INTO HIS HANDS

The Worst Kind of Man

They say grief comes in stages.

Nobody tells you that sometimes the stages arrive all at once. That you can be standing in a hospital corridor holding your father's hand while he is still warm and simultaneously understand that the boy you loved for four years is standing six feet away doing the maths on how this changes things for him.

Marcus comes to the hospital.

Of course he does.

He sits in the waiting room in his performance costume still chalked and he looks at the floor and when I come out of my father's room he stands up and he opens his arms and I walk into them because four years is four years and my father just died and his arms are familiar even when everything else is not.

He holds me.

He says: I'm so sorry.

He says it into my hair.

He says it the way he says everything that requires sincerity. With the specific quality of a man who has learned what sincerity sounds like and reproduces it accurately.

I cry into his chest.

I cry for the first time since the fall.

He holds me and I cry and I think: he is here. He came. Whatever else is true he came and he is here.

I find out later he left after forty minutes.

He had somewhere to be.

The funeral is on a Thursday.

My mother sits in the front row and does not speak and does not eat and does not sleep and I spend the week between the hospital and the funeral being the person who makes sure she does all three because if I stop moving I will have to feel the thing that is sitting in my chest waiting and I am not ready to feel it yet.

The circus keeps going.

Not performing. But existing. The eighty people and the lot and the animals and the rigging that killed my father still hanging in the big top like it doesn't know what it did.

I go in at five every morning.

I stand on the platform.

I do not grab the bar.

I just stand there and look at the tent and think about my father in the wings and the nod and the two seconds with his hand on my face and I let the grief be as large as it actually is for exactly five minutes and then I go back to being the person who makes sure everyone else is okay.

Marcus is not at the lot much.

He is around. Technically. But around in the way of someone whose attention is elsewhere. His phone is always in his hand. He disappears for hours and comes back with explanations that are complete and reasonable and that I accept because I am too tired to examine them and because four years and because my father just died and I cannot hold everything at once.

At the funeral he stands beside me in the front row.

He holds my hand during the service.

His hand is the right temperature and the right pressure and completely absent.

I know this feeling.

I have been trying not to know it for longer than I want to admit.

After the service people come and say things and I say things back and at some point I look for Marcus and he is across the room talking to someone on his phone with his back to me and his posture has changed from funeral posture to something else entirely.

Something lighter.

Something that belongs to a different kind of day.

I watch him for a moment.

Then I go back to receiving condolences.

He comes to my trailer eleven days after the funeral.

I am eating toast because eating toast is the minimum required nutrition and I have not been managing much above the minimum lately.

He comes in without knocking.

He has always come in without knocking.

He sits across from me at the small table and he has the expression he gets when he has made a decision and is managing the delivery of the decision. I have seen this expression before. When he decided to change our approach angle without telling me. When he decided to take the summer residency without asking if I wanted to spend the summer away from the Stellara.

I know this expression.

My gut knows this expression.

My gut has been sending me messages about this expression for two years and I have been sending them back unopened.

He says: I need to talk to you about something.

I put my toast down.

He says: I've been thinking a lot since the accident.

I say: okay.

He says: about my career. About where I am and where I want to be and whether this is still. He stops. Whether this is still the right fit.

I say: whether what is still the right fit.

He says: the Stellara.

The word lands on the table between us.

The Stellara.

Not us. Not our partnership. Not four years of performing together and sleeping in adjacent trailers and building something that the industry called extraordinary.

The Stellara.

I say: you're leaving.

He says: I've been approached by the Meridian company. It's a significant opportunity. International touring. A real stage. He says real stage the way he says it when he means as opposed to this. He says: I think I need to take it.

I look at him.

I say: when were you approached.

He says: recently.

I say: how recently.

He says: it doesn't matter when. What matters is.

I say: Marcus. How recently.

He looks at the table.

He says: a few months ago.

A few months ago.

My toast is going cold on the plate.

A few months ago my father was alive and the season was running and Marcus was signing satisfactory on pre-show checks and a few months ago he was already in conversation with the Meridian company about leaving.

I say: before the accident.

He says: technically but.

I say: before my father died.

He says: Ivy.

I say: you were planning to leave before my father died.

He says: it was just conversations. Nothing confirmed. He says it with the specific smoothness of someone who has rehearsed the distinction between just conversations and something confirmed and has decided the distinction is meaningful. He says: the accident just. Accelerated things.

I say: accelerated things.

He says: there's also. He stops. There's something else.

Something in how he says it.

Something in the careful way he is arranging his face.

My gut is not sending messages anymore.

My gut has gone completely silent in the way it goes silent when it already knows what is coming and is bracing.

He says: I've been seeing someone.

The trailer is very quiet.

I say: how long.

He says: Ivy.

I say: how long Marcus.

He looks at me.

And this is the moment.

This is the moment the performance ends.

I have been watching Marcus Vane perform for four years. The charm and the warmth and the I'll always catch you and the hand in mine at the funeral. All of it a performance. All of it calibrated. All of it the production of a man who understood very early that being likeable was the most useful skill available and developed it accordingly.

