Nothing Disappears is beautifully written and true. Along with Smith’s eye for small details and ear for dialogue, he has an intuitive sense of the ineffable connections that exist between people. This is a persuasive and moving first novel.

                            --Meg Wolitzer

1.

        In his more lucid moments Rudy used to say the only way to see something clearly was to make it disappear. In that instant just before it was gone you knew everything about it: the smooth sides, the awkward shape, the few rough edges where your fingers could find a grip. That was the only certain knowledge you’d ever have, and that was the difference, he said, between you and the audience: you knew what you were seeing, even as it vanished.

        But it turns out old Rudy was wrong. I've made things disappear—scarves, rabbits, whole towns, in fact—and I know. It's not that instant before when you see most clearly, but the instant just after. Then you know things as well as you ever will because you know them by the empty space they leave behind. That's the moment of clarity—that and, if you're lucky, the moment when they reappear. The rest is just a blur of anticipation or loss. The longer you think about all that’s gone, the less certain it grows, until memory itself becomes just another way of not seeing clearly.

        Take this one town I used to know. In my memory it was a grey and overcast place huddled under lowering clouds. But on my first day back, fresh off the bus, finding my way down the familiarity of Main Street as if through someone else’s dream, the sun was bright, and the whole town lay bathed in light as if giving the lie to all that I recalled.

        Only one structure fit my memory. Wrapped in its own shadow, the Longfellow Building resisted even the warmth of early July. It was a crooked, slump-shouldered old pile, but it had always held a special place in the hearts of its neighbors. The tallest, grayest building on Main Street, it carried an air of gloom and ancient damp that was almost monumental, though its only real claim to fame was that it should have been knocked down twenty years ago. Over time that alone had turned it into a landmark. People noticed it. They admired it in the grudging, self-satisfied way of small towns everywhere. Growing up, children had it pointed out to them: the Longfellow Building, the ugliest building in Strawberry's Landing. The only structure in town with no redeeming architectural value.

        At least that's what the Department of Housing and Urban Development had said when they'd sent a man out in the Eighties to advise local planners. The phrase was in his report, and it became a kind of watchword in town. No Redeeming Value. It should have come down. But it was saved because the town fathers used the last of their federal money to demolish three of the most beautiful buildings in all the Northeast.

        The Landing was not a very progressive place, never in the forefront even by the conservative standards of Connecticut, and its first attempts at urban renewal came long after the rest of the country had all but given up on the idea. Town planners decided to make an example of one particular block in the south end of town where three beautiful brick buildings in the Federalist style stood across the second broadest Main Street in New England from an ancient hardware store, a diner, and the prepossessing gloom of the Longfellow Building. The plan was simple. Renovate the three beautiful buildings—the newly named Federalist Row—and clear out the shabbiness across the street to make way for something cheerier. This would revitalize the town, preserve its historic past, and make a name for the town fathers as champions of all that was good and beautiful.

        The Mertel Construction Company was selected for the task. Although Mr. Mertel had no direct experience with historic renovation, he was the uncle of the town's then-mayor, which cloaked him in its own particular mantle of expertise. And the project, after all, was fairly straightforward. The delicate fabric of two-hundred-year-old masonry was to be reinforced: spidery strands of steel were to be laced through the walls. Then the bricks themselves were to be hand-scrubbed and sealed against the elements, and the windows reglazed with a special thermopane that mimicked the faint purple tinge of ancient glass. Everyone agreed it was going to be a triumph of history.

        But on that first day, less than eight hours into the project, history, like Elvis, left the building. No one knows exactly what happened. At least, no one would admit it. But the delicate brickwork that had outlasted two centuries, seven wars, and any number of smaller skirmishes, shrugged its broad shoulders and conceded defeat. In less than an afternoon, with all the vast array of construction equipment, supplies, and tools laid out before it, the facade of the middle building collapsed into rubble, taking a portion of the wall on either side along with it.

        The entire town turned out to see the wreckage, poking through bricks and mortar mixed long before the Revolution, sidling up to the gaping front to peer in at the exposed shelves of floors and ceilings. The Mertels, uncle and mayor, were left with no choice but to complete the demolition, spending the town's entire budget of federal aid, while, across the street, the Longfellow Building remained exactly as it was. 

