60 for 60: The Invisible Circus

By Emily Johnson

If, like me, you’re eagerly awaiting the release of Jennifer Egan’s latest novel The Candy House next month, you’ll appreciate how serendipitous it felt to find this excerpt from her debut novel in the Columbia Journal archives.

The Invisible Circus was published in 1994. This excerpt, which appeared in issue twenty-four/twenty-five of the Journal in 1995, follows sisters Phoebe and Faith as children, and their relationship with their vibrant, charming, sensitive father. Like Egan’s later work in A Visit from the Goon Squad, it can easily be read as a stand-alone short story.

Even early on in her career, it’s remarkable to see Egan demonstrate her characteristic ease in folding years of her characters’ lives over and under one another with perfect clarity. She involves us in these family dynamics from the first sentence; Phoebe longs for the attention that adventurous Faith gets from their father, and both sisters are acutely aware of his artistic temperament, wanting to make him happy, fearing what might make him sad.

We, too, are taken in by his charisma, his immensity, and his vulnerability; we understand how two young girls might want to both impress and protect him, even as we see them contending with an emotional weight beyond their years.

Through the romance and beauty of their privileged early childhood, there is an undercurrent of possible disaster, of things taken too far, the sense of a precipice. Their father will die not long after the events of this chapter, we’re told. Phoebe is angry with herself for not having watched her father more closely, as if by watching, she could have staved off harm. Watching, keeping a close eye on the ones you love, takes on many dimensions in this piece.

In the novel, Faith has died by suicide while traveling in Italy in 1970, and Phoebe goes on a journey to find out the truth of what happened to her sister. In many ways, when we meet her here as a child, she is already watching Faith closely as Faith surges ahead. “Walk into your fear,” Phoebe’s father tells his daughters, and the words hang for us like the root of the novel’s chord. “Let everything go and you’ll get it all back, I promise.”


Excerpt from The Invisible Circus

Jennifer Egan


While Phoebe’s father was painting her sister, Faith, Phoebe would bang objects sometimes to try to catch his attention, or rustle leaves if they were outside. Her father looked, but only for a second.

She tried disappearing, wobbling into the bushes in her bare feet or hiding up in her room, waiting for someone to call, but no one did.

Finally, in frustration, she went back to them. Faith reached for Phoebe without even moving her head—she was good at sitting for paintings. Phoebe slumped against her sister and, out of nowhere, she was happy. Their father grinned. “You’ve been ignoring us, squirrel,” he said.

Afterward Phoebe would run to look at the canvas, thinking she might be in the picture, too, but there was only Faith. And sometimes not even Faith was fully visible, just a hint of her face, a shadow or else nothing at all. But even then Phoebe saw her sister hidden among the trees or windows or abstract designs, like a secret. She was always there.

“It’s a gesture,” their father said, “an expression you make with your body.”

Diving lessons. A gigantic turquoise swimming pool, water syrupy-looking in the thick summer light. Three boards, the highest a virtual skyscraper attempted only by the sea­soned teenaged divers, doglike boys with short legs and long tapered torsos, girls whose slender bodies curved toward the water like birds diving for fish, entering it with so tiny a splash that they left an impression not so much of having dived as of having ascended.

“Sure you’re scared,” their father said. “Don’t fight it, that’s the trick. Walk into your fear. Let everything go and you’ll get it all back, I promise.”

Phoebe listened, mystified. She was too young to dive except from the pool’s edge, but her father’s face she under­ stood. He climbed on the lowest board and bounced, hand­ some in his faded trunks, his muscular body more like the boys’ than the half-melted physiques of the other fathers. He could still do a one-and-a-quarter, though he’d been much better back in the seminary. “Don’t fight the fear—let it swallow you,” he called, still bouncing. Their heads bobbed as they listened.

Abruptly he stopped and climbed off the board. “You poor kids,” he said. “You just want to get wet.”

From a reclining chair he watched them practice, gathering Phoebe absently into his lap, calling over her head to Faith and Barry. “You’re not ready for that,” he said when Faith headed for the middle board. She tried anyway, hit­ ting the water sloppily, legs flapping back over her head. “She’s a show-off. That’s not enough,” he remarked to Phoebe, adding with a laugh, “Too bad.”

