That Delphine did not turn to look up at the window proved her both quick thinking and self-disciplined, although she did decide to hurry back into the room. “Oh dear,” she said in the tone of a resigned wife, “and to think, standing on his hands is the only way he can maintain his readiness. And we’ve managed to have two darling children!”
Turning away she spoke to the crowd sweetly, as though nothing out of the ordinary had occurred at all, as though she hadn’t just thrown them into a state of startled conjecture. “Don’t forget, the show is at five o’clock this evening! Second stage at the fairgrounds!”
From the quality of the silence behind her, she knew it would be packed.
THAT NIGHT, Cyprian spun plates on the top of poles balanced two on each arm, one on each shoulder, one on his forehead, and one between his teeth. He set up a long line of poles and plates that he twirled as he ran back and forth, while Delphine took bets from the crowd on how long he could keep the plates going. That was where they made most of their money. He stacked things on his head, whatever the audience came up with — crates of chickens, more dishes. He declined the washing machine. While the stack mounted up, he jigged. He rode a bicycle over wires strung across the fairgrounds. For the finale, as the night was windless, he climbed the flagpole and balanced, did a handstand gripping the ball on top. The sight of him — tiny, perfect, a human pin against the wild black Minnesota sky — made Delphine start with a thrill of sympathy. At that moment, she forgave him for his lack of sexual heat, and decided that his desperate need for her was enough.
A STOCKY POLISH girl from off a scrap of farm is not supposed to attract men so easily, but Delphine was compelling. Her mind was very quick — too quick, maybe. Things came out of her mouth that often surprised her, but then, she’d had to deal with a lot of unpredictable drunks in her life and this had sharpened her reflexes. She had small, even, very white teeth, a clever dimple on one side of her mouth. Extremely light brown eyes, honey gold in direct sunlight, narrow and bold in a tan face. Her nose was strong, straight, but her ears were rakishly lopsided. She often wore her hair in what she imagined was the style of a Spanish contessa — one spit curl midforehead, two before either off-center ear, the rest in an elaborate bun. If she stared sharply into a man’s eyes, he was immediately filled with unrest, looked away, could not help looking back. Just because she was magnetic, though, it did not make life easy.
At the age of three or four months, she had lost her mother. Her extreme affection for her dipsomaniacal father was unappreciated, even misplaced, and yet she was helpless before the onslaught of his self-pity. They would have lost even their tiny wedge of land and homestead many years ago, but for the fact that the farmer to whom her father leased his land refused to buy it outright and sewed that up in a contract. Therefore, they had a tiny income month to month, which went to hooch unless she swiped it. To escape a miserable home life, Delphine had sewed bright outfits, practiced the fabulous speeches of tragic heroines, and thrown herself into local dramatic productions. She’d met Cyprian when he was honing his act with the congenial town troupe. She left North Dakota with him, headed back into the hills and trees of Minnesota, where the towns were closer together and less dependent on the brutally strapped farmers. He’d said that there would be excitement, and that commenced with the all-revealing handstand before the window. He also said there would be money, which she hadn’t seen much of yet. Delphine had joined the show because she hoped she’d become infatuated with Cyprian, who was the only other person in the show and was, although this became quite incidental, handsome.
Cyprian called himself a balancing expert. Delphine soon found that balancing was really the only thing he could do. Literally, the only thing he could do — he couldn’t wash his own socks, hold a regular job, sew a seam back together, roll a cigarette, sing, or even drink. He couldn’t sit still long enough to read an entire newspaper article. He couldn’t hold much of a conversation, tell a story beyond the lines of a joke. He seemed too lazy even to pick a fight. He couldn’t play long card games like cribbage or pinochle. Even if they ever stayed in one place long enough, he probably couldn’t grow a plant! She did begin to love him, though, for three reasons: first, he claimed he was crazy about her, secondly, although they had still not made love with decisive lust, he was very sweet and affectionate, and lastly, his feelings were easily hurt. Delphine could never bear to hurt a man’s feelings because she was so attached to her own father. In spite of his destructive idiocy when in his cups, she harbored an undying fondness for Roy Watzka that became, unfortunately, a kind of paradigm.
For instance, she expected nothing much of Cyprian, except that he not fall off the chair. For his part, after only one week, Cyprian grew attached to belonging to Delphine. He curled in the cheap rooming house beds, under covers that Delphine had requested be relaundered, as she was picky about bugs. While he nursed his sore muscles, Delphine busied herself with their survival. She mended what they’d torn during their act, planned how long to stay in each town and which to hit next, counted money, if there was any, wrote letters and advertisements to newspapers, decided what they’d eat.
The morning after the flagpole balance, she proclaimed that they had the wherewithal to eat sausage with their eggs and oatmeal. It was necessary, anyway, to fortify themselves for the long practice session they had decided to hold in a cow pasture. They ate slowly, luxuriously, from thick scarred plates. The café owner knew them now and brought extra sugar and a leftover pancake. Cyprian drew a diagram. A stick man standing on his hands on a chair, a random-looking but really very carefully balanced stack of chairs, the bottom chair on the stomach of a woman whose stick arms and legs were supports, whose balloon face smiled out off the scrap of a playbill.
“This will make our fortune,” said Cyprian, solemn.
Delphine looked at the tower of chairs, the line that represented her gut beneath, and forked up another sausage.
NO COWS WERE IN the pasture and the patties on the ground were dry circles. She flung them off like plates and did some stretches, a couple dozen toe touches. Flexed. Hard to begin with, her stomach muscles would soon be phenomenal. Cyprian showed her how to develop them using a series of scientific exercises. Now, as he had to fall hundreds of times before he perfected an act, Delphine calmly yawned as the weight left her stomach. An instant later he crashed beside her. She didn’t move until all of the chairs had fallen away, battering him. He set the chairs up so that if she just held her position beneath she could not be harmed. Time after time, as he fell and fell, memorizing each piece of the balancing trick in his body, she felt the edifice collapse and strike the earth around her. She stayed still. A few times a chair leg came close enough so that her hair was disarranged a bit, but beyond that she was never touched.
THE DAY WAS SPECTACULAR, and Delphine was dressed in a long elegant red skirt that swirled as she walked before the crowd. She did four cartwheels, and ended up sitting on a low, broad table. Cross-legged, she closed her eyes, folded her hands, and meditated to draw out the suspense. Just as the audience began to shift, impatient, she flipped over and became a human table. Cyprian then approached, holding a large wooden tray set up with tea things. On his head and his shoulders he carried an arrangement of six chairs, which he shrugged off, one by one. He sat upon the last chair, put the tray on Delphine’s torso, nodded pleasantly to her. He drew a fork, a knife, a napkin, a herring from his sleeve, and then proceeded to lay out the plate and eat the herring, which he cut into tiny bites and chewed rapidly. When he was finished, he dabbed his mouth, stretched, appeared ready to relax with a smoke and a good book.