Pacific Avenue (16 page)

The priest held up the circle of bread. “Behold the
Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.”

“Lord, I am not worthy to receive you,” the
congregation answered. “But only say the word and I shall be healed.”

After Mass, we trailed home, exhausted. Richard put his
arm around me as we walked alone though the night.

* * *

April ended with early heat that year. Every time I looked,
Francine’s rosebushes had popped out more flowers—they reminded me of a
jack-in-the-box. Hummingbirds dipped in and out of the red ones all day, and
after the sun went down, lightning bugs made neon processions.

We were learning
The Snow Queen
with the puppets. Martin had proposed it the week
before, as we sat around his living room after a rehearsal.

“You’re the boss,” Richard had said.

Martin shook his head. “Not that kind of boss. I want
us to decide together.” He kept the stack of scripts in his lap.

“So, why do it?” Richard asked.

“Because we need a strong Christmas piece, and I think
it has a good message.”

It sounded convincing to me. “So, why
not
do it?” I asked.

Martin opened the top script and riffled the pages.
“It’s not a folktale. It’s a literary fairy tale. It doesn’t have the international
flavor that we plan to specialize in.”

“Are there any Christmas pieces that do?” I asked.

“I don’t know of any.” Martin shrugged and handed the
scripts around.

We voted unanimously to do it.

Rehearsals of
The Snow Queen
began in earnest the next day. Now we were putting
the production together, using temporary puppets while we made the permanent
ones. Christmas seemed remote, almost impossible, in the blossoming heat of New
Orleans. I would have given anything for some of the ice and snow in the story.

I thought of the last line: “It was summer—warm, beautiful
summer.”
Easy for a Danish man to say. He should have tried being pregnant
in a tropical climate.
September could
hurry up, as far as I was concerned.

I borrowed Thu’s sewing machine and sewed puppet costumes
with the breeze of a fan right on me. I had to weigh down the pattern pieces to
keep them from blowing away. The costumes reminded me of doll dresses I’d made
with Aunt Ruth. I wondered if she ever missed me.

Richard came in from the yard, carrying a box. “We need
to practice today—can you do the costumes later?”

I sighed. There was so much to do later and so little
later to do it in. It was only a couple of days until Sharon’s and Sam’s visit.
I needed to buy food and clean house and do the laundry. And cook.

And I had an assignment for Tex’s drawing class—I was
working my way though an odd old book of drawing exercises. This week’s
assignment was to draw something while looking only at the model, not at the
drawing. It sounded impossible. And for Thu’s woodcarving lesson, I was supposed
to carve a chain out of a single piece of wood, which also sounded impossible.
And I had backdrops to do for
The Snow Queen,
under Thu’s watchful eye.

But Richard was
right—practice came first. We had to at least go through it once before
rehearsal with Martin and Thu this afternoon. I put aside the costumes as
Richard pulled puppets out of the box. We used the table as a stage.

NARRATOR: Once upon a time, a
demon made a mirror in which everything was reflected as evil. Everyone who
looked into it believed it showed the world as it really was. And that was bad,
but still worse was to come. For, one day it broke, and the pieces flew
everywhere. All who were caught by one of the shards saw the world in the
likeness of that mirror.

With the glove puppets, it
was easy to do fast vignettes of people dressed in clothes of all nations,
jeering and criticizing each other and everything around them. We both talked
at once in a babble of discord. I picked up the story again.

NARRATOR: In a large city, there
lived two friends, a boy named Kay and a girl named Gerda. One day when they
were playing, Kay felt something strike him in the heart, and a cold splinter
pierced his eye. He cried out and Gerda ran to help him.

Too stiff. “This last bit
should be dialogue, not narration,” I commented. I marked the script for
revision.

KAY: You are very ugly. Why should
I spend time with you? I can find a much more beautiful girl.
(turns and
leaves)

The Gerda puppet reached her hand out as if to draw him
back, then lifted it to wipe her cheek.

The phone rang.

With the hand that wasn’t being Kay, Richard got it. He
passed it to me.

“Hey, doll. Francine says she doesn’t mind if I build a
ramp up to your porch so Martin’s chair can get in the door,” Eddie said. “Is
it okay with you?”

“Good idea.” I didn’t want to have any more picnic dinners.
It was warm enough now for a picnic, but the mosquitoes knew that as well as we
did.

“This afternoon work for you? I’ve got the wood and everything.”

“This afternoon’s fine. I need to go to the market
anyway. Sharon and Sam are coming, day after tomorrow.”

“I’ll bring you some vegetables, then. See you later.”

I told Richard what Eddie had said, then set the sleigh
and Kay’s sled on the table. “The next scene shows kids playing in the snow. I
don’t know what to do to get a realistic snow effect. We have snowflakes, but I
can’t dump them like garbage out of a truck.”

Richard laughed. “Any ideas?”

“Maybe some kind of sifter? Maybe a net?

“What would make them fall out?”

“I could jiggle it,” I suggested.

“I don’t see how, unless you can grow a third hand.
Even with glove puppets, you can’t tend to a net.”

“What about a mechanical sifter?” I wasn’t sure how
this would work, but there had to be some way to do it.

“Noisy. Fasten a string to your toe and tap your foot.”

I considered this bizarre solution. “It would make me
too stationary. But a foot-operated device is a good idea. Something with a
pedal, or a stirrup thing that I could get out of when I needed to.”

I was developing into the scenery and special effects person,
which suited me fine. And a scriptwriter. Of course, I liked operating the
puppets as well, but Richard had far more talent than I did. Neither of us was
like Thu, who had mastered it all. Of course, she’d been doing it a lot longer
than we had.

We settled the boy puppets
onto our hands and went on with the dialogue.

