The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [20]
After dinner Phoebe would pace nervously up and down the silent hallway past her brother’s door, which was always shut. One night, in desperation, she knocked. Barry opened the door an inch or two and peeped out. “Heya, Pheeb,” he said through the crack.
He turned and went back in his room, leaving the door ajar. Phoebe hesitated, then decided this must be an invitation to enter. Barry’s room looked unfamiliar, its red rug and bubbling fishtank. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen it.
Barry sat at his desk. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
Though she and Barry were only seven and twelve, there was a wariness between them that seemed always to have been there. “What’re you doing?” Phoebe said. “Homework?”
“Nah, I finished.” He was scrutinizing something on his desk. When Phoebe approached, Barry hunched protectively over whatever it was, so she went instead to the fishtank. There were eight or nine fish, two frilly black with ugly bulbous eyes, her favorite. “Can I feed them?” Phoebe asked.
“I already did.”
“Okay.” Phoebe watched the fish in silence, overcome with despair. Plants fluttered in one corner of the tank, jostled by silvery bubbles that rose to the water’s surface and vanished.
“Actually, Pheeb?” Barry said. “You can if you want. Feed those guys.”
With a tiny key he unlocked a drawer beneath the tank, where, to Phoebe’s surprise, his fish food was kept. She sprinkled a few flakes on the clean water, anxious not to abuse her privilege. Only when the fish had gulped these down did she dare add more. “See, Bear?” she said. “They’re hungry.”
Mysteriously, the tension between them eased. Phoebe began exploring her brother’s room, which, despite Barry’s savagely guarded privacy, was arranged as if for an audience. An ant farm, a Southern plantation house with a field of miniature corn, some creature’s brain inside a jar, plastic dinosaurs romping among miniature trees and cottonball clouds—shelf after shelf of displays.
Phoebe sensed her brother’s dark eyes following her, his pleasure at having captured her attention. She grew bolder, moving close to the shelves, even touching things, filled with a desperate wish to please him. She inquired about the cargo planes and battleships he’d built, animating her voice as she remembered their mother doing when Barry was younger and would still show his projects to the family.
“I’ve got something that’s better than everything else put together,” Barry said, moving back toward his desk. “But it’s a secret. You’ve got to swear not to tell.”
“Swear on the Bible,” Phoebe declared. She followed her brother to the desk. Spread across it were thin sheets of creased, rather ancient-looking paper covered with cryptic blue sketches. Phoebe heard her brother breathing behind her.
“They’re Dad’s,” he said in a hushed voice. “From engineering school.”
Phoebe stared at the sketches. She felt Barry poised to spring at her reaction, and it made her nervous. “Are you going to try and make one?” she asked.
His whole face lifted in a grin. He unlocked a desk drawer and, with a flourish, removed a wallet-sized board with a frazzle of knobs and wires erupting from it. A black electrical cord emerged from one end like the tail of a rat, and Barry plugged this into a fixture above his desk. He turned a switch and a small blue light winked on, accompanied by a shrill siren-like noise. Grinning feverishly, Barry raised the volume. He made the siren a buzzing noise,