The Aerialist’s Knee

Maeve’s left knee had a click in it that she could set her watch by, a dry, wooden sound that came whenever the humidity in Sarasota rose above eighty percent. She sat on her screened porch, her legs propped on an overturned plastic crate, watching the young acrobats from the circus academy practice their handstands on the public beach. They were young, their skin the color of copper pennies, their muscles smooth and untroubled by thirty years of cheap hotels and hard landings. Her own career had ended in a net in Ohio, a split-second delay that had left her with three steel pins in her patella.

The air smelled of fried catfish from the shack down the road and the sweet, rotting tang of red tide that had begun to wash up along the coast. Maeve reached for her glass of iced tea, her fingers stiff and slightly thickened at the joints from the arthritis that was her only pension. She had toured with the blue unit for twelve seasons, living in a six-by-eight compartment on the train, her costumes smelling of sequins and dry-cleaning fluid. Now, she lived in a park where half the residents were former clowns or horse trainers, their yards decorated with concrete lions and old iron rings.

On the beach, a girl in a red leotard was performing a series of rapid back handsprings along the hard pack near the surf, her movements so light she seemed to ignore the gravity that had broken Maeve’s leg. Maeve watched until the girl stopped, her arms raised in the traditional salute, her body silhouetted against the orange smear of the Gulf sunset. It was a beautiful pose, but Maeve knew the price of it—the cold ice packs at midnight, the smell of liniment on hot sheets, and the long, silent hours of waiting for the joints to stop their clicking.