Jennifer Egan - The Invisible Circus

Jennifer Egan is the author of Look at Me, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, The Invisible Circus, The Keep, A Visit from the Goon Squad, and the story collection Emerald City. Her nonfiction appears frequently in The New York Times Magazine. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York.

A Visit from the Goon Squad
The Keep
Look at Me
Emerald City and Other Stories
The Invisible Circus

For my mother, Kay Kimpton
and my brother, Graham Kimpton

I would like to thank the following individuals for their advice, encouragement, and efforts on my behalf: David Herskovits, Monica Adler, Bill Kimpton, Nan Talese, Jesse Cohen, Diane Marcus, Tom Jenks, Carol Edgarian, Webster Stone, Virginia Barber, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, Ruth Danon, David Rosenstock, Kim Snyder, Don Lee, Julie Mars, Ken Goldberg, and David Lansing.

I am grateful as well to the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Corporation of Yaddo for their support.

Above all, I owe thanks to Mary Beth Hughes, whose faith, wisdom, and insight are essential to this book.

for the present age, which prefers the picture to the thing pictured, the copy to the original, imagination to reality, or the appearance to the essence illusion alone is sacred to this age, but truth profane so that the highest degree of illusion is to it the highest degree of sacredness.

Ludwig Feuerbach

Exultation is the going
Of an inland soul to sea,
Past the housespast the headlands
Into deep Eternity

Emily Dickinson

Shed missed it, Phoebe knew by the silence. Crossing the lush, foggy park, she heard nothing but the drip of condensation running from ferns and palm leaves. By the time she reached the field, its vast emptiness came as no surprise.

The grass was a brilliant, jarring green. Debris covered it, straws, crushed cigarettes, a few sodden blankets abandoned to the mud.

Phoebe shoved her hands in her pockets and crossed the grass, stepping over patches of bare mud. A ring of trees encircled the field, coastal trees, wind-bent and gnarled yet still symmetrical, like figures straining to balance heavy trays.

At the far end of the field several people in army jackets were dismantling a bandstand. They carried its parts through the trees to a road, where Phoebe saw the dark shape of a truck.

She approached a man and woman with long coils of orange electrical cord dangling from their arms. Phoebe waited politely for the two to finish talking, but they seemed not to notice her. Timidly she turned to another man, who carried a plank across his arms. Excuse me, she said. Did I miss it?

You did, he said. It was yesterday. Noon to midnight. He squinted at her as if the sun were out. He looked vaguely familiar, and Phoebe wondered if he might have known her sister. She was always wondering that.

I thought it was today, she said uselessly.

Yeah, about half the posters were printed wrong. He grinned, his eyes a bright, chemical blue, like sno-cones.

It was June 18, a Saturday. Ten years before, in 1968, a Festival of Moons had allegedly happened on this same field. Revival of Moons, the posters promised, and Phoebe had juggled her shifts at work and come eagerly, anxious to relive what shed failed to live even once.

So, how was it? she asked.

Underattended. He laughed sardonically.

Im glad it wasnt just me, she said.

The guy set down his plank and ran a hand across his eyes. Blunt, straight blond hair fell to his shoulders. Man, he said, you look a lot like this girl I used to know.

Startled, Phoebe glanced at him. He was squinting again. Like, exactly like her.

She stared at his face. Catnip, she said, surprising herself.

He took a small step away.

You were friends with Faith OConnor, right? Phoebe said, excited now. Well, Im her sister.

Catnip looked away, then back at Phoebe. He shook his head. She remembered him now, though hed seemed much bigger before. And beautifulthat intense, fragile beauty you saw sometimes in high school guys, but never in men. Girls couldnt resist him, hence his name.

He was staring at Phoebe. I cant believe this, he said.

While Catnip went to extricate himself from the work crew, Phoebe struggled to catch her breath. For years shed imagined this, a friend of Faiths recognizing her now, grown uphow much like her sister she looked.

Together she and Catnip crossed the field. Phoebe felt nervous. There were blond glints of beard on his face.

So youre what, in high school now? he asked.

I graduated, Phoebe said. Last week, actually. She hadnt attended the ceremony.

Well, Im Kyle. No ones called me Catnip in years, he said wistfully.

How old are you?

Twenty-six. Yourself?

Eighteen.

Eighteen, he said, and laughed. Shit, when I was eighteen, twenty-six sounded geriatric.

Kyle had just finished his second year of law school. Monday I start my summer job, he said, and with two fingers mimed a pair of scissors snipping off his hair.

Really? They make you cut it? It sounded like the Army.

They dont have to, he said. Youve already done it.

Traffic sounds grew louder as they neared the edge of Golden Gate Park. Phoebe felt like a child left alone with one of Faiths friends, the uneasy job of holding their interest. Do you ever think about those times? she asked. You know, with my sister?

There was a pause. Sure, Kyle said. Sure I do.

Me too.

Shes incredibly real to me. Faith, he said.

I think about her constantly, said Phoebe.

Kyle nodded. She was your sister.

By the time they reached Haight Street, the fog was beginning to shred, exposing blue wisps of sky. Phoebe thought of mentioning that she worked only two blocks awaywould be there right now if not for the Revival of Moonsbut this seemed of no consequence.

I live around here, Kyle said. How about some coffee?

His apartment, on Cole Street, was a disappointment. Phoebe had hoped to enter a time warp, but a sleek charcoal couch and long glass coffee table dominated the living room. On the walls, abstract lithographs appeared to levitate inside Plexiglas frames. Still, a prism dangled from one window, and tie-dyed cushions scattered the floor. Phoebe noticed a smell of cloves or pepper, some odor familiar from years before.

She sat on the floor, away from the charcoal couch. When Kyle shed his army jacket, Phoebe noticed through his T-shirt how muscular he was. He took a joint from a Lucite cigarette holder on the coffee table and fired it up, then lowered himself to the floor.

You know, he croaked, holding in smoke as he passed the joint to Phoebe, a bunch of times I thought about dropping by you and your moms. Just see how you were doing.

You shouldve done it, Phoebe said. She was eyeing the joint, worrying whether or not to smoke. Getting high made her deeply anxious, had paralyzed her more than once in a viselike fear that she was about to drop dead. But she thought of her sister, how eagerly Faith had reached for everythinghow Kyle would expect this of Phoebe. She took a modest hit. Kyle was bent at his stereo, stacking records on a turntable.