The Motion of Puppets (24 page)

“Get your hands off her,” Theo shouted, his face pressed between the bars, and as soon as he spoke, her eyes widened with alarm, and the man reflexively let go of her, and she pivoted on her heels and made her way to Fifth Avenue, running as fast as possible through the clots of people on the sidewalk. By hesitating for one moment, Theo lost the chance to catch her, and by the time he found the exit from the zoo, he could not spot her anywhere. He walked quickly up the avenue, looking for her along the way to see if she had doubled back into the park and was waiting for him, but she would not be found.

She did not answer her cell phone. She did not answer the intercom when he buzzed her apartment building, and he sat on the stoop till nightfall, hoping to intercept her. In those long hours, all he could see was the image of her sprinting crazily through the streets of New York, and his thoughts ran wild with conjecture about the man on the sidewalk and why she had fled rather than simply talk to Theo. Everything that he knew about her seemed to fly away, every dream seemed to curdle. At midnight, he gave up and went home.

Another full day passed before she reappeared on a Tuesday morning in the spy hole in his front door. With a box of rugelach and two coffees, she appeared contrite. The worry that had eaten at him gave way to a gush of relief. He threw his arms around her and led her in.

“What happened to you Sunday? Where have you been? I've been worried sick.”

Pulling him close, she kissed him, trembling in his arms till he returned her embrace.

“What is it, Kay? What's wrong?”

Breaking from the embrace, she positioned herself behind an armchair, holding on to the wings for protection. “I can't tell you. If I tell you, you will want nothing to do with me.”

Theo remembered that moment as a crossroads, but at the time, his answer was spontaneous and unequivocal. “There's nothing you could say that would make me want to end this. Is it about that man you were arguing with? Your boyfriend?”

She laughed nervously, apprehending his thoughts for the first time. “Barry? Not in the way you are thinking. There's nothing between us, honestly. Not anymore. Nothing romantic, if that's what you are afraid of, if that's what you mean.”

“But you were yelling at him, and he would not let go.”

“You'll hate me.”

“Say anything.”

“He's a mistake, a bad influence,” she said. “That's not exactly right. He's a guy who can get his hands on drugs. That's what we were arguing about. That's why I ran away from you.”

Her confession stunned him.

“I'd needed some speed. There were back-to-back auditions, and I've been feeling run-down and tired. When I saw you there, you were early, you weren't supposed to be so early. I didn't want you to know, so I ran away.”

“Are you still using? Are you still seeing him?”

“Lord no,” she said. “A little boost to get me through a rough patch. I hadn't seen him in ages, but I knew that he could hook me up. But I've stopped. I'll stop.”

“Except for Sunday.”

“One time,” she said. “Look, he said he was interested, but I'm not. That's why we were fighting. I was trying to end things for good. Untangle the strings.”

The moment proved a fulcrum between doubt and trust. He canceled his classes for the day, and they talked all morning, shedding layers of the past. Soon enough they worked their way back to each other, tempered now by the moment. It wasn't the drugs, so much, for he had experimented in his own foolish youth. It was her disappearance, how she did not trust him and instead had run away from him. How Kay had not realized that he would be so frightened. “I do not want to live without you,” he told her in bed that afternoon, and she had held on tightly and told him she would not leave. And here he was, living despite her absence.

Tell me where you are, and I will come find you.

The computer chimed when he switched it on, and from the couch, Egon mumbled in his sleep. Just past two in the morning. Careful not to wake him, Theo plugged in his earbuds and clicked on the bookmarked video. He watched the parade again. The video began midstream, a second of shaking as the camera sought its subject. Light fluctuated, too dark, too bright, and then a balanced exposure. Disembodied voices from the crowd, children oohing and aahing as each puppet came into view. “Look at her,” some child said clearly when Kay appeared, and he froze the image. She was beautiful as a puppet, her countenance serene, almost peaceful. She looked like an Art Nouveau exaggeration, herself and not herself. The sculptors had captured the heart shape of her face framed by a stylized sweep of hair. And the arc of her cheekbones sharp against the smooth paper skin, the slight overbite that pushed forward her smile, the delicacy of her small ears, the set of her eyes beneath the arch of her brows. He clicked the mouse and set the video in motion, and she was gone as suddenly as she had appeared, and then the children screamed with delight as the giant queen arrived, her handlers struggling to keep her aright and steady, and then she filled the frame before all went suddenly black. The last moment was nearly terrifying in the extreme close-up, as if the taping had suddenly become too intense for the videographer, as if the scene were swallowing the camera. He whispered to the screen, “How could you have gone away?”

