Pacific Avenue (13 page)

“You’re moving
again
?”
my mother snapped.

The wind huffed and puffed against the sides of the
phone booth like the Big Bad Wolf. I kept the folding door shut by leaning on
it.

“We never intended to stay in a rooming house permanently,”
I said. The booth had initials scratched into its aluminum frame. “JL + CP.”
Good
luck to them. Whoever they are.

Mom sighed loudly. “I suppose not. But when are you
going to settle down? You can’t
drift.
”

Some papers flew by.
They
weren’t drifting. They were really moving. Maybe Mom
would be happy if I did that, just flew away.

I tried to keep my voice friendly. “We’re not drifting.
We got better jobs. We’re going to work for a puppet theater.”

“
Puppet
theater. . . . What in the world are you
doing,
Kathy? Birthday parties, that kind of thing?”

“No, we do international folk tales. It’s for world
peace.”

“Oh, for pity’s sake, that’s even worse. With birthday
parties, at least you might meet people. Are you turning into hippies?”

I sighed. “No, Mom, we’re not turning into hippies.
Just doing something we believe in.”

“You’ve always been so
difficult,
Kathy. Why don’t you get something with the city?”

“We
will
be
working for the city a lot. We’ll be performing in schools.”

“It doesn’t sound like much of an opportunity. And why
Gretna? That’s so far away from everything.”

“In Gretna, we can afford a house. And we need one, because,
well, we’re having a baby.” A motorcycle passed, drowning out Mom’s answer. If
there was one.

“Mom?”

“I heard you. Kathy, aside from everything else, you
are too young to have a baby.”

“The baby’s even younger, Mom.”

“I don’t feel well. Maybe you’d better talk to your
dad.”

She put the phone down, and a loud, confused conversation
filtered through it from the other end. I hung up as gently as if the receiver
were made of Limoges porcelain. Called Sharon, but she wasn’t home. I’d send
her a postcard and tell her. Too bad Mom would get to her first.

Back in the room, Richard was putting books into a couple
of toilet paper cartons I’d scrounged at the market. He gestured toward the
boxes, grinning. “Was this a commentary on our taste in literature?”

“No, just the only cardboard boxes I could find.”

He reached over and squeezed my hand. He still seemed
doubtful about it all, but at least he was going to try.

“Want me to go get a pizza or something?” I asked. It
was getting on for dinnertime, and he’d packed the food.

“Pizza, the mover’s friend,” he agreed. “Got money?”

“Uh-huh. What kind of toppings?”

“Whatever you like.” He turned back to the boxes with
tape and scissors. Toppings—uh-oh. I was in my fourth month, and I felt
nauseated a lot. Not in the morning, and not by any specific thing. Something
would smell funny all of a sudden, and then it would be queasy time.

I was starting to bulge, too. So far, I looked more
chubby than pregnant. That wouldn’t last much longer—all my clothes were
getting tight. At least we’d have more money, working for Martin. There were
probably lots of maternity things at the Salvation Army anyway.

They’d have baby furniture, too. I’d have to take pink
and blue both, whatever I could get, but maybe I could make it pretty so it
wouldn’t look hand-me-down. I went over the furnishings of Francine’s house in
my mind. Tante Beatrice hadn’t had a crib or a changing table, of course. The
idea made me smile.

I got a mushroom pizza and brought it back to the room.
After we ate, we packed the car and headed over to Gretna.

One last stop: at the Market, to say good-bye to Eddie.
“It’s not good-bye, doll,” he said as I hugged him. “I live on the next
street—Martin will show you. You take care of my girl, now,” he told Richard,
squeezing his shoulder. “And I want to be that baby’s
godfather.
”

He gave us a big bag of fruits and vegetables as a housewarming
present. I could see it was stuffed with the best of everything, and my throat
closed up like it was wrapped with a tight scarf. Once again, we drove across
the bridge, with Richard holding the brown paper bag in his lap.

