The Russian sisters played a series of roles in many of the scenes, but Kay’s favorite was “Cinderella Goes Shoe Shopping,” with Irina in the title role and the other two as the stepsisters complaining about their feet. Mr. Firkin played the hapless clerk trying to serve all three at once. But it was the ending that fascinated and terrified Kay. By some magical trick, the shoes—also wired—began to dance by themselves in a frenzy, clattering on the stage as the puppeteers stomped on the floor behind them. All five puppeteers worked the actors, but the Quatre Mains handled pairs and pairs of shoes, furious with the sticks, so many flying wires that he indeed seemed to have four hands.
Most of the time, Kay’s role as MC was to fill in the intervals between the skits, but for “Punch and Judy’s Final Grudge Match,” she played the part of the ringside announcer as Stern’s Punch was relieved of his slapstick and pummeled senseless by Finch’s Judy. Unlike most of the puppets in the show, the Punch and Judy were strangers to her. They had not come from the Back Room, and it took her a while to figure out where she had seen them before. They had been in the front display window of the old store in Québec. They were stock characters, mere toys compared to her friends. Kay caught herself longing for someone she used to love. The man in the bell jar.
Every performance sped by, barely time backstage for the troupe, soaked with sweat, to change the puppets’ costumes, shift props, wheel backdrops into place. The giants possessed a manic energy, their faces lit with joy as they pulled strings, worked the rods and levers, donned the glove puppets. Bending to her, the Deux Mains smoothed the wrinkles from Kay’s dress and checked the straps to ensure the rods would stay in place.
“The grand finale,” she whispered to Kay. “Keep it real.”
In the darkness, the giants took their places. Finch, Stern, and Delacroix handled the Three Sisters and the puppet playing Marmee. The Quatre Mains took control of the rods at Kay’s feet, and the Deux Mains operated her hands and mouth. A spotlight shone, and they walked Kay to the edge of the doorway.
“The death of Beth,” she intoned. “Or, the last of a little woman.”
With an assist from Finch and Stern, she maneuvered into bed. A pneumatic device arranged under the quilts of the sickbed made it appear that a doll was breathing her final death rattle. The March sisters and Marmee had gathered around her, watching, their simulated breathing in sync with Beth’s. The only motion came from the trembling of the strings. Their stillness added an air of dignity. The expressive limits of their wooden faces matched perfectly the emotions of the moment. They were born to grief and in their grieving expressed most clearly the defining sorrow of their faces.
A puppet seagull flew by the window. The tape recording of its call sounded like a laughing maniac.
“She’s much too young,” Meg cried.
“How can she do this to us?” Amy asked. “How can she leave us? Oh, Beth.”
“I cannot bear it,” Marmee said. “My angel.”
Jo faced the audience. “She was the only decent one among us. Beth, I will write about you. You won’t be forgotten, and your sacrifice will make me a better writer.”
“She goes,” Marmee said. “She flies from us.”
By the alchemy of light and a puppet ghost made of the sheerest silk, Beth floated from the bed and disappeared into the rafters. The surviving Marches bent their heads to the empty bed. The lights were lowered on the tableau and lifted to Kay’s spot by the door. The theater was hushed.
“Of course,” she said, “that’s not how her death plays out in the novel. No deathbed contrition, no gathering of the sisters. Beth slips away quietly one night, just like that.” She snapped her fingers in sync with the puppeteer. “The book goes on, and there are even a few sequels, as if there are sequels. For Beth, the story ended. As it does for us all. There’s only one ending.”
With the Quatre Mains moving her feet and the Deux Mains her arms, Kay walked to the middle of the stage, the spotlight following her. Dressed in black, the puppeteers revealed themselves, but the audience continued to focus on the doll.
“A sister, a sister … a sister lives on as long as there are those to remember her. A mother, a child, a brother, a father, and her sisters and friends. You won’t forget your old aunties, will you? We can try to forgive Louisa May Alcott for the bum ride Beth got, for that rude treatment ill deserved just to make a better, more dramatic book. Because, well, in the end the writer pulled it off. Beth is still alive in us all these years later. All the Little Women made eternal through … what? A book? Art? Love? Or is it all the same?”