Test Pattern Read online

  WHEN LORENA WAS in her ninth month the circus came to town. The Little Top Traveling Circus wasn’t big, but it was big enough to have two tightrope walkers, a gorilla that rode a bicycle, and a bunch of either midgets or dwarfs, she never could remember which was which.

  And it had a freak show.

  She stood outside the freak-show tent and stared at the poster of the Half Lady and the Penguin Girl and the Alligator Man. “Come on,” Pete said. “Let’s look.”

  “I don’t want to,” Lorena said. She could smell sawdust, candy cotton, and the pork-rind breath of the man behind her who was pushing her in line. She felt her belly stretch and shift until it seemed to inflate and surround her like a life preserver. She felt very far away, as if she were floating above the shoving crowd. No, she didn’t want to look at the freaks.

  “Come on,” Pete insisted, and propelled her inside, flipping a couple of quarters to the sideshow barker, who snapped off two red tickets from the big roll. Inside, the tent was murky and dank. When she became accustomed to the dimness, she realized she was standing right in front of the half lady, whose shiny satin dress ended at the hips and so did she. Even though she was perched on a stool, she came up to Lorena’s chin.

  Lorena planted her feet in the sawdust and gawked. The half lady’s hair was rigid with ringlets, rather stylish for a freak. She lifted her face to Lorena’s, a face that could have been anyone’s face, nothing special, nothing strange. Wide flat cheeks flamed with dots of rouge. Small pointed chin, its dent a shadow in the weak spotlight. Her soft dark eyes focused on Lorena’s belly asshe reached out and touched it with tiny, rosy fingers. Lorena felt the baby move.

  Suddenly the half lady sprang from her perch and landed on her hands on the sawdust-scattered floor. Lorena shrieked, grabbed at Pete, who staggered backward. “Jeezus!” he said. The half lady pranced around on her hands a bit, did a flip, and bounced back up on the stool, where she calmly patted her ringlets back into place.

  “Let’s go,” Lorena said to Pete, yanking on his sleeve.

  He ignored her. “Look! Baby Thelma!” he said. Baby Thelma weighed 655 pounds. “Six HUNNERD and FIF-ty-five POUNDS!” bellowed the barker, his undershirt translucent with sweat. Baby Thelma was piled into a chair that sagged dangerously beneath her. She wore a dainty nightie of a dress sprigged with flowers and lace, and flipped it flirtatiously above pale fleshy thighs. She had a sweet face, small, benign features embedded into a bow-topped global head that tipped and nodded just slightly at Pete’s astonished comment: “Jeezus!”

  “I want to go. Now.” Lorena tugged at Pete as she waddled toward the exit, but he yanked his arm away to stare at the lobster boy’s hands, the monkey woman’s beard, the alligator man’s skin, the porcine features of the pig-faced boy. He steered Lorena to the front of the crowd, where a child with a crusty scalp burrowed between them until he was the only thing between Lorena and Herman the Human Blockhead.

  The Human Blockhead was preparing his instruments on a little table just beyond the rope that separated him from the crowd. Precise as a surgeon, he laid out a screwdriver, a six-inch steel spike, and a silver mallet. As he did this, he told a joke, something about a dog in a bar, then picked up the screwdriver, tipped his head back, stuck the screwdriver all the way up one nostril and plucked it out again in a graceful swoop.

  Lorena felt her knees melt. “Pete,” she whimpered, but the Human Blockhead had more in store. “Just warming up,” he saidwith a grin. He looked like a marine with his close-cropped head, his square-set jaw, his blocky little body. He picked up the spike and stuck it in one nostril. Then with the silver mallet, he banged the spike up his nose.

  BONK. BONK. BONK.

  He drove that steel spike all the way up his nose until it disappeared into his head.

  Afterward, when they laid Lorena flat on a tarp outside the freak tent with a cold towel over her forehead, she said it was more the sound than the sight of that spike disappearing into the Human Blockhead’s nose that made her throw up.

  She went into labor before they got home. She had the baby the next day. The hospital was four blocks from the shipyard. All day long, she could hear its sound, metal on metal, the tattoo rhythm of the shipyard.

