I am no expert on clowning and I could have done a ton of research before writing this, but chose not to so forgive me if my thoughts are askew. Clowns for most people seem to occupy a liminal space of uncertainty. I think that’s because we laugh at them, but they are truly sad. Sometimes we laugh at them because they are sad. I have a few friends who have delved into clowning, not Barnum and Bailey clowning, although related, but developing a particular mask (hence the nose) that is a clown. From what I’ve seen these masks are not like characters in a play, but a particular creative creation on the part of the person performing and they all carry pieces of that person into the light. It’s like taking a small piece of yourself that rarely sees public life and asking it to sing “Baby Got Back” at a massive karoake bar.
Over the past few weeks I think I’ve developed a new “mask.” I don’t have a nose for her yet, but I’m working on it. I also haven’t figured out a name for her yet, but this is her story.
On the eve of her first trip to Vegas our clown receives the news that her grandma is in the hospital dying. Does she go? Does she stay? She is ripped apart by grief, but unfortunately, grief is never a straight-forward emotion. Her first response is divine calm. Her grandma will finally pass into the arms of her waiting, loving relatives. Then rage washes over her. How can she even consider going to Vegas? Then happiness. Grandma would want her to go. Then resignation. She has to go. Then, at last, pain. Wracking sobs well into the night.
Boarding the plane the next morning our clown is indeed a sad clown. She puts on various masks to disguise her unease, but she is truly a sad clown. In the plane she flies over the Rocky Mountains, her home, and into the beautiful desert, dry, parched and cracking. Suddenly, bright blue water appears as if conjured out of thin air and then buildings that glint silver in the hot desert sun. This place is totally nuts. The next three days are filled with a surreal mixture of money, sex, alcohol, heat, bodies, sleep, and death. Our clown breathes in the ridiculousness of it and lets it course through her veins until insanity becomes her state of mind. She laughs and stumbles, no tears are shed. This is the clown we laugh at.
On the morning of her last day in Sin City reality seeps back in. Her grandmother has passed away. A volley of phone calls to and from family follows. Our clown breathes in her insanity. Her grandma did not want a funeral. “Preposterous,” the rest of the family says. The arguments between the family begin, but the clown becomes the telephone line, pulsing with the anger and resentment of those speaking into her. But before the messages reach the other parties our clown ingests them, eats them whole like snakes swallowing their dinner. The ringing phone is silent. Another lung full of insanity and our clown enters the casino for the last time to play Craps. For hours she sits at the table with her husband imagining herself in some Rat Pack movie. She’s winning, the free drinks are flowing. She is a happy clown. Then the phone begins to ring. But, as they say, what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Our clown deposits her zen insanity into a slot machine at the airport with her last quarter and boards the plane for home.
The plane rises into a rare Las Vegas storm. Thunder shakes the plane. Lightning flashes past the windows. People on the plane gasp. Then they break free. Outside the window, burnt orange delirium. The sun pushes through the clouds and the landscape looks like something from Mars. The rain runs in spirdering rivulets, turned the color of lightning by the setting sun.
After a short night’s sleep a new insanity begins for our clown. Take the husband to a root canal appointment. Drop-off happy husband. Pick up the dog from a friend’s house. Pick-up numb husband. Talk to relatives on the phone. As our clown’s numbness sets in, her husbands pain increases. The doctor forgot to give him pain medicine and antibiotics. Must clean house. There is a stranger coming. By night our clown’s husband is pulling at his hair in pain. A restless night. Morning. Frantic calls to dentists and pharmacists. Pick-up pain meds, drop-off pain meds, pick up clown at the airport. A real clown, nose and all. Our clown says…well, I’ll paraphrase:
“Hi! Had a good flight? We’re happy you’re here. You totally don’t know us, as a friend of a friend. Our life’s a little crazy right now. My grandma just died. My husband had a root canal. Our house has odd vibes, but we are so happy to have you with us.”