For ten days each July, they came to St. Louis to visit Grandma and Grandpa in the mansion where their mother grew up, and while their mother played bridge with old friends or golfed with Grandpa, their father drove them to the country club. Thick grass surrounded the pool. You could have your lunch brought there: cottage cheese, salade  nicoise. No money ever changed hands; you just signed “3342” with a tiny yellow pencil and the bill went to Grandma and Grandpa. Early evenings, tanned and showered, martini in hand. Phoebe’s father would lift her into his arms to wait for her mother on the club’s flagstone terrace. As he gazed down at the sloping green lawns and egg-shaped flowerbeds, Phoebe felt his happiness. Behind the chugging locusts she heard the faint thump of tennis balls, like a heartbeat. There was a warm sweet smell of cut grass. He was happy. Phoebe drank her Shirley Temple, saving the cherry for last. Summer heat on her bare arms. filling the sky with strange, imaginary colors. It looked like heaven.

But he never painted enough. Driving the stakes of his easel deep into the lawn, their father would gaze up at the towering elm and walnut trees outside their grandparents’ house, everyone hanging back, letting him alone. “I can’t believe this is all I’ve done,” he’d say, panic in his voice at the discovery that he’d spent his vacation drinking cock­ tails, charming the club wives with his lean handsomeness, his roguish air of having come from somewhere else, someplace less fastidious. Now the vacation was over. Tomorrow they would fly home.

“I’ll bring them to the club today,” their mother said. “You stay and paint.” But no, no, he would take them. He was dying to escape.

Beside the pool their father lay back in a chair and closed his eyes. Phoebe and Barry and Faith clustered helplessly around him, frightened of a world that could reduce their father to such despair. Phoebe stared at his tense, unhappy face and wanted to help, but she felt so small. He couldn’t see her.

Faith kept glancing at their father, fidgeting with the straps of her bathing suit. Finally she rose to her feet. With dread in her face she walked slowly to the highest diving board and climbed its steps. She looked tiny up there, eleven years old, slim and deeply tanned, slightly knock-kneed. “Dad,” Barry said. Their father opened his eyes and rubbed them, followed Phoebe’s and Barry’s stares and sat upright, muscles tense in his neck. Faith stood a long time at the end of the diving board. A few teenagers waited impatiently below, craning their necks to see what was taking so long. Please do it, Phoebe thought. Please, please do it. Faith gave a tentative bounce. Then a clarity came to her movements, a stillness; she leapt high in the air, spread wide her arms and arced into a swan dive, head straight down like an arrow’s head, pulling the wand of her body toward the turquoise water. Her splash was minute—in years to come Faith would never again match that first, perfect dive, a fact that galled her-and their father leapt to his feet. “That’s it!” he cried. “Jesus, you see what she did?” He was grinning, his despair gone, and Phoebe knew the day was saved.

Faith must have known, too. She rose from the water, steamy chlorine footprints on the pool’s concrete lip, grinning from ear to ear as they all waited, and suddenly Phoebe was angry—why her? Why always her? Then, without warning, blood poured from her sister’s nose over her mouth and chin and neck, spattering the wet concrete, as if by accident she’d breathed out blood instead of air. Faith frowned, raising a hand to her face. “Oh,” she said, and there was a beat of confusion before their father bolted to her side, laid Faith gently on the grass and sent Barry running for ice, a wet towel.

When the nosebleed finally ended, Faith slept for a solid three hours. Their father moved her tenderly into the shade of a tree, but she didn’t wake; she was exhausted.

Phoebe and Barry went swimming, then ordered grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. At the sight of Faith’s thin, sleeping shape, Phoebe felt something move in her stomach and was ashamed of herself for having wanted her sister to jump.

Phoebe’s ragged memories of her father made her angry at herself; she should have watched more closely, should have memorized whole days from his life. She remembered the strength of his arms, the rough, easy way he would lift her to his chest—absently, as if she were a cat he wanted to put outside—would toss her into the air or spank her with­ out warning, so startling Phoebe that her crying came as an afterthought.

His dark mustache was unexpectedly soft. Mornings when her father and mother were still in bed, Phoebe would burrow between them, inhaling the milky warmth of their flesh, softer after hours of sleep.

