Free The Invisible Circus by Jennifer Egan Page A

Sleep.”
    “Maybe Dad can see us,” Faith said softly, looking at the sky. “Maybe he’s watching.”
    Phoebe looked up. And yes, the sky and sunlight seemed fuller than on the other days, alive with their father’s watchful, humorous gaze. Phoebe stared into the fresh white sun and offered herself. Not alone—alone she was nothing—but as part of Faith, a small shape included within her sister’s outline. It hurt. Her whole body ached as if it were dissolving. Phoebe kept her eyes open as long as she could, then shut them. The darkness relieved her. “Poor thing,” Wolf said, rocking her to sleep.

five
    Phoebe’s mother had worked for Jack Lamont since 1965. He was a film producer, best known for White Angel , which won Best Picture in 1960. Phoebe had never seen the movie.
    She found Jack impossible to like, handsome though he was with his deep tan and pale blue eyes. A terrible chill seeped from beneath his warm-looking skin. “Hiya, Pheebs,” he’d say when she came in the office, then the pale eyes flicked away and that was it, her moment had passed. She would always be his secretary’s daughter. “He’s shy, that’s all it is,” her mother said, but that wasn’t all. Jack was a man in complete control of his life.
    Her mother had started as a part-time typist for Jack when their father was first diagnosed. Later she became his full-time assistant and now, thirteen years later, effectively ran his life. No decision he made was too sublime or mundane not to warrant her involvement: cutting partners from a deal, choosing restaurants on the Riviera (where she’d never been), Mexican golf resorts, birthday and Christmas gifts for his far-flung children. It filled Phoebe with pride that a man as cool and self-possessed as Jack could depend on her mother so heedlessly, as if her very touch ensured good fortune. Yet she resented the way his life loomed over theirs, his emergencies wiping out long-held plans in an instant. Barry claimed their mother had all the disadvantages of being Jack’s wife, without the benefits. “Benefits!” their mother snorted when he aired this theory. “There are no benefits to marrying Jack.” He was thrice-divorced, still engaged in legal skirmishes with his last ex-wife. “On the payroll” was his term for the fractured array of steps and exes and halves whom he still supported; if nothing else, their mother said, you had to admit the man was generous. (“Guilt” was Barry’s dour construction.) As for the wives, Phoebe’s mother still lunched with all but the third, who was keeping her distance until the legal matters were settled. Jack married interesting women, her mother said, although the throes of divorce sent him reeling into the soothing embraces of sweet, empty-headed starlets.
    Phoebe’s mother complained about her boss, but Phoebe knew she loved the job. She was co-producing a film with Jack—her first—a documentary on the life of one of Faith’s heroes, Che Guevara.
    Monday morning was drenched in fog, as if the city itself were still dreaming. Her mother drove, Phoebe sitting uselessly beside her, as always. She still hadn’t learned to drive. Her mother discouraged it, citing their solitary car, but Phoebe knew the true reason was fear for her safety. Not driving embarrassed her. Like all her mother’s restrictions it divided Phoebe from her peers, but she accepted it as she did not smoking, watching enviously as friends mouthed perfect silky rings, gulping down luscious French inhales like whipped cream.
    “I’ve been thinking,” Phoebe said, “about maybe going somewhere.”
    Her mother glanced at her. “Like where?”
    “Europe.”
    “What for?”
    “Just, I don’t know. Just travel. Maybe start college a year late.”
    There was a long pause. “This seems a little out of left field,” her mother said.
    “I know it,” Phoebe said bitterly. “Because I never do anything.”
    “Sweetheart, you’re about to start college,” her