        Shortly thereafter, the younger Mertel decided to give up electoral politics. In a daring daylight escape, he named himself to the recently vacated post of Town Health Inspector, a lifetime appointment, and resigned from the mayor's office. Federalist Row was renamed the Federalist Lot, and the interim mayor, unable to find anyone with more serious plans, leased it to Buster Winfield, who preserved it in its fallow state and parked cars on it for $3 a day. The sole building raised on the lot was a small, plywood hut, only vaguely in the Federalist style, containing a chair, a space heater and a black-and-white tv.

        As I stood now, on a Monday afternoon, in that cool and durable shadow I could still recall the sight of the ancient brick facade collapsing under the weight of everyone's expectations. It was almost twenty years ago. I'd been less than four, standing with my brother in the crowd, but the image was as clear as if the dust were still hanging in the air. It was my oldest memory, the first one to stay with me, and in the last seven years I'd never once thought about it. But now it came back, reappearing out of nowhere with the lingering smell of dust and disappointment, and  I wondered if it was just coincidence that my earliest memory of home was of something collapsing. Standing there I realized: if I remembered that so clearly, then an entire town full of memories could be lying in wait for me in exactly the same way.

        And with that notion came the thought of Kevin. I wanted to ask him what his earliest memories were—if he realized how treacherous and unreliable the past could be. But then, he didn't seem to have suffered from it. Quite the contrary. He seemed to have managed pretty well. Of all the differences between us, that was perhaps the biggest.

        I gazed up at the grey façade, made even more gloomy by the streaks of soot washed into patterns just short of meaning. The windows stared out blankly over my head. From that first moment of its non-collapse, people had begun to develop a grudging respect for the building. It might be ugly, it might have no redeeming architectural value, but at least it didn't collapse. And if it wasn't going to fall down on its own, no one had the heart to tear it down. So it remained, growing shabbier with each season, and every few years some new public service group would move in until they could find a better place. It had held the Salvation Army for a while, then the Youth Service branch of the town welfare department, and, for the last few years, the Shortfellows Children's Theater.

        Reflexively I straightened my jacket, patting pockets, checking props, shaking out my hands, all the jittery habits of opening night. I told myself it was nothing more than a strange new town, and we’d had our share of those. Except that it wasn’t a new town. It was the oldest possible town, and it wasn’t we anymore. It was just me. And I could feel the very familiarity of the place crowding in around me. I wanted to run to the bus station; I wanted to catch the first thing out of town. Don’t worry, said Rudy the way he always did. His voice still a whisper in my ear. Don’t talk, don’t think, don’t worry... It’s magic.

        I pulled open the door and stepped in. The interior had been elegant once: oak wainscoting and high plaster walls, but now everything was scuffed and stained. Dust hung in the air with the stale, cedary smell of an attic only recently opened. There was no sign of life. No sound. Half a flight up stood a pair of broad doors, closed and locked. “Anybody home?” To the left a stairway rose, following my words out of sight.

        A voice floated down. "Up here."

        I climbed the steps all the way up to the eaves, ending at the only open doorway in the building. Beyond was a small room, brightly lit, crowded with furniture, hemmed in on all sides by the sloping roof. With a knock on the open door I stepped in.

        On a high stool beside a desk a very young girl sat very still with her face raised patiently to the light. Before her stood a large and gaudy clown in orange overalls and a baggy white t-shirt, who was carefully smearing greasepaint over the child's forehead and cheeks. At my entrance they both looked up, the young girl with the tense expression of someone trying to maintain her balance on a narrow space, and the clown with a face of painted and inscrutable sadness. She wore a red sausage frown and black diamond eyes beneath a pink wig like a huge brillo pad.

        "Can I help you?" she asked.

        I hesitated. "I'm a little underdressed."

        "That’s okay. We're very informal here."

        "I called you earlier. My name's Charles."

        "Then I must be Emily." She straightened up a little stiffly. "I'd shake hands, but you look so clean." 

