Clown in
Hades
by
Jill
Zeller
SMASHWORDS EDITION
******
PUBLISHED BY:
J
Z Morrison Press on Smashwords
Clown in Hades
Copyright ©
2011
by Jill Zeller
Cover art by http://depositphotos.com
Smashwords
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Clown in Hades
“We were dead but we didn't notice.”
Orphee, Jean Cocteau's Orpheus, 1950.
Mom's cooking killed Dad. Even now the smell of bacon slithered under Ilise's bedroom door as Mom prepared a cholesterol-laden feast of eggs and bacon and buttered toast. On the wall above her bed, as if he had been executed and left as an example, Dad's face beamed in his clown makeup, preserved for all eternity on black velvet.
Pulling on her robe Ilise tied the belt around a waistline sweated for and paid for by Orrie's royalties. She hadn't touched bacon in five years. Barefoot, she followed the worn carpet down the hall to the kitchen.
In a sweat suit of pink and blue with a jeweled cat on front, her mother stood beside the toaster, waiting for the English muffins to pop. Her breasts pushed out the cat's ears. Her buttocks mounded under the sweat pants. How could Mom let herself go like that?
“Hostility, that's what it is, plain and simple. Hatred. Vituperation.” Mom spoke to the radio. She listened to NPR day and night.
The cat Chichi lounged on one of the place mats. Orrie would have hated the cat being on the table. Ilise thought of Orrie's long fingers, his hair sweeping her breasts as he raced his tongue down her belly. When was the last time he had done that to her? Not since he started banging that girl who called herself a poet, that neurotic skinny damaged skank.
“Want some juice?” A giant glass of orange juice appeared next to the live cat's tail. Mom hadn't washed last night's mascara out of her eyes. “I got up early to make you breakfast.”
“Thanks.” It did taste good in Ilise's throat, scraped from wine and crying and the wind through the open window of her car as she drove here last night.
“So when is that asshole going to beg you to return?” Mom gave her a sidelong glance as she mashed the eggs trying to turn them over. Ilise would have used the pan to flip them.
“I don't know, ma. Maybe this is the end.”
“If you'd'a had kids this would never have happened.”
As if her mother knew the wisdom of Gaea. Children solved all the problems of the world. Outside, the gray sky spat rain driven sideways on the bay wind, a wind carrying disquieting fears Ilise couldn't quite name.
The photo album lay on the table under the cat; placed there like the family bible, it chronicled the sanctified ruins of Ilise's parents and their life in the circus. Pushing Chichi aside, Ilise opened it and saw her father's curly blond hair and blue eyes, dimples punctured his cheeks—her own features. Beside him stood a slimmer, alluring Mom. Together in their wedding photo, airbrushed with browns and greens, they looked like Greek gods. In their costume photo, Dad in his clown makeup, and Mom in her bareback rider merry widow, they resembled denizens of a faerie world, trickster and vamp.
Mom loved to tell the story of how she was dating Antonio when Randy the clown, fresh from clown school, swept her off her feet, so to speak. She was on a rope twirl when Randy somersaulted across the ring beneath her. As she slid down the rope, her foot landed between his legs just missing his crotch.
“I'm going up to Freddie's tonight to meet the girls and play cards.” Mom stretched her arms behind her, pulling the ears of the sweat shirt cat onto her shoulders. “Why don't you come with us? You can't sit around here all the time.”
Ilise looked at her expensive pedicure. At least she had gotten her hair cut the day before she stormed out of the house. Finding a decent hair stylist in Milpitas was going to be a challenge. “Ma, I'll be fine. Orrie might call.”
“Oh yeah, right.” Sarcasm was Mom's refuge. “He's going to call. Listen, Ilise. He is glad to see the back of you. He just couldn't throw you out on his own. Having that girl was just an excuse.”
Orrie was good at excuses for his shortcomings. Excuses for not calling. Excuses for standing her up. Excuses for disappearing. But he could honey her up, make love, make her his queen once more. After all, didn't she get the cars and the money and the clothes? Hadn't he paid for her cooking school? Wasn't he the best lay she ever had?
“I'm going to take a shower.” Last night when Ilise was standing on the porch with her suitcase after driving from San Francisco, she could see Mom struggling not to say “I told you so.” She still hadn't said it, but Ilise shuddered to think that Mom now believed her own daughter was a junior member of Mom's bitter club of ex-wives.
“I'm not leaving him,” Ilise said as Mom disappeared down the hall. “I'm just taking a break.”
It was nearly midnight. Mom had gone to bed. Ilise put on her shoes and went out the door. Orrie did not call today. Ilise emptied the last of the viognier she had brought with her into her glass. She couldn't shake the feeling of entrapment; if she didn't get out of the house and walk the several blocks to the 24-hour Safeway, she would never get home.
The night was cold, rain absent, starry night a stern substitute. Ilise wished she had brought her coat. She wished she could decide what to do. It was as if the air of Milpitas had stolen her will.