The Book of Speculation

19 JULY 21ST

In the carnival parking lot I shuffle the pieces, rearrange things until they line up. My father loved my mother, he told me so. Love at first sight. Enola is not sick; she’s fine and we don’t die.

Except that we do.

The red and white awnings of Rose’s Carnival crest over the lot next to the brick box that is the Napawset Fire Department. Inside are rides and ride jockeys, rigged games, a fun house with shifting floors and mirrors, a sideshow, and my sister. I’ve parked by the torn banner proclaiming this the “45th Annual Firemen’s Carnival and Fair,” the carnival Enola and I went to as kids; after all the money I spent trying to win her goldfish that died in a night, it’s hers now, hers and Doyle’s.

I hobble down the midway — a wide walkway of trampled-down grass lined with booths, fried food, and blinking lights — in search of a card reader’s booth. A man calls the tin horse races through a megaphone. Whack-a-mole, a shooting gallery, and the ring toss are manned by teenagers, or a peculiar breed of thin person with sunken cheeks — pockmarked and hungry, but intriguing. The air is heavy with kettle corn and cotton candy, and pop music blares. This is Enola’s home. The grounds teem with sweating faces, and children dart between parents’ legs. I can almost feel my father’s hand gripping my shirt to keep me from running to the coin toss to try to win a live frog. I stumble, roll my bad ankle, and the pain tastes like metal.

Towering over the carnival is the swing ride — a classic model Chair-O-Plane, candy cane — striped yellow and purple, the top adorned with mirrored panels that catch the sun. I remember Dad buckling Enola into a seat. I remember sailing in the chair next to his, watching the wind plaster his hair to his forehead. Even then he hadn’t smiled; he was too busy looking for a piece of Mom in the place where they’d met. The next year Enola and I went alone. Laughter streams from the swings as chains tighten and chairs ascend, careening in centrifugal grace. I limp to the end of the line. A higher vantage should help me find Enola.

It’s a tight fit, my knees are almost in my mouth, but then we lift. I rise, spiraling outward, and see houses looking out from the walls of the town — a place where neighbors steal mothers in the night and drown them. At the top of the arc I can see the Sound beyond the rooflines that somehow contain my house — correction: Frank’s house. The water is dull, not smooth as glass or angry and thrashing as in books. It’s gray, calm, and dead. I hate it, hate that’s hard like a shell. She drowned herself in a second-rate water.

I swing my foot, bend the ankle, and the sting feels pretend, just an idea of what pain is supposed to be. The carnival looks like a toy with a windup key. There, the concession with the pink lemonade. There, the Wheel of Fortune everybody plays though it’s universally known to be rigged. Voices are fading shouts, laughter, cries at nothing.

Toward the back I see it, a purple tent with a line of people. Yes, that’s her.

When we swing to the ground in loping waves, things are different. This is no grand carnival, but I would run away with it.

I need Enola. Three days left and I need her.

An enormous man in a Hawaiian shirt lumbers by; a scraggly braid dangles down his back like a possum tail; he heads toward a striped tent and ducks under a flap — the sideshow. This must be George the Fat Man, the one with the weed. I search around for Doyle, but he’s nowhere.

I walk toward the small purple tent, past the shouting and the funnel cake, French fries, and zeppole, each with its own fry-oil perfume. The back of the grounds is marked by the Zipper, a rotating conveyer belt that whirls riders in spinning cages in the sky. I took Enola on it when she was too small; the lap bar didn’t lock right and she knocked herself out. For weeks she had a goose egg with the dark purple imprint of waffled chain.

Dunk the Freak has a short line of people waiting to throw softballs. The Freak is a skinny guy in a dirty tank top who shouts that I throw like a girl. Behind him is Enola’s tent — purple velour and duvetyn, spangled with gold moons and stars, hand painted. A sandwich sign leans against the tent corner, a picture of a hand floating over a crystal ball with the name Madame Esmeralda written in Gothic style.

Esmeralda. Really.

The interior is lit by a lamp covered in a red silk shawl. At a card table draped with paisley cloth, Enola is a child’s idea of a fortune-teller — head wrapped in a purple scarf, gigantic gold hoops in her ears. She’s got two clients, a couple of teenage girls; twin ponytails, blond and brown. And there is Doyle beside her, his tattooed hands slithering over the table.

Lifting the curtain lets in light, making the girls turn their heads. Doyle squints. Enola glares at me through rings of black eyeliner. In a thick accent she barks out, “Outside! Esmeralda will be with you.”