  Bonk. Bonk. Bonk.

  THEY NAMED THE baby Cassandra, after Pete’s grandmother, and called her Cassie. Lorena deflated rapidly, lost almost all the weight except for a soft roll just above her waist that never went away. Her belly button went back in, folded into a stretch-mark-scarred pocket, star-shaped. Pete poked it with his finger. “Now stay there,” he said, and it did.

  Cassie grew and life settled into a rhythm. She and Lorena fused into one, each dependent on the other, while Pete seemed to exist in a parallel world that touched theirs only when he needed to eat or sleep. After dinner he would listen to the war news as it spilled from the cathedral-shaped Philco radio, muttering to himself, Boy I’d show those Krauts a thing or two, damn this bum leg, I’d mow those Japs down, too, if it wasn’t for this bum leg. Then he would fall asleep, mouth open, snore rattling deep in his throat, head thrown back against the lace doily that protected the lumpy green chair.

  Lorena had crocheted doilies for each piece of furniture in theliving room, even the ottoman where Pete’s feet, splayed out into a V, rested, one toenail threatening to knife through a threadbare sock. She crocheted doilies for her mother, her aunts, for the neighbor lady who waved to Cassie when she took her for walks in her buggy. Snowflakes that would never melt, the delicate webs of lace spun from beneath her flying fingers as she listened to Helen Trent on the radio. Her days were filled with useful toil. Still, something was missing.

  It started like a hole in her stocking. Tiny, barely there. She didn’t even notice it at first, the void that pervaded each moment. It was there each morning when she opened her eyes to the spiny ridges of Pete’s back. It was there when she spooned back an eruption of oatmeal from Cassie’s toothless mouth. It was there when, sated from lovemaking, she rolled up like an anchovy in her husband’s arms.

  What was it? She had everything she was supposed to have. A husband. A baby. A cozy apartment full of doily-topped furniture. She used to wonder, What more could she possibly want?

  Now, after all these years, she knows the answer. She found it on TV, right in her own living room. She’s no longer alone with her dreams, for television is her mentor. It beckons, it teases, it tempts her with her future. Look, it says as she stares at the screen, see who you can be: You can be a dancer. You can be famous.

  You can be … a star.

  TAPPETY TAPPETY TAP TAP TAP. Lorena is testing tap shoes. The rejects are piled like shiny black beetles on the floor of the dance studio shop, this pair too tight, this too loose, this too clunky, this too flat. “Jeez Louise,” says Delia. “Make up your mind.”

  Lorena does an energetic shuffle-ball change in a gleaming patent pair tied with big black grosgrain bows. “What d’ya think? Would Ann Miller wear these?” she asks, twirling in the mirror to catch a rear view. Her sinewy legs look like Pinocchio’s, ascending pale and wooden-looking from the tops of the shiny licorice shoes to the hem of the red satin tap pants she’s also trying on.

  “She’d wear ‘em to bed, she’d love ‘em so much,” Delia answers irritably.

  “Hey, come on. You’re the one said, ‘Stop talking all the time about what you want to do, and just do it.’ So here I am. Doing it.”

  “I meant pursue your career, not shop for shoes.”

  “Well, this is the first step. Putting together my costume.” She poses in front of the mirror, one arm stretched over her head, the other reaching down past her cocked hip. “I need a top hat.”

  “I need a drink.” Delia slumps back on the folding chair and is enveloped in tulle and gauze from costumes jammed together on a rack above her. “I’m getting claustrophobia in here.”

  Tappety tappety tap tap tap. “I’ll take ‘em,” Lorena decides as she performs a final test run. “These, too,”
she adds, wiggling her red satin-clad hips and shimmying her faux-tuxedo-shirted breasts.

  A sudden WooWoo wail startles Della. Arms and legs flailing in near unison, Lorena has broken into a frenzied tap dance to the chugga-chugga rhythm of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” that she’s singing to her image in the mirror.

  The ancient saleswoman napping behind the register wakes up with a start. “Busby?” she asks.

  “She wants it all, shoes and costume,” Delia announces. “Pay,” she orders Lorena, and, fighting her way through tulle, stalks outside to wait.