        She had a low, warm voice, I'd noticed it that morning on the phone: like velvet brushed against the nap. But now it seemed so out of place emerging from the white, painted face that it might have been dubbed. 

        She held up a crumpled tube of makeup. "You don't mind if I keep working, do you? I'm a little behind."

        "I could come back later."

        "No, that's all right. I'm almost done." She squeezed a white blob onto her fingertips. "Have a seat. Anywhere you can find one." And she turned back to the young girl.

        I looked around. There were several chairs, sagging and overstuffed, and a long ragged sofa beneath a triptych of windows that overlooked Buster Winfield's parking lot, still operating after all these years. Every surface was piled with bright scraps of clothing: gauzy dresses, coils of satin, a purple feathered boa. It looked as if a vintage clothing store had exploded. If colors were noise the place would have been deafening, but as it was the only sound was the whisper of traffic rising from the street below.

        I shrugged off my jacket and looked around for some place to hang it. On the back of the door there was a hook, though it was already full. Black jeans, black turtleneck, black sweater. In that room full of bright colors they seemed out of place, though I suppose even a clown needs a break now and then. I hung up my jacket and turned back.

        The girl was sitting like a statue slowly disappearing under a coat of whitewash.

        "I think you missed a spot," I said.

        Emily didn't answer. She wasn’t, I noticed, a particularly friendly clown, but that didn’t surprise me. I’d met a few in my travels, and as if carrying the weight of professional cheerfulness like a sack of rocks on their backs, they tended to be a little grumpy on their own time. Or maybe she was just concentrating. Her white fingers slipped over the girl's cheek, covering the last little trapezoid of pink skin.

        I'd known a woman years ago, and the only way you could tell she was a pickpocket was by the way she handled her knife and fork at meals. She moved so lightly, with such precision, that it took no effort at all to imagine those same fingers dipping into a coat pocket as smoothly as a hand into water. Emily's hands were larger, long and muscled, but she had that same slippery dexterity. "I can see this isn't your first clown," I said.

        "No indeed. Jill, here, makes twenty-nine."

        "Twenty-nine?"

        She glanced up, her expression impenetrable. "What's the matter? Don't you like clowns?"

        "Well, sure. Everybody likes clowns."

        "Okay, then."

        "I was just wondering why you needed so many."

        "Because,” she said patiently, “today is Clown Day."

        "Why did I think it was the Fourth of July?"

        "It’s a common mistake. We have a parade to lead…." She glanced at her wrist, where a large smiling watch face had been painted. "In about an hour."

        "Is that the correct time?"

        She shook her wrist. "It might be a little slow."

        Her overalls were baggy and patched with as many different fabrics as there were holes. Polka dots. Paisleys. A large pink and white heart over the left breast. Rags dangled from her pockets as though spilling out. Just for an instant I thought I must have the wrong person. I had never, in my wildest dreams, envisioned her like this.

        "Are you really engaged to the mayor?" I asked.

        She looked up in surprise, pushing a few pink tendrils off her forehead with the back of her wrist, then almost reluctantly she smiled. At least I think she smiled. The painted frown shifted up slightly at the edges. "As far as I know. Why? Don't you approve of that either?"

        "I think of mayors as being fairly serious people."

        "That just shows what you know about clowns. Deep down inside, I'm a fairly serious person, myself."

        Which I should have known, of course. Which I should have kept in mind.

        "Is that what you called to talk to me about?" she asked.

        "Your seriousness?"

        "The engagement."

        "Not exactly. I think I mentioned on the phone, I'm kind of new in town."

        "Of course you are." She gazed at me, as if expecting to find the date of my arrival like some stamp of freshness on my face. "How new?"

        I checked my own watch. No smiling face. "Five hours, eleven minutes. More or less fresh off the bus. Before I set up shop I like to check with the local talent. You know, get a sort of clown’s-eye view of the town."

        "I can see how that would be useful," she said.

