The Greatest Show This Side of the Missouri
by Anne Guidry

When Gabriel walks home tonight, he walks the same way he’s always walked for the last few months – past the power plant, across from the stadium; down through the bar and restaurant district where a few stragglers are being questioned by the cops; past the bridge where he can see the riverboat casinos casting bright neon lights over the river.

When he arrives home, Gabriel sets a lawn chair on the edge of his yard, on the hill above the lumber yard and looks out across the river, where a patchwork of whorls and eddies are illuminated under the blue lights of the bridge. Every bridge is a different color now; in the distance, he can see green, and on clear nights, purple, and sometimes, beyond that, the white flashing lights of the riverboat casino wheels. Since the downtown reconstruction project, everything seems to be lit now. “Operation: Light Up the City,” is what it was, he told Rosalyn. He had voted for redevelopment, though, and if that meant stringing lights across everything that will hold them, “I’m not complaining. It makes things look better, anyway,” he’d told Rosalyn and she’d peered at him through those professorial spectacles and said, “Sure. Depending on how many drinks you’ve had.”

Rosalyn had never agreed with anything he said after they started living together, and he couldn’t blame her for it. She’d quit drinking and he hadn’t. She’d gone to the AA meetings and he’d stopped. He kept going for a while, but only in the hopes of seeing her there. A high school English teacher at Alcoholics Anonymous. “I guess it hits in all kinds of ways,” she’d said. “For example. A Unitarian minister.” He was drawn to Rosalyn, maybe, because she was nothing like who his ex-wife had been. She was starkly beautiful, in the sharp angles of her cheekbones, in the creases in her clothes, and even then, in the gauntness of her face, slightly off-color, there was something rather austerely attractive about her. She was as unlikely a companion for him as anyone. But he never asked her why she stayed and he only knew that sometimes he made her laugh and softened the coldness in her eyes and the lines crossing the corners of her mouth.

Once, a group of them from the meetings went out to dinner at the Grand Street Café, in the dead center of suburbia, in a ritzy shopping district lined with brand name stores. They sat next to each other at the table and he had held a bottle of cider poised above her glass and asked her, “Can I interest you in a little sparkling cider?” And somehow she’d found it ironically hilarious, the way he said it, and the way they drank from a false champagne bottle, in plastic wine glasses.

Now, Gabriel drinks wine from a champagne glass and begins to think about what he will say for his sermon tomorrow. Two months ago, Eric had called to tell him they were interested in having him speak at the church. Since they had been losing members, they were trying to become more active in community outreach programs. They were joining a new service organization, the Uncommon Denomination, that was already doing well in other cities and attracting a larger congregation. They wanted to bring him in and speak. Proof of their intimate connection with a community in need. Their personal participation in the renewal projects.

“Don’t feel pressured,” Eric had told him. “But I think it could be quite effective if you’re up for it. How’ve you been doing, anyway?” Gabriel had never really liked Eric, nor anyone else on the church board, though he had always liked being there, leading services, and so, with little hesitation, he had agreed.

He holds the wine bottle on one knee, resting the champagne glass precariously on the other, and sometimes the glass spills, but he only picks it up and refills it again, silently, steadily. Then he shifts the bottle between his legs, and leans over to rest his hand on the bristled and bony head of Tula, his partially deaf, adopted greyhound. “Just look at that,” he says softly to the lush collage of color across the river. “See that, Tula?” The greyhound wags her snout back and forth, weaving in and out beneath his hand. “Tell me that’s not beautiful,” he says. “That sure is beautiful.” He takes a long slow swallow of wine and wipes a hand across his mouth. “And here we are,” he says, “ladiiiiies and gentlemen…” Ladiiiies and gentlemen, he still hears the announcers of the renaissance festival saying through the loudspeakers, Good evening and thank you for coming. We’d like to welcome you here to the greatest show this side of the Missouri.

Tonight, on the other side of the river, Gabriel’s daughter sips tea with her mother in the kitchen of their apartment. Tomorrow, for the first time since he was suspended three years ago, her father will lead a sermon at First Unitarian.

“You do whatever you want to,” the mother tells her. “You do what you feel comfortable doing. If you don’t want to go, that’s perfectly fine.”

