Evann Orleck-Jetter

Clowning

Novel extract

Chapter 2

It’s pouring when I walk out of the airport so I flag a taxi instead of waiting for the bus. Fat droplets wobble down the cab’s side window, fork off and form tributaries, pool. I pick at my already ravaged nails but stop when I see blood at the cuticles. I’m always like this coming home. Like all of my unhappy past selves are wedged into the backseat of this cab. There’s almost no room for me. 

But I’m not really going home, I remind myself. I’m going to Provincetown. By the time we pull up to the ferry dock, the rain has stopped and the sun breaks through, bearing down on me as I walk to the boat. I feel like I’ve been through a car wash.

*

It’s 1 p.m. on a Saturday in mid-July, and people onboard are already drinking. They lift fizzing cups and make too many toasts. Toasts to an unforgettable weekend. To Gary’s job promotion. To getting plastered. Squinting through the crowd to the back of the boat, I spot an empty seat, and beyond that, the deep blue Atlantic. I sit down and rake my fingers through my hair, which is damp at the nape. Someone whoops loudly as the ferry takes off. 

A chasm widens between the boat and the city. Surprisingly green little islands dot the harbor. A sleek windmill turns lazily on a sandy bank. All comes into focus and fades just as quickly, a winking goodbye to the mainland.

I reach for the water bottle in the side pocket of my red backpack. I’m about to take a sip when someone taps my shoulder. “Talia?”

Ugh. I know that voice. I look up to see Camilla Carpenter’s berry lips and gleaming teeth. 

“Hi Camilla!” She looks exactly the same as I remember her, as she’s always been. The golden-haired all-American girl.

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m visiting my mom,” I tell her.

“Oh right, where are you living again? London, right?”

“Yep, that’s the one,” I say, and laugh, though it’s not funny at all.

“Wow, so cosmopolitan of you.”

“Um, thanks. How have you been?” 

“I’m engaged.” Camilla shows me her ring, a flashy pear-shaped diamond on a gold band. Meanly, I imagine her exploding into a cluster bomb of pink confetti.         

“It’s a beautiful ring.”

“Brian’s around here somewhere.” Camilla looks over her shoulder and he appears, just like that, like he’s been summoned out of my nightmares with the snap of her long fingers.

“Oh hey Talia,” Brian says, barely meeting my eyes.

His face is red and clenched like a colicky baby. Clearly uncomfortable. I’ve often wondered if Camilla knows what Brian did to me, or if she cares.

“So, what are you up to in Provincetown?” I ask.

“Bachelorette party. Brian’s along for the ride.” I have a hard time picturing fratty Brian in Provincetown, gay mecca of the East Coast. 

He turns to Camilla. “Babe, I want a drink.”

“Just a sec.” She puts a hand on my shoulder and steps forward so Brian is now shut out of the conversation. “I just wanted to say… I’m really sorry about your parents.”

I grit my teeth. “Oh, it’s fine. It happens all the time. At least they’re not dead. Thanks though, Camilla.”

She seems to barely register what I’ve said. “Give your mom a big hug for me, okay?”

“Okay.”

With a swish of blonde hair, Camilla is off, Brian in tow. I keep my eyes on the sea. It’s the strangest thing: the waves appear to be moving in slow motion, blown backward by the wind, cresting against gravity. Like watching a movie on rewind. 

*

My mom waves a very tanned, sinewy arm at me from the ferry dock. People say we look a lot alike: small, difficult, dark-complexioned women. She’s smiling but even at this distance I can see her eyes welling up. When I reach my mother, she pulls me in and hugs me tightly, rocking slightly from one foot to the other.

“I can carry your suitcase,” she says, reaching for my bag.

“No, it’s fine,” I tell her, yanking it back. 

“Oh Tal, I’m not as old and decrepit as you make me out to be.”

We walk side by side on the long pier leading to town, past kiosks selling whale watch tickets, sea glass necklaces, driftwood mandalas, and shark-decal dildos. I look at my mom, who is tapping her hand against her chin anxiously.

“I swear, I saw a girl who looks just like Camilla getting off the boat.”

“That was Camilla.”

“Why didn’t you tell me? Let’s go find her.” She pulls my arm. My mother is surprisingly strong, despite how skinny she is.

“Stop.”

“What’s wrong with you? It’ll only take a second.”

“She’s with Brian.”

My mom scrunches up her nose. “Brian.”

“Brian Potts.”

“Potts.”

“Oh my god, how is your memory this bad? Her boyfriend since high school. Now her fiancé, apparently.”

She puts a hand on her chest. “Of course. Brian. I thought his name was Friar for some reason.”

“Literally who is named Friar? I wish you’d wear your hearing aids.”

“My hearing is just fine,” she snaps. “You mumble. Anyway, I should say hi, at least.”

“Please mom. Please.”

