“The Sleeping Beauty doesn’t marry the prince that kisses her awake,” says the baby. “She marries a different prince.”
The baby comes into my study — Marie away on an emergency day off, her father sick — to tell me a new story.
In this story, when the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by the prince she is angry at him. Why won’t you let me sleep? she says. If I wanted to be kissed, I would have told you I wanted to be kissed.
You looked so nice sleeping, I couldn’t help it, the prince says.
I hate you, she says. Ohhhhhh!
The prince, who knows how the story used to end, asks the Sleeping Beauty if she’d like to get married.
Are you kidding, prince? she says. I’m not going to marry someone who wakes me up when I’m trying to sleep.
The prince regrets having wasted a kiss in a lost cause. He asks the Sleeping Beauty to marry him one more time in case she didn’t mean her first refusal of him. The Sleeping Beauty says if there is one thing she can’t stand it is a man who doesn’t take her at her word, which is no.
The prince says that though there may be other Sleeping Beauties in his life, he’ll always love this one the best. Then he goes away. The Sleeping Beauty is sad when he is gone, but after a while she falls asleep and dreams of a prince who will never wake her up.
“He kisses too much,” Marie complains to me. “I don’t like so much kissing.”
“You don’t have to go into his room with him and close the door.”
A small glint of surprise animates her otherwise impassive face.
“If I had known that, I wouldn’t be in the present predicament.” She stands with her back to me. “I hope you won’t hate me when I tell you this. There’s another man in my life.”
“Another man?”
She nods, lets out an exhausted sigh. “My boyfriend is insanely jealous. About little things. I had to tell him what was going on, and now he wants me to give up the job. He even talks of punching the baby in the nose.”
“He sounds unbalanced to me,” I say.
“He’s a little unsure of himself,” she says. “Like, he’s had a difficult life. His real mother gave him up and he was brought up by foster parents, both of whom happened to be blind. It gave him a suspicious view of life. He wants to marry me.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“The baby. For my boyfriend’s sake, I think it would be best if I gave up the job.”
For the baby’s sake, I press her to reconsider her decision.
Couldn’t she stay until he got over his crush?
Again we misunderstand each other. She furrows her brow, a pucker of tension in her forehead. “My boyfriend?”
“The baby,”
“And what about me, what about my feelings? The baby will grow up, and find someone else. I’m twenty-two. In eight months, I’ll be twenty-three.” Tears fall. I put an arm on her shoulder.
There is a knock on the door. We freeze, unable to speak, watching the door slowly open.
“Oh, my God,” she whispers. “What should I do?” She panics and rushes to my closet, opening the door and flinging herself in.
“Where’s Marie?” the baby asks.
“She’s hiding,” I say. “See if you can find her.”
He punches me in the side, a gesture more of impatience than of anger, the intent symbolic rather than violent. “I don’t want to play that game.”
I nod my head in the direction of the closet, give Marie away in silence.
“If you see Marie,” the baby says in a loud voice, “tell her I’ll be in my room with Polly.”
The baby-sitter comes out of the closet. “So young and so unfaithful,” she says, hurrying out, turning to give me a sharp look as if I were implicated in some deception practiced against her.
Crashing noises assail my concentration. The baby, red-eyed, furious, returns, saying, “I’m going to tell. Marie is throwing things at me.”
“He started it,” she says, following him in. “He called me a name. You tell him to stop calling me names.”
“She tore up a picture I made of Polly and broke the arms off my Spider-Man model.”
Their grievances against each other extend and intensify, a competition of complaint painful to witness. I stand between them, a truce-team to defend against further outbreak of violence.
“You ought to punish him,” says Marie. “I think at the very least his television privileges ought to be taken away.”
“I think her television privileges ought to be taken away,” says the baby.
“I don’t watch television that much,” says Marie, looking at me as if I were the one who would deny her. “Still, I don’t need to be told things like that. That’s no way to treat someone who lives in your house. I’m not going to stay like that.”
The baby goes with Marie to her room to help her pack. Forty minutes later she emerges with a valise under each arm, the baby at her side carrying one of her plants.
“I don’t want her to go,” says the baby after they’ve kissed good-bye two or three times.
“I don’t want to leave my baby,” she says. Her momentum apparently a determining factor, she moves irresistibly to the front door. “I’ll come back and see you,” she says.
“Will you come tomorrow?” the baby asks.
“I’ll try,” she says in a voice that acknowledges the odds to be prohibitively against succeeding. “I’m going to miss him.”
“I don’t want her to go,” the baby says.
They say good-bye several more times, and when it seems that the procedure might go on indefinitely, Marie rushes out as if weeks late for an appointment she still hopes to keep. The baby waves and calls to her, banging on the window to catch her fleeting attention. We watch Marie walk away with her head bent forward as if she is bracing against a hurricane. In the distance, she seems almost as small as the baby himself.
“She was waving,” the baby says, “but I couldn’t see it because she was turned the other way.” His thumb eases into his mouth, a ship entering port.
A week without word of her has passed since Marie’s departure. The baby keeps an optimistic vigil on a footstool at the window. He pretends he is studying the weather for signs of change. Her name is not mentioned.
Occasionally, he sings the name to himself. Marie. Marie Marie…•Marie Marie Marie…Marie Marie Marie.
The day the baby stops watching for her at the window, Marie calls. Her voice is so low that I think at first she is calling from some great distance.
“Where are you?” I ask.
“Here,” she says.
“Are you in the country?”
“I’m just a few blocks away.” Her voice fading out: “Does he remember me?”
“Of course he remembers. Should I put him on?”
“I don’t know. My head’s so untogether. I’m such a mess. Maybe I’ll come over and see him.”
“Why don’t you come over tonight and have dinner with us. Look, he’d love to talk to you.”
“He would? If he does it quickly, maybe it’ll be all right. My boyfriend’s in the bathroom and he’ll be out, unless he gets into what he’s doing, in about five minutes.”
I call the baby to the phone. “Is it anyone I know?” he asks, wary about taking the receiver, a stranger to its pleasures.
I step outside to give him privacy, and light up a cigar I was saving for a special occasion. Five minutes later, the baby comes out of my study walking backward. “Why did you give me the phone?” he asks.