It didn’t take long to unpack our Volkswagen-full of possessions.
Francine had left a box of kitchenware and linens sitting in the corner on the
kitchenette, with a note: “Thought you might use these.” The room was clean and
the doilies were gone. There was a vase of homegrown flowers on the table. To
keep from bursting into tears, I made the bed with Francine’s linens and put
the kitchen things away. I set each thing in place so carefully, so perfectly
straight, I might have been tending a shrine.

It rained in the night, the wind rattling the window
sash and water drumming on the roof. I woke and held Richard as he slept,
feeling the coziness of being out of the storm. I was drifting, almost asleep,
when the baby moved for the first time. I caught my breath, surprised and
scared.
I’m a mother.
And then Richard,
still sleeping, laid his arm across me and pulled me to him. I lulled into his
arms, listening to the rain slacken, and finally slept too in the warmth beside
him.

I woke to Richard’s quiet rustlings in the kitchen and
the smell of cooking. It was still raining. Richard had lit the heater, but the
room wasn’t warm yet. I wrapped myself in a fuzzy robe as he poured me a cup of
coffee. He was already dressed. Oatmeal steamed in a saucepan on the back
burner, and on the front one was a skillet full of sausages he was stabbing
with a table fork. A small pop of grease caught his finger.

“Damn,” he said, without much interest, glancing at his
hand. He didn’t bother to get a longer fork.

I looked at the sausages and decided not to have any.
Better not think of them as food at all. “I felt the baby move last night,” I
told him, to change the subject.

“Are you okay?”

He sounded confused.
I wanted you to be excited and
happy.
“Sure I am, it’s what’s supposed to
happen.”

“Oh. I’m sorry. This is sort of a lot to take in.”

“Don’t worry, it’s not a problem,” I told him.
It
is
a problem. I want you to want us, not
put up with us.
But pushing him wasn’t
going to help.
Change the subject.

“So, what’s on for today?” I asked.

“We’re all set here. I thought we might go over to Martin’s
after breakfast, see what he needs?”

“It
is
Saturday.”

“I don’t think he’s got a nine-to-five operation.”

His eagerness surprised me. I had expected resistance
and awkwardness. I dressed in a clean shirt and yesterday’s jeans, leaving the
snap and about an inch of the zipper undone so I could fit into them. We didn’t
have an umbrella, but Richard was pacing, impatient to get going, so we left
anyway, trying to run between the raindrops.

We waited awhile on the front porch after we knocked.
We could hear the children inside, hear Martin and Thu, but no one answered for
a minute or so. When Martin did let us in, he laughed.

“Better use the kitchen door like we do. Almost didn’t
realize you were here. Good thing the porch is covered. I wish you’d get a
phone, by the way. It would make it a lot easier to work with you.”

“Oh,” said Richard. “I guess it would.” I looked at him
sharply, surprised at his quick agreement. We hadn’t even considered it before.

We draggled, dripping, into the living room. Thu
glanced up from the couch, where she was persuading one of the twins to eat a piece
of toast. The other twin came in with a beautiful phoenix kite. He sat beside
his brother, reached for a slice of toast on the coffee table, and brushed
against a steaming cup. It turned over and rolled, spreading tea across the
surface. Thu mopped it up with a napkin and smiled at us. “It looks like I’m
making tea. Would you like some?”

“Please.” Hot anything sounded good to me. She gestured
at the dining table, and we sat around it. She disappeared into the kitchen.

Martin set his chair at the end of the table. “I gather
you’ve never done much with puppets before,” he said.

“Well, no,” Richard admitted.

“No sweat. We’ll start at the beginning. First you need
to see the different kinds of puppets and get a feel for what they do. We use
all sorts—glove puppets, shadow, rod, marionettes—so you’re going to have to
learn fast.”

“We’ll practice a lot,” I promised.

He didn’t answer right away, and I waited, afraid to
say more. I hoped he wasn’t reconsidering hiring us. Finally, he met my eyes
and smiled.