“Okay, if it’s such an inconvenience for you.” She scans the pier. “They’re probably gone, anyway.”

I breathe out, relieved.

“I know you two aren’t friends anymore but seriously. You don’t have to avoid her like the plague.”

We reach the end of the boardwalk. “This way,” she says, nodding to the right. “I can’t wait for you to see the house.”

It’s unusually quiet on Commercial Street; the whole town is probably at the beach. My mom leads me past the Governor Bradford karaoke bar and The Lobster Pot and Womyn Crafts and then onto Pearl Street. The houses here all have bursting gardens and views of Cape Cod Bay. Everything soft and fragrant. It’s like walking into a bad painting.

“They should never have named her something as snooty as Camilla,” my mom says suddenly, taking out her keys. “The girl had no chance.”

*

The apartment is on the top floor of a sagging 200-year-old red house at the end of a tiny street. My mother always wanted to be part of the artsy year-round Provincetown community so she was thrilled to find a sort of affordable rental.  

She shows off the view of the bay from her back deck, the azure tiles in the bathroom, the old casement windows and new, built-in bookcases. My mom has arranged blue hydrangeas and orange daylilies in a cut glass vase on the table and opens the fridge to show me all the delicacies she’s bought me. “I even got smoked sable and whitefish spread,” she says brightly, forgetting that I like neither of those things.

Each sparkling surface feels like evidence of her newfound freedom, the lifestyle she’s always wanted, and wants me to see that she’s achieved. I think she’s overcompensating. There’s this energy that flows through my mother and settles into each tasteful corner of the apartment. Something like guilt. 

She makes us lunch: leftover cucumber soup and two tiny slices of five-grain bread.

“Do you have any butter?”

“I didn’t tell you? No more butter for me. Only olive oil.”

I notice that she doesn’t put any oil on her slice. She just dips the bread into the cold soup, and nibbles on it. 

“How about we go to the beach after this?” 

“Too jet lagged.” I yawn for emphasis.

“Okay,” she says. “I guess I’ll just swim at the bay.”

“I’m going to lie down for a bit, then I’ll join you.” 

I wash out the bowls in the sink and then go to my room. I sigh in the doorway. It really is so clean, so nice. I lie down on top of the covers. The curtains framing the window remind me of scallop shells, of doilies. Lace slips. A breeze blows the fabric away to reveal the blue of the bay. I can’t fall asleep now. But my head against the pillow, the white noise of the air conditioning, those murmuring curtains, all pull me under. 

*

When I wake up, to my mother calling my name, it’s already dark.

My mom smiles at me from the kitchen table. She sits under a blindingly bright ceiling light and motions me to sit down across from her. I feel a bit like a suspect, my mom the overworked detective about to interrogate me.

“I didn’t want to wake you up,” she says, “but it’s been hours. You’ll never get over your jet lag if you sleep all day. Oh and also—” she looks a bit embarrassed. “I do have plans tonight, but I’d love it if you joined me. It’s my weekly writer’s workshop. I almost rescheduled but then I thought you might want to come too.”

 “No. Not tonight, Mom. I mean I just got here. But you go.” 

“Are you sure you don’t want to come?” she asks. “It might be good for you. Inspiring.”

“I’ll pass this time. Honestly, it’ll be nice for me to have the place to myself for a bit. To get settled.”

She’s disappointed. “Okay. I’ll be back around 10.”

“Enjoy yourself. Don’t come back early for me.”

My mom kisses me on the forehead. I can smell her perfume, a mix of sandalwood and vanilla. It’s new.

*

I step out into the cool evening after she leaves.  I take a few deep breaths of salty air.

In for four.

Hold for four.

Exhale.

I learned this exercise on Headspace, but apparently it comes from the Marines, who use it to stay calm in combat. It’s never worked that well for me. My therapist says that in especially anxious times, it’s best to focus on the senses. What can you touch? Smell? Feel? What can you see?  

To my left a full moon reflects off the dark waves. A lone gull circles, briefly illuminated above the sparkling sea.

Chapter 3

After that first, bright day that I slept through, heavy rains hit Provincetown. A steady downpour that never lets up, punctuated by the occasional roll of thunder.

We lose power one night, and scrounge around in the cabinet under the sink, where my mom thinks there’s an old flashlight.

The rain has got me down. “It’s like London, without the entertainment,” I tell her.

My mother refuses to let me bring her down. “First of all, Tal, there are probably more drag shows here than there are in London. And look at this–” she says, pointing to her phone screen, eerily bright in the kitchen darkness. “It’s going to break the day after tomorrow. Then sunny and in the 80s for the foreseeable future.”

“Thank god.”

“Think of this weather as an opportunity, Talia. To work on your novel.”

“Okay.”

“Do you have a draft you’d like me to take a look at?”

“I already told you, not yet. I’ve got some new material I’m really excited about. But I want to do a few edits before I show you.”