        I was used to reading people's expressions. When you're performing, everything depends on knowing the audience: where they're looking, what they're thinking, what they're about to do next. But the white makeup was like a screen between us. At the time it didn't occur to me to wonder if it was just coincidence that she was so thoroughly masked for our first meeting, though I thought about it later.

        "Are all clowns this suspicious?"

        "It's the Fourth of July," she said.

        "I thought it was Clown Day."

        "The point is, it's a national holiday. And you climb off the bus, drop your bags, and head straight over here to talk to me?"

        "Something like that."

        She shook her head, gazing at me with her smooth, unreadable, sausage-frowned expression. "What exactly is it that makes me so interesting?"

        In a town as small as Strawberry's Landing prominence is more a matter of personality than position, and Emily Burke had personality to spare. She'd come to college here because she'd wanted a small untroubled town, and when she discovered it was no more untroubled than the larger places she'd grown up in, she decided it was at least trouble on a scale she could manage. She'd been a gymnast in high school, and a dancer, but she didn't do either in college. College was a time to get serious, to give up childish pursuits and proms and parties, and devote herself to more important things. In her second month at Methodist University she and a group of friends broke into the main biology laboratory and released thirty-two monkeys and a hundred-and-twenty-one white rats from their cages. A few weeks later she was arrested for the first time when she chained herself, along with twenty-three others, to the gates of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant. But that was only the beginning.

        Upon graduation she decided to stay on in town. She started the children's theater with the help of a federal block grant but continued to divide her time between putting on plays and getting arrested. She made several trips to Seabrook with Greenpeace, and down to New Haven with Citizens For a Clean Harbor. And one busy weekend she stayed right here in town with a performance of The Lost Treasure on Friday night and a full scale protest against toxic dumping at the Shapewell Metalworks factory on Saturday morning.

        That was more or less how she met my brother. She and three others arrived at the plant wearing red and white coveralls with the Shapewell logo on the front, and with their faces made up into death's heads. They then proceeded to put on a sort of Morality Play. Climbing out onto a twelve-inch ledge outside the third floor of the building, they demonstrated how close to the brink of extinction Shapewell was taking the ecology of the Connecticut River. They tossed handfuls of metal shavings, rusty pipes, dead fish, and water fowl onto the parking lot below. They shouted down to the crowd that had gathered. They told them Shapewell was poisoning their drinking water. They told them Shapewell was killing them.

        The television cameras arrived, and, as though connected by a kind of telepathic umbilical cord, so did Kevin. This was just a few months ago. He'd only recently become mayor, the youngest mayor in Connecticut since the Revolutionary War, and he was hot on the job. Perhaps he'd been in his office or in the middle of a Town Council meeting when he heard, because he arrived with several councilmen in tow. They stood in their shirt sleeves and loosened ties, as if preparing to wrestle with this latest municipal problem, but they proved ineffectual. Standing there amid a gathering crowd of police, they called up to the demonstrators to come down, to desist, to please be careful, but no one up on the ledge paid any attention.

        And then there was a sudden hush in the crowd. I suppose it's possible that, even if the television cameras hadn't been there, my brother would have entered the building, climbed up three flights of stairs, and stepped out onto the ledge, but we'll never know for sure. All we know is what the cameras recorded: silence, then a whisper, and from a third floor window, high up the brick wall, a blonde head emerged. Moving very slowly Kevin braced himself against the window frame and drew himself out, setting his foot on the ledge. It took courage; I'll grant him that. He hated heights. To anyone who didn't know him he seemed merely to be moving in slow motion, but knowing how terrified he must have been, you could have seen that he was edging forward by sheer force of will. A twelve inch ledge two feet off the ground is plenty wide. You could jump around on it. You could dance. But thirty feet up with an asphalt parking lot underneath, it shrinks to the width of a fence post. Kevin moved slowly as if with every step he had to locate the ledge all over again.

        Emily and her friends stopped throwing dead fish. They stopped shouting. They turned.

        "I think you should all go inside," Kevin said slowly. Despite his fear, he spoke loudly enough for the cameras. "I think this performance is over. You've made your point. Now let's please stop before anyone gets hurt." As he spoke he continued to edge along toward the protesters until, with the word 'hurt', he could have reached out and touched them. It was then that Kevin realized he was the only one on the ledge not wearing a safety harness.

