The Invisible Circus - Jennifer Egan [86]
“I don’t know,” Wolf said tiredly, turning back to the stereo. He slipped in a tape and turned it on. They sat, waiting in the crackling silence before the recording began.
“Faith,” Carla said, sounding confused. “Faith.” She pronounced it “Fate.”
“You remember Faith,” Wolf said, as if reading from a script.
“Yes. Of course I can remember Faith,” Carla said, frowning. “But why is Phoebe …? I don’t …” The words seemed to elude her, yet she didn’t switch to German.
“I’m her sister,” Phoebe said, blood rushing to her face. “Faith’s sister.” It felt like a proclamation.
Carla’s eyes were on Wolf now, her mouth slightly open. She spoke in soft, rapid German. He answered humbly, his throat dry. Phoebe thought he seemed afraid.
Carla ran a hand through her short hair, turned to Phoebe and said, “I did not know that you are the sister of Faith,” in the clearest English she’d used all evening.
Phoebe stared at her. There was a change in Carla’s exprèssion, as if she were seeing Phoebe clearly for the first time. There was pity in her face.
“I am sorry,” she said, moving closer, some delicate smell rising from her skin, and Phoebe was filled with a wave of sorrow such as she almost never felt about her sister, a longing to rest her head on Carla’s soft breast and be soothed. She very nearly did it.
Carla cupped her palm around Phoebe’s shoulder, her touch gentle but authoritative, a doctor’s touch. They sat in silence. Iggy Pop was singing “The Passenger.” Phoebe forgot Wolf was there.
The next day was Carla’s day off, and she’d bought tickets weeks before to a jazz concert later that night. Phoebe willingly bowed out. They would all be sleeping at Wolf’s, so while Carla changed clothes in the bedroom, Phoebe helped Wolf arrange a bed for herself on the living room couch. In ponderous silence they tucked in the sheets.
“Hey. I’m sorry,” Wolf said, grazing Phoebe’s eyes.
“She didn’t know who I was,” Phoebe said, her indignation awakened just by saying it.
“I know. I know.” His manner was harassed, but Phoebe saw shame in his eyes. “I wanted it not to be a big deal,” he said. “It was idiotic.”
Carla emerged from the bedroom wearing makeup, her black pants tucked into red cowboy boots. To Phoebe she looked reduced in some way, her delicacy and frank expression no match against the vague, tricky pull of Faith’s absence.
A new uncertainty had formed in Carla’s expression, as if she herself sensed a change in her standing. “We go?” she said tentatively, asking Wolf and Phoebe both.
Wolf moved to her quickly and drew Carla against him with a kind of urgency, as if the sight of her standing alone were more than he could bear. Phoebe looked away as they moved to the door. “Ich liehe dich,” she heard him whisper.
After they’d gone, Phoebe went to Wolf’s bedroom and threw herself on the bed. The overhead light was off, curtains were drawn; the green glass shade of an antique desk lamp made the room feel aquatic. The soft mattress dipped like a hammock. She listened as an airplane bored its way through the sky, trying to picture the people inside it, each with a destination, a life, luggage full of belongings they’d bought and packed and cared about. In Mirasol she and Faith used to lie in bed trying to guess the destinations of approaching trains; “Milwaukee … Decatur … Dallas,” they’d propose in increasing volumes, “Europe … Timbuktu … Florida,” and as the train passed, Faith often would leap from bed and run to the dark window, stand like an apparition in her white nightie until the engine had faded to silence and even after, when the whistle arced back from the distance like an echo. “Tomorrow they’ll be so far,” she said. “And we’ll just be here, isn’t that weird?”—always with