The daughter’s eyes are wide and darkly rimmed with eyeliner; she has just come from a dance performance; her hair is still stiff with hairspray. Like everyone else in her family, she is a performer. “I don’t know Mom, I really don’t think I can go. I don’t think” – she shuddered and gave a short laugh – “I just don’t think I can, you know? Her eyes are tired, but her voice is sharply awake. “Are you going?”

The mother hesitates, and the angle of her head and the light of the stove lamp reflecting off her glasses make her expression hard to read. “If you want me to,” she says. She was once an actor, too, though that was before she’d gotten divorced, that was years ago. More than once, the daughter remembers seeing her parents perform together in an afternoon matinee, and then seeing her father perform the next morning in church, leading the sermon, telling anecdotes she’d heard many times over. Sometimes she resented it, the fact that he shared those stories with people who had no real right to hear them.

She laughs abruptly and the tea sloshes over the side of the mug and runs down the side. “I was just thinking, he’s probably going to tell that story about the baby bird pecking its way out of the shell,” she says.

“Again?” the mother says, smiling.

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” she says, running her finger along the side of the mug where the tea is dripping down. “One Easter Sunday,” the daughter begins, “I came across a little egg shell—

“A little egg shell with a tiny bird inside,” her mother continued the story. “And the little bird had fallen from the tree and was having such a difficult time pecking its way out of the shell—

“And sometimes that same thing happens to us.” Her voice imitates the exaggerated intonation of her father’s storytelling sermon. “Sometimes, you find yourself…how does he say it?”

“You forgot the baby bird makes it out.”

“Oh yeah,” the daughter sips her tea, and her eyes briefly lighten as she looks to the side and remembers him telling the story, “And as I watched, the baby bird, slowly but surely started to peck away a larger hole. Until finally the hole was big enough, and I watched it lift its little head for the very first time.”

And when we remember and celebrate resurrection, she remembers him saying, we sometimes forget that it can be very small – in this season of rebirth – and we sometimes forget it can be more difficult than we imagine.

“Oh god, I hope he doesn’t tell that one.”

The mother smiles. “You should go, Daise. He would like to see you there.”

“Did he really see that happen?”

“Who knows,” the mother answers, filling her mug with tap water and setting it in the sink.

Maybe because of the wine, or maybe because he is tired, Gabriel suddenly feels overwhelmed by the lights and the reflections in the river. He walks shakily into the house, through the garage door and up the steps to the first floor of the duplex. He finds his glasses, finally, next to an ashtray, and puts them on so that every light will be contained for him, and distinct, and so he can review what he will say for the service tomorrow.

“You don’t need your glasses, Gabriel,” Rosalyn would tell him. “If you were sober, you’d see fine.”

“It’s a fine night for celebration, though,” he says out loud. “Gather your dreams, dreamkeepers….how does that go?” His lines from former plays come back to him occasionally, but only in segments, and only occasionally. When Rosalyn was there, she would often correct him if he recited something wrong. He doesn’t miss that about her.

“Gather your dreams, dreemkeepers…” But Tula has fallen asleep on the grass and isn’t listening.

Across the river, Gabriel’s daughter presses a warm washcloth to her eyes and leans over the bathroom sink. Tonight, her dance group performed with an elementary school and she is more exhausted than usual. Her group of kids had been particularly oblivious to the instructions she explained again and again. One boy had insisted on imitating exactly what she did, instead of following his part, which confused the rest of them so much that by the end, all they could manage was a lopsided, jagged-shaped circle, instead of the neat curving spiral that was planned.

“I thought you were great,” Jay had told her, when the performance was over and they were walking out through an empty auditorium, replete with candy wrappers and kernels of popcorn. She rolled her eyes. “I think it’s great that it’s over.”

“You really come alive up there,” he’d said. “You’re like someone else.”

“Oh? So what, you don’t like me now?”

He smiled. “You lose your shell up there when you perform. Someday I’m gonna go backstage and steal it and I’m not giving it back.”

If her father had been there, she thinks, those kids would’ve been perfect. She dries her face with a towel, switches off the light and steps across the hall into the bedroom. When she was little, her friends were always asking if he would be there before they visited. They would ask him to do his tricks for them, and somehow, even when he was only juggling faded cloth beanbags, they were mesmerized.

Gabriel knows that Rosalyn was right. Nothing is clearer than it used to be with his glasses on. Still, he feels more focused and steady, and decides to stay outside a while longer and review what he was planning to say. Eric had said he might be invited back part-time, depending on how it was received. Or something like that. Hadn’t he? Right now, all he can really remember about their conversation is Eric reading to him from the Uncommon Denomination’s newsletter and the way his collar cut into his neck when he leaned down over the desk.