  “C’mon. I’ll buy you a drink,” Lorena says, happily clutching her new purchases as they walk down the street. “Let’s be ladies and drink martinis.” She steers Delia into the dim and dusty lobby of the Warwick, right into the mahogany-paneled bar, empty now in mid-afternoon. “My treat,” she says as they wriggle into seats around a toy-sized table.

  Delia’s lips curl around the rim of the cone-shaped glass as she sips daintily between grimaces, explaining, “I hate the taste of gin.”

  “Me, too,” says Lorena with a wince, “but I like the olives.” They order another round. Lorena props her chin on the heel of her hand, leans conspiratorially across the tipsy table. “Y’know, if it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have the guts to do this.”

  “Hey,” Delia says with a salute of her refilled glass, “you’re the one with the talent.”

  “Sure,” Lorena agrees, “but talent just takes you so far. You need inspiration, someone who believes in you. You’re the very very best friend anybody ever ever had.” She dabs at her brimming eyes with a crumpled cocktail napkin.

  “Here’s to best friends,” Delia says, and downs the rest of her martini.

  “Yup.” Lorena fishes out her olive, pops it into her mouth. “By the way,” she asks, “what do you think of my routine?”

  “What routine?”

  “My ‘Chattanooga Choo Choo’ routine.”

  “That’s your routine?”

  “Well,” Lorena huffs, “I have to perfect it.”

  Delia examines the toothpick-impaled olive she’s been nibbling. “Well… I think, maybe it needs a little … work.”

  Lorena’s eyebrows clash momentarily above her long green eyes, then spring up in revelation. “Tellya what,” she says, tottering to her feet as Delia rescues the glasses that wobble dangerously on the tippy table, “you tell me where it needs improvement. Now be honest,” she adds. “Best friends can always be honest.”

  And she’s off, woo woo. Arms swinging in great circles, feet tapping, in a sharp staccato that echoes from the terrazzo floor of the cocktail lounge, she accompanies herself, gasping the words to the timeless tap-dance song as she accelerates to warp speed. The bartender gazes in mild distraction as he wipes glasses, then politely patters applause at her finale.

  Delia is weeping, pounding on the table, her eyes streaming tears of laughter. “Oh, Lorena,” she moans, “you just tickle me so.”

  “What’s so funny?” Lorena asks, panting as she catches her breath.

  “Uh,” says Delia. She wipes her eyes, puts on a serious expression. “Nothing.”

  “You were laughing at me.”

  Delia looks bewildered. “Wasn’t I supposed to?”

  Lorena slumps down in her chair. “It needs a lot of work, doesn’t it?”

  Delia reaches over and pats her arm. “Just practice, sugar pie. Just practice.”

  “Honest?”

  “Honest.”

  5

  CASSIE

  MOLLY’S FATHER HAS a beard. He must have the only beard in Newport News. He talks what Mom calls New York Loud out of lips so red it looks like he’s wearing lipstick. He’s big. His shirt spreads a little bit around the buttons, and curly chest hairs peek out. He’s jolly and nice, and when he smiles his eyes smile, too, soft mushy eyes, brown like Molly’s, with black eyelashes all around.

  Over the couch in Molly’s house is a huge painting of her mother naked. Molly doesn’t seem to care that it’s there, that it covers the whole wall. I try not to look at it when I go over there but I can’t help it. I stare at it when Molly’s not looking. I don’t know anybody else whose father painted their mother with no clothes on.

  Mr. Finkelstein is an artist. They used to live in New York, but they moved here when he got a job with the shipyard drawing plans. I guess it must be boring for them after living in glamorous

  New York, but this is where they live and where he paints, at a crooked wooden easel in their dining room. There are lots of his paintings all over the house, crowded together, signed in big loopy letters “Max Finkelstein.”

  Molly pulls me over to one painting he finished last month and she tells me not to touch it, it’s still wet. He didn’t even use a brush on this one, she says. It’s his new style, all the colors squished right on the canvas out of the tube. I can’t tell what it is, it’s just big blobs of juicy colors, red and blue and orange sitting there like toothpaste. Molly says nobody else paints like this, squishing blobs right on the canvas. She says that someday her father will be famous for it.