The performance ends now.

What is underneath it is something I have been trying not to see for two years.

He says: six months.

Six months.

He has been with someone else for six months.

He signed a satisfactory pre-show check with her name in his phone six months ago.

He held my hand at my father's funeral with her name in his phone six months ago.

He held me in the hospital corridor and said I'm so sorry into my hair with her name in his phone six months ago.

I say: who.

He says: her name is Celeste Voss.

He says it the way you say a name you have been waiting to say for a long time.

With relief.

I say: Celeste Voss.

He says: she's a performer. Meridian company. She's. He pauses and in the pause is everything he is about to say and everything he is not going to apologise for. She's extraordinary. Everything I. He stops again.

I say: everything you what.

He says: everything I need.

The trailer is very small suddenly.

I say: and I'm not.

He says: Ivy.

I say: say it. You're already saying it. Say it.

He looks at me.

And he says it.

He says: you were never going to be enough for where I'm trying to go.

He says it simply.

Like it is just information.

Like he has been carrying this assessment of me around for long enough that it has stopped feeling cruel and started feeling factual.

You were never going to be enough.

I sit at my small table with my cold toast and my eleven days of grief and my father's nod still living somewhere behind my eyes and I look at Marcus Vane and I think:

He means it.

He has always meant it.

The performance was always in aid of this moment. The choosing of me was always temporary. The I'll always catch you was always conditional on me being useful to where he was trying to go.

And now he is going somewhere I cannot follow and I have served my purpose and the performance is over.

He is not finished.

I find this out when he stands up.

He says: honestly? This. He gestures. This circus. These people. He says it the way you say these people when you mean people who are beneath you. This was always a stepping stone. I've been ready to leave for two years.

I say: my father built this circus.

He says: I know. He says it without the appropriate weight. He says: and it's a lovely circus. For what it is.

For what it is.

I say: my father died in this circus.

He says: yes. He looks at me with the eyes that I now understand were always calculating even when they looked warm. And I'm sorry about that. I genuinely am. But I can't let that. He stops. I can't let that be the reason I stay somewhere I was always going to leave.

Something happens in my chest.

It is not grief.

It is not the big heavy grief of Thomas and the hospital and the hand going still in mine.

It is something colder than grief.

Something that has edges.

I say: get out.

He says: Ivy.

I say: get out of my trailer Marcus.

He stands there for a moment.

He is surprised.

He expected tears maybe. Or pleading. Or the version of Ivy that overrides her gut and accepts reasonable explanations and gives people more chances than they have earned.

He did not expect the cold thing.

He does not know about the cold thing.

He has never seen it because it has never had a reason to arrive before now.

He says: I think with some time you'll understand that this is actually.

I say: if you say best for both of us I will pour this coffee on you.

There is a beat.

He leaves.

The trailer door closes behind him.

I sit at the table.

I look at my cold toast.

I look at the closed door.

I think about six months and Celeste Voss and enough and stepping stone and for what it is said about my father's circus eleven days after my father died in it.

I think about the satisfactory pre-show check.

I think about the bolt.

I think about what extended period means and how long a period and whether six months ago is when the extended period started and what that means.

My gut is not silent anymore.

My gut is screaming.

I pick up my coffee.

I do not pour it on anyone because he is already gone.

I drink it.

It is cold.

I don't care.

I sit in my trailer and I let the cold thing in my chest find its shape and its edges and its specific and particular form.

It takes a while.

When it is done I know exactly what it is.

It is not grief.

It is not heartbreak.

It is fury.

Clean and cold and specific and mine.

I stand up.

I go to the window.

Marcus's trailer is already half packed. I can see through the open door. Boxes. Bags. The specific efficient movement of someone who has been ready to leave for a long time and is relieved to finally be doing it.

He is on the phone.

He is smiling.

I watch him smile on the phone in the doorway of his half-packed trailer eleven days after my father died.

I watch him for a long time.

Then I turn away from the window.

I pick up the investigation report that Rosa gave me three days ago and that I have been trying not to read too carefully because reading it too carefully meant arriving somewhere I was not ready to arrive.

I am ready now.

I read every word.

Satisfactory.

Extended period.

Pre-show check found insufficient.

I read the name signed beside it.

Marcus Vane.

I put the report down.

I think about the bolt and the extended period and six months ago and Celeste Voss said with relief.

I think about my father in the wings.

Moving without hesitating.

I think about what I am going to do with what I know and what I still need to find out and who is going to help me find it out and I think about Rosa's folder and the one name left in it.

I pick up my phone.

I call Rosa.

I say: the catcher. The one left in the folder. Set up the meeting.

Rosa says: Ivy. Are you sure you're.

I say: set up the meeting Rosa. Today.

She is quiet for a moment.

She says: I'll call him now.

She hangs up.

I put the phone down.

I look at the investigation report.

I look at Marcus through the window still smiling on his phone.

The fury in my chest is cold and specific and very very clear.

Someone tampered with the rigging that killed my father.

And the person who signed it off knew.

I am going to find out everything.

And then I am going to burn it all down