Grandma and Grandpa O’Connor still lived in the South­ ern California town where Phoebe’s father grew up. Mirasol was mostly Navy—Grandpa had been a military policeman­—and the small olive-colored house where these grandparents lived could not have contrasted more starkly with the others’ St. Louis mansion. But Mirasol had the ocean. Sea wind rattled the doors of the   neighborhood church, grains of sand fell from prayer books. As Phoebe watched the priest break the Host, she would think, That could have been my father. He’d almost become a priest. Phoebe imagined his strong arms lifting the golden chalice to drink the blood of Christ, placing a pale Host on the tongue of each parishioner, murmuring “Amen” to their “Body of Christ.” But to Grandma and Grandpa O’Connor’s lasting sorrow, her father had refused a place at Holy Cross Fathers at Notre Dame and gone instead to Berkeley, where by his own account he endured his electrical engineering courses so at night he could play the bohemian. sketching nude models in paint­ spattered art studios.

Afterward he’d moved to San Francisco, lived in North Beach and worked the construction jobs that had cost him some hearing on the left side. On weekends he would set up his easel behind the Maritime Museum and paint the old blue-eyed Italian men who played bocci. Phoebe’s mother had met him there, on a trip to San Francisco with friends from Bryn Mawr a graduation present from her parents. After their wedding Phoebe’s father took an engineering job at IBM, the job Phoebe came to believe had cost him his life.

Phoebe grew up surrounded by sketches of Faith: in their mother’s arms at the hospital, at home in her crib, on a rabbit skin, splashing in her bath, in a high chair, car seat, playpen. Beside the vivid record of her sister’s childhood, Phoebe’s own existence felt shadowy. and this confused and enraged her. Seven years younger, she grudgingly endured stories of how Faith had lunged for everything in sight with her small, star-shaped hands: bees, hornets, broken glass, diamond earrings. Everyone spoke of her daring, how when her father pushed her on the swings Faith would egg him on, yelling “Higher! Higher!” until at four years old her swing overshot the bar it was attached to, wavered in midair and dumped Faith onto the sand.

Their mother screamed, bolted from the bench where she’d been rocking Barry’s stroller and ran to Faith, who lay crumpled in a heap. “Gene, how could you push her so high?” she cried.

“She told me to.” he said, shaken, abashed. “She kept saying ‘Higher.'”

Faith was white-faced, her lips dry.  Grains of sand fell from her hair. “Look at her.” their mother chided, lifting Faith up. “Honestly, Gene, she’s four.”

“Not hurt,” Faith whispered. When her parents eyed her skeptically, she insisted, “Not hurt.”

Years later the grandparents still would tease her. asking, Does it hurt? Does it hurt? No way, Faith always said, laughing. She was famous for that.

Phoebe tried in small ways to match her sister’s daring, taking little chances on her trike or with the neighbor’s dog, but Faith was always older, always doing more. When her sister’s exploits led her into trouble, Phoebe felt a surge of guilty satisfaction. Once Faith came home crying after a hunting trip in Sonoma with their father, a dead rabbit clutched to her chest. “Well of course it’s dead. You shot it, for Christ’s sake,” their father said, exasperated, but Faith hadn’t meant to: she loved to shoot clay pigeons but had never hunted, and failed somehow to realize that firing at a flash of brown fur would lead to something dying. She buried the rabbit in the backyard among the other beloved family pets (“Killed by me,” read its epitaph, inked on kindling wood with Magic Marker, and underneath that, “i am sorry. Bunny”). Years later Faith still mentioned the incident, that poor rabbit she’d murdered, by accident.

On the Osage River one Sunday: someone’s pier, slippery wooden slats, Faith pushing with the other kids until a boy sent her flying into the river with her sun hat on, in front of all the parents. Faith emerged dripping river water, laughing crazily under the sopping hat, waited until her assailant wasn’t looking and then threw her weight against him so the boy slipped, fell unevenly into the water, smacking his head on the pier as he went down, a big gash just above the left eye. Faith’s horror at the sight of his face running with blood, all the parents leaping from white grille chairs in a single motion. They rushed to the boy, whose eye was saved by half an inch— less—and while they rallied to get him to a hospital, Phoebe followed her sister to a hidden corner of lawn, powerless to stop her sobbing. Phoebe felt afraid then, touched by the bad thing Faith had done. Her sister disappeared for the rest of that day. They found her at nightfall, coiled tightly in a spare bedroom, fast asleep. Their father carried her to the car. Back at Grandma and Grandpa’s, Phoebe stood outside her parents’ door and over­ heard them arguing. ‘Tm saying stop encouraging her,” her mother said. “You see what happens.”