“Enola, I—”

“You. Out. Now.” She smacks her palm against the table. Doyle eases from his chair to usher me out.

“Five minutes, okay? Chill.” He pulls the tent closed.

I push a fold of drape to the side, enough for a peephole, and watch as Enola rocks in her chair, speaking in a low voice to the ponytail girls, who huddle in close.

“You want to know of love, yes?” Enola asks. The blonde starts to speak, but is shushed by my sister’s hand. “Not to me, darling.” Dahlink. “Tell the Painted Man,” she says. “The Painted Man keep your secret. He hold your secret. I fix it. Future has two doors, yes? One to open, one to close. Painted Man closes.” She touches a fingernail to a sucker on Doyle’s forearm, then touches her chest. “Esmeralda opens.”

It’s crap, but there’s something about her eyes; they’re different, not hazel like Mom’s, more black — someone else’s. The blonde leans over and whispers in Doyle’s ear, her ponytail brushing his arm, tentacle meeting tentacle. He nods and puts his hand over Enola’s. There’s something disturbing, something that reminds me of a notation: Wild Boy promoted to apprentice fortune-teller. I’m not looking at Enola, but Madame Ryzhkova, mixed with Mom, echoing through my sister’s body.

Enola’s eyes roll and her spine shoots out of its chronic slouch, pole straight. There is a blur, movement and slapping sounds as she lays the cards in a perfect Celtic cross. I recognize the spread from The Tenets of the Oracle. Ten cards. Two in the center, forming the cross, one above, one below, one to the left, and one to the right, then four cards dealt in rapid succession in a line up the side. I can see their faces. They’re different from the ones in The Tenets, but common. A Waite-type deck, delicate, with pictures even I know. The girls angle their chairs, ponytails swinging like pendulums. When she sets the last card Enola’s head falls back sharply, as if her neck has snapped. With perfect timing, Doyle snakes a hand around and tips her back up. Her eyelids flutter open and she bends over the cards.

“Yes, yes,” she says. “Two of you love one man. Yes. Always same.” She laughs; in another woman the sound would be sexual but in Enola it’s carnivorous. “This one.” She points a finger at the blonde. “She is one with force behind her. Always chase, this one is.” The brown ponytail bobbles up and down. “This boy, he like a strong girl. See here? Swords. He like decision, confrontation.” She waves her arms, an air of madness in the gesture. “You.” She stares at the brown-haired girl. “You wait for scraps, yes? Second best for you always.” A small giggle from the girls, a joyless ripple. “See the cups?” Enola continues. “Water. In this position is change, flowing. Communication. You talk to him, yes? She does not speak.”

The girls crowd together like hens to grain, studying the cards. Abruptly Enola’s voice falls away and her jaw goes slack. She stares through the girls, beyond the tent and into something I can’t see. Her hands move, sightless birds navigating migratory patterns. A new arrangement overlays the old, six lines of six cards, each set atop the others. She turns and turns, and when she speaks again it is without trace of accent, without a glance at the cards; discarnate, the voice moves through her. I can see Death, the Devil, and the Tower, and a heart that’s stabbed with swords.

“Losses will be borne. Death rising from below. Barrenness. Empty fields. There will be no children.”

The tent begins to hum as gooseflesh rises to meet air. The girls squirm in their seats. One shivers. A flurry of silk streaks across the table as Enola grabs one of the girl’s wrists.

“All around you those you love will wither. Mother, father, and down the line.” Her words spill and Doyle pops up from his chair, cracking like a spark as he latches on to Enola, shaking her. She continues, “Your name dies with you and will never pass another’s lips. For you it is as water cuts stone, you will wear until nothing is left.” Doyle squeezes her shoulder but she is gone.

As water cuts stone.

The dark-haired girl tugs her friend’s wrist from Enola’s grasp. A tic in the neck, sand leaking from a bag and Enola folds in, her face so white as to be clear. Enola again, but less. Her eyes flick to my hiding spot, our gazes lock, and it chokes.

“Wrong card,” she says. The accent is back. “Happens sometimes. Many spirits walk these grounds.” She pats her scarf, tucks in an escaped hair, and then glares at me. “Get out.”

I snap the drape closed, a deep pain sprouting in the middle of my skull.

Doyle sticks his head outside. Peering from the tent he looks like a mounted trophy. He laughs, nervous and conspiratorial. “Bro, you gotta give it some space, man.”

“Huh?”

“You’re showing up in the cards. You’re too close. Give her like—” He pauses. “Yeah, like, five minutes.”

