AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Swell.
Safe in her greasepaint and wig, Evie galumphed through the heart of the town, waving to the crowd. It was still all there, unchanged: the churches, the shops, the country club where Evie had gone to luncheons with her mother’s fancy friends and had to keep her back and her smile straight, knowing she was being scrutinized on her manners and found wanting. She felt a surge of anger when she passed the Zenith Hotel, where she’d read Harold Brodie’s ring and gotten exiled to New York City for it. She’d told the truth about that louse Harold, and everyone, including her parents, had believed the boy over her.
All of it seemed banal to Evie now. These little people with their little lives. Their petty concerns—whether Mrs. Berg’s toast points had been soggy at the bridge club or if Mr. Tufts had made a fool of himself putting on airs around Evelyn Miller, who was half his age. Their mothers would suck the misery marrow from those bones of contention for a month. No matter what those people did going forward, they would forever be known and judged by their all-too-human mistakes. And for what? So those petty folks doing the judging would have something to feel superior about? So they wouldn’t have to think about their own emptiness?
It won’t keep you from dying, Evie thought as she waved to t
he faces both familiar and strange lining the roadway. But they were dying already in so many ways. Trapped in their little cages of loneliness and desperation and bitterness.
Once upon a time, Evie had cared about such things, too. She’d wanted that easy life of never-ending parties and handsome beaus driving her around town in their new autos where she could be seen by all. She’d wanted desperately to be liked. That girl and her wants seemed to belong to a different lifetime. It was astonishing to Evie that she’d ever wanted any of that life at all. She didn’t know what she wanted next, but she hoped it would feel truer. She wasn’t even sure there would be a something next. Not if they couldn’t stop Jake Marlowe and the King of Crows. Not if they couldn’t stop evil from destroying it all, even the stupid country club luncheons Evie loathed.
Right now, though, she wished more than anything that she had one of those flower buttons that squirted water so she could spray Norma Wallingford square in the face.
She’d work on being a better person tomorrow.
As the caravan continued down Main Street, Evie was chilled to the bone to see new signs posted: DIVINERS ARE A THREAT TO OUR NATION. REPORT YOUR SUSPICIONS TO THE AUTHORITIES. KEEP AMERICA SAFE! KEEP AMERICA FIRST! She tried to catch Theta’s and Sam’s eyes, but they were too far ahead. The Blue Noses of Zenith had gone from being phonies to being dangerous phonies. Evie’s breath caught as she spied her mother and father in the crowd. They looked small and spent, like they were watching the circus but seeing none of it.
Mama. Daddy. I love you, Evie thought rather suddenly, and then they were moving away from her.
While Zarilda’s crew set up the tents and wagons and stalls all over again on the Zenith fairgrounds, Evie sneaked back into town, still in her clown getup. She wanted to see her parents again, and remember James. But every front yard she passed, every corner she turned, made her uneasy. Inside Mr. Beaton’s five-and-dime, where Evie had spent many an afternoon lusting after the penny candy on display, a couple of kids she didn’t know giggled at her in her getup, and she responded by dancing the Charleston. The bell over the door tinkled and Evie went still as her mother entered the shop with her head lowered. She seemed so much smaller and more drawn than before. The presence of her mother, so close, brought a small lump to Evie’s throat.
“Good afternoon, Mr. Beaton. May I get an ammonia Coke, please?”
“Yes, Mrs. O’Neill. Coming right up.”
The bell sounded again. It was Harold Brodie’s mother, along with two of her country club friends. As she spied Evie’s mother, a terrible delight showed in her eyes. “Why, hello, Mary. How are you feeling, dear? Must be such a shock to hear about Evangeline. And after all you did for her,” she tutted with fake concern.
Evie’s mother looked stricken. “Yes. Well. I-I’m afraid I’m not feeling well. Mr. Beaton, I believe you’d better forget about that ammonia Coke. I’d best go home and rest.”
“Of course, Mrs. O’Neill.” Mr. Beaton took note of Evie for the first time. “Can I help you?” he asked tersely.
Evie shook her head and strutted a funny strut, and Mr. Beaton snorted and went back to stocking the shelves. “Circus people.”
Evie’s heart ached to see her mother having to leave the shop with her pride in tatters. She knew how much her mother enjoyed being seen as a good, pious woman with a sterling reputation—a pillar of the community. Evie hadn’t made it easy for her, she knew, and she wished she could take back some of her antics. Not all of them, just the really stupid stuff. Mostly, she wished she could ease her mother’s shame over it all. She wondered if her mother finally understood that these Blue Noses she’d been trying to impress all these years weren’t worth impressing. They were just scared little people letting fear dictate their lives and the lives of others.
“Scared little mice with their twitching mice noses,” she whispered to herself as she narrowed her eyes.
With Evie’s mother gone, Mrs. Brodie and her cohorts dug in on their gossip. “I always knew something wasn’t right about that family. That daughter! An anarchist! Good luck removing that stain from their reputation, I say. You know she accused my son publicly of doing something unspeakable to a chambermaid at our hotel? Why, when I think of the way he suffered from that indignity. She was always a bad egg, if you ask me.”
“Loose and wild. And that comes from a mother not having a firm hand,” said pinch-faced Mrs. Wylie. “I’ve never had a day’s trouble from my Isabel.”
That’s because Isabel can scarcely think for herself enough to order an ice cream, Evie thought. She was glad that her makeup hid the heat in her cheeks. On her way out of the shop, Evie swiped her palm along her grease-painted jaw and pressed her messy hand against Mrs. Brodie’s beautiful camel coat, leaving an indelible mark. It was juvenile, of course. Horrible, really. And very, very satisfying.
Out on the street again, she smiled for the first time. “Good luck getting that stain out of your coat, you old witch.”
At the corner of Elm and Poplar, Evie saw her mother heading up the hill toward home. Evie followed from a safe distance. When her mother reached the front steps of their house—their house!—Evie stepped through the gate and into the yard. Her mother turned around, brow furrowed above her cheaters in a disapproving look Evie had come to know well over the years. “May I help you?”
Evie took a few steps closer. “Mama. It’s me.”
And if Mrs. O’Neill hadn’t been holding on to the railing, Evie was fairly sure she would’ve fainted dead away.
The house smelled like her childhood, a combination of coffee, the morning’s bacon, bleach, and a mustiness the bleach could never touch. Nothing had changed. There was her father’s chair by the fireplace, just like always. There was her mother’s chair across from his, a knitting basket on the floor beside it. A tiny museum of middle-class domesticity. Everything preserved as if to move even one thing might upend the fragile order and send the whole house crumbling to dust.
They sat at the kitchen table. Evie’s mother had offered her tea, which Evie did not drink. Touching the cup would overwhelm her with memories she could not bear.
“Did you do those terrible things they’re accusing you of, Evangeline?” her mother said.
“No, Mama. I promise.”
