The Motion of Puppets(56)
What would he think if he suddenly saw her in the barn? So changed as to be unrecognizable. He would walk right past her as though she were a stranger. Or a stranger still. There was so much she had not told him, sides to her personality kept secret during the months of dating and even after they had moved in together, after the wedding, too. She had always thought there would be time for the whole story. And he, too, hidden by the past, a stranger in many ways, the life he had away from her, the teaching he would be good at, he was a generous and patient man, and she imagined a gaggle of coeds would fall in love with him every semester. The French seduction. A man of words. Muybridge, she recalled suddenly. White beard, animals in motion. She could picture her husband hunched over the pages, moving Muybridge between languages. At the table, his shirtsleeves rolled up, and a serious frown of concentration that sometimes frightened her. Theo.
“What did you say?” the Good Fairy asked.
She would have blushed had blood run beneath her skin. “Theo,” she said at last. “Theo was his name. It just came back to me again. Sometimes my mind comes and goes about the way things used to be.”
With a creak of wooden bones, the Good Fairy sat beside her and put an arm around her shoulder, a weariness in the motion. A twig snagged on Kay’s collar.
“Better you forget all about him,” the Good Fairy said, as they untangled.
“I don’t think about him much, except to wonder if he misses me. If he is curious about what happened, or if he has forgotten about me yet.”
The Good Fairy rubbed her back in wide circles, the rough fingers scratching an itch that had not existed before. “I used to be just like you. When I first came into this world, it was passing strange. Imagine my surprise to find I’d been changed into this scarecrow, this bundle of kindling, where before I was a person just like you and the rest. For the longest time, I ached to be who I once was, to see my people—Lord, how I missed them. But I made my peace with it, took the advice of Mr. Firkin and the Queen and just put the past where it belonged. There is no past, only the right now. Much more appealing to think about what is to come.”
“Well, what is to come?” Kay asked. “Are we to be here for long? I heard the Deux Mains say to the people in the village that the next shows will be in the spring. Does that mean we’ll be shut inside through the whole winter?”
“You’ll learn,” the Good Fairy said. “Don’t measure the days as you once did, not as something to be endured but as an opportunity to rest. And savor the moments for what they allow.”
Behind them came a drumming on the floor, starting out slowly and softly and increasing in speed and volume. No? stomped her feet and growled, the tantrum intensifying till she threw her hands in the air and howled and caterwauled. “All winter, all winter. I can’t stand another minute.” Shrieking, she ran across the room and sped around the corner, heading for the barn door. The puppets were too shocked to react immediately, and they stood there, stunned, as her screams bounced off the walls, a spray of curses as she fought the lock.
Nix and Mr. Firkin were the first to move, and the others quickly followed, even the little dog madly barking at the commotion. Kay and the Good Fairy brought up the rear, trailed only by the Queen, who seemed to glide, her robes flowing like a bridal train. They found No? gnashing her teeth, wailing uncontrollably at the stubborn bar. As soon as she saw them, she banged her skull against the wood. “I’ll go mad if I don’t get out.”
Reaching over the tops of their heads, the Queen grabbed No? by the scruff of her neck and silenced her. She lifted her as if no more than a rag doll and wrapped her tightly in her arms. No? sobbed against the Queen’s bosom. Trembling, No? tried to catch her breath, but the attempts to stop herself only exacerbated the emotions. The others watched, wondering whether the Queen would crush her wire and paper body or offer comfort.
“There, there, child,” the Queen said. “We must have none of this. You know better. You know there is no way out by yourself.”
“I want to go home,” No? said.
The Queen stroked her face, ran her fingers over the bristly stubble on her bald head. They all waited for the sobbing to subside, reluctant witnesses to her despair.
“I want … I want…” And No? lost control again and buried herself more deeply in the billowy largeness of the Queen.
Kay could not bear to watch the suffering of her friend. She moved away from the pack, leaned against the wall, and peered through the crack between two boards. Another day approached. In the yellow and lavender light and shadow, she could see the frost coating the grass. In the jagged starlight under the setting moon, the ground sparkled and danced. Theo would have been mesmerized. Gathering her in his arms, he would have stood behind her, holding her until the night gave way. She, too, would go mad if she never saw him again.
*
Aboard ship on the Atlantic, Muybridge looked back at the United States of America for what would be the last time. Going home at last, back to England, back for good. He was sixty-four, but felt like an old man with a young man’s ambition. Turning toward the east, Helios, god of the sun, going back to its rising. The year before, his zoopraxiscope had played motion pictures at the world’s fair in Chicago. He had met with Edison and étienne-Jules Marey, worked in Philadelphia with the painter Thomas Eakins. He had toured the country, gone to and come back from Europe, lecturing to enthusiastic crowds enchanted by his moving images. The foundation had been laid for his two masterworks, Animal Locomotion and The Human Figure in Motion, but all he could think about on the wild gray sea was his wife and her lover, Harry Larkyns, and the bullet to the heart. And all that might have been.