Her robes sweeping the air, the Queen quickly turned to Kay. “And as for you, learn your place and like it. Or I shall lump you till you do. I want you to go to the corner and stay there, until I say you may be excused. You are hereby charged with ensuring that no bees will come near our person … not one, you understand? And you will clean up the bodies. Well, what are you waiting for?”
Kay felt like a little schoolgirl, sitting by herself in the corner, but she was glad that she had tried to help No?, who seemed better already, the madness drained, a pleasing dullness in the way she moved. As for the petty tyrant who ruled their world, the Queen must be obeyed, but loyalty is best earned and never coerced. Kay would bide her time. She would find a way to show that hearts trump the Queen.
20
They gathered around the television set like a nuclear family. Theo, Egon, and Mitchell on the sofa, Mrs. Mackintosh perched on an ottoman, and Dolores in her wheelchair, the dog dozing at her feet. The Yankee pot roast had disappeared, the apple tart as well, and night had settled into the restive hours between supper and bedtime. Through sheer persistence, Dolores had been able to track down a copy of the video recording from the TV station in Burlington, and they were all ready for another point of view on the Halloween parade.
The biggest difference between the recordings was the quality and higher resolution. The whole piece had been constructed like a story and not merely a series of images marching across the screen. However, one did not see as much of the puppets on the news as they had on the home movie. More intercuts of the children and parents watching the parade go by, and a cute ten seconds of a little girl telling the reporter which puppet was her favorite. “The sticks one,” she had said. Kay had appeared twice in the story, both times fleetingly—in the parade and in the aftermath in the parking lot.
“I’m surprised you spotted her,” Theo said.
“She’s sharper than you think,” Mrs. Mackintosh said.
“Quiet, the both of you,” Dolores said. “I badgered them to send the B roll as well.”
Mitchell leaned forward. “B roll?”
“All the background stuff they shoot and then splice into the main story. Just watch.”
The cameraman had started with a panorama of the decorated streets of the small town, the children gathered at the edge of the sidewalk, sitting on the curb, waiting for the show. The footage jumped to the actual parade, three full minutes, with good shots of each of the puppets, from the tubby barrel man at the head to the giant queen at the end. Kay appeared from a different angle than in the home movie. She was clear and crisp and the shot stayed with her longer as her handler wobbled her forward. At the moment the puppet’s face was closest to the lens, Dolores froze the picture.
“That’s her. I would know my own daughter anywhere.”
Mrs. Mackintosh swiveled on the ottoman to face the three men. “I nearly fainted when I saw her. Whoever made that doll surely knew Miss Kay.”
Theo stared at the image on the screen. So much time had passed since he had last seen her. Lately he had been wondering just how true the face he conjured in his imagination was, between the idealized and the real, the desire to see her again so great that he had forgotten precisely what she looked like. Sometimes he could not picture her at all, and other times, he could close his eyes and re-create all the colors of her eyes, a rough patch of skin on her hand, a beauty mark behind her left ear. The paradox fell apart as he stared at the face on the TV. He, too, was certain that the puppet had been copied from his wife’s face.
Dolores pressed Play, and Kay walked out of the frame. There was the fantastical creature made of sticks and the titanic queen, and then the scene shifted to the parking lots, interviews with children not quite charming enough to air. The puppets moved about in the background, and now and then, he caught a glimpse of Kay. Toward the end, a few of the handlers unburdened themselves of the effigies. They were just college kids, the same as his own charges. A few seconds of the puppets leaning against light poles and walls like a gang of hooligans, and then the tape suddenly scrambled and another story picked up, something about a moose, that had been recorded over. Just as the original B roll would have been by now. Theo was grateful for Dolores’s quick thinking and tenacity in securing a copy before it was too late. They had proof. But of what?
“I know who they are,” Dolores said. “I’ve tracked them down.”
“She’s a Sherlock on the Internet,” said Mrs. Mackintosh.
Dolores reached for a folder on the end table and triumphantly held up the evidence. “The Northeast Kingdom Puppet Company, established in 1973. Right here in Vermont. ‘Making street art and political theater to reenchant and reclaim the world.’ Whatever that might mean.”
Mitchell cleared his throat. “So how did your daughter come to be a puppet?”
Nobody seemed to notice that he had misspoken.