        The realization startled him into one step too many. The edge of his foot caught on the building and very slowly he started to fall. He grabbed for the closest thing to him,  which was Emily, and she grabbed him, and together they fell, the cable of the safety harness stretching taut, then miraculously holding. And gradually, two-and-a-half stories above a hard parking lot, twisting gently in the breeze, Kevin realized that the body he was gripping ever so tightly was female.

        I thought it was strange, at first, that a moderate and politically ambitious mayor should become involved with someone so utterly immoderate. But Dewey Reynolds didn't seem surprised. Newspaper editors so seldom are. "You know small towns," he said. "They encourage eccentricity, as long as it's familiar. And Emily's a fixture. A popular fixture. Besides," said Dewey, "they're not all that different. Stepping out onto ledges. Chaining yourself to gates. It's all theater. But it's interesting theater. Worth keeping an eye on. Who knows? We might learn something."

        He meant, I'm sure, we might learn something newsworthy, something that would make a good story for his paper. But my motives were much less pure than his. We were both curious about Emily, but I was curious for all the wrong reasons.

        She gazed at me a moment longer, the greasepaint tube still clutched in her hand, but I just stood there, leaning against the edge of the desk with my stage-face on, smiling and blank. The little girl, just short of a clown now, with chalk white skin and her own blue eyes, sat there staring grimly ahead, pretending she was invisible, or that I was. That sort of determined seriousness is always hard to resist. It’s like a large painted sign saying: kick me.         I leaned forward, snapping my fingers once in front of her face, just to get her attention, then with a little flourish I drew a yellow silk scarf from her buttonhole. As it grew longer and longer, her eyes grew rounder until finally I pulled it free and dropped it wispily into her lap.

        She stared up at me without a word.

        "Wait. Is this yours?" I reached out and plucked from her ear a tiny green frog and set it on the edge of the desk. The frog and the young girl both sat there, staring at each other, too surprised to move. "Maybe you should think about washing more often," I said. I was reaching for a silk rose when Emily laughed. Just like that. Gloomy frown and all. A laugh like a puff of smoke. She stood gazing down at the face of the girl staring down into the face of the frog. "How did he do that?" the little girl whispered.

        Emily shrugged. "You'll have to ask Mr. Bentchley.”

        That caught me by surprise. I hesitated, then offered up a crooked smile. "I don't remember mentioning my last name."

        "Didn't you?"

         The girl reached out a cautious finger tip, not quite touching the frog's nose. It shifted its webbed feet and blinked. "What's his name?"

        "He doesn't really have a name," I said. "He's new to the act. I just picked him up outside."

        "Is he magic?"

        "I wouldn't be suprised."

        "Can I touch him?"

        "Be careful of warts."

        She snatched back her hand, but continued to eye him warily.

        Emily, with a lingering smile, reached over beyond the frog and picked up a long, thin brush and an artist's palette dotted with paint, for all the world as if she were going to do the girl's portrait. "Okay, Jill. Let's get you finished up. We've got a parade to start. Eyes closed."

        The girl obeyed. She sat up patiently. The frog stared.  Emily dipped the brush in a smear of black paint and leaned closer.

        "How did you know who I was?" I asked.

        But Emily said nothing. She was all concentration now, leaning into her work. Delicately she traced a narrow diamond over each quivering eyelid and filled them in with feathery strokes. Then, dipping into the red, she gave the child a big, broad smile. I stood and watched. On her own face the makeup had dried some time ago, and the texture of skin showed through: thin creases at the corner of her eyes, and beneath the greasepaint on the upper lip the slightest crease of worry. Her eyes were warm and brown, and they looked out through the makeup as if through a mask.

        After a moment she lowered the brush, then drew a rag from her back pocket and wiped a little smudge of stray paint from the corner of the girl's eye. Straightening up she stretched wearily and dropped the rag onto the desk. "That's it, Jill. Up the hill. Rachel's waiting."

