Lives of the Circus Animals
LIVES OF THE CIRCUS ANIMALS
A Novel
CHRISTOPHER BRAM
FOR ALL MY FRIENDS WHO HAVE WORKED
IN AND AROUND THE THEATER
The important point is not to feel a lot, but to feel accurately.
—BEING AN ACTOR
Contents
EPIGRAPH
FRIDAY
1
You want strangers to love you?”
2
He stepped outside to West Tenth Street, happy to return…
3
Backstage in the wings, Frank Earp was all eyes and…
4
The kids snapped out of their trances and hurried offstage,…
5
Jessie sat in the fluorescent gloom of a rocking subway…
6
Jessie came out on Forty-fifth Street and turned right. Shows…
7
Tsk, tsk, tsk went the machine as it counted out…
8
Sorry,” said Rufus. “I didn’t know you had company.”
9
He sat in the dark, an imperfect dark with a…
SATURDAY
10
A gang of birds whistled and shrieked in the maple…
11
Hello, Jessica? Sorry to disturb you on your day off,…
SUNDAY
12
The Hudson River raced outside their window, a soft mirror…
13
The jazzy rhythm of wheels quickened, grew louder, then died…
14
Mom cleared the table, then brought out the cake, a…
15
Passive-aggressive be thy middle name,” said Jessie. “What’s she fighting…
16
Thinking white thoughts, blank thoughts, null thoughts, Henry stared at…
17
I am not nothing. I am not nothing. I am…
18
Toby angrily stuffed his uniform into his locker and pulled…
19
Henry led his pretty American down the stairs to the…
MONDAY
20
And how did that make you feel?”
21
Look at these figures, Frank. Oo-hooo! A Monday-morning sell-off. These…
22
Oh, Frank, thought Jessie as she hung up. She’d said…
23
Sunlight, brightness, day. Henry had forgotten how bright daylight could…
24
Once upon a time, Monday nights were dark nights. Every…
25
You: Hello.
TUESDAY
26
The buzzer loudly buzzed. “It’s me, doll,” Irene sang over…
27
Hi. Uh. Sorry. A lady was going out as I…
28
I luf you like a pig lufs mud.”
29
I am too talented for my own good. What would…
30
Jessie rode the subway downtown from Columbus Circle. The train…
31
He climbed deep into her kiss. He pressed her pillows…
32
Henry Lewse stood on the bright stage of the Booth…
33
Peach skin. Blond haze. Freckles. The body stretched out before…
34
Me: Who do you see there?
WEDNESDAY
35
The rain fell all night. There was rain in her…
36
Henry flung the door into its frame. The wood and…
37
You: Let’s talk about success.
38
Downstairs in the foyer of One Sheridan Square, standing by…
39
Hello, Henry? Jessie? Somebody? Please! Dolly Hayes again. I’ve been…
40
Like their namesakes, Leopold and Loeb, the musical couple of…
41
Hello.”
THURSDAY
42
The sun was up, the sky was blue—the powder blue…
43
The Vandam Diner was on the ground floor of an…
44
The city was still dark and glossy with rain as…
45
Henry had never guessed his assistant was so wiry and…
46
The bed was piled with naked parts: bottoms, breasts, a…
47
You: You must know everything.
48
The audience for Tom and Gerry was in a peculiar…
49
They were all on television: Allegra, Dwight, Henry Lewse, and…
FRIDAY
50
An alarm began to beep and Jessie woke up.
51
Kenneth hung up the phone feeling confused. A secretary gave…
52
Piece of cake,” Henry cheerfully reported in the elevator. “Easy…
53
What a vile, stupid, shitty day.
54
Henry Lewse. Wow. I can’t believe I have you on…
55
He smiled. He twinkled. He scratched his ear. He was…
56
You love your wife and daughter, don’t you?” said Dr.…
57
The sun burned low in the hazy sky over the…
58
Despite the canvas shades, the apartment was not entirely dark…
59
Applause erupted out front, solid and loud. Backstage in the…
60
A posterboard sign was taped to the plate glass of…
61
It’s working, thought Frank. It’s finally working. Or more accurately,…
62
Irene was right. Most people never arrive at a New…
63
The elevator arrived and Jessie lead her posse up the…
64
Caleb stared at the three faces. Or no, four faces,…
65
So that’s Caleb Doyle, thought Henry as he followed Toby…
66
When Jessie came out to the terrace, she found Frank…
67
Kenneth stayed in the bathroom longer than he intended, sitting…
68
Molly was at the zoo. The animals were having cocktails:…
69
When the playwright’s mother pulled a gun from her purse,…
70
Nobody fled the party, but people knew to get out…
SATURDAY
71
Three-thirteen. The clock on the precinct station wall was like…
72
It’s nothing like the movies, thought Henry. After the big…
73
The police station remained quiet. It somehow felt both eerie…
74
The sun rose and the birds sang louder. There was…
SUNDAY
75
Toby woke up in his room on West 104th Street.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRAISE
OTHER BOOKS BY CHRISTOPHER BRAM
COPYRIGHT
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
FRIDAY
1
You want strangers to love you?”
