Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

That left Victor. Victor wasn't so bad. He was only seventeen, and he seemed even younger. He was a slight, stooped, timid boy with a frail tickle of a mustache that Emily longed to shave off. Once the others were gone, he moved his blankets to the rear bedroom. He showed up for meals looking shy and hopeful. It was a little like having a son, Emily thought.

By now they were completely out of money, so Emily started work as a paid assistant at Crafts Unlimited. Leon found a part-time job at Texaco, pumping gas. Victor just borrowed from Mrs. Apple. Mrs. Apple lent him the money, but gave out lectures with it She wanted him to go back to school, or at least take the high-school-equivalency test. She threatened to send him to live with his father, whom Emily had always assumed to be dead. After these lectures Victor would slink around the apartment kicking baseboards. Emily commiserated with him, but she did think Mrs. Apple had a point. She couldn't understand how things had gone this far, even; everyone seemed to be living lives without shape, without backbone. "When you think of it," she told Victor, "it's amazing your mother ever let you go to New York in the first place. Really, she's a very… surprising woman."

"Sure, to you," said Victor. "Other people's mothers always look so nice. Up close, they're strict and grabby and they don't have a sense of humor." Then Mrs. Apple came to Emily with an idea. (She probably felt that if she came to Victor, he'd turn it down automatically.) If they were so set on acting, she said, why not act at children's birthday parties? They could put an ad in the paper, get a telephone, borrow her Singer sewing machine to stitch a few costumes together. Mothers could call and order "Red Riding Hood" or "Rapunzel." (Emily would make a lovely Rapunzel, with her long blond hair.) They would gladly pay a good fee, she was certain, since birthday parties were such a trial.

Emily passed the idea on because it sounded like something she could manage. She would not, at least, freeze up onstage in front of a few small children. Victor was immediately willing, but Leon looked doubtful. "Just the three of us?" he asked.

"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.