“How do you mean? Encourage her how?”

“I mean she does it for you. That wildness? Come on, Gene. You know perfectly well that’s for you.”

Her father’s voice was hushed, furious. “You think I told her to knock that kid in the river?”  he said. “I don’t tell her to be wild, Christ Almighty. She just does it.”

“You don’t have to tell her,” her mother said. “Any fool can see it makes you happy.”

Remembering her father, Phoebe pictured a man always struggling to carry too many things at once, children, brief­ cases, rolls of unstretched canvas. She saw him leaping up the garage stairs late for dinner after a poetry reading by one of the Beats he so admired, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gregory Corso, Michael McClure—all were his acquaintances. He’d even been present on the legendary night when Allen Ginsberg challenged a heckler to take off his clothes, then flung off his own before a stunned audience. Often their father painted late at night, stealing an hour or two when they’d all gone to sleep. He’d be up the next day before anyone, clean-shaven, smelling of limes. With dark circles under his eyes he kissed them all good-bye and drove downtown to his other life, the one he despised.

Weekends, he would haul his easel and canvas and paintbox to the cliffs near the Golden Gate Bridge. If Phoebe walked slowly enough, her father would sling her into his arms and carry her, too. Their mother followed with the blanket and camera and picnic basket, herding Faith and Barry. Only when they’d all finished eating would their father set his canvas on the easel and stand before it anxiously. Often he couldn’t paint, couldn’t make himself even begin and finally gave up, resting his head in their mother’s lap. But occasionally Faith would wander over and hand him a glittering purple flower she’d picked from the ice plant and some­ thing would hit him just right. “Baby, can you stay there a minute?” he’d ask, and always Faith would; Phoebe couldn’t remember her sister ever refusing in favor of some game or a fort she and Barry were building, though there must have been times when she’d wanted to. Or maybe not. Maybe nothing of her own could compete with their father’s need of her, her unique and seemingly bottomless power to save him.

Now and then Barry would emerge after hours alone in his room holding a machine, which he would show their father. Phoebe always dreaded these occasions, for try as their father might to look alert, machines were his work, and he loathed them. “You made this stuff in school, right, Dad?” Barry would say, always hopeful at first. “You got any ideas of how I can make this go backwards?” When he realized their father was only half listening. Barry would fall silent. “Forget it,” he’d say, and storm off, leaving their father startled, with no idea what he’d done wrong. No! Phoebe wanted to holler outside her brother’s door. No, no, no! He made everything worse. She felt such a terrible pain, knowing what would happen, unable to stop it. It left her sick. She pitied her brother and wanted no part of his weakness.

Their father was always struggling, always tired, but there came a time when he struggled harder to do what he’d always done, when suddenly he was exhausted. The circles under his eyes turned dark and moist as clay. Even his skin seemed weaker, bruising at the smallest impact. Phoebe and Barry and Faith no longer wumphed against him when he tottered home from work; now they seized his legs and held them tightly, filling him up with their strength, replenishing what IBM had drained away.

When Phoebe was five. she looked across the dinner table one night and saw her father sleeping. Her mother crouched at the oven with Faith, easing a toothpick into a chocolate cake. The kitchen was warm, an arc of steam on each windowpane.

“Daddy,” Phoebe said softly. He didn’t move. His lips were white. “Daddy?”

Barry sat beside their father, pouring salt on the table­ cloth and arranging it in piles with his fork. Normally their father would have stopped him-the salt mounds were a regular battle between them-and Barry wore a smirk of in­credulous triumph at what he was getting away with. He looked up at their father, whose head hung to one side. They heard his labored breathing. Barry grinned at Phoebe and pulled a few hairs on their father’s arm.

Faith galloped back to the table holding her cake be­ tween two red potholders. At the sight of their father she stopped. “Mom.” she said.