“Thu’s whole family is puppeteers, so she’s learned all
this since she was little. I had to get it the same way you will, quickly.
She’s still a far better puppeteer than I am. Probably always will be, too,” he
added as she came in with the tea. “There’s also the matter of talent.”

“Practice,” she admonished. He smiled.
Maybe someday
Richard and I will have in-jokes too.

“That’s the key,” Martin said. “Practice at home, and
then rehearse here with us. Eddie said you’d been at college. What were you
studying?”

“Engineering,” said Richard.

“Art,” I chimed in.

Their faces lit up. “You’ll both be
very
useful,” Martin said.

Thu turned to me. “Once you get settled, let’s get together
and go over the art side of the theater—the scenery and costumes and so on. I
can really use some help with that.”

“What will I be doing?” Richard asked.

“Maybe your engineering will come in handy on some of
the special effects,” said Martin. “But both of you will mostly be operating
puppets. I hope you can learn quickly, too. We can really use the extra hands.”

Richard nodded. “Can I see some of the puppets?” he
asked.

“Oh, yes. That’s what we want to do first thing. We’ll
start with a couple of marionettes—they’re probably more familiar to you.”

Thu opened a cabinet and took out a clown and a bear.
She handed the clown to Martin.

Both marionettes bowed to us, and then the clown
juggled, did a flip, and danced. But the bear looked unimpressed. It nibbled at
its paw and then scratched behind an ear. The clown gyrated wildly and the bear
turned its back. The clown approached the bear and tapped its shoulder. The
bear scratched again and lay down. It curled up to go to sleep.

The clown shook the bear’s shoulder and pushed it back
upright. I knew a puppet couldn’t have facial expressions, but I could swear
the bear looked bored and annoyed by the clown’s persistence. Finally it gave
in, shrugged, and gazed at the sky with “Enough, already!” in every line of its
pose. And dropped to all fours, once again an ordinary bear.

The whole performance took less than five minutes. When
it was over, I looked around, startled. Everything was much too big. I wanted
the magic world of the puppets to go on and on, wanted to live there.

Richard was bright-eyed and silent.
He forgot about
being a soldier for a few minutes. He looks like a kid.
The sudden turning-over feeling inside of me may have
been the baby again, or maybe it was love, I couldn’t tell.

* * *

It was a month into our
apprenticeship with Martin, and he and I were watching Richard and Thu block out
the action of
The Legend of Savitri.
Pieces of costume littered the coffee table, along with assorted props,
teacups, books, and notepads. Martin took the narrator’s lines. Reading, he
lost his Australian accent completely. He began spinning the story with a
bewitching tone of “once upon a time.”

NARRATOR: Long ago, in the land of
India, there lived a king named Aswapati who wanted a child more than any other
of the world’s blessings.

The curtain opened. For this rehearsal, the stage was
bare except for an altar. The final scenery would have to show a private room,
one where the king would go to pray. I made a note to check the library for
ideas about Indian interiors. Or maybe I could simplify it, since the scene was
short? Martin and Thu would have opinions about that. I scribbled a note to
myself in the margin of my script.

Aswapati entered from
stage left. Richard’s hours of practice with the marionette were paying off.
When we’d first begun rehearsing
Savitri,
Aswapati had walked like Frankenstein, but now he moved fairly normally.

ASWAPATI: I have many wives, but
none are blessed with children. For long years I have prayed to the goddess
Savitri, morning and evening. My hope is nearly threadbare. Still, I will
continue to pray. Surely the goddess will send me a child.

Aswapati knelt with a
faint thump. Martin marked the rehearsal script, though I knew Richard wouldn’t
have to be reminded to work on the move. Aswapati would be praying morning and
evening, all right. He would kneel and get up, kneel and get up, until Richard
was satisfied with his performance.

SAVITRI:
(rising from
behind the altar)
I am Savitri, the
daughter of the sun. King Aswapati, you have been faithful in your prayers.
Your wish is granted. You will be the father of a baby girl.