  When Molly isn’t looking I stick my finger in the paint to see if it really is wet. It is. I wipe my finger on my dungarees and hope she doesn’t notice the red smear. I think it’s pretty neat that he paints blobs, but what I really want to look at is the naked painting of her mother.

  When we go into her living room again to play Sorry on her coffee table, I sit on the chair across from the couch so I can look at the painting. While Molly is setting up all the pointy-headed pieces on the Sorry board, I pretend to care about whether she is yellow or I am blue. What I’m really doing is looking over her bent head to stare at her naked mother on the wall behind her.

  She looks a lot like Molly. She is small and round and freckled, with curly reddish hair. She is lying on her side, leaning her head on one hand, looking at me like she’s sleepy. She is smiling. Her lips make a crooked V shape like they do when she’s asking me if I want some cookies, and I look toward the door that goes to the kitchen like she’s going to pop out any minute.

  I’m embarrassed to look at the rest of her, but Molly is still deciding what color Sorry piece she wants, so I do. Her mother’s titties are round and white, and the nipples are big and pink. Down There, there’s hair. It’s reddish, like the hair on her head. I can’t stop looking now, it’s like somebody took my eyes andwired them to the painting, and I can’t even look at Molly when she says “Come on. It’s your turn.”

  Finally I force myself to look down and make my move, but my eyes keep jumping to the painting. It’s not like I’ve never seen a naked lady before, because I’ve seen Mom when she’s taking a bath or when she’s wiggling into her bathing suit at the beach. She covers herself up quick, though, so I never get to study all the parts. I can’t think of a time when I’ve ever been able to take a really good look.

  Because of naked Mrs. Finkelstein up there on the wall, I start thinking about what I saw yesterday on test-pattern TV and wondering about men and women and the things they do together. “You know,” I say, sliding my yellow man down the board and bumping Molly’s, “I saw on my show—”

  “Oh, no, not your show again.” Molly rolls her eyes.

  “There’s a show on where people sit up on a stage and yell at each other about sex. Then people in the audience get up and yell at the people on stage about sex.”

  “Made it up.”

  “Did not.”

  “Made it up. Nobody talks about stuff like that. Especially on television.”

  “Cross my heart, there are shows where people yell about sex. Sex with each other. Sex with their daughter’s boyfriend or their husband’s mother or their neighbor’s kid. Sex sex sex. I’ve seen lots of shows like that. They all have leaders who run around in the audience with a microphone so people can yell at the people on the stage.”

  “No such thing.”

  “Yeah there is. And there’s another kind of show where people just t
alk and nobody yells, but a colored lady is the leader.”

  “Now I know you made it up. There’s no colored ladies on TV except for on Amos ’n Andy.”

  “Well, there are,” I say because there are, “but what I want toknow is, do people really do those things? You know, have sex with people they’re not married to? Is that allowed?”

  Molly scowls at the Sorry board, then moves her man and bumps mine. “Ha!” she says.

  “Well?” I need to know.

  “I guess,” she says. “Why not?”

  I don’t understand any of this.

  MR. FINKELSTEIN COMES home while we’re playing Sorry, clunks through the door with a big roll of canvas and a bag from the art supply store. He dumps the bag onto the dining-room table and tubes of paint spill out. “Hello, ladies,” he says in his voice that sounds a little like Groucho, a little like the Great Gildersleeve. “Why are you inside on this gawdjus sunny day?”

  “I’m winning,” says Molly.

  “Well, that’s a reason,” he says. He starts picking through his artist’s case, throwing rolled-up, squished-out tubes into the empty bag and filling the case up with the fat new tubes he just bought. “They must think I eat paint at Allen’s Art Supply,” he says. “I keep that place in business.”

  “Cassie says she sees TV shows that talk about sex,” says Molly. She shakes the dice. It comes up double sixes. I want to disappear without a trace.

  Mr. Finkelstein looks at me and his beard seems to bristle. I’m afraid to look at him, but when I do, he’s laughing. “So what channel is this sex show on?” he says.

  I don’t say a word.

  “She watches shows on the test pattern,” Molly answers for me. “The other day they said ‘penis.’”