“I’m good here.”

“No, dude,” he says with a slow twist of his head. “You are seriously not good here. I’ve got it covered.”

“I’m her brother. Let me—”

“That’s my point; you’re too close. You’re making stuff murky.” He scrunches his face up. “Let her ramp it down, okay?” His hand comes through the curtain. He pats me on the shoulder. “Go see Thom. We told him about you and he wants to talk to you. Seriously, go. Give us five, ten minutes. Okay? He’s in the big RV with the birds on the side.” His hand disappears and reemerges holding several crumpled dollars. He pushes the money into my palm and gives me a soft shove back. “Get food.”

As I hobble away he asks what happened to my foot. “Pothole,” I reply.

“Hey,” he calls. “If you swing your right arm wider it’ll help keep the weight off your ankle, yeah? Diagonals, man. Think diagonals.” I don’t want to, but as I walk toward the smell of fried dough I find that I’m swinging my arm wider.

Enola’s face was wrong when she looked at me. The way her head snapped back, there was no control, no lie, just that voice. Something’s very wrong. Drowning wrong. I need to talk to her, and maybe I do need to talk to Thom Rose.

* * *

The RV is, as Doyle said, past the rides on the back of the lot, huge and plastered with white silhouettes of ducks in flight. I lean against it, taking weight off my foot, and knock. A tiny bald man answers. He wears a checked shirt, shorts, and sandals. Deep wrinkles line his mouth. His eyes are framed by squint marks from a lifetime of driving into the sun. I don’t know what I expected a carnival owner to look like, but he looks like someone’s uncle.

“Are you Thom Rose?”

“Who wants to know?” His eyes narrow, and it looks as if I’m about to have a door slammed in my face. Then he grins suddenly and flings the door open. “You’re Simon Watson, aren’t you? Anybody ever tell you that you look just like your sister?”

The camper is filled with books and papers, what looks like piles of receipts and bills, an unmade bed, and a small kitchen that is surprisingly spotless. “Sit, sit,” he says, pointing to a chair by a table that folds out from a wall. “Enola says you’re looking for work.”

Am I looking for work? Library work, but work. “Yeah, I am.”

“She says you’re a swimmer.” He opens a can of soda, pours himself a glass and offers me one. “Talked you up a lot. Said you can hold your breath for ten minutes.”

“Give or take.”

He drinks his soda for a while, contemplating. A yellowed finger taps at the table as if searching for something, a pencil, a cigarette. “It’s been a while since we’ve had any good athletics, but a breath-holder, a swimmer, that’s a hard sell for a man. Not saying we can’t do it, but it’s always been a woman. Mermaids. Put a cute girl in a small bathing suit, lots of long hair, a little peek here and there.”

“I know.” My mother was a carnival striptease. “Enola thought you’d be interested, but I told her I didn’t think it would work out.”

“Oh, no. I am interested. It’ll just take me a minute to figure out. Your sister’s a good kid. If she’s happier having you around and it doesn’t cost me anything, I don’t see why not. It’s been a real long time since I’ve seen a swimmer. There are those Weeki Wachee girls down in Florida, but they’re not the same. You don’t need an air tube, do you?”

“No, sir.” I could try it, maybe. Just for a little while, see what wandering feels like.

“Good. It’s better that way, cleaner lines. We could rework the dunk tank, maybe. That damned kid’s a pain in the ass anyway. Doesn’t matter if he’s a different kid, he’s always a pain in the ass.” He sucks on his teeth, then barrels on. “Best mermaid I ever saw was back when I was a kid. Gorgeous.” He sketches the outline of her with his hands. “A diver, too. You don’t dive, do you?”

I don’t know. Maybe, but no, at the moment I don’t dive. I tell him so.

“Shame. That’d be something,” he says. “She’d jump into this glass tank — no splash at all — and stay under so long you’d figure she’d either died or grown gills. White bathing suit, built like the prow of a ship.” He whistles. “My folks wouldn’t let me have pinups. Verona Bonn was better than a pinup.”

I hide my reaction. “I think I’ve heard of her. Any idea what happened to her?”

“Took up with a lion tamer, I think. Got pregnant. That’ll put a mermaid out of a job fast.”

Verona fell in love, had my mother, then drowned. Not so different from Mom, not so different from any of the other women. Each left a child behind, two in my mother’s case.

“This may sound strange, but Enola mentioned you let her see some of your log books? A little while back someone sent me a manuscript that I think belonged to a carnival. I’d love to have something to compare it to.”

