Chapter One
1956
Jonathan sat intently watching the spinning laundry. He could sit for hours in the laundromat, mesmerized by the circular motion of the dryers. There goes a blue strip of cloth, a yellow, a bright red. How merry it all appeared to him, like circus artists flouncing up and down solely for his amusement. Pajamas, socks, and hankies whirled and churned themselves into dancing clowns.
"Jonathan, bring me the detergent."
Jonathan reluctantly lifted himself up from where he was seated and side-stepped his way to where he knew the detergent had been left, without moving an eyeball.
"Yelp!" Mrs. Simpson's toy poodle was under Jonathan's foot.
"Get away from my dog, you little shit."
Jonathan's mother snapped her fingers in the middle of a clown's tummy. He followed the snapping fingers until they stopped in front of a worried face.
"Sorry, Mom."
Jonathan apologized both to the elderly Mrs. Simpson and her poodle. He then walked to the table and picked up his mother's detergent. After handing the detergent to his mother, he tried to return to his circus, but was prevented by snapping fingers.
"Jonathan, you spend too much time staring at the dryers. I think you become hypnotized by the motion. Why don't you run down the street and pick up a comic book?"
With a sour, squinty look he shuffled across the linoleum floor. As he opened the laundromat door, he looked back and saw a striped clown bob and weave and tumble in a merry farewell. Jonathan waved. He saw a movement from the corner of his eye. It was his mother waving to him. He nodded in her direction, but then gave a secret wink at the dryer before he exited.
The pavement was hot, and as he stepped off the curb he could see high-heel marks and tire treads in the tar on the street. Ninety-six degrees for the past three days. The prickly heat on his neck stung. Jonathan pulled his T-shirt up to his chin. It was air-conditioned at the Laundromat. Why did his mother send him out into this heat? he asked himself. In all of his ten years he could not remember it as hot as this.
Jonathan quickly bought a comic book. It didn't matter which it was. He wasn't going to read it anyway.
When he walked back into the Laundromat, Mrs. Simpson was unloading her dryer. The rambunctious clowns, now weary, slipped languidly into the laundry bag.
"I'll fold these when I get home," Mrs. Simpson said. "I'm missing my favorite talk show, and anyway, they'll still need to be ironed."
Jonathan's mother nodded at Mrs. Simpson, and then caught sight of her son.
"Did you get what you wanted?" she asked.
Jonathan hadn't wanted anything except to stay there, he thought. He raised his comic book up so that his mother could see what he had bought with his allowance.
His mother frowned.
"Batman. I wish you had picked up something less violent."
Jonathan crossed in front of Mrs. Simpson's poodle, which snapped at his ankle.
"He never forgets," whispered Mrs. Simpson to Jonathan.
He backed away from both the dog and its mistress. Then he saw a perky pink and yellow clown fall to the floor. The poodle seized it in its teeth. The dog shook its head violently, then laid its paws on the edge of the pink and yellow clown. The cloth ripped. Jonathan lunged for the material, and the dog instinctively snapped at his hand.
"Get away from my dog!" Mrs. Simpson's hand swept across the back of Jonathan's head.
"Mrs. Simpson!" screamed his mother.
A cacophony of raised voices backgrounded the demise of the pink and yellow clown. Jonathan could do nothing but watch the poodle shred the fabric as the women argued. By the time Mrs. Simpson left, bits of the clown, formerly Mrs. Simpson's bed jacket, were scattered across the floor.
"Wicked woman," muttered his mother.
Jonathan brushed away his tears with the back of his forearm.
Late that afternoon, Jonathan stretched the top half of his body out of his tenement window to view the other clowns dangling limply in the summer heat. Their appendages and shoulders were attached precariously to clothes lines. They had a free and daredevil style that the clothes in the dryer didn't. They hung without nets three, four, sometimes even five stories above the cement yard. Once he had seen one crumpled on the ground, badly soiled. The Emmet Kelly of the troupe, he had thought.
Suddenly a group started to dance. The ringmaster was yanking them back into their domicile. There they would disguise themselves as nerdly possessions and blend into the humdrum around them. The squeak of the clothesline was their only ovation. Jonathan silently cheered as the last clown quivered and flapped from the line's vibrations.