“Tula,” he calls out. “Tula!” And the dog lifts her long head and looks around, startled, as if she couldn’t imagine who could be calling her. He pats his knees, “Come here, sweetheart.”

It’s this in-between time, he thinks, this marvelous in-between time, and I’ve got the best seat in town. Tonight he was an assistant magician at a seasonal Renaissance circus, but in the morning, he will become a temporary minister again, stand in front of the congregation for the first time in three years. Tonight, he helped make a tablecloth disappear and levitated a terrified little girl, and in the morning, he smiles to himself, he will be speaking of resurrection. And now, the late night between the evening and the day, this time in between – what is it? It is a precious time, because for now, and for a short time only, Gabriel is a spectator.

“Best spot in town, Tula,” he says, and she nestles the bony frame of her body against his knees. “Out, out, brief lights,” he whispers to Tula, and across the river.

The daughter settles down into the warmth of her bed and wonders what her father will say for his sermon tomorrow. How will he introduce himself? What will he reveal? Probably, she thinks, he will act as if he has never left. As if nothing ever happened and he has no right to be ashamed. He hadn’t had a drink in a year, he told her, last time she visited him for dinner. They still hadn’t summoned him to court. He was hopeful that they wouldn’t. Only he could’ve gotten out of that, she thought. Dropped charges because the summons never came.

“You know I haven’t had a drink in a year, Daise,” he’d said. “How do I look?”

“You look good, Dad,” she’d told him, though his face was gaunt and his skin was slightly yellow and she knew Rosalyn had left him for good.

“You think so? It’s been a long time, no drinks, Daise.”

“I heard you the first time.”

“You believe that?”

“I believe you,” she said, thinking of the night she drove him home after he had been detained for driving intoxicated, remembering how repelled she was by the way he slumped in the passenger seat beside her and closed his eyes, letting his head fall over on one shoulder, not speaking to her at all, and how betrayed she felt by his vulnerability.

Late in the summer, she and Jay had gone to see him at the festival by the river. Neither of them had wanted to stay very long, in the smoky garish lights and periodic loudspeaker announcements.

She closes her eyes and wishes the night were not so late. She needs more time to recover. She needs more time to decide.

Gabriel pours himself another glass of wine, and sets the mostly empty bottle on the ground and raises his glass to the skyline, “Here’s to the most beautiful city,” he says. “To redevelopment!” he calls. Tula lifts her head and cranes her neck forward, her thin nostrils sniffing tentatively towards the horizon.

When Gabriel was leaving the renaissance circus that night, walking past the gymnasts dressed in lavish sequins and slick leotards, it didn’t matter to him that the gymnasts normally taught aerobic exercises at the Gold Club Gym. It didn’t matter that there were only four small tents, and an outdoor wooden platform for a stage. It didn’t even matter that half the crowd was drunk and he couldn’t stand in one place too long without some hand reaching out and tugging the red velvet of his tunic, or reaching into his pocket. None of this matters to Gabriel tonight, because he knows might not be going back. He knows when he tells people, ladies and gentlemen, watch closely, and tell me you don’t believe what you see that in the morning, he will shake their hands and say, peace be with you. And answering him, they’ll say, and also with you.

That was always her favorite part, she thinks, remembering when they would go every Sunday that he lead the mass. When everyone would stand, stretch and shake hands or hug. Her younger brother had always sat in the pews with his knees drawn up to his chest, grimacing at anyone who tried to give him a hug. Maybe because she wanted to prove she was more mature, she had always participated with the grownups and soon it became something she looked forward to. At the end, when the congregation filed out of the chapel and into the lobby, her father would greet them at the door and shake their hands and she would wait there beside him and sometimes she would shake their hands, too. “Who is this?” Someone would ask. “This is my apprentice,” he’d say. “This is our official peace-giver.”

“You know, Tula,” Gabriel says, though by this point she has gone inside and curled up on the carpet underneath the kitchen table, “I haven’t even thought about what I’m going to say tomorrow.” He stands and begins walking slowly towards the edge of the yard. “I haven’t even thought about it.” He stops on the edge of the rocky ledge that looked down on the lumberyard. There are fewer lights now, though the casino wheel and the bridge will be on all night. He lowers himself down onto one of the flatter rocks. “I have no idea…” he says, trailing, “what…I’m going to say.” He takes his glasses off and sets them in the grass and begins to massage his forehead. Then he clears his throat and presses his fingers against his closed eyelids and forces his mind to focus.