Thom slides his chair back. His expression closes and he begins to play with an empty ashtray. “You don’t show that sort of thing to anyone who’s not family,” he says.

So, Enola is family. “Of course. I understand. No harm meant.” We resume a light conversation, discuss me taking on work until we can figure out an act. Ride jockeying, basic back breaking. I want to get back to Enola.

I am near the door when Thom says, “You aren’t by any chance Paulina Tennen’s kid, are you?”

I stop. “Why?”

“Ah, thought so. Your sister said her mom worked shows, but she wasn’t real specific. You and your sister, you look so much like her it’s uncanny. I ran across her a long time ago, back when my father was running things. I think she was working with a magician. She seemed real nice. Pretty, too. Hard to forget a face like that. You said somebody sent you a show book?”

I nod.

“That’s odd. Unless it’s got to do with your mom, one of her shows. Wasn’t Lareille, was it?” I shake my head. “Thought not. As far as I knew Michel was still chugging along.” He scratches his neck. “Any idea why they sent it to you?”

“He thought it might have belonged to a family member.”

He chews his lip, showing a tobacco-stained tooth. “Books stay with a show. If one’s just floating around out there loose, that most likely means a show went under.”

The water-stained pages lend his words an unintended accuracy. If the show fell victim to a flood it could explain the Koenigs’ disappearance as well. “It’s pretty old,” I say. “Filled with drawings. Lots of them of tarot cards.”

Thom Rose grins. “And let me guess. Your sister won’t tell you anything about ’em.”

I shove my hands deep into my pockets. “Exactly.”

He laughs drily. “Yeah, she’s tight-lipped. Sorry, but you’re shit out of luck with me. I don’t know much about cards except that your sister does ’em right. I like her. Keeping her happy keeps the Electric Boy happy, and that’s good for me. That kid’s a gold mine.” He opens the RV door and ushers me out. “Tell her I said I’ll figure out how to take you on.”

Limping back toward Enola I wonder what Thom would have said if I’d told him that Verona Bonn was my grandmother, that she and my mother both drowned. But tight-lipped runs in the family, among other things.

I’m about to go into Enola’s tent when the ponytail girls rush out. The crowd swallows them in a sea of patterned shirts and sunburns.

“What just happened?” I ask, lifting the tent flap.

Enola turns on me fast. “What the hell do you think you’re doing barging in on a reading? I don’t go to your work and fuck stuff up. Oh, wait. That’s right, you don’t have a job. And what happened to your leg?”

“Floor trouble.” I duck in. It’s sweltering, with a vague smell of clove cigarettes. Doyle is folded up lotus style on the ground by the table, a glowing lightbulb rolling around his hand. The only sign of his unease is a slight brow pinch, pulling the tentacle ends tight across his cheeks. Enola grabs a bag from under the table, shoves her hand in, and pulls out a zeppole, dripping with fat and sugar. She stuffs her mouth, chipmunking it.

Around half-chewed bites she asks, “I thought you weren’t coming. Why are you here?”

“You scared the hell out of those girls. And what’s with the accent?” I ask.

“Quit answering questions with questions,” she says and wipes the back of her neck. “Damn it’s hot. I’m going to need a swim later. The accent’s been part of the deal for a while.”

“And him?” I nod to Doyle.

“Just a thing we’re trying out,” she says.

“Brings in more cash,” he says, without opening his eyes.

“Adds to the mystery,” she says.

“Those things you said to the girls? Does that add mystery too?”

“No idea what you’re talking about.” Angry silence.

“Frank had sex with Mom.” The lightbulb stops twirling.

“Fuck,” Enola says. I tell her what Frank told me, about how they met, how long they were together. About the house. Enola makes notches in the side of a card with her thumbnail. The Hanged Man, an inverted figure strung from a cross by his pointed foot, almost like St. Peter. Not the supple cards she keeps in her skirt pocket; these cards are stiff, with backs covered in fleurs-de-lis. “Shit. Well, that screws you and Alice. Fuck, wait. She’s not our sister, is she?”

“No. God, no.” I say. “Mom cut him off.”

“Well, at least there’s one damned thing she did right.” She sneers and a small bead of sweat rolls from her lip.

“Little Bird,” Doyle says.

“Give me a minute to process, okay,” she mutters.

“He kicked us out of the house,” I say.