Every string of clowns would disappear before nightfall. Each would be stretched, smoothed, flattened out, and then folded to be tucked away inside a drawer or closet. They would be silent and motionless until freed in a revolving burst of hot air or shaken to life on a simple rope.
By dinner time, only one queue of entertainers was left. Jonathan assumed they would be gone by the time he finished supper. But they weren't, and night was hovering.
"Jonathan, come away from the window. I swear, people are going to think you're a Peeping Tom."
Jonathan moved into the living room and sat at the feet of his parents. He wondered what a Peeping Tom was. The family spent the next two hours in silence. They watched the picture tube spin out homogenized yarns. Jonathan preferred the clowns.
By nine o'clock Jonathan was tucked into bed. He peered out the open window next to him and saw that the entertainers were still hanging out. They swung high above the ground, spread across the fourth-floor windows. There was a giant sheet that fluttered and foiled, dragging the others with it in each burst of energy. Down near the end of the line, just above Jonathan's fire escape, was a red-and-white clown. Its legs occasionally brushed the rusted steel of the railing. The tips of the feet pointed downward ballet-style.
Jonathan sat up in his bed. His green eyes, brown hair, and freckles were a blur in the darkened room. He watched the clown kick and swing in the air. He stood atop his mattress and stared into the mirror across the room. One more look at the clown, and then he too spread his arms wide and kicked his feet. The mirror reflected only a very real little boy, who looked pudgy and clumsy. There was none of the breeziness that the fellow on the line had.
Jonathan jumped a few times and then landed on his behind. His bare feet touched the spongy carpet, and he walked to the window. While climbing onto the window ledge, he noticed that one of the clown's legs had become wound around the handrail. It pulled and tugged in the wind but couldn't pry itself loose. He was afraid the clown would be hurt, like the pink-and-yellow one earlier that day, so he climbed onto the fire escape.
The steel slats were scratchy and cool against his feet. Loose pieces of paint and rust stuck to his soles. His own pajama rustled to life in the summer breeze. Jonathan couldn't reach the red-and-white clown from his landing; he had to climb the steps. Jonathan was a sensible child and knew the danger. But he was excited--so he climbed. He climbed three steps before he could reach the desperate clown. As he reached for the cloth he looked down. Suddenly his body was swirling in little circles. He grabbed the handrail, and was elated by the thrill. His pajama sleeves fluttered in glee as his free hand touched the red-and-white clown. He unfolded the fabric and set the clown free. It gaily shimmered in the summer night, performing especially and only for Jonathan.
My jammies never get to hang recklessly in mid-air, he thought. He remembered the sweltering heat of the dryers as the breeze of the night sent a tiny chill through his body. Jonathan clutched the handrail with both hands and leaned over the railing.
"Wow!" He sighed.
Jonathan started moving up the steps, pulling on the handrail as if it were a mountain-climbing rope. He paused to dangle one foot in the air, without the feel of solid ground under him, while he continued to stare down at the courtyard. Then he put the foot on the next step.
When he reached the red-and-white clown's shoulders, he stopped. He held one hand out over the railing, and his pajama sleeve trembled in delight. He flicked his arm back and forth in space, and the sleeve started crawling up his arm.
"Don't be afraid," he whispered.
The sleeve stopped at his elbow and loosely swung in time with his motion.
"You're not scared." He giggled. "I bet you'd like to be out there with the red-and-white clown. So would I."
He leaned as far as he could over the railing and removed one of the clothes pins attached to the red-and-white clown. The clown dropped quickly, but like a circus performer he remembered seeing, it was caught at the last minute by the other shoulder, which still had a clothespin.
Jonathan's eyes sparkled. The suddenness had halted his breath for a mere moment, and then elation followed. Soaring and swinging high above the solidity of the earth was his dream.
Ten minutes later, after some of his own acrobatic maneuvers, Jonathan's own pajamas were dangling free in the world. And all that could be seen of Jonathan was his bare behind crawling back across his window ledge. 