There was another long pause. “No,” he said. “I just don’t want them to hate me.”
“And who do you think hates you, Kenneth?”
“Oh, everyone.”
She laughed, much to his surprise. Her laughter was thin and professional, but not unfriendly.
“I’m joking, of course. Most people don’t know me from the man in the moon. And it’s not real hate. Not really
. Even from people who do know me. It’s fun hate. Faux hate. I’m the man-they-love-to-hate.” He sighed. “Oh, all right. Yes. It does get to me. Sometimes.”
“Of course,” said Dr. Chin. “We’d all rather be loved.”
She sat in an armchair, a mild, round-faced woman in a ruffled blouse, under a Georgia O’Keeffe painting of a skull in a desert.
Kenneth Prager sat on the sofa—the far end of the sofa—tall and lean in a charcoal gray suit. This was his first time in therapy, his second session. Forty-four years old, he had managed to avoid this rite of passage until now. He was not enjoying it. Not only did Chin expect him to do most of the talking, but she also refused to let him have the last word. His livelihood was built on having the last word.
He took a deep breath, smiled, and said, “They call me the Buzzard of Off-Broadway.”
This time she didn’t laugh but looked concerned, even hurt, for his sake. “And how does that make you feel?”
“Oh, I was flattered. At first. All right, somewhat miffed. A predecessor was called the Butcher of Broadway, so it’s old material. When you get mocked, you want the jokes to be more original.”
She wrote something on her notepad. He feared his flippancy revealed more than he knew.
“But that’s not the cause of my depression,” he said. “If it is depression. I don’t feel guilty about my work. My caring what people think is just a symptom, not a cause.”
Therapy was his wife’s idea. Gretchen had grown tired of his glum spirits, his sour sorrow. He couldn’t understand his unhappiness either. His life could not be better. He had a loving wife, a pretty daughter, a good job, even a dash of fame. He was only second critic at the Times, but strangers recognized his name if not his face. He should be happy. But he wasn’t. This failure of happiness worried him. If the achievement of so much in life could not make one happy, then why bother living?
“I love my work,” he insisted. “I’ve always loved theater. The immediacy of it. Real human presences. I enjoyed reviewing movies well enough, which I did for three years. But I was only third-stringer there and saw too much trash: horror-slasher-teen pics and such. So I was overjoyed when they moved me to drama. Where I’d always wanted to be. The unease didn’t set in until after New Year’s. I thought it’d pass, or I’d get used to the strangeness, but the strangeness only got stranger. Back in March, Bickle, the first reviewer, went into the hospital for heart surgery. So a few plums fell into my lap, including the big new Disney bomb, Pollyanna. Everyone panned it, not just me. We were all surprised when Disney pulled the plug. Nevertheless, I was the one who got congratulated for killing the beast. Which felt odd. Then there was a new play by the author of Venus in Furs. Everyone wanted it to be good. I know I did. But it wasn’t. It was called Chaos Theory and was about madness and mathematics. I think it was really about AIDS—the author is gay—which I said in my review. But it was just so self-indulgent and preachy. It closed too. This time I got hate mail. Floods of it. From people calling me callous and homophobic. And I’m not homophobic. I’m in theater, for pete’s sake. Well, not in it, but of it.”
Chin was looking down at her notepad, without writing. Her pencil quivered. Had she read his review? Did she adore the play? She thought he was homophobic?
“So—” He hurried back to the real subject. “I was relieved when Bick returned and I was number two again. It took the pressure off. But nothing’s felt the same since. The strangeness returned. It felt worse than ever. Nothing has any savor anymore. Everything feels gray. I’m not sure what I want anymore.”
She flipped through her notes, as if she’d lost her place. “You want to be number one again,” she said idly, as if it were too obvious to mention.
He shifted uncomfortably on the sofa. “Yes, no, yes,” he replied. “I should want Bick’s job, shouldn’t I?”
“You don’t?”
“There’s talk of retiring him. They need a replacement, which is why they moved me over to drama. As a test. And I wanted the job. Once. But I don’t anymore. Only—I don’t not want it either. I’m not sure what I want anymore.”
