The Funhouse

the past. This carnival was supposed to be humongous, the second largest in the world, two or three times bigger than the rinky-dink carnival that usually came to town. There would be a lot more rides than there had been in other years, a great many new things to see and do.
        But he wouldn't see or do any of them if he was two hundred miles away, starting a new life in a strange city.
        For almost a full minute Joey lay in the darkness, feeling sorry for himself-and then he sat bolt upright, electrified by a brilliant idea. He could leave home and still get to see the fair. He could do both. It was simple. Perfect. He would run away with the carnival!

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    8
        
        Wednesday morning the test results came back from the lab. Amy was officially pregnant.
        Wednesday afternoon she and Mama went to the bank and withdrew enough money from Amy's savings account to pay cash for the abortion.
        Saturday morning they told Amy's father that they were going shopping for a few hours. Instead, they went to Dr. Spangler's clinic.
        At the admissions desk Amy felt like a criminal. Neither Dr. Spangler nor his associates, Dr. West and Dr. Lewis, nor any of his nurses was Catholic, they performed abortions every week, month in and month out, without attaching any moral judgment to the act. Nevertheless, after so many years of intense religious instruction, Amy felt almost as if she were about to become an accomplice to a murder, and she knew that at least a residue of guilt would remain with her for a long, long time, staining any happiness she I might be able to achieve.
        She still found it difficult to believe that Mama had agreed to let her abort the fetus. She wondered about the fear in her mother's eyes.
        The operation was done on an outpatient basis, and a nurse took Amy to a room where she could undress and put her clothes in a locker. Mama remained in the waiting room.
        In the prep room, after a nurse had taken a - blood sample, Dr. Spangler came in to chat with s her for a moment. He tried to put her at ease. He was a jovial, chubby man with a bald head and. bushy gray sideburns.
        “You're not very far gone,” he said. “This will be a simple procedure. No serious chance of complications. Don't worry about it, okay? It'll be over before you realize it's begun.”
        In the small operating room, Amy was given a mild anesthetic. She began to drift out of her body as if she were a balloon rising into a high, blue sky.
        In the distance, beyond a haze of light and a curtain of whispering air, Amy heard a nurse talking softly. The woman said, “She's a very pretty girl, isn't she?”
        “Yes, very pretty,” Dr. Spangler said, his voice fading syllable by syllable, almost inaudible. “And a nice girl, too. I've been her doctor since she was a little tot. She's always been so polite, selfeffacing…”
        Soaring up and away from them, Amy tried to tell the doctor that he was wrong. She wasn't a nice girl. She was a very bad girl. He should ask Mama. Mama would tell him the truth. Amy Harper was a bad girl, evil inside, loose, wild, untrustworthy, just no damned good. She tried to tell Dr. Spangler how worthless she was, but her lips and tongue wouldn't respond to her urging. She couldn't make a sound-
        -until she said, “Uh,” and opened her eyes in the recovery room. She was on a wheeled cart with railed sides, flat on her back, staring at an acoustic-tiled ceiling. For a moment she couldn't figure out where she was.
        Then she remembered everything, and she was amazed that the abortion had been such a quick and easy procedure.
        They kept her in the recovery room for an hour, just to be sure she wasn't going to hemorrhage.
        By three-thirty she was in the Pontiac with her mother, on the way home. During the first half of the short drive, neither of them spoke. Mama's face looked like a stone carving.
        Finally Amy said, “Mama, I know you'll want me to keep a curfew for a couple of months, but I hope you'll let me work evenings down at The Dive, if that's the shift Mr. Donnatelli gives me.”
        “You can work whenever you want to work,” her mother said coldly.
        “I'll come home straight from work.”
        “You don't have to,” Mama said. “I don't care what you do. I just don't care anymore. You won't listen to me anyway. You won't behave yourself. You've loosened the