“Good Lord,” their mother said. dropping into a chair and gathering their father to her, so his head lolled against her shoulder. “Let’s get you to bed.” He nodded. rising slowly from his chair.

When their parents had left the room, the three of them stared at one another, unsure how to react. Barry’s grin still hung tentatively on his face. But Faith looked afraid and Phoebe felt it, too, like ice water down her spine. The cake plate still hung in Faith’s hands, forgotten.

The next day was Sunday.  Monday their father would go to the doctor. There was a false heartiness in the air. too much loud. bright laughter.

After church they went to Baker Beach. Normally the waves were bloated and sodden, pulling away from the gritty sand with a sound like deep-frying.  But today the sea was flat, silvery as a lake.

Their mother leaned against a log. one arm around their father. Faith and Barry rolled up their pants to wade and Phoebe ran behind them. shrieking when the icy water touched her feet. Barry wanted their father to walk with him to the far end of the beach, where giant mussels and purple starfish clung to the rocks.

“Don’t think so, Bear.” their father said. “Not today.” Barry looked crestfallen, and their mother offered to go. They set off. padding over the thick sand.

“Want me to sit for you?” Faith asked.

“I’m beat,” their father said. “You draw me for a change.” “Okay,” Faith said with energy. She sat. the big pad covering her legs. She held the stick of charcoal between two fingers and looked at their father. They both laughed shyly. “It’s hard,” Faith said.

“Damn right it’s hard.” he said, closing his eyes and resting his head against the log. “Just draw what you see.”

Phoebe leaned against her sister. Together they took in their father’s pale, spent face. Faith made a few lines, char­ coal trembling in her fingers. The longer their father’s eyes stayed shut, the more nervous they became. They had to keep him awake.

Faith stood up. The pad dropped to the sand. and their father’s eyes snapped open. ‘Tm going swimming,” she said, slightly breathless.

Phoebe looked up, surprised. This was not a swimming beach.

“In your clothes?” their father said.

“I wore a swimsuit.” She pulled off her sweater, hurrying, whipping off her stretchy pants to reveal a blue one­ piece with a white ruffle along the bottom. The wind made her shiver.

Their father sat up. ”I’ll be damned.” he said. “If you’d told me, I would’ve worn mine.”

“But you’re tired,” Faith said.

“Not that tired.”

Phoebe felt relief. Faith moved nervously on the sand. “Will you watch me?” she asked.

“Sure I’ll watch. Just don’t go too far out.”

“But watch.” Faith was always asking to be watched, having reached that age when nothing seems quite real without an audience.

Faith walked toward the sea. “She’s nuts,” their father said. and laughed. “Your sister is one hundred percent crazy.”

They watched Faith slowly enter the water. She was twelve, fragile in her adolescence: small breasts that astonished Phoebe whenever she caught sight of them, the slight­ est indentation at her waist. Phoebe saw from how slowly her sister walked that the water frightened her. So what, she thought anxiously. Get in.

Her father leaned against the log and gathered Phoebe into his lap. The top of her skull fit perfectly under his jaw. Together they watched Faith wade deeper into the water. “It must be cold as hell,” he remarked.

Faith turned to look back at them. “Are you watching?”

“We’re watching,” he yelled. “We’re wondering when you’re going to dunk your head.”

The instant he said it, Faith dove underwater and began to swim. With careful strokes she moved parallel to shore, first the crawl, then the breaststroke. She turned around and came back the other way. doing the backstroke and side­ stroke. Now and then she paused, calling out to make sure they were watching. Phoebe fattened their father’s yell with her own—she was happy, Faith was keeping him awake.

“You must be freezing to death,” he shouted.

“I’m not,” Faith cried through chattering teeth. “I’m warm as a desert.”

But gradually Phoebe felt her father’s head grow heavy above her own. Faith did the butterfly. “You see that?” she called. But the wind had risen, her voice was faint. Their father’s eyes must have fallen shut.

“Daddy?”

Phoebe raised her arm, but apparently her sister couldn’t see it. “Dad?” Faith called again. When there was no reply. she resumed swimming, faster now and away from shore. Go on, Phoebe thought, Faster! She felt unable to move, as if she could act only through Faith, as if her sister’s movements included her. Go, go, she thought, watching Faith’s shape grow smaller. Good! He would have to wake up now.