        The girl squirmed off the stool and turned, giving me a full look at her newly painted face. Despite the cheerful make-up the girl still looked very serious.

        "Keep smiling," I said.

        She glanced at the frog, still perched on the desktop.

        "Go ahead. Take him. He loves a parade."

        But instead she turned and raced down the steps, the slap of her footsteps echoing up the stairwell then fading away.

        For a moment Emily stood there by the empty stool, looking slightly at a loss now that she'd run out of clowns to paint. "I should get going."

        "I know. You've got a parade."

        But then, reluctantly, she sat down on the stool. "You're not quite what I expected," she said. And not for the first time I wondered what Kevin might have told her. The eyes regarding me now were still warm, but distant again behind that bright, frowning face. It took a kind of double vision to keep her in focus, the chalk-white skin and sausage mouth beside those warm eyes and that soft, low voice. When she spoke her lips and the tip of her tongue showed like a quick, pink secret she was trying to keep. "Why didn't you tell me on the phone who you were?"

        "I was undercover,” I said. “I wanted to see what you were like. How did you know?"

        "Your brother said you were coming back."

        "What else did he say?"

        She hesitated. "He warned me about you."

        "He couldn't have. He doesn't know the first thing about me."

        “He said you were kind of a screw-up.”

        I shrugged. “Okay. Maybe the first thing.”

        "Has he ever seen you perform?"

        "Not for a long time. Why?"

        She gestured at the frog, still sitting patiently on the desk. "You're better than he said you were."

        I considered that for a moment. Then with a certain, pardonable ostentation I cracked my knuckles and pulled out the deck of cards from my pocket. I shuffled once to loosen them up, and fanned them out in my hand. "Pick a card. Any card."

        Emily glanced over at me warily. "I thought you wanted to ask me about the town."

        "I do. Take one. Go ahead. But don't show it to me."

        With a serious expression not so different from the little girl's, she drew out a card and glanced at it.

        I cut the deck. "Back it goes."

        She replaced it in the middle of the pile. Under cover of straightening the deck I finessed her card to the top and cut it back under to the bottom. I was a little out of practice, but the cards were behaving well. The deck was smooth, and I couldn't help smiling. I shuffled again, feeling more comfortable now, feeling almost at home, slipping back into the familiar patter like an old suit of clothes. I could feel Rudy smiling over my shoulder. "Long ago, when I was a boy," I said, "I learned the secret of telling when someone was lying. I can listen to a voice and, just by the tone, I can tell."

        "What sort of lies?"

        "Any sort. All sorts."

        I held out the deck. Emily shook her head. Her expression was impenetrable, shielded by the painted face. 

        "Guilty conscience?" I said.

        "No more than the next clown."

        "Well then..."

        She held up her hands, smeared with greasepaint. "I've got to clean up."

        "Then I'll show them to you. I want you to read each card. Read it out loud. And tell the truth. But when you come to the card you chose, I want you to lie. Make up another card. I'll know when you're lying."

        She picked up the rag and began wiping her hands. "I've got a parade to lead." But she couldn't resist. Her eyes were on the cards.

        I started lifting them up, holding them away from me.

        "Seven of spades," she said.

        "True."

        "Five of clubs."

        "True."

        "Ten of clubs."

        "True," I said. And then, "How does someone fall in love with my brother?"

        "Is this part of the trick?"

        "Tell the truth and you won't have to worry."

        "How can someone not?" she said.

        "Could you be more specific?"

        From that white face her black diamond eyes gazed back at me as if it were obvious. "He's charming. He cares about people. He gets things done."

        I held up the next card. "That's it? Cares about people?"

        "You asked," she said. "Jack of Spades."

        "Well, he does get things done. I'll grant you that."

        "Six of hearts."

        "True."

        "Seven of hearts." She paused. "Why does someone run away from home?"

        "This is my trick."

        "Fair's fair. It seems an odd thing to do."

        "Why does someone chain herself to a nuclear power plant?"

        "I asked you first."

        "I'm holding the card."

        She shrugged. "Because it's important. Because someone needs to remind people what two tons of uranium can do to a state full of people. Or that ten thousand gallons of sulfuric acid poured into the river a little at a time is still ten thousand gallons. Five of Hearts," she said.

