***
In New Haven, Clyde and I finally had the fight we’d been spoiling to have for weeks. He’d signed me up for a very close-in circuit, New York and Connecticut and New Jersey only, never more than a three-hour train from New York City. The show was starting to command high prices, the kind of numbers that had seemed out of reach when we conceived our plan, what seemed like a lifetime ago. He wanted to make the particular people who ran this circuit happy, for business reasons. It was a favor to them. It was also easier on me. I didn’t ask him which reason weighed heavier.
Clyde was preoccupied with business in New York, and he didn’t say exactly what, but I was fairly certain I knew. He was talking with investors who might help him build the Carolina Rose. If he built the theater, it would be time to bring me back to New York as we’d agreed. If I became his headliner under exclusive contract, the act would still be mine in name but his behind the scenes. He had swallowed his pride for the time being, because I was so inflexible about the Halved Man, but I knew he wasn’t truly at peace. He went along because he had to. There was a distance about him, a tension in his muscles. We made love as usual, and his motions were the usual motions, but he didn’t look into my eyes, and I knew exactly what that meant. He hadn’t forgiven me.
What made it even more evident was the mark he made in my book. While paging through my copy of As You Like It, I found that he’d turned down the corner on a single page and underlined a short passage with a few sharp strokes of the pen. I expected it to be the line about fleeting the time carelessly, but it was another mention of Arden: Ay, now am I in Arden; the more fool I; when I was at home, I was in a better place: but travelers must be content.
In New Haven after the act, I climbed into the railcar, traded my silk gown for a cotton shift, and poured myself a finger of brandy. My body ached. It didn’t look it, but the Halved Man was an intensely challenging physical illusion. It wasn’t just about the speed and the gestures, which so many of my illusions were. Raising and lowering the knife with precision required very careful control, and the saw itself was remarkably heavy. I was starting to think maybe I should reengineer the opening, so instead of pushing the box into place myself, I’d have one of the assistants push it, but I was reluctant to cede even that much control. My complete power over the box was one of the things that made the illusion so remarkable. I had designed it without spectacle on purpose. There was nothing else to look at but me, the box, the man inside, and the weapons I would use to cut him apart.
There was a noise at the door, and I started, but then recognized the sound of the key turning in the lock, and since only one person had that key, I raised my brandy to welcome him with a smile.
“I wasn’t sure you were coming tonight,” I said.
“I wasn’t sure either,” Clyde said. “But here I am.”
I raised my lips for a kiss, but he didn’t respond, and I knew he had something to say.
“Tell me,” I said.
Without preliminaries, he said, “I want you to stop doing the Halved Man.”
I laughed.
“Don’t laugh!” he said, wounded, angry. “I’m serious.”
“I know you are! I’m sorry. But it’d be ridiculous to give it up now. This is what we’ve worked for all this time. Enough success to give us our dreams.”
“I don’t like the trick,” said Clyde.
“Don’t call it a trick.”
“It’s a trick,” he said, sitting down on the bed, resting his head in his hands. “More than anything else you do, it tricks people. It makes them think something other than what they want to. Your illusions, the rest of them, they make people believe in a better world. This trick makes them believe in a worse one.”
“I’m not changing the world. The world is what it is.”
“I think it upsets people.”
“They love it!”
“You love it. Maybe too much.”
“What are you saying?”
“It scares me,” said Clyde. “To be honest? I’m a man, and to see you cutting a man in half, it makes me worried that you might want to do that to me.”
Fortified by the brandy, I decided I needed to answer him. There was something that had been tickling the back of my brain, another reason the illusion appealed to me, and it was another part of the truth. I couldn’t just tell him the Halved Man was meaningless. I couldn’t tell him what Ray had done to me or what I’d done to him. But I could tell Clyde the alternate meaning, the one that was his anyway.
“Now don’t be scared by this,” I said, “but in a way, I do.”
“How do you suppose I could not be scared by that?” he shouted, springing up.
I sprang up too, holding my hands up, barely noticing when the empty brandy snifter fell on its side. “No, no, no. I don’t want to harm you, not at all. If anything ever happened to you—it would wreck me. I love you more than my own self. Believe me.”
“Then what did you mean?”
“If I could—not cut you apart, no, but if I could, I’d divide you. I’d have part of you with me every day on the road, lying down with me, loving me. And I’d have part of you back in New York keeping the books and building both our careers. You understand? I’m sure you wouldn’t mind dividing me too. Making me two separate people. Your business partner, and the woman you love.”
He leaned in then, placing his forehead on my shoulder, and I wrapped my arms around him, tight. I could feel his heartbeat, his breathing, the heat of his skin. He was my love, my whole love. He was not divided.
I asked tentatively, “Do you understand?”
“I understand.”
I said, “You’re my world, my golden world. I need you. If I can only get half of you sometimes, that’s what I’ll take.”
“You’re right,” he said, cradling my cheek. “It’s not fair. I want to be with you too, all the time. My whole self.”
“We can’t have the impossible.”
He said, “Someone will have to compromise.”
I tried to think of what else I could do, but I didn’t know how to fix it. Finally Clyde was the one who spoke.
“Then I’ll come with you,” he said. “We’ll find someone else to settle the apples.”
I hadn’t expected him to say it, and at first, all I could think of were reasons why not. “But you’re the best. I don’t know who else I could trust.”
“I’ll still be responsible. You’ll still be in my hands.” He smiled at the double meaning. “But I know a young man who needs an opportunity, and he can answer the telephone calls and balance the accounts. We’re established enough I don’t need to go knocking on doors anymore. Our door is the one getting knocked on.”
I had to ask one more question. “And what about your theater?”
“It can wait a little longer,” he said. “I don’t want to be divided anymore. I want to be with you.”
“Thank God,” I said and held him forever.
***
He booked me on the Beauregard circuit, a guaranteed three months of shows, one last act as my business manager to settle our future, undivided. At night, our safe little self-contained world, our movable home, rode the rails through the dark from Kalamazoo to Grand Rapids, Gary to Richmond, Charlotte to Charleston. We played to sold-out crowds. Local dignitaries, mayors and governors, attended in seats of honor. On the second night in Washington, DC, there was a rumor that a well-disguised President Roosevelt entered Ford’s Theater and watched the show from the back of the orchestra level, and whether or not it was true, it brought us all great joy.
If I thought that the weeks of my life where I stopped traveling and spent my days with Clyde were wonderful, it was even more wonderful to have him with me all the time. He was there with me when the sun first began to peek through the curtains in the morning. He was there when we arrived at each dark, empty theater and transformed it into a thrilling place of magic, a carnival of color and light. He shared in that tense moment in every performance after the first flourish—ta-da!—when you hold your breath for what seems like an eternity, waiting for someone, anyone, in the audience to begin applauding, praying this won’t be the time when the entire crowd just stares at you in hollow, awful silence. Most importantly, he was there with me, to wrap his arms around me, when I donned my nightgown and crawled under the covers to sleep. The bed in the railcar was small, and there was always some part of us that hung off. One arm or another, sometimes my feet, sometimes his head. But we managed. We were in love.
It was that simple. At least, I hoped it was.