The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [79]
Wolf gave her a quizzical look. “I’ve been waiting for you,” he said.
They headed back down to the car. The sun was at an angle now; each tree made a cool bar of shadow on the path. Phoebe felt caught, punished for the whole charade of this day, for turning her back on the awful time she’d had, pretending to be someone else. The fantasy sickened her now, glutted her like long days at the carnival or amusement park—corn dogs, candy, bright spinning rides—excesses that had always left Phoebe longing for the more spartan ways of home. Faith was the opposite. Any sense of an ending had awakened in her a driving need to prolong whatever it was; Phoebe remembered her sister getting off one punishing dizzy ride and starting to vomit, their father lifting her over a trash can and holding her midair, muscles jumping in both his arms as he braced the spasms of her slender body heaving up a day’s worth of peanuts and snocones and cotton candy. Faith spent her last breath, then frantically sucked in air only to be sick again, more violently than the first time. It was terrible to watch. Faith was crying, tears running haplessly down both cheeks as their father gathered the long hair away from her face, holding it in his fist until at last she’d finished.
He carried her to a fountain and held her over it. They all stood quietly while Faith drank. When he set her on the ground, Faith stood weakly, rubbing her eyes while the color returned to her cheeks, then she smiled and suggested they get back on the ride. Their father laughed, relieved to see her spirits back. But Faith persisted, begged and coaxed and wheedled until it was clear that she actually meant to do it, get back on. But he wouldn’t relent, not that time. Simmer down, he said, you’re acting like a maniac. Riding home, Faith slumped by the window, stomach rumbling. She jammed her hands against it to stifle the sound, looking so miserable Phoebe thought she might be sick again, but it wasn’t that, she just hated going home.
They reached the Volkswagen. The car’s interior smelled like Wolf, a peculiar mix of tart and sweet like the backyard after a hard rain. Phoebe remembered that smell from his T-shirts, which she used to find on the floor of Faith’s bedroom. If no one else was around, she would lift one to her face, inhaling Wolf’s smell, a smell of comfort mixed with something else she couldn’t name, yet was drawn to.
She would tell him, Phoebe decided, what had happened in Europe. It was pointless to hide it.
“Wolf,” she said when they were moving.
She told everything, starting with London, moving on through each city, marooned in Karl’s apartment in Amsterdam, frightening those children outside Dinant, finding God, losing Him again. She’d expected to grope for descriptions, but found instead that they tumbled from her, stunning Phoebe with a wash of unexpected relief, even power. For out of the nightmarish surge of events a story had hardened into shape and it was hers, that story. She could tell it. She’d escaped.
Wolf drove in silence, expressionless. When Phoebe reached the part about trying to throw herself through the glass in Paris, he swung off the road. “I’m sorry,” he said, killing the engine. “I can’t drive and listen to this.”
The car was only an inch or two from a split-rail fence. Wolf leaned on the wheel, staring through the windshield while Phoebe finished. Afterward they sat in silence. Phoebe noticed a cow to her right with a smooth yellowy coat, enormous bones protruding from her backside. She felt calm, light.
“It’s wrong,” Wolf said. “You going through that.”
His grim tone unsettled Phoebe. She searched for some answer.
“It’s just wrong,” he said.
“Well, God,” she said. “I mean, it’s not like you caused it.”
They drove on, stopping soon after in a village for lunch. A shallow river pushed through the heart of the town, fat geese, soft black ducks paddling near the shore. Bright paintings adorned nearly every building: Christ on Saint Christopher’s shoulders,