Good morning, he will say, it’s good to see you here. “Good morning,” he says to the lumberyard. “I’m glad to be here.” Then what? “I’m glad to see you.” He wonders who he will say that to. If he will recognize anyone. Where Rosalyn will be.

A few weeks ago, Rosalyn had found out from a friend who had known them both from AA meetings that he would be leading a sermon. She came home and found Gabriel smoothing his robe out on the bed.

“I would like to know,” she’d said, throwing her own jacket on top of the robe, “what kind of sense you see in this. The fact that me, a teacher with twenty years’ experience and sober for the past eight years cannot get a decent job and you, who sit there watery-eyed like it’s a goddamn joke, will go back to giving sermons.”

“It’s just for the holiday.”

“Well that makes me sick.”

And he thought, for the first time, he would see her cry then. But she hadn’t. She’d snatched her jacket up again and left. Then she’d come back several times and taken most of what she owned and left him with Tula and, accidentally, a note-marked copy of Catcher In the Rye.

Gabriel decides he will concentrate better inside. Leaving his glasses and the lawn chair and bottle and champagne glass, he picks his way across the yard and up the stairs, and soon he is lying across his bed, with his shoes still on, unable to keep his eyes open, thinking, What am I going to say? with a dull and vague sense of dread.

He was an accidental minister, was what her grandmother had always told her about him. He just liked the performance of it and it didn’t matter what the performance was. Years later, she had asked him if that were true. “Well,” he’d said, smiling. “I don’t know. I especially like the environment of it.” And she nodded and thought she knew what he meant. How the late-morning light shone in through the windows. How simple stories acquired a kind of lyricism.

When she thought about it later, though, she realized that her grandmother may have been right. He had begun as an actor and had volunteered ever since in not-for-profit theatre productions over the summers and during the holiday season. No major roles, but enough that she had grown up accustomed to seeing him in Shakespearean costumes or with makeup caking the creases in his face.

When she was younger, though, she always thought he looked regal on Easter, wearing the long white robe. Like she was part of some royal family. She will never forget that, though her latest memory is of him gazing blankly into the congregation with a shaved head and dark rings under his eyes and his latest performance has been at a low-grade Renaissance festival in the West Bottoms downtown. She will never forget how once, when her birthday fell on a Sunday, he released a flock of doves in the chapel, and how it felt when one brushed across her shoulder on its way up to the rafters.

She doesn’t know what he will do tomorrow, she can’t imagine how it will come together, but she will go nevertheless. She will be there, she thinks, decisive, resigned, and lets herself fall into a shallow and coveted sleep, dreaming that he greets her at the door and they are the only ones there, but somehow neither of them expected anything different.“I’m glad you came,” he tells her, leading her from the lobby into the open, airy light of the chapel.

What am I going to say, Gabriel thinks frantically, his mind racing even as he knows he is falling asleep. He imagines Eric standing at the front of the congregation in his gray suit, speaking about the Uncommon Denomination, reading from the mission statement: “…a home, sanctuaries, we have sacred spaces that are large enough to hold those who hunger for something….”

He rolls over and looks out the window and tries to keep his eyes open. And what am I going to say, he thinks knowing that he won’t wake up in the morning and that Daisy will be there until the early afternoon, greeting people at the door, waiting for him, and that still she might believe him when he tells her he hasn’t had a drink in years.

The lights shine as brightly as they did when he was walking home, loudly, incessantly, the rotating spokes of the casino wheels cutting into the soft darkness of the night. It’s right there, on the edge of my mind, he thinks, knowing that tonight was all the material he needed to remember if he had just started writing. Redevelopment, he’d say, something about the city and that smoky, tunic and tassels Renaissance circus, something about being a spectator and the in-between time. Something about Daisy.

And it might be eloquent. And it might make sense. And it might be quite a performance. But all he can hear, in the brief moments before he falls asleep and drifts unknowingly into the late afternoon of the next day, is the announcer of the Renaissance circus, tapping the microphone and saying in that deep and spectacular voice, Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming and welcome here to the greatest show this side of the Missouri.