She studied him with her round, smooth, full face. Kenneth couldn’t tell if her stillness masked sympathy or disapproval. She seemed so cheerfully impersonal. In a less politically aware age, he could’ve thought of her as an inscrutable motherly Buddha.
“Like I said,” she offered. “You want people to love you.”
“Isn’t that a silly thing for grown-ups to want? Especially someone in my line of work.”
She shrugged—“silly” was irrelevant here. “Maybe if you praised more and criticized less?” she proposed. “Would you feel better about yourself then?”
He stared at her. “But I’m a critic. I’m paid to criticize.”
“Aren’t you also paid to praise?”
“Yes, but—” He shook his head. “I always feel what I say. And I say what I feel. I have nothing but my opinions to go on. If I’m untrue to those, I’m lost.”
“So you let pride stand in the way of happiness?”
She was faintly smiling. Was she pulling his leg?
“Only pride in a job well done,” he declared. “Otherwise I’m a hack. And I’m just as anxious praising as when I criticize. Because I can make success as well as failure. Because of where I work.”
“The Times,” she said.
“Yes. The Times.” Had she forgotten? “That’s what this love and hate are really about. People think I have all this power. But I don’t feel powerful. I feel powerless. I mean, I’m just another journalist on deadline. I know, I know. It’s not me that people hate. It’s the Times. The Times has all the power. But people mistake me for the Times.”
She gazed into him, calm and deep, as if hearing the running water of thought in his brain.
He followed his thoughts backward, upstream a few yards. “Are you saying that people do hate me, Dr. Chin?”
“Such a strong word, hate. I wonder why you keep using it. Do you hate them?”
“No. I don’t hate anyone.”
“There seemed to be an enormous amount of—not hate, but dislike in your remarks this morning about that Neil Simon play.”
Kenneth froze.
“A harmless comedy,” Chin continued in her gentlest tone. “People want to laugh. You seemed angry at them for enjoying a joke that you didn’t get. I sensed a lot of rage in your word choices.”
There was no safe haven in this city of newspaper readers, no refuge from his own prose. “That wasn’t rage,” he said. “That was wit. I was being funny. I want people to laugh. I just want them to laugh at fresh jokes, not stale TV one-liners. Do we really need to discuss a smart-ass review of an unnecessary revival of Star-Spangled Girl?”
“You call it smart-ass. Another interesting word choice. I’m no crude Freudian, Kenneth, but what does a child do with his ass?” Chin laughed, disowning the idea even as she delivered it. “You expressed your rage by shitting”—she laughed harder to get the word out—“on an audience who enjoyed a joke you didn’t get. And maybe on a playwright who is more famous than you—or I—will ever be.”
“Can’t we talk about my dreams?” he said. “I’ve had some very interesting dreams this week.”
“These questions disturb you? The critic hates to be criticized?” She laughed again, more amiably this time. “I’m just tossing out ideas, seeing what works as we get to know each other. But your reviews can be as revealing as dreams, Kenneth. They are dreams you dream with words. There was one phrase in particular I found revealing…”
Kenneth had trusted Chin when she was silent. As she talked more about his review, he lost all faith in her. He felt no rage toward Neil Simon or Simon’s audience. Maybe he wanted to be loved, sure, but only by people who loved what he loved, which was good theater. Her suggestion that he be nicer in print proved that she didn’t have a clue. Chin had been recommended as a therapist experienced in handling artists, which should have warned him. Any artist who’d
spill his unhappiness to a shrink instead of pouring it back into his work was not someone to win Kenneth’s respect.
He patiently heard her out. Finally, he took a deep breath and said, “I never took you for a Neil Simon fan, Dr. Chin.”
“Oh I’m not. I don’t know his work, only his reputation. I rarely get to the theater. In fact, I try to avoid it.”
“You don’t like theater?”
“My own little quirk,” Chin admitted with a chuckle. “I feel embarrassed watching actors. All standing up there pretending to be people they aren’t. Actors in movies or TV don’t bother me. But seeing them live onstage makes me very anxious.”
Kenneth couldn’t believe his ears. She treated it as a comic tic, a matter of no importance. Physician, heal thyself, he thought. She’s crazier than I am.
“But that’s neither here nor there,” she said and began to discuss the uses of self-forgiveness.
Good-bye, Dr. Chin, thought Kenneth. He needed to find another shrink. Her theater phobia was the last straw. Besides, she had no coherent program, no unified theory of psychology. She said so herself: she just tossed out ideas, seeing which ones stuck. And she laughed too much. It was impossible to take her seriously.