This is a lie. I have not worked on my novel in months.

I can’t tell if she believes me or not. Doesn’t really matter, though. She won’t call me out on it. Because I can be very unpleasant when pushed. 

*

The rain doesn’t let up. My mom, as usual, is busy. Busy with research for her new book, Feminist Icons of the Renaissance Age. Busy with her friends from the writing group. Busy organizing a boycott of a café in town that’s mistreating its teenage staff. 

I feel a bit annoyed. I’ve come all this way and we’ve barely seen each other. 

I put on Teva sandals, a thin sweater, and my mom’s oversized red raincoat and step outside for the first time in days. I head toward the breakwater, which is approximately eight thousand steps, round trip. Staying with my mother is triggering those calculations. She counts calories. I count steps.

The coat is shockingly bad at its one job, and rain drips into my hair, my eyelashes, and down my neck. I regret wearing mascara, which I’m sure is now settling smugly into the creases under my eyes.

The streets are empty. I peer into a house lit by a frosted glass chandelier.  A man in a plush purple armchair sits by the window, a book in hand. It looks like he’s about halfway through. I try to make out the cover and that’s when he looks up and sees me. I wave, and then wonder if I look a bit menacing, a stranger staring through the downpour, the hood of my raincoat covering my eyes. But the man just raises his book in greeting. 

I keep walking. By the time I reach the breakwater, I’m ready to retreat. I want to head back to a hot shower and fresh cotton sheets. But I try to take in the view first, because I’ve spent most of this walk looking at the pedometer app on my phone. 

The raindrops fall diagonally as the wind picks up, stinging my eyes. Waves crash against the breakwater. The boulders are dark and hemmed with seaweed. Halfway between where I’m standing and the lighthouse at the far end, I see a little red flame that grows larger. Someone in a red raincoat is walking the breakwater towards me. Why would anyone be out there in this downpour? They’re moving quickly too, I can tell, dangerously fast on the slippery rocks. Then they stop. They must see me, in my own red coat, staring at them. For a moment I’m overcome with the sense that I’m looking at myself, at my own reflection. That if I raise my right arm, my shadow will raise their left. We will tilt our heads towards each other until they touch, above the green gray sea. 

Chapter 4

My mom can’t stop talking about a woman in her writing group.

“Laura comes from a small coal town in Kentucky,” she tells me. “Everyone in that family is pro-life, Second Amendment Republican. And she said: I will not live with this hatred in my heart. She told me that.”

“I thought Kentucky was one of those places that’s not actually real. Like I’ve never actually met a person fromKentucky, you know?” 

She laughs. “Well, you will once you meet her. Hopefully soon too.”

I think my mom may have a little crush on Laura, the way she talks about her.

I bring this up.

“And is there something wrong with that, Talia?”

“Obviously not.”

“As long as you don’t mind your mom sleeping with a woman.”

“Please. Please don’t say that again. I’m embarrassed for you.”

“Embarrassed. You know what you sound like, Talia? You sound like you’re sixteen again. Like you’re about to slam the door and give me the finger.”

“You’re on a roll.”

“Speaking of which, do you see a ring on this finger?”

“You never had a ring on that finger.”

“That’s beside the point.”

My parents decided that wedding rings felt too oppressive; instead, they wore matching Navajo silver bracelets they bought on their honeymoon road trip through the Southwest. My mom picked up a pair of Squash blossom earrings from the same roadside jewelry stand, but I told her it was cultural appropriation and so she doesn’t wear them when I’m around. 

*

Perhaps my mom is right. I reverted to my teenage self the moment I stepped off the ferry. In my defense, though, she can be embarrassing. After I graduated from college, my mom took me to Rome to celebrate. At dinner in Trastevere, she complimented our waitress on her excellent English. The girl gave her a look. “That’s because I am English,” she said. “I’m from Manchester. In the UK.” As we were leaving, my mom waved goodbye to everyone in the restaurant. “Arrivederci! Ciao bella!” she boomed with an outstretched arm, before walking headfirst into the glass door. That type of thing.

But then she’s warm and open in a way I’ll never be. My mom’s always making friends.

I stayed in our hotel room one afternoon on that trip, and she came back hours later, breathless, to tell me about the owner of the alimentari whose mother briefly dated Robert De Niro, and about the old woman she met in Villa Borghese, who lived in Minneapolis for ten years where she had six children with three different men. Both of her new friends were eager to meet me, and I couldn’t help but think they’d be disappointed if they did. 

I imagined what the trip would have looked like had I come without her. Sitting alone in restaurants brimming with people that I was too afraid to speak to. Taking silent walks and slipping back into my hotel room early every night. Of being in a city, sort of, not really. 

So yes: my mother is embarrassing. Loud. She misses cues and then overcompensates.

But she is effortlessly alive. Why do I find it so hard?