Late into the night he typed his corrections to Muybridge, one ear on his snoring friend Egon and one ear attuned to the music of translation. Although the publisher would surely have further questions and corrections, Theo was giddy to be nearly done, the work so long a part of his life. At dawn he put on a pot of coffee and muscled through the transcription of his own spidery handwriting, some pages taking him back to Québec, back to that misery. The morning brightened. There was only one direction: forward.

“I'm finished,” he said to Egon as soon as he arose. “Let's find those puppets.”

 

Book Three

 

19

Cozied in his office, Mitchell listened to their story from start to finish, surrounded by the artifacts of his passion for the ancient world. From over his shoulder, a bust of Aristotle looked down on Theo and Egon, and the bookshelves were crowded with titles in Greek and Latin. He seemed open and credulous, nodding at certain points as though he recognized elements that mirrored his vast knowledge of mythology. When Theo and Egon had finished, he leaned back in his chair and toyed with a shard of pottery decorated with a chain of fearsome maidens linked in a ritual dance.

“What do I know of puppets? I would like to say it was the Greeks who invented the puppet, but they are older than that by thousands of years. The Egyptians buried clay puppets with the mummified corpses in their tombs. Pull the strings, and their marionettes could knead bread. Even the dead get hungry in the afterlife. In India thousands of years ago, they made a terra-cotta monkey who could be made to climb a stick, and there are puppets mentioned in the Mahabharata and the Kama Sutra.”

“Kama Sutra, you don't say,” Egon whispered an aside. “I'd like to see that.”

“Shadow puppets of ancient China, the bunraku of Japan, the wayang of Java, still in use to this day. The American aboriginals had their totemic dolls with movable arms and legs, and Cortez, who brought along his own puppeteers, encountered such figures among the Aztecs. They have been with us for millennia all over the world. An ancient impulse.”

Theo cleared his throat. “There was one of those primitive aboriginal dolls in the window of the Quatre Mains. Native American. Inuit, maybe? Kay fell in love with it.”

“The doll and the puppet are really an expression of our desire to create and control life,” Mitchell continued. “We make a little man—”

Egon wriggled in his chair and scowled.

“I beg your pardon,” Mitchell said. “Figuratively, hah, in every sense, a simulacrum. A homunculus, a human machine. Like us, but not like us. A stand-in, an actor that can be put in motion, made to speak, and suffer indignities or lift us to transcendence. You see it as well in icons and idols. These effigies that you showed me on the computer.”

On the edge of his seat, Egon interjected, “Giant puppets. Life-size. And larger than life.”

Setting down the pottery shard, Mitchell leaned across the desk. “Small or large, on the end of a finger or lifted by a dozen men, the idea is the same. What did Horace say? ‘Man is nothing but a puppet on a string'?

“You know, when I was about eight years old, I saw a Punch-and-Judy show, and the whole time Punch fought with Judy, the crocodile sneaked up behind him, and the man lifted the slapstick to strike the woman and hit the crocodile on the backswing. Completely by accident. Again and again. We kids shrieked and hollered, ‘Look out, look out!' but Punch never bothered to glance over his shoulder. Those jaws would open wide, a mouth filled with sharp teeth, and slap, down he would go. After a few rounds, the croc got wise and sneaked around to the other side. Behind Judy.”

“What happened next?” Theo asked.

“He ate her up. First try.”

Egon laughed. “There's a lesson there.”

“And then Punch started deliberately hitting the crocodile with the slapstick, and all the children roared. What the lesson is depends upon your point of view. Turns out all right for Mr. Punch, not so much for Judy and the crocodile. I can remember it like yesterday.”