The next time Faith stopped, she looked tiny. If she  called out, Phoebe couldn’t hear. Faith lingered there, looking back toward shore as if waiting. Phoebe felt ready to explode with the urge to run to the water, shout that their father was sleeping again and Faith had to do something. But he rested so solidly against her, pulling long, deep breaths, and Phoebe felt paralyzed—not frozen so much as absent, without a body of her own. Go, she thought, Keep going. And as if hearing her, Faith began swimming again. It became hard to see her sister through the cold glitter of sunlight on the ocean. Phoebe thought she stopped once more, but couldn’t be sure.

It worked. To Phoebe’s vast relief, their father stirred behind her. He rubbed his eyes, shook his head and looked out to sea. He looked up and down the beach. “Where’s Faith?” he said.

“Swimming.”

He leapt to his feet, holding Phoebe under her arms. He set her down on the sand.

“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Where is she?”

It hadn’t occurred to Phoebe that Faith herself might be in danger. Now a sick, guilty feeling swelled in her stomach as her father bolted to the water’s edge. She followed slowly.

“Faith!” he bellowed at the top of his lungs. “Faith!” His voice cut the wind, and the force of yelling so loudly made him start to cough. “Faith,” he cried over and over again. Then he stood, one hand shielding his eyes,  and  stared  at the water. “I think I see her,” he said. “I think she’s out there.”

He turned to Phoebe, who waited timidly at his side. Her father’s pants were soaked to the thighs.  He took Phoebe’s    arm and walloped her behind so quickly and efficiently that she hardly knew what was happening until it was over. “How could you let her get so far out?” he shouted helplessly. “Why didn’t you wake me up?”

Phoebe began to sob. She had no idea why.

Their father resumed calling out to Faith. He hollered until he had almost no voice left, then he coughed and coughed, unable to stop, until, to Phoebe’s horror, he doubled over and vomited into the water. Afterward he wiped his mouth and began shouting to Faith again.

She was swimming back. Phoebe saw her sister’s tiny arms plowing the sea. Their father’s face was gray; he looked on the verge of collapse. He stood back from the water, breathing hard. Phoebe clung to his leg, and absently he cupped a palm over her head. “She’s coming back,” he said. “You see her?”

Finally her sister emerged from the water, frail and exhausted, nearly gasping for breath. From the look on their father’s face, Faith must have known she was in trouble. “You said you’d watch,” she said, without confidence.

Their father slapped her across the face, his palm making a loud, wet noise against her cheek. Faith looked stunned, then tears filled her eyes. “That didn’t hurt,” she said.

He hit her again, harder this time. Phoebe, standing to one side, began to whimper.

Faith was shaking, her thin limbs covered with goose­ flesh. With each breath her ribs stood out like a pair of hands holding her at the waist. “Didn’t hurt,” she whispered.

He hit her again, so hard this time that Faith bent over. For a moment she didn’t move. Phoebe began to howl.

Then he lifted Faith into his arms. She clung to him, sobbing. Their father was crying, too, which frightened Phoebe—she’d never seen him cry before. “How could you scare me like that?” he sobbed. “You know you’ve got my heart—you know it.” He sounded as if he wanted it back.

Phoebe put her arms around whatever parts of them she could reach, her father’s wet pants, Faith’s slippery calves. A long time seemed to pass while they stood like that.

Finally their father lowered Faith onto the sand. She looked up at him, her teeth chattering violently. “Daddy, are you going to die?” she said.

There was a pause. “Of course not,” he said. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”

“You’re not scared?”

“No, I’m not scared. Why, are you scared?”

Faith took a moment to answer. Phoebe thought of her father coughing, vomiting into the waves. She wished she hadn’t seen it.

“No,” Faith said slowly, “I’m not scared.”

He was dead within the year.



About the author:

Emily Johnson is a first-year fiction student in Columbia’s MFA program. She is the Event News Fellow for Columbia’s School of the Arts. Her fiction has appeared in PRISM international and been shortlisted for The New Quarterly’s Peter Hinchcliffe Award. She is a community organizer and freezer-cake enthusiast, dividing her time between New York and Toronto.