The Motion of Puppets(21)

They walked to the overlook and stood along the cast-iron railing and watched the boats go by on the Saint Lawrence. “Kay’s mother has been in touch with the cirque. She says you haven’t been returning her calls.”

Theo closed his eyes against the sunlight reflecting off the water. “I don’t know what to say to her anymore. She asks questions with no answers.”

“She’s distraught about her daughter.”

“Naturally. I know. I just cannot face her.”

“I’ve been getting this secondhand, realize. She spoke with the stage manager, who told someone who told me, so it is not from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. Her mother thinks you two had a row, a blowup, and Kay has run away from you and is hiding. Afraid of you.”

“Her mother barely knows me. Lost my temper? Why would Kay be hiding from me? We were happy.” Just as he said the words, he heard himself speaking of her in the past tense, and his voice caught in his throat. He pictured his mother-in-law back on her farm, fretting the days away over Kay, going about what chores she could manage in that stoic New England manner. While his first thoughts were sympathetic, he quickly grew angry about her suspicions. She had never liked him, not from the start. Perhaps the ten-year age difference with her daughter bothered her more than anything, though he could not be sure if a more fundamental distrust existed. She was unfailingly cordial to him, hospitable on the few occasions when they’d spent the night under her roof, but she focused almost all of her attentions on her daughter, as though he was not there. The last time they saw Mrs. Bird, at the wedding earlier in the year, she had seemed so fragile in her wheelchair. But there was a fierceness to her as well, a mother bear protecting her cub.

“Could be she has a point, the mother-in-law,” Egon said. “I don’t mean that Kay is afraid of you, of course not. And I don’t see her deliberately hiding from you. But perhaps she isn’t here at all. Perhaps she left the city. She took a wrong turn, bumped her head, ended up somewhere other than Old Town. We have been up and down these same streets a thousand times. Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong place.”

Blown by a sudden gust of wind, a derby rolled down the boardwalk, spinning on its brim until bumping into Theo’s feet. From a distance, the juggler came running toward them in an odd and curious manner. He moved like a mime pretending to run, a slow-motion gait in exaggerated steps. Theo thought of Muybridge’s photographs of the racehorse, how they needed to be viewed at the right speed to convey the illusion of galloping. Played too slowly, the sequence of images produced a herky-jerky notion of a horse, like this juggler who seemed to have slipped off the sprockets. Panting despite his awkward chase, the young man stopped in front of them and bowed deeply at the waist, like a puppet loosed from its strings. With a quick thank-you, he retrieved his derby and then trotted away.

“Nice catch.” A voice came from the other direction. It was Inspector Thompson with his partner Foucault. Theo wondered if they had been tailing him the whole day.

“We noticed you across the street,” Foucault said, “and thought we should say hello.”

“Any leads, detectives?” Egon asked.

Thompson joined them at the fence and grasped the iron bars. “I wish we had some news for you, Mr. Harper, but there’s nothing. We’re looking. We’ve recanvassed the neighborhoods and businesses between your place and the theater, but nobody saw a thing that night. Nobody watching the street at that hour.”

Except the gremlins, Theo thought. Except the little eyes peering through the little holes.

Egon lit a smoke and flung the match over the edge. “Is there any chance that she went somewhere else?”

Foucault mimicked his senior partner and joined the line at the fence. “We notified the provincial police straight away, and even the Mounties in case she’s gone off the farm entirely, so there are police officers all across Canada keeping their eyes out.”

“Of course anything is possible,” Thompson said. “Is there any reason to think she might have left the city, Mr. Harper?”

“None that I know of.”

“Did you two ever argue, Mr. Harper? I mean, above and beyond the usual why do you leave your socks about the place?”

He denied it with a frown.

“Did she ever talk about going home to the States? Any reason to believe?”

“What have you heard? Have you been talking to that bastard Reance from the cirque? Has my mother-in-law been calling you?”

“As a matter of fact,” Foucault said, “she told us that Kay worried about how possessive you can be, prone to jealousy. You didn’t lose your—”

“Her mother has no right to make such accusations. She thinks I stole her daughter away. I assure you everything was fine between me and Kay. We are happy.”

Thompson drummed on the iron bar with his fingers. “I apologize for my partner, Mr. Harper. Just considering the possibilities, so that we may dismiss the unlikely.”

Stepping away from the fence, Theo faced them all. “Listen, Kay wouldn’t leave me. She wouldn’t go off on her own. Don’t listen to all these false stories about a temper. I have no temper. I didn’t do anything to her, and never would. She’s here, I can feel it in my bones.”

*

The changeover always happened slowly. A spark flickered deep within, perhaps only in her mind or, as she now thought, at her soul’s center of gravity. The inside flame would go on and then off and on again until it caught hold, and suddenly she would be conscious, not quite aware of where and who she was, but able to think. In those moments of limbo, Kay remembered vestiges of all she had left behind: the circus, the balancing act, a man following her through darkened streets, Father, Mother, husband. He would be worried about her, why she had not yet come home. So late, she should send a text to explain how they got carried away, one drink becomes many, and how she tried to shake that persistent old lecher. She should be home with her man, his books and papers messing up the kitchen table. The Muybridge Obsession. Her husband whispering French to himself as he worked. His old-fashioned fountain pen marching across the blank page. In his own world, he could still be working and not have noticed how late it had gotten and the fact that she had not yet come home. Or when she did, he would be at her side in bed, his hand resting on her hip, but he was not here. And no hips, no breasts, her figure gone back to a child’s, the dawning awareness of the state she was in, a wire frame, cloth body, arms, and legs, stuffed, a head full of dust. Her puppetness came gradually upon her. The flatness of the shelf was now hard against her back, and she was very nearly overcome by how stiff she felt.