BOY 1: Let’s tie our sleds to
the carriage! The horses will pull us through the streets!

BOY 2: Don’t let the coachman
see us!

I had constructed sleigh-and-horse combinations to
glide across the stage. I managed these while Richard’s boy puppets sneaked
rides behind them, laughing and playing.

When they were offstage, we had a brief break that
would be filled with music and falling snow—provided I could work out a good
way to make that happen. The seconds without puppets would be effective, but
they’d also give us a chance to set up for the remainder of the scene.

I marked my script to insert a music cue for Kay to
appear onstage alone, carrying his sled. From the other direction, a great
white sleigh appeared, with a driver muffled in a furry white coat.

“
Ermine,
”
Richard said, studying the script. “What does that mean besides
white
?”

“It has small black markings.”

“Could anyone
tell
from
the audience?”

“Probably not. But I’ll do them anyway.
I’ll
know, even if no one else does.”

Richard struggled to make Kay tie his sled to the
sleigh runners. A hand puppet didn’t make for convenient knotting, but we
couldn’t have the ties dangling. I’d have to work something out to make them
stick. Something that would hold when Kay, tiring of the game, found he
couldn’t escape.

“So, he yells ‘Stop!’ and ‘Let me go!’ And then what?”
Richard, juggling props, had lost his place in the script.

“That’s the cue for more
snow.” I marked my script. It looked like I was going to have a busy foot,
twitching the net to make a blizzard. It would probably take a second person to
pull the sleigh and manage the lights.

NARRATOR: The great sleigh slipped
along faster and faster. The wind whipped at Kay’s cheeks and tore his hat
away.

“How do we manage the hat?” he asked.

“I’ll put a string on it.”

He laughed. “Which one-man-band did you hire to do all
this?”

“I have an idea it’s going to be me.” It was true. When
it came to special effects, everyone expected me to do magic. And I loved
figuring out the effects, along with the scenery and props to go with them.

“You could get a second job at Preservation Hall.”

“My first job already
takes up all my second-job time.”

NARRATOR: All at once, the
flurries cleared and the sleigh drew to a halt. A tall figure rose slowly from
its high seat. Snowflakes glittered on her crown, and a diamond flashed from
her cloak like ice. It was the Snow Queen.

“That ought to sound scarier. Richard? If I don’t get
to the market this minute, I’ll be late for rehearsal with Thu and Martin.”

“I thought Eddie was bringing food,” he said
indistinctly, hunting under the table for Kay’s hat.

“Vegetables, Richard. Last time I checked, you hadn’t
turned vegetarian, and I know Sharon and Sam haven’t.” I kissed him quickly and
got out of there.

When I got back with the groceries, Eddie and Richard
were laying out the framing for a platform and ramp. They took the bags from my
arms and heaved them onto the porch. With the steps gone, it wasn’t easy for me
to get myself up. I decided to try to manage some of the housekeeping chores
before rehearsal. Richard was going to have to take the clothes to the
Laundromat—I was out of time.

I wanted everything to be perfect for Sharon, wanted to
show her I wasn’t a hippie like Mom said. I scrubbed angrily at a stain on the
sink.
Mom should try something like this for a change—try and see how
perfect she could make things without the big new house in Magnolia Woods and
the twice-a-week maid. Try working full time and then some, and taking classes
too. I’d like to see her try living with a man who woke up with battle
nightmares night after night. Try being pregnant—well, she did that, twice.
Probably she wished she’d quit after once.
I slapped the dishcloth on the counter.

“Hey, what’s wrong?” Richard asked behind me. I hadn’t
heard him come in.

“Mom thinks we’re hippies.”

“Why that in particular? I mean, we don’t use drugs or
any of the rest of it. Aren’t hippies passé anyway?”

“Mom doesn’t know that.”

“Guess not. But why hippies? We’re serious artists. We
don’t do anything but work.”

“She doesn’t think it’s work.”

“Hell, in that case, let’s get her down here to move
scenery. If she thinks it isn’t work, she’ll have a ball.”

Picturing my mother as a stagehand made me laugh so hard,
I collapsed into a chair.

“That’s what you call serious?” I gasped.

“No, but I’m glad you can see the funny side. I hate to
see you quarrel with your folks. I wish now I hadn’t been so self-righteous
with my parents. They were wrong about a lot of things, but I was too, and so
what? I wish Mama was going to be around to see the baby.”

A flood of relief took me by surprise. He wanted his
mother to see Jamie. “Could you make up with them?” I suggested.

“I don’t think so. Sergeant Johnson made it clear that
I was dishonorably discharged from the family.”

“But what
happened
?”
I pushed out the other chair for him to sit down and talk to me, but he ignored
it. He got out the laundry bag and went into the bathroom.

His voice came muffled around the door. “I joined the
March on Washington.”

“The one where they threw their medals over the fence?”
I called.

“I didn’t have any medals to throw. But yes, that one.”

“Why didn’t you tell me before?”

“I never talk about the war. Somehow it dirties
everything it touches.”

“Even the protests?”

He came back dragging the bag. “Even that. I can’t explain
it too well, Kathy. I finally quit trying.”

“I can see where your marching on Washington might
bother your dad. Do you wish you hadn’t done it?”

“No way,” he said, without a second’s hesitation. “But
I wish I hadn’t been such a sanctimonious little shit when I told him. That’s
what I mean by
dirties.
I was being a
warrior. I had to win.” He opened a cabinet and took out the box of detergent.

“Do you think your mom would care, with a grandchild on
the way?”

“Maybe not,” he said, pausing in the doorway with the
bag of dirty clothes. “But there’s another angle. Racism doesn’t work all one
way, you know. They’re not exactly going to be happy that I chose a white
girl.” He went out, careful to keep the screen from banging behind him.