Anne Tyler - Morgan's Passing

"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.

It was mostly Leon's doing, their success. He still grumbled any time they had a show, but the fact was that from the start he knew exactly what was needed: dignified, eccentric little characters (no more squeaky voices) and plenty of audience participation. His heroes were always dropping things and wondering where they were, so that the children went wild trying to tell them; always overlooking the obvious and having to have it explained. Emily, on the other hand, cared more for the puppets themselves. She liked the designing and the sewing and the scrabbling for stray parts. She loved the moment when a puppet seemed to come to life-usually just after she'd sewed the eyes on. Once made, a puppet had Ms own distinct personality, she found. It couldn't be altered or submerged, and it couldn't be duplicated. If he was irreparably damaged-or stolen, which sometimes happened-she could only make a new one to fill his role; she couldn't make the same one over again.

That was ridiculous, Leon said.

She imagined the world split in two: makers and doers. She was a maker and Leon was a doer. She sat home and put together puppets and Leon sprang onstage with them, all flair and action. It was only a matter of circumstance that she also had to be the voices for the heroines.

Victor was neither maker nor doer, or he was both, or somewhere in between, or… What was the matter with Victor? First he grew so quiet, and paused before answering anything she said, as if having to reel Ms mind in from more important matters. He moped around the apartment; he stared at Emily sadly while he stroked his wisp of a mustache. When Emily asked him what Ms trouble was, he told her he'd been born in the wrong year. "How can that be?" she asked him. She supposed he'd taken up some kind of astrology. "What difference does the year make?"

"It doesn't bother you?"

"Why should it bother me?" He nodded, swallowing.

That night at supper he put down his plate of baked beans and stood up and said, "There's something I have to say." They still had no furniture, and he'd been eating on the windowsill. He stood in front of the window, framed by an orange sunset so they had to squint at him from their places on the floor. He laced his fingers together and bent them back so the knuckles cracked. "I have never been a sneaky person," he said, "Leon, I'd like to announce that I'm in love with Emily." Leon said, "Huh?"

"I won't beat around the bush: I think you're wrong for her. You're such a grouch. You're always so angry and she's so… un-angry. You think her puppets are nothing, a chore, something forced on you till you get to your real thing, acting. But if you're an actor, why don't you act? You think there's no theatre groups in this city? I know why: you had a fight with that guy Bronson, Branson, what's-his-name, when you went to try out. You've had a fight with everyone around. You can't try out for the Chekhov play because Barry May's in that and he'll tell all the others what you're like. But still you say you're an actor and you're so disadvantaged, so held back, wasting your talents here when there's other things you could be doing. What other things?" Leon had stopped chewing. Emily felt her chest tightening up. Victor was smaller than Leon, and so young and meek he would never hit back. She imagined him cowering against the window, shielding his head with his arms, but she didn't know how to step in and stop this.

"I realize I'm not as old as Emily," Victor said, "but I could take much better care of her. I would treat her better; I'd appreciate her; I'd sit admiring her all day long, if you want to know. We'd live a real life, not like this, with her ducked over her sewing machine and you off brooding in some corner, paying her no attention, holding some grudge that no one can guess at… Well, I'll say it right out: I want to take Emily away with me." Leon turned and looked at Emily. She saw that he wasn't angry at all. He was relaxed and amused, smiling a tolerant, kindly smile. "Well, Emily?" he said. "Do you want to go away with Victor?" She felt suddenly flattened.

'Thank you, Victor," she said, pressing her palms together. "It's nice of you, but I'm fine as I am, thank you."

"Oh," said Victor.

"I appreciate the thought."

"Well," Victor said, "I didn't want to sneak around about it." Then he sat back down on the windowsill and picked up his plate of beans.

The next morning he was gone-Victor and his tangle of blankets and his canvas backpack and his cardboard carton of LP records. He hadn't even said goodbye to Mrs. Apple. Well, it was a relief, in a way. How could they act natural after that? And she and Leon did need to be on their own. They were a married couple; it began to seem that they really were married. She was starting to think about a baby. Leon didn't want one, but in time he would come around. They could use Victor's room for a workshop now, and then for the baby later on. It was lucky Victor had left, in fact. But she hated how his woodsy, brown boy-smell hung in the empty room for days after he had gone.