        "People know that."

        "Do they? I think people know what they want to know. If they don't want to hear it, they don't."

        "And it's up to you to straighten them out?"

        "Yes."

        I paused, fingering the next card. "I'm not sure that's true."

        "Of course it is. What else are we here for? If you're not doing something that changes the world, then you're wasting your time."

        "You are a fairly serious clown."

        "Didn't I say so? If you're not serious, what's the point? Six of diamonds."

        "How serious?"

        She shrugged, but she was leaning forward now, tensed with purpose. "If something absolutely has to be done, how serious is that?"

        I stopped for a moment, weighing the cards in my hand. "I don't know. In my experience I can think of a few things that absolutely should not have been done, but I'm not so sure about the reverse."

        She looked up at me. The painted frown was firmly in place, but her eyes held a glint of curiosity. "What shouldn't have been done?"

        "Too much, even to think about."

        "What about leaving town? Was that something?"

        Without replying I raised the next card.

        "Six of spades," she said. "Not a note. Not a telephone call. No warning at all. Your parents were frantic."

        "Who said so?"

        But it was her turn not to reply. 

        "I left a note," I said.

        "That's not what I heard."

        "Then you heard wrong."

        "They thought you'd been kidnapped."

        "They?"

        "Your family."

        I lowered the card. "No they didn’t."

        "They said you were travelling around with some old man named Weizman."

        "Rudy. That's right."

        "For seven years?"

        "We were in touch. I wrote to them."

        "How often?"

        "As often as I could."

        But she just looked at me, waiting. The cards were turning stiff in my hands. They seemed to be waiting, too.

        "Not often," I said. "We travelled around. The northeast mostly. He had his circuit. Massachusetts, New York, Vermont."

        "Was it fun?"

        "Every so often."

        "And the rest of the time?"

        I shrugged.

        "Then why do it?"

        "What did Kevin say?"

        "They thought you'd been brainwashed at first. Then they decided it was just the sort of thing you'd always done."

        "You don't mean 'they'.

        She shrugged. "He was worried about you." Emily glanced down at the card I was holding. It had drooped down toward the floor, forgotten. She reached out for it, turning it to see the face.

        "Don't bother," I said. "It's the Jack of Hearts."

        "True enough." But she held onto the card, looking down at it as if there were something more to be read in its face. "Why was it so hard?"

        "Leaving home?"

        "No. Coming back."

        It wasn't a question I'd expected. Not from her, not from anyone. Though it was one I asked myself all the time.

        I glanced down at the frog, who was staring at me now as though he couldn't believe what he saw. "Why does someone become a clown?" I asked.

        "For fun.”

        "Remember,” I said. “I'm still holding the cards."

        "Do I need another reason?"

        "I just thought maybe.... It’s another face to hide behind. Someone else’s smile. It’s a little added protection."

        She  shrugged. "If you know the answer," she said, “why ask the question?”

        "It was like that for me. Being on the road. It was like hiding in someone else’s life. There was no past, no future. Just the moment. Or the afternoon. Or the evening. Nothing beyond."

        "And that was fun?"

        "No. Not fun, exactly.” I thought about it, the long, long days of travel, the boredom, the occasional fear and excitement. “Actually, it scared the shit out of me, at least at first. I didn't really know what I was doing. But in an odd way I felt protected. Because it wasn't important. Because no one knew me. Because, in some fundamental way it just didn't matter."

        She considered that for a long moment. "Your audience must have thought it mattered."

        "Oh, that. Sure. You have to do the show well or people don't come. And then we wouldn't eat. That got to be pretty important. But on the level that most people live their lives…." I shrugged. "It didn't matter at all. You said a life ought to be important. Well, this wasn't. And you have no idea what a relief it was."

        "It doesn't sound easy."

        "Not easy, exactly. But all I had to worry about was discomfort: hunger, damp, a hard night's sleep, a night in jail. At the time it seemed manageable."

        She regarded me closely. Behind the impenetrable makeup, her mind was turning something over. She hesitated.

