A Lie for a Lie by Emilie Richards Page B

seat. I had called her in a panic, and she had agreed to come, although she’d pointed out that after a night of arranging olives and tossing out perfectly lovely lilies, this was a bit much.
    I found Junie and Miss Emma happily ensconced in the rear captain’s chairs, playing with the air vents. Sometimes my mother is easily pleased.
    “You’re sure you want to do this tonight?” I asked them, gesturing toward the sinking sun. “It’s not cooling off. And it’s going to be even hotter inside that tent. We could go home and rent a movie. Trapeze ? The Greatest Show on Earth ?”
    Junie, who never misses a chance to go anywhere in costume, was wearing baggy pants and a polka-dotted shirt with an orange-striped bow tie. A very, very large bow tie. Feeling Quilty was probably missing an entire bolt of orange-striped fabric. I’d picked her up a little early, and there hadn’t been time for greasepaint or a bulbous red nose, which had not been a miscalculation on my part.
    “Saturday night is the full show,” she said as she hopped down. “I can’t wait to see it.”
    I wondered if I should have brought my girls. But the Price Girls had scheduled an emergency rehearsal, and Teddy would have asked for the theological implications in every act. I’d thought I’d better check out the tent show in person first, particularly if there were picketers—who luckily appeared to be home cooling their heels tonight. The show was old news now, and the media had gone away.
    I held out a hand to Miss Emma, who was surprisingly nimble, if slow. She wore faded jeans and a babydoll eyelet blouse that showed every crevice and liver spot. There were other cars parked up and down the road, but not as many as I remembered from my first visit. The thrill had probably worn off, and caution had set in. Not only were there wild beasts in the tent show, there was a message, and it wasn’t being served up with air-conditioning.
    We walked down the roadside, slapping at the occasional mosquito. Miss Emma whistled “Entrance of the Gladiators,” which is the classic circus theme song. I’d done some homework that afternoon, trying to find out whatever I could about Nora and the others.
    I shared my sudden wealth. “Circuses originally came from England. Did you know that? When they started they were small, the original dog-and-pony shows, and they weren’t able to travel very far because they had to build seats and rings everywhere they went. Once they went under the big top, they could travel faster and farther. Eventually they were transported by rail, long, long trains. Some of the shows took up as much as thirty acres once they set up.”
    “You’ve been reading again,” Lucy said. “I’ve warned you about that, Ag.”
    “Yes, well . . .” I sneaked in the rest of it. “Some historians believe the circus was really important for changing attitudes and broadening horizons. Women were stars and highly valued in their acts. People of different races and cultures were visible in places they’d never been seen before.”
    “Like in sideshows? Freak shows?” Lucy said. “This was a good thing?”
    “Well, not by our standards, of course, but for some people the sideshows were a way to earn a decent living instead of living off charity. And the circus was a place where they could be accepted as part of a community.”
    “Are we going to sing a hymn before we even get through the gates?”
    I swatted her with the notebook I’d pulled from my purse to fan myself. “I couldn’t find much about Nelson- Zimboni, though.”
    “I bet you didn’t look on the Internet, did you?”
    The computer and I—all right, the entire technological universe—do not see eye to eye. Sometimes late at night when everybody else is asleep, I can hear Ed’s laughing maniacally from the study.
    “I like my information to come from reliable sources,” I said airily.
    Miss Emma stopped whistling. “They didn’t have sideshows. I can tell you