"We could change costumes a lot. And there are always people around here, if we're really stuck for more characters."
"We could use my mother for a witch," Victor said.
"Well, I don't know," Leon said. "I wouldn't even call that acting, if you want to know the truth."
"Oh, Leon." She dropped the subject for the next few days. She watched him weighing it in his mind. He came back from the Texaco station with his hands black, smearing black on the doorknobs and the switchplates. Even after he washed, black stayed in the creases of his skin and rimmed his fingernails. Sitting on the kitchen counter waiting for his tuna, he spread his hands on his knees and studied them, and then he turned them over and studied them again. Finally he said, "These children's plays, I suppose they'd do for a stopgap." Emily said nothing.
He said, "It wouldn't hurt to give it a try, just so we don't get stuck in it." Now, all this time Emily and Victor had been laying their plans, they'd been so sure he would change his mind. They'd already ordered a phone for the kitchen. It arrived the day after Leon gave in. They placed an ad in the papers and they made a large yellow poster to hang in Crafts Unlimited. Rapunzel, Cinderella, Red Riding Hood, the poster read. Or… you name it. ("Just so it doesn't take a cast of thousands," Leon said.) Then they sat back and waited. Nothing happened.
On the sixth day a woman phoned to ask if they gave puppet shows, "I don't need a play; I need a puppet show," she said. "My daughter's just wild about puppets. She doesn't like plays at all."
"Well, I'm sorry-" Emily said.
"Last year I had Peter's Puppets come and she loved them, and all they charged was thirty-two dollars, but now I hear they've moved to-"
"Thirty-two dollars?" Emily asked.
"Four dollars a child, for seven guests and Melissa. I felt that was reasonable; don't you?"
"It's more than reasonable," Emily said. "For a puppet show we get five per child."
"Goodness," the woman said. "Well, I suppose we could uninvite the Macintosh children." In the two weeks before the party Emily borrowed Mrs. Apple's sewing machine and put together a Beauty, two sisters, a father, and a Beast, who was really just a fake fur mitten with eyes. She chose "Beauty and the Beast" because it was her favorite fairytale. Victor said he liked it too. Leon didn't seem to care. Plainly, as far as he was concerned, this was just another version of the Texaco job. He hardly noticed when Emily came prancing up to him with her hand transformed into Beauty.
She cut a stage from a cardboard box, and bought gauzy black cloth for the scrim. She and Victor clowned together, putting on doll-like voices to match the puppets' round faces. They had the two sisters sing duets and waltz on the kitchen windowsill. Leon just looked grim. He had figured out that most of their fee had already been spent on materials. "This is not going to make us rich," he said.
"But think of next tune," Emily said, "when we'll already be equipped."
"'Oh, Emily, let's not have a next time." On the day of the party-a rainy winter afternoon- they loaded everything into Victor's mother's car and drove north to Mrs. Tibbett's stucco house in Homeland. Mrs. Tibbett led them through the living room to a large, cold clubroom, where Leon and Victor arranged the cardboard stage on a Ping-Pong table. Meanwhile Emily unpacked the puppets. Then she and Victor set the two sister puppets to whispering and snickering, trying to get Leon to join in. He was supposed to work the Beast, which he'd never even fitted on his hand; and he'd had to be told the plot during the drive over. He claimed the only fairytale he knew was "Cinderella." Now he ignored the puppets and paced restlessly up and down, sometimes pausing to lift a curtain and peer out into the garden. It was because of his parents, Emily thought. This house resembled his parents' house, which Emily had once visited during semester break. The living room had that same stiff, icy quality, with the pale rugs that no one seemed to have walked on and the empty vases, the ticking silence, the satin striped chairs, where obviously no children were ever allowed to sit. Mrs. Tibbett, even, was a little like Mrs. Meredith-so gracious and honeyed, her hair streaked, her mouth tight, with something unhappy beneath her voice if Leon would only hear it. Emily reached out to pat his arm, but then stopped herself and curled her fingers in.