“So, come with us. Did you talk to Thom?” She puts her feet up on the table. They’re bare and dust clings to her toes. A sliver of light breaks in. “Out!” she yells. “Esmeralda is busy.” The curtain flops shut. Doyle hops up from the ground to chase after the client. His flip-flops disappear beneath the drapes. Alone again, we stare at each other. “Well, shit.” She chews a piece of skin by her thumbnail, the card almost touching her mouth. “I knew Frank had a thing with the house, but I never got why. Wow. That’s gross.” She’s fidgety. She puts down the Hanged Man in favor of the entire deck, fanning, restacking, and flipping the cards over her knuckles. “I really am sorry about Alice. That makes everything weird. Are you going to tell her?”

I hadn’t even considered it; it’s an injury none of us needs. The last she saw of me was bruised and in a broken house. She wouldn’t cry if I told her, that isn’t like her, but would she slam a door on me? Absolutely. Would she look me in the eye after? “I don’t know if it’s for me to tell. I have things to figure out first.”

“Right. Shit. Where are you going to stay? I’d offer but we’re cramped.” She shrugs.

“You have a place?” This is news.

“Doyle and I have a trailer that hooks to his car. We follow Rose’s with it sometimes.”

“Oh.”

She shoots the deck between her hands in arcs. “It got to be a pain keeping his stuff in the car, lightbulbs were always breaking.” She absently draws a line in the air. “We do a caravan kind of thing. We can probably figure something out for you.”

I hadn’t expected her to have a home. Not her — them, there is a them. I’d always pictured Enola as solitary, but she’s perfectly paired. They pass cards back and forth like it’s speaking. I have no such language, though the librarian I was had decimals, everything a classification. What would they be? The 400s for the language, 300s for the sociology, 900s for the history of her, us; though something about them begs for the 200s and religious fervor.

“Hey,” she says. “You okay?”

“I found something strange. Mom died on July twenty-fourth, and so did her mother. Also, Thom saw our grandmother perform, which is weird, but that’s not even the strange part.” I’m rushing, but I don’t care. “I went through the book Churchwarry sent me, and then a bunch of books and articles that Alice and I found, death registers, newspapers going back — way, way back. I went back until I could find names that were in the book. They die on the twenty-fourth, all the women, Mom’s relatives. They all drowned and they drowned on July twenty-fourth.”

She stops moving. “That’s it. You think we’re all going to drown, don’t you?” She shakes her head. “That’s twisted. That’s you wanting to hear things, fucked-up things. You’ve been alone in that house for too damned long.” She looks down at the table, at her hands, her cards. “You think we’re like her.”

“No,” I say and hope that for one second she believes me.

“You’re the worst bullshitter.” Enola’s chair tips forward and she sighs. “She just got sad, okay? Unbearably sad. I told you that book is messed up. Forget about it. Go get your stuff, come back here, and we’ll set up a place for you tonight. Get the hell out of the house. If Frank wants it, let him have it; it’s filled with dead people and it’s going over.” She reaches out to squeeze my hand, grinding the knuckles together. “Look, I’m sorry if I left you alone too long. I’m sorry, okay? Get your stuff. Bring it back here. Don’t bring the book.”

She looks so earnest, as if I am the problem, as though she didn’t just scare the life out of two teenage girls. “What’s going on with your cards?”

“Nothing,” she says, too quickly. “It happens sometimes when somebody interrupts a reading. Messes up the vibe, taints it. Speaking of which,” she waves a hand, “I need to clear the room.”

“I went through the book. I saw what you did.”

“What did I do?”

“You defaced it. You ripped out every single sketch of tarot cards and I want to know why.”

“I’m not fighting with you.” She adjusts her scarf and wipes at a black eyeliner smudge, making it either worse or better. We stare at each other.

Doyle slips back into the tent. He looks back and forth between us before slinking over to my sister. “Dude, you need to let it go.”

His arms form a mass of dark octopi around her shoulders that looks like it could strangle. She puts her hand on his elbow and it’s this simple touch that makes it clearer than any performance he’s done for her, the miles he’s driven, or whatever she might say about him — she loves him. They have a home, a life, and I’m outside it.

“Okay,” I say.

“Get your things and come back. Promise? Get away from Frank,” she says.

“Camp out in your car. I’ve done it, it’s no big deal,” Doyle says.

They take turns saying things about making a place for me, how everything will be fine. But I look at Enola and see the shimmering ghost of fear; she may lie to herself, lie for Doyle, but she heard me. She’s frightened.

“I’ll be by later,” I say as I leave the tent. I need to figure out what to do about Alice. I need to call Churchwarry.