        “What?” I said.

        "I've met your family."

        "So?"

        "They're wonderful."

        "So?"

        "They're smart. They're accomplished. They're nice."

        "That's what I hear."

        "And you just left."

        "More or less."

        "Why?"

        I shrugged again. "Because I couldn't stay."

        She shook her head. "Uh-uh. Now I've got the card." And she held up the Jack of Hearts. Funny that it should be that card out of all of them. After all this time. I felt as if I’d spent my whole life in the shadow of that card. But what could I say? I sat there. Even in a game of truth there's only so much you can tell.

        "There was a girl," I said.

        "I know. I heard."

        "Did you?"

        "Kevin told me."

        "Then you didn't hear right."

        "I heard she died."

        "Yes," I said. "That’s true enough."

        I sat there watching my brother's fiancée, waiting to see if she might say something more. But clowns are undependable, they never talk when you want them to. They never tell you what you need to know.

        She stood there looking down at the Jack of Hearts. "That’s not enough.” She said. “That’s not an explanation."

        “No.” But what startled me was that I wanted to give her one. I wanted her to understand. I wanted to tell her, but I didn’t know how.

        In any magic trick you have to know what you're hiding as well as what you show. You need to remember all the lies your trick is built on if you want to focus on that one, final truth. But I had lost track, somewhere in the last seven years, of all that I was hiding. When I'd made my life disappear all that time ago, everything had been sharp in my mind. But now the truth had grown blurry. I'd made it vanish, and I couldn't remember where. What could I tell her?  That nobody just dies? Certainly not Gracie. That Kevin had killed her almost as surely as if he'd lit the fire himself?

        I stood up, a little abruptly, perhaps, but a good magician knows when the show is over. "Thanks for your time. I know you've got some clowns waiting."

        She hesitated. "I'm sorry."

        "For what?'

        She gave a wry smile. "I'm not sure yet. Maybe for all the wrong impressions I had.”

        “Don’t be so sure.”

        “Come to the parade," she said.

        I shook my head. Whatever plans I'd made on that long bus ride back, they didn't include this. I had planned to dislike her. I planned to hate her, if I could. But how do you hate a clown with a voice like that? "I don't think so," I said.

        "I'm sure your family will be there."

        "All the more reason. Though, I am sorry to miss Clown Day."

        "Twenty-nine different shapes and sizes…."

        But I was already turning to the door.

        "So, tell me," called Emily. "If you wanted to leave so badly, why come back?"

        I stopped and looked up. The white face, the eyes, and the steady, wide frown, all so coolly opaque. But then I noticed at the base of her neck, just above her collar, a narrow crescent where the greasepaint gave way to the warmth of her skin, a little curve of bare throat that had somehow been overlooked. It made me want to reach out a fingertip and touch that skin. Just the skin, not the woman herself, just that slight, exposed part. But I didn't. Instead, I told her the truth, or most of it, as much as I could, addressing myself to that delicate hint of honesty beneath the clown's face.

        "I heard you two were engaged."

        She hesitated, caught between curiosity and surprise. "And you came back? Just like that? After all this time?"

        "Of course. He's my brother. What was I going to do? Let him get married without me?"

        And she just looked at me.

        I slipped the cards back into my pocket before she could speak again. We'd had enough truth for one afternoon, and I was beginning to understand something. I had climbed onto the bus almost thirty-two hours before with only the vaguest of plans. But now I realized, almost inspite of myself, what it was that had brought me home, and I felt like the worst kind of magician: surprised by his own tricks.

        Rudy had died, and I'd heard that Kevin was engaged, that he was mayor now and soon to be married, that things were still looking up for him. And I decided to return. I wanted to see his bride-to-be. But, more than that, I wanted to see what he'd built for himself in this town where our family had been living for two hundred years. I wanted to see for myself what his life looked like. And something else, something more.

        As I gazed into the painted inscrutability of Emily's face I realized that I had come back in the spirit of fairness, in the belief that no one should have too much good fortune. I came back to make sure, if it was ever in my power, that Kevin wouldn't have everything exactly his own way....