On The Other Side Of The Wall Lived The Clown

On the Other Side of the Wall Lived the Clown

"I bet you'd stop loving me if I got fat," Lily said, standing in the darkened room above the Deluxe luncheonette in Newark, Delaware. The long mirror was a silver lake on the wall. Next door the clown from Baltimore was practicing his juggling act; once again the pins crashed down like thunder, and afterwards the clown said, "Shit." Then he started the act all over again.

The clown pronounced his city of origin Bal-tee-more. His real name was Rudy, and he lived on fried chicken, and so smelled like chicken, as did his entire room, his wife, and the hallway. He bought this chicken daily from Roy Rogers, which was down on the main street of that small college town where Lily and Thomas studied Geography. Tonight was Lily and Tom's four month anniversary; they had eaten in a Chinese restaurant, then raced home to make love.

"I think we should kindly tell the clown that he was not meant to be a clown," Thomas said, as the pins came crashing down once again.

"You would," Lily said, "You would stop loving me if I gained thirty pounds. Wouldn't you?"

"Is that a comment on my shallowness, or yours?" Thomas said. "Can't seem to figure out the source of these questions."

"Don't torture me with your clever elusiveness. Just tell me. Would you dump me if my butt suddenly inflated to ten times the size it is now?"

He laughed. The clowns' pins crashed and the clown said "No!"

"Come here," Thomas said. He held her. "I would love you no matter what."

"What if I gained a hundred pounds?"

"More of you to hold."

"One Seventy five?"

"Even more. You'd be luscious."

The pins crashed. "Goddamit!"

"Luscious? Really?"

"Really."

What if I was so fat I couldn't fit through the door? So fat when I laid on the bed the bed just cracked right in half? Would you still love me then?"

"Absolutely. Your soul would still be inside you, wouldn't it?"

A knock came to the door. It was the clown's wife.

"Look, can you keep it down? You have these bizarre conversations, and he can't help but listen, and it's really fuckin' up his act. Excuse my mudd mask."

The wife of the clown was addicted to mudd masks. Her face was almost always caked with the cracked green goop, and they had grown used to it. In fact, they had only seen her without the mudd mask once, and her naked face had startled them: still, the clown's wife felt compelled to say excuse my mudd mask, each time she saw them.

They closed the door after assuring the clown's wife that they would try to speak more quietly. The two of them walked over to the window and peered down at the parade of pedestrians-- festive tonight; moonlit, long strides eager to get somewhere, clothing bright with the colors of autumn.

"Would you love me if I was one inch tall?" Lily suddenly said, her eyes held wide on the starless sky.

"One inch tall?" He laughed briefly, warmly, and then said, "If you were one inch tall, I'd just keep you in my pocket."

"If I could take a pill, a pill to make me one inch tall, I would take it, and I would live forever in your pocket. I would. That would be my world. I wouldn't have to deal with the world people call the real world. It's not very real if you ask me, Thomas."

He kissed the top of her head. The pins crashed. The clown said "Fuck this". Then it seemed he was heaving his pins at their wall.

"I thought I was whispering," she said, alarmed.

But naturally, a knock came to the door. They opened it.

"Would you love me if I was one inch tall?" Mudd Mask asked them in her sing-song little voice of mockery.

"I was whispering!" Lily said. "What are you doing, leaning your ear up againt the wall? Can't two people in love have some privacy?"

Mudd Mask shook her head, lit herself a cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, kept shaking her head. "In love," she murmured. "Is that what you tell yourself these days?"

"What do you mean these days? You've only known me for three weeks. Why is this even your business?"

"Look, my little chickadee," the mouth in the green face said. "These walls are like yay thin. In Bal-tee-more the walls are thick. We're not used to this. I can practically hear you breathing when I'm sound asleep."

"That's ridiculous."

"Lots of what's true tends to be ridiculous now, don't it, sis?"

Lily and Thomas just looked at her. They could smell the heavy odor of fried chicken being twisted and battered by the odor of her smoke. The clown's wife had more to tell them:

"I hear this conversation of yours every day, and I think to myself, can people really live that way? Would you love me if I was fat? Would you love me if I was old? Would you love me if I was one inch tall? Would you love me if I was a shoe covered with dogshit? Would you love me if I was the measles?"

Suddenly the clown appeared. He did not have his make-up on, but on his feet were the enormous clown shoes. He had grizzled grey hair, a belly, and wore a white tee-shirt.

"Look, we're from Balteemore, " he said. "We're not spring chickens no more. We're trying to make a living. And you two, you two are fuckin' up the whole shimmyshangin' nine yards. Everytime I get the pins in the air, one of you says somethin' mental."

A silence fell. They all looked at each other.

"O.K." Thomas finally said. "We'll take a vow of silence,I mean, anything to help your pins stay in the air."

The clown turned and walked away.

"You really hurt his feelings now," his wife said. "You people understand nothing."

A feeling in the hall assured them the aging clown from Baltimore indeed had been wounded. They were suddenly acutely aware of the clown's fragility. Within the awareness was a knowledge of their own strength, and futures, which were vast and unknown, and carried within their hearts like wild seeds. They began to feel guilt ridden and generous, but it was too late.

"Would you love him if he was a clown?" said the clown's wife, nodding toward Thomas, and staring at Lily.

Lily nodded her head.

"Would you love him if he lived on nothing but chicken and cried if he didn't get his chicken at exactly the same time each day?"

"Sure I would," Lily said, and squeezed the damp hand of Thomas, her heart pounding.

"You don't know a damn thing about it," she said. "You don't know a damn thing. You and your boyfriend who reads you poems. Let me tell you somethin' college girl, you could never love the clown I love, you don't got the heart. And if you can't shut up in here, least you could do is change the subject."

But now the clown had wandered back. Oddly enough, he was smiling.

"Look," he said, his arms extended as if to embrace all three of them. "Someday we'll all be dead. So very, very dead."

The clown bent his head to the left, his eyes downcast, his lips holding a smile of sympathy for all their mortal selves.

"Dead," he repeated. "All four of us. Under the ground. Gone. Isn't that some bullshit? You understand me what I'm saying here?"

"Why don't you two just come on in," Lily said.

They entered. First the clown's wife removed her mudd mask in the little bathroom. She emerged white faced and wide-eyed. Then Thomas poured them each a glass of Night Train wine. The clown spoke of his life; He had most recently been a dishwasher. He had broken too many dishes. He had been so nervous. Things hardly ever worked out. Life was hard on the nerves, that's what thing he knew. He sighed. A silence fell, and the mystery of their breathing together deepened.

"It's good to be here!" the clown finally said.

They toasted to being alive. Then the four of them sat in a row on the double bed, their legs dangling. The clown's feet in his shoes were enormous. They laughed at that. A fire truck roared by in the street below. They listened, waiting as it passed. They sipped their wine.