“So you will help us?” Theo asked.

“I had nightmares about that crocodile for months. One bite and she was gone.”

Thumping his fist on the desk, Egon said, “Enough of your Greek and crocodiles. Your car, man. We came to ask if we could borrow your car.”

“To hunt for puppets?”

“Or at least the puppeteers,” Theo said. “To see if we can find out what happened to my wife.”

“And you think she is a puppet? She underwent a metamorphosis?”

“Precisely,” Egon said.

Theo contradicted him immediately. “Well, no, not exactly. We just need a car. To go to Vermont for a few days. See my mother-in-law and learn what we can about this puppet that looks like my wife.”

“Why didn't you say so? Of course you can borrow my car,” Mitchell said. “On one condition. I want to help. You let me drive.”

“Our bags are packed,” Egon said. “We knew you couldn't say no.”

“An adventure,” Mitchell said. “Boys, I would go to Hades and back for a good quest.”

*   *   *

They took the scenic route along the Hudson River shrouded in the gloom of an early November Friday afternoon. Mitchell drove his old Ford station wagon slowly and carefully, regaling his captive passengers with tales from the classical myths. Egon kibitzed from the backseat, pointing out the state police lurking on the shoulders long before the others noticed. They passed into Vermont, almost without realizing the time and the landscape flying by. The mountains rose dramatically from the road on the way to Bennington. Using the map on his smartphone, Theo barked out the directions, and they arrived just north of town at his mother-in-law's farmhouse by dusk.

After all that had happened, he was not prepared to see Dolores again. Now that they were back in touch, he had heard a note of forgiveness and hope over the phone, especially after she had shared the news about the Halloween parade. Still, he could not be sure what she might say or do in person. And certainly not how she might react to his two friends in tow.

Mitchell and Egon walked up the wheelchair ramp to the porch, and Theo took the stairs. Waiting for them at the front door stood Mrs. Mackintosh. He had forgotten about the Scottish next-door neighbor who often looked in on Dolores and helped her with the domestic chores. With a crook of her index finger, she bade them be quiet as they entered the house.

“The poor dear was up to high doh,” she said. “Now she's dead tired from all the anticipation ever since you called to say you were coming. I tucked her into bed for a wee nap, and she'll be cracking to see you after a spell.”

The travelers settled in the front parlor, and Mrs. Mackintosh went into the kitchen for the tea things. The house held memories of Kay in unexpected places. Dozens of framed photographs on the wall marking Kay's childhood and a few more recent shots. Her father had been the photographer in the family, and it was clear that he had doted on her. Their only child. But the objects held an associate power, a reminder of the world from which she had come. The feel of the doorknob in his hand, the cones of lamplight on the corner tables, the cut-glass dish of hard candies centered on the coffee table. A roast in the oven reminded him of Sunday nights. On the mantel, a great clock ticked, an antique machine with painted oval portraits of Washington and Lincoln said to have once belonged to the latter's son Robert, down at Hildene. The click of nails on the hardwood floors preceded the appearance of a great beast sauntering from the back rooms. Their old bluetick coonhound named Sal, a last connection to Kay's father, recognized Theo at once with a look from her mournful brown eyes. Her tail spun in circles as she trotted to his side and buried her head in his lap, and when he reached down to greet her, she drank in the scent of him and rolled onto her back, begging for attention.

“Get on offa that,” Mrs. Mackintosh scolded the dog. She set down a pot of tea and the service, complete with a plate of shortbread, and the men fell to it, pushing aside the dog's curious nose.

“I want you to know, Theo, just how sorry I am for your loss. Miss Kay was a fine young woman, much loved, and sorely missed.”

Theo looked up from the dog. “Missing, yes. But not yet gone.”

The smile melted from her face. “Dolores says as much. She has been going on about those puppets ever since they showed up on the telly, but I'm afraid there'll be no good of it. You mustn't get her hopes too high.”

Mitchell and Egon munched their cookies, staying out of the way.