The real clown seems to take this news in stride. She’s a clown, of course. Home. Her husband is sleeping very soundly. He cleaned a bit while she was gone. We show the clown to her digs, make lunch, chat, figure out her transportation. Then our clown drops THE clown off at her space for her tech rehearsal. Our clown comes home and crawls into bed next to her husband. After a brief nap she opens her laptop to find a bridge has collapsed five minutes away. Images flash across her computer screen: dust, sirens, crushed cars, fire, injured, dead. People are dead. People are dead who live in our city. “Husband, look.” Her husband is teetering and warm. She takes his temperature. It’s 103 degrees. The emergency rooms are full. She fetches bags of ice to put under his armpits, cool towels for his forehead. He sleeps. She looks at her computer again. Where there was a bridge there is no bridge. Death. She’s a sad clown again as tears drip onto the space bar of her keyboard.
Our clown’s life drifts back into a reasonable pace, gliding through blips of grief. She buries herself in news coverage on the bridge, obsessing over those who died or are missing. Her husband goes through the second of three appointments on his tooth. His pain cools and he goes back to work. The real clown flits in and out of the house. Our clown also goes back to work, staring numbly through the store entrance feeling utterly disconnected from the travelers passing in and out of the doors. The phone calls slow down. The family’s grief, anger, and resentment drift off into a calmness punctuated by occasional gasps of unfulfilled sobs. Her mother is being haunted by her grandma’s ghost. We are going to try to have a baby. The river releases more bodies.
Our clown goes to Wisconsin. Three hours in the car with the Indigo Girls (our clown’s idea of heaven). Her grandma isn’t waiting for her in the window this time, but she looks anyway. Grandma’s room has been hastily converted into a workout/office room. The artifice of this move shines through in the obviously unused look of the equipment. Grandma’s stuff is in boxes in the closet. Her uncle brings them out into the dining room where two weeks before our clown enjoyed lunch with her grandma, sister, and nephew. Two weeks before that she sat with her husband for hours contentedly watching her grandma work on wordfind puzzles. Hours pass as she sifts through her grandma’s archive, pulling out items she thinks members of her family would like. Her aunt goes through the pictures with her. Invites her to stay for dinner. They remember together. Her aunt thinks she’s being haunted as well. “Why doesn’t she want to haunt me?” our clown wonders. She packs up her “Grandma Box” and begins the trip home. She stops at the casino. A bit of the Vegas zen insanity creeps back into her lungs with the smoke in the casino. She plays some slots, wins some money, and hops back in the car with the Indigo Girls for the trip home. No tears were shed this day. She is a thinking clown.
At home she reads her grandma’s diary. It begins in January 2004:
“My Grandaughter Shannon and Scott gave me this beautiful Journal. I enjoyed their visit before Christmas. They will see me again next year. They are two special people to me.”
It ends in November 2005:
“Wish all my family could be together. Pen ran out of ink. There isn’t much to write about this time. I hope to finish this Journal. God willing.”
Our clown closes it, puts it away and falls asleep. No tears are shed.
The next evening our clown has hit her “Fridays.” She must open her store at 5:30am on Saturday so Friday night is always a struggle for sleep. To occupy herself she grabs her grandma’s wordfind book. Our clown always loved wordfinds just like her grandma. She opens to the first puzzle. Her grandma already started it. The words are awkwardly looped with a shaky pen. She looks over the puzzle and loops a couple words. Then she discovers that her grandma forgot to loop the second S at the end of “sweetness.” Our clown pulls the pen over the shaky writing and extends her own straight, definite pen loop around the S. Then our clown feels her stomach flip over like the loop on the S and begins to cry in earnest. She cries until she’s in a stupor. Her husband walks in, shocked and eager to help. “What happened?” Our clown’s first few attmpets to explain to him the cause of her sobbing are completely impossible to decipher through the crying. Finally she manages to get out, “She forgot the S.” Her husband stares at her confused and slightly worried at her utter lack of clarity. After several minutes of our clown attempting to explain it to him, finally needing to show him the puzzle and demonstrate the extra loop, he understands, but is clearly still at a loss for why this incident caused such a waterfall. He offers to make some tea. Our clown falls asleep before she can drink it.
The end.
It’s weird when you wake up one morning and you can suddenly feel that your life is back to “normal.” I’m back to being me, but with a few modifications. I’m not exactly sure what those modifications may be, but I’ll know as they appear I suppose. Right now we’re getting ready for my in-laws to visit and I’m working on making up for some of the time I lost to study for subfield exams. Studying. That’s what I’m doing today as you can see from this enormously long blog. Once my finger stops tapping on these letter keys and moves to the mouse pad to “publish” it, I will have to get dressed and start studying…after I walk the dog.
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