“My mother lives here,” Kay said. “This was home once upon a time.”
Mornings before school, her mother used to fix Kay’s hair, separating and plaiting the strands as she sat behind her. Kay could still feel the gentle tug of her mother’s hands as she worked, the pressure to keep still, and the final gesture when she finished, her palm stroking the braid to make sure it stayed in place. Her mother’s hands. She and Kay would fold the washing together on a summer’s day, taking the sheets from the line stiff from the air, a crisp snap, Kay on one set of corners, her mother on the others, and stepping forward hand to hand to bring the ends together to her mother’s grasp. Her mother’s dusty hands patting a ball of dough, rolling it out with a wooden pin the color of honey, and scooping the thin circle to lay it into a pie pan, and pouring the mountain of Granny Smiths or peaches that glistened like golden crescent moons. Her hands holding knitting needles like two pens converting, through clicking manipulation, a fall of yarn into a scarf, a blanket, a cardigan. Her mother’s hand inside a sock monkey moving along with the funny voice to tell her a bedtime story. Her mother’s hand against Kay’s face on her wedding day, holding there for the first time in years before letting go as if to say good-bye forever.
That she could not remember her mother’s face bothered Kay. Her forgetfulness was more than a character flaw, rather a sign of a deeper disturbance that had beset her ever since she had joined the troupe. Her past had shattered like a mirror and could be apprehended only in shards and slivers. Her mother’s face had been the first she had fixed upon and was the most familiar of her entire life, and Kay knew that something had gone terribly wrong in its utter blankness. She could not recall her husband’s face either, despite their intense intimacy over the past few years. A face she had stared at for hours, days, weeks. Eyes that darted and followed her own when they had been kiss close. A smile that had lingered across a table as they earnestly discussed their future together. And now the picture of his face slipped in and out of memory with disturbing frequency.
*
The giants stopped for the night but left them in the back of the van. Cold air seeped into the space; a crisp autumnal chill bore right through the boxes so that even the straw lining was no protection. Not that Kay minded the cold, no more than the close air and claustrophobia of her miniature casket, but still she could feel the changes of the season. And they must have parked in some remote and deserted place, for the night was eerily quiet, punctuated only by the quick hooting of an owl. Her mother used to say that’s the song of a speed owl, the hoots strung together like the ringing of a telephone. She missed her mother till dawn.
Frost had formed overnight, and the stiff grass crunched under the weight of the boxes as the humans unloaded the vans. A woodpecker trilled and hammered at a tall tree. The early sunshine warmed the crates till they ticked and creaked, and happy voices filled the air. She could hear Finch and Stern and new people talking and laughing as they moved about, and the aroma of coffee and fresh bread reminded her of hunger and the welcome of breakfast.
A shadow fell across the boxes. “Let’s have a look at them.” The man’s voice was touched by a slight Irish accent.
“Right here and now?” Finch answered.
“Give them a splash of sunshine. Let them see what they’ve been got up to.”
Finch and Stern opened the boxes and laid out the puppets on the dew-damp lawn. A few fat white clouds gathered over a chain of plump mountains in the west. Pines and firs mixed with birch and maple, nearly leafless in the late autumn, and ringed the perimeter of the landscape to the horizon. A yellow farmhouse stood across the road, smoke doodling from a brick chimney. The Quatre Mains and the Deux Mains were approaching with mugs of coffee in their hands. The vans had been parked next to an old red barn, and Kay could just make out the words on a small hand-painted sign: Northeast Kingdom Puppet Museum.
The Irishman walked among the puppets, picking up those who caught his fancy, trying his hands at the sticks and strings to make Irina dance. Smitten by the Good Fairy, he cradled her in his arms, turning her over and peeking beneath her bodice to see how she had been assembled. Nix made him laugh. No? brought a sadness to his eyes. When he drew close to Kay, he showed a kind smile on his ruddy face as if he already knew her.
“They’re grand,” he said. “Excellent carving and handiwork, but they’ll never do. Too small for our shows.”
“But we’ve come all this way,” Finch said, “on a promise.”
Clapping her on the back in solidarity, the Irishman laughed. “A man’s words is his only honor. We have a few weeks yet to Halloween. Time enough to make, what, ten or twelve out of this lot if the fair weather holds.”