The doorbell rang-a whole melody. "It's a goddamned cathedral," Leon muttered. The first guests arrived, and Melissa Tibbett, a thin-faced, homely child in blue velvet, went to greet them. These children were all five years old or just turning six, Mrs. Tibbett had said. They were young enough to come too early, with their party clothes already sliding toward ruin, but old enough, at least, not to cling tearfully to the birthday presents they'd brought. Emily supervised the opening of the presents. Mrs. Tibbett had vanished, and the two men seemed to think that dealing with the children was Emily's job. She learned the names that mattered- the troublemaker (Lisa) and the shy one who hid in corners (Jennifer). Then she settled them in front of the puppet show.
Victor was the father. Emily was each of the daughters in turn. Concealed behind the scrim, she didn't feel much stage fright. "What do you want me to bring you, daughter?" Victor squeaked.
"Bring me a casket of pearls, Father," Emily piped in a tiny voice.
Leon rolled his eyes toward the ceiling.
"What do you want me to bring you, Beauty?"
"Only a rose, Father. One perfect rose." She could see the outlines of the children through the scrim. They were listening, but they were fidgety underneath, she thought. It made her nervous. She felt things were on the verge of falling into pieces. During the father's long scene alone in the palace, she saw Mrs. Tibbett's fluttery silhouette enter and stand watching. What a shame; she'd come during the dull part.
"Oh. A table has been laid for me, with lovely foods," the father said. "And look: a fine gold bed with satin sheets. I wonder to whom this belongs." Mrs. Tibbett shifted her weight to the other foot.
Then the Beast arrived. Emily expected him to roar, but instead he spoke in a deep, chortling growl that took her by surprise. "Who's gobbled up all my food?" he asked plaintively. "Who's been sleeping in my bed?" (Oh, Lord, she hoped he hadn't confused this with "Goldilocks.") "My lovely bed, with the satin sheets to keep my hairdo smooth!" he groaned.
The children laughed.
An audience. She saw him realize. She saw the Beast raise his shaggy head and look toward the children. Their outlines were still now and their faces were craned forward. "Do you know who?" he asked them.
"Him!" they cried, pointing.
"What's that you say?"
"The father! Him!" The Beast turned slowly. "Oho!" he said, and the father puppet shrank back, as if blown by the Beast's hot breath.
After the show the maid passed cake and punch around, but most of the children were too busy with the puppets to eat. Emily taught them how to work the Beast's mouth, and she had Beauty sing "Happy Birthday" to Melissa. Mrs. Tibbett said, "Oh, this was so much better than last year's 'Punch and Judy.'"
"We never do 'Punch and Judy,' " Leon said gravely. "It's too grotesque. We stick to fairytales."
"Just one thing puzzles me," said Mrs. Tibbett.
"What's that?"
"Well, the Beast. He never changed to a prince." Leon glanced over at Emily.
"Prince?" Emily said.
"You had her living happily ever after with the Beast. But that's not how it is; he changes; she says she loves him and he changes to a prince."
"Oh," Emily said. It all came back to her now. She couldn't think how she'd forgotten. "Well…" she said.
"But I guess that would take too many puppets."
"No," Emily said, "it's just that we use a more authentic version."
"Oh, I see," Mrs. Tibbett said.
By spring they were putting on puppet shows once or twice a week, first for friends of Mrs. Tibbett's and then for friends of those friends. (In Baltimore, apparently, word of mouth was what counted most.) They made enough money so they could start paying Mrs. Apple rent, and Leon quit his Texaco job. Emily went on working at Crafts Unlimited just because she enjoyed it, but she earned almost as much now from the extra puppets that she sold there. And gradually they began to be invited to school fairs and church fund-raisers. Emily had to sit up all one night, hastily sewing little Biblical costumes. A private school invited them to give a show on dental hygiene. "Dental hygiene?" Emily asked Leon. "What is there to say?" But Leon invented a character named Murky Mouth, a wicked little soul who stuffed on sweets, ran water over his toothbrush to deceive his mother, and played jump-rope with his dental floss. Eventually, of course, he came to a bad end, but the children loved him. Two more schools sent invitations the following week, and a fashionable pedo-dontist gave them fifty dollars to put on a Saturday-morning show for twenty backsliding patients and their mothers, who (Emily heard later) had to pay twenty-five dollars per couple to attend.