once."

I turned and looked to see if he was serious. "You telling the
truth?"

"Always do."

"Well, why then?"

"Jealousy."

"I see. I think."

"It happened in Laramie, Wyoming, which is about as stupid a place as you can find to draw on someone. I was still drinking in
those days."

"And you shot him because you were jealous?"

"Yep. That's right."

"Interesting reason."

"Only good reason, far as I can tell."

"He live?"

"Sure did. I'm a terrible shot."

"You sorry you did it?"

"Yep. Son of a bitch shot back. That's why I walk with a lurch. I
went to jail, too."

"How long?"

"Long. And it would've been a whole lot longer except I was
injured worse than my victim. Still, I guess I can't complain for I got
myself straightened away in jail, which I can tell you doesn't happen
often. When I got out I took the only job I could get."

"You were a workingman?"

"With Hagenbeck. For almost four years. Finally they made me
a groomer, and then when they saw my way with animals they made me
a cage boy."

I digested this information, thinking it was sort of funny, the way
even the gentlest of men can turn out to have been wildcats when
young. In fact I practically giggled, thinking about the silliness of men,
when information of my own came bubbling out of nowhere. At first I
fought it, thinking, Don't say it whatever you do when it just sort of
popped up all on its own: how I should've stopped my mother from
tracing up that crazy old mountain horse, Tom. How her absences and
loony behaviour had been annoying me so much I was half hoping
something would go wrong when she headed out the door. How when
she left that day I was wishing her ill and nothing but. By the time I was
finished unburdening myself, I was feeling misty and weak.

"Mabel," he said, "listen to me. That wasn't your fault. It just wasn't. If it was anyone's it was your mother's for it sounds to me like
maybe she didn't mind the idea of having a bad accident, which was
nothing but irresponsible given she had a girl to take care of. Trust me.
If you told that story to a hundred people, a hundred people would tell
you the same thing. You were wronged. Not her."

I lay there enjoying the rare sort of weakness that feels good
all over.

"You think so?"

"I know so."

I looked at him like he was crazy. What he'd said was like telling
me up was down and down was up. Art looked over, so we were staring eye to eye. Then he gave me one of those sly little grins that in Arttalk meant, just you wait.

Just you wait and see.

That winter we rented the same house I'd had the year before. Art sewed
curtains and crocheted sofa-arm protectors and painted the kitchen a
shade of yellow veering closely toward peach. With no High School act
to perform or cats to train, I now had plenty of time to spend with
Rajah, taking him on walks and wrestling with him and just letting him
know he hadn't been thrown over. This helped; by March his surliness
and his gum problems eased, though he still couldn't be let anywhere
near Art, his aversion to the man smell-based and difficult to overcome.

In April, the circus opened its week-long stint at Madison Square
Garden. This meant I had to watch Clyde Beatty spend a full eight
minutes getting a single cowed lion to do a sloppy sit-up (and then
almost get himself killed before emerging sweaty and shaky and bathed
in applause that rightly should've been mine.) The only thing that
made it bearable was having Art beside me, tut-tutting and shaking his
head in disgust. Afterwards he brought me flowers and massaged my
feet and cooked me omelettes.

"Don't worry," he told me more than once. "History has a way of figuring out what's crap and what isn't, and I got a feeling one day
history's going to be mighty accurate when it comes to the subject of
Mabel Stark, tiger trainer."

"The only problem," I'd respond, "is there's nothing history can
do for me now."

That year the circus took its normal route, skirting the lower half
of the U.S. during the spring and then wending its way north for the
hotter part of the year. Business was good, it being 1926 and people
having money to spend, though it would've been better were it not for
all the circuses owned by the Ringlings' main rival, Jerry Mugivan, by
which I mean Hagenbeck and Cole Brothers and John Robinson and a
handful of others. That year John Ringling decided he'd buy an albino
elephant some trapper had taken in Siam. It was the only known albino
bull in existence, so the cost was high: $100,000 American. Ringling put
him in the spec and the menage, where for a while he earned his keep.
Shortly thereafter, Mugivan began displaying albino elephants as well,
though his were regular elephants covered with whitewash. This
worked until one day a rainstorm hit. While it embarrassed Jerry
Mugivan, what it did to Ringling was worse: every Tom, Dick and
Harry now believed his white elephant was fake as well, a $100,000 bull
suddenly worth no more than a circus lot mongrel.

When what was happening sank in, it's said John Ringling flew
into a rage, tossing furniture and throwing lamps and smashing sculptures worth almost as much as his white elephant. Meanwhile, his
solemn and brooding brother, Charles, looked on. Around this time
rumours started that the Ringlings were trying to buy the Mugivan
shows. This sounded too extraordinary to be true, for it'd mean the
Ringlings would own every decent-sized circus in America, and it was
impossible to imagine any two men having that much power. Mostly
the rumours were dismissed. I know I didn't pay them much attention,
mainly because I was busy with my own concerns, such as was I or was
I not going to get my damn cat act back.

About two months into the season, the circus was someplace
south, Mississipi or Alabama I believe. Hot, I do remember that. I was
in the menage, filling water pans toward the end of the day, feeling
depressed my tigers were starting to look like run-of-the-mill menage
creatures, by which I mean flabby and lacking in gumption. I heard
whistling, and when I turned I saw a trail of smoke rising above the
cages one aisle over. Art turned the corner and gimped up quickly.
When he spoke he was practically squealing.