Clown Girl. Monica Drake
whiff of turpentine and the heavy linseed oil scent of paint that drifted from brushes kept in plastic bags.
Two of the walls in the mudroom were made of small squares of glass, floor to ceiling windows, and magnified the heat. The sun came in from behind a tree and made a shadow-puppet show of leaves and branches against the wall. I put the Green Drink and orange plastic jug on a shelf, where I had my own little altar to St. Julian the Hospitaller, patron saint of clowns, fiddlers, murderers, and pilgrims. As a part of the altar I stacked change from my pockets. I piled business cards of the men who asked me out, my audience and fan club.
In clown clothes you walk a thin tightrope, teetering between lust and fear, coulrophiles and coulrophobes. In that narrow band what I aimed for was the laughter of children. OK, more recently what I aimed for was a quick paycheck, a ticket out of Baloneytown. But I wasn’t in it for the groupies.
On the next shelf down there was a stack of library books. Your Baby, Your Body: Watch It Grow! These were books I didn’t need anymore: my body, my baby. Both had stopped growing. The books were overdue, and the library books were the only thing with a due date now.
I’d write my own book of miscarriage: What to Expect When You Expected to be Expecting, Until It All Went South. I unclipped the squirting daisy from my shirt and put the daisy on the shelf, next to the plastic jug.
Below the shelves, on the floor, was a collection of bowling shoes, loafers, painted Keds, and curled wing tips, everything in a size eleven or larger, specially chosen for clowning. And then there was one pair of Rex’s old tennis shoes, absolute boats, his real size. Rex’s shoes bent and crinkled where his toe knuckles had worn against the seam, as though Rex still stood there, invisible, feet in the shoes.
The room overflowed with drawings of Rex in charcoal on paper, in pen and ink, and in pencil. A red clay bust stared down at me from the top shelf of my doorless closet. “Honey, I’m home,” I said to the clay bust. Rex. The bust didn’t blink. Every image I made of him—drawings, paintings, and sculptures—they all had the same faint smile, like the Mona Lisa, Rex’s sly secret. I said, “Don’t be mad, I still love you,” then lifted the head, turned it upside down, pulled a sock from under the neck and tucked a day’s wages inside.
I turned on a radio to block the murmur of Herman and Italia, and sat on the edge of the bed. Chance crowded against my ribs.
I dialed the number for the clown hostel in San Francisco, where nobody ever answered.
“Yello, yello, yello, kiddos!” the answering machine sang. “We’re off to the races, but if you leave your name and number, we’ll make sure your birthday party’s a smash to remember. Ha, ha! Don’t tell the folks!” A horn honked three times, followed by the beep.
“Rex, it’s Nita,” I said into the answering machine. “Are you there? I need to hear your voice. Call me, OK?” I started to hang up, then put the phone back to my ear and added, “I’ve been in the hospital, Rex.” He’d want to know.
I picked up one of Rex’s velvet shirts, ran the fabric across my neck, and smelled the smoke of old fire tricks. Clown College was one way to move ahead, but there were others. We could join Clowns Sans Frontières—Clowns Without Borders—sworn to cheer the children in war-torn countries, practice tricks around land mines, juggle in food and medical supplies. I didn’t plan to do corporate gigs forever. No, I wanted to make a difference in the world: another clown for peace. I unbuttoned my shirt. The satin slipped from my shoulders, a silky caress. I unfastened the polka-dot bra. The flurry of photos and cards fell out: St. Julian, my Clown Union card, my parents, and Rex. Family past and future.
In the early days after Rex left, when I was still pregnant, sometimes I’d imagine that he never came back and there was a romance to the idea of abandonment, the loss of a great love. At least it was familiar terrain—I’d lost my parents young, knew the way things went. But this time, I’d raise Rex’s child. Later the kid would ask, “Mom, what was Daddy like?” I’d tap a circus poster glued to a crumbling city wall or unfold a worn program. “He was the strongest man I’ve ever met,” I’d say. “He was gorgeous, and could make me laugh…” I’d tell stories of Rex Galore until Rex was mythic.
But instead, it seemed, I’d tell Rex the story of how the baby abandoned us.
Herman and Italia laughed together in the kitchen, and the sound was like two mismatched dancers. I turned up my radio, then eased out of the striped pants, the sweaty polyester.
When we met, Rex was a model. I was a student, late for drawing class. He was already naked on a pedestal, posed on a draped white sheet. He had the knotted biceps of a gymnast, the rock-solid terrain of a dancer’s thighs. It was winter. He was pale except for a blue lined tattoo of fish that swam around one arm.
Ta da! Magic.
We were a silent movie, Rex and me, that first day, in a class full of students. His eyes shifted toward me, then away, then back. I looked down as I set up my easel. I started to draw, and looked up. Our eyes met. I dropped my charcoal and stepped forward to pick the charcoal up—stepped closer to the pedestal where Rex stood, naked. He watched as I stepped in. I looked up and at the same time bent down, and with one hand groped for the charcoal stick on the floor. Then Rex was a whole geography that loomed over me, the lines of his muscles, shape of his bones, curls in his hair, and I wanted to move to that country, that continent. He was the Man in the Moon, the Eiffel Tower, Apollo, Dionysus. I didn’t have to put Rex on a pedestal, because he was already there. Posed.
My face was hot. Something inside me tickled.
He knew I looked with more than an interest in light and shadow, contour and planes. When it was break, Rex reached for his robe. We, students, were the audience, he was the show. He pulled the belt of his robe around his hips, ran a hand over his dark hair, stepped off the pedestal, and turned to me.
Then I was part of his show. Other students pretended not to watch. I brushed charcoal from my hands. My hands were hot, and the coal stuck in a black dust.
Rex walked around the edge of my drawing board to look at my charcoal drawing of him naked—Yikes! There it was: penis, dick, cock, peter, willy, wanker, forced meats, soda jerk. Call it what you want, but it’s the hardest part of a naked man to sketch. A penis always looks too big or too fat, except for when it looks too small. Too oceanographic, a sea creature. I know, I’ve worked at it long and hard, and working at drafting a dick only makes it worse; too much study and the organ is like something from the Art of the Insane, pure fixation. Carefully done, the lines of a penis grow overly detailed, painful in their stiffness, until you’ve drawn the penis like a second figure alongside the larger body. It’s a tiny man, to stand for all men. A dick.
Hidden or blurred, it’s as though the artist is afraid of seeing something clearly, afraid to look straight on, to take the bull by the horn, as they say. I’m sure Michelangelo gave his famous David sculpture those massive, oversized hands not so much to convey the power of God working through David, but more to distract from the meager proportions of David’s sculpted dick.
Rex was tall, and more than proportionate. The first time I drew him I worked to make his penis look real: a dark cluster of charcoal lines, curling hairs, deep shadows. Obsessive. Inspired. I didn’t expect the model to step from his pedestal and see that my eyes had traced every line, curve, and fold. He nodded. Maybe he liked the way I handled his dick. Who knows? He broke through the silent movie then and said, “Take your break outside?” He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his bathrobe pocket.
I didn’t smoke, but said, “Sure, OK.” He pulled on unlaced, paint-stained work boots, no socks. I followed him into the hall, downstairs, and out of the building. It was raining out and we stood under the building’s overhang, apart from other smokers. Rex stood in his bathrobe, naked underneath, as though that was normal.
“Those your pins?” he asked.
I folded my hands over my chest, felt myself blush.
He nodded toward the building, the classroom. Ah, pins! Of course. My juggling pins were in a backpack. They were