The Book of Speculation: A Novel

“Do you have money to fix it?”


“Not right now.” I’ll need a loan. Without a job, getting one will be nearly impossible, and the job hunt is glacially slow. I could ask Frank for money. My chances of success there might be better; money toward saving my house is money toward saving his, and this was my father’s house, and that’s important to Frank. But for Alice. It’s one thing to take money from Frank; taking money from Alice’s father is different. I should ask her, but best to try the Napawset Historical Society first; they could make it a cause, landmark it. I look over to see Enola swaying softly, matching the waves.

“You should come with me.” She sounds strangely urgent.

“Why?”

“What’s left here?” she says.

“The house. I can’t just leave it.” At times it feels like our parents are still in it, in the walls, and someone needs to see them through to its end. I’m as rootless now as I’ll ever be, but here I know what roads to take when the water’s up, where everyone is based on the tide, who’s a summer person, who lives here. Here my hard feet make sense. And Enola knows to come back here.

“Just come.”

“I wouldn’t know what to do and I wouldn’t know anybody.”

“You’d figure it out and you’d know me,” she says.

“That hasn’t always worked out so well.”

She makes a face, then sighs. “You’d be okay. I’d help you.” Her hand disappears into the skirt pocket and I can hear a soft shuffling.

“I saw you up last night,” I say. Her hands stop moving. “What’s going on with the cards?”

“They’re just being weird.”

When I press her about it, she pounces on me and rubs my hair with her knuckles, hard, burning my scalp. We both start laughing. She tickles my sides and I squirm to get free. An Indian burn ends everything when I twist her forearm until she howls and smacks me upside the head, stopping things as quickly as they started. We fall on the grass. For a second we’re right again.

“You had Alice over last night,” she says, gasping.

“I thought you were asleep.”

“What’s with you and her?”

“I don’t know,” I say. And I don’t, not really, but I want to protect this old new thing between us.

“I like her. She’s too good for you.” She breaks off a piece of beach grass, puts it between her teeth and chews. “You’d like Rose’s,” she says. “It’s the carnival that came around when we were kids. It’s a family business.”

“How’d you wind up with them?”

“A friend I met reading cards in Atlantic City. He’d worked with Rose’s before and introduced me. I read Thom Rose’s cards, we talked and wound up clicking. It’s good travel and a steady gig through the summers. The money’s not so bad.”

“Did you mention Mom?”

“I’m not an idiot. What, I’m not going to say that my mother worked the circuit? That’s probably why he hired me. He’d take you on if you wanted.”

“And what would I do?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

My understanding of carnivals is esoteric. Here is the reality, my knock-kneed sister with the wild eyes, asking me to run away. It would scratch the itch that’s always wondered what Mom was like before Dad. “Is it like it used to be?”

“Pretty much,” she says. “A little bigger, more rides now, more games. The sideshow’s changed, more acts, fewer bouncers.” She sees my confusion. “Jars, the stuff in jars. Never mind, you don’t want to know.”

Things preserved in formaldehyde, animals and otherwise. I remember standing inside a too-hot-to-breathe tent, fingers glued together by sweat, staring at a milky white pickled shark with two heads, one at each end. “You like it?”

“Sure.”

“You didn’t sound great when you called. And you look tired.”

“It’s not great all the time,” she says. “But what is? Eating crap, getting sick, shitting my brains out.” She stretches an arm over her head. Her shoulder makes a loud popping sound. “I got really sick last year outside of Philly. I go into a bookstore because they clean those bathrooms. I’m in there sick like I’m dying—guts rolling around, staring at the floor trying not to pass out and I see these yellow shoes sticking out in the stall next to me. The lady figures out I can see her feet so she pulls them back, like I’m not supposed to know she’s there. Like, if she picks up her feet she can forget she’s hearing my shit hit the water. You don’t deal with stuff like that. You’ve got a house. You’ve always got your own toilet.” She scratches the back of her neck. The bird tattoo on her wrist flutters. “But most of the time it’s good. Thom would love you.”

“Why do you want me to go so badly?”