Puppets

Daylight belongs to the wives. They stroll about the development swinging canes to demonstrate the doling out of blows. “Dick made a lopsided birdhouse,” says the one named Elizabeth, thrusting her lightweight aluminum like a pool cue to kidneys. “Edgar clogged the toilet twice,” says Isabel, swinging hers like a driver (she was once quite the golfer) meant for knees and ankles. Desi chops her carved eagle’s beak into Burt’s imaginary ribs the whole time, saying nothing. Clearly they do not need their canes for walking.

Some of the neighbors see them as feisty and charming, whereas the Austin twins are on to them. The twelve-year-old girls sit on their porch swing all summer in tiny tube tops and shorts, pretending to read. But they have big ears and memories, and a knack for impersonation. The three old women — dubbed Lizzy and Izzy and Dizzy by the twins — look upon the long and lazy brown legs of the girls with disdain, stopping sometimes to demonstrate their threatening gestures in the direction of the porch. The girls pretend not to notice, but their peripheral vision is like radar as well. Behind the books, their lemonade-moistened lips smile.

Darkness belongs to the three old husbands. The wives toss them out during game shows to fumble around in their loose marionette way. Their war tattoos compete with bruises. They hobble stealthily. Edgar’s socks remain damp from the toilet incident. Dick sports a hole in his palm from a misguided birdhouse nail and bends at the waist. Burt is silent, like his wife, and a back brace armors old wounds. They are the ones needing canes and maybe even walkers, but lean on each other instead, the last of a devastated platoon heading home. Their home is the night, the trees and bushes their shelter — in particular, one squat pine just outside the bedroom window of the Austin twins. The tree is on a slope, so they can see right in, a close balcony view.

They know the girls’ names but cannot tell them apart, especially through the window in the soft gold light. What is different about the girls at night is how they set free their long blond hair and brush it a hundred times, filling it with electricity, in the arcs of which the men catch glimpses of their wives when they were young and fresh, before the meanness came.

The window is always open. The girls take turns with the three puppets they fashioned from pantyhose stuffed with batting. The faces are scrunched and peevish and the men recognize their wives even though the features are missing. The hair was scalped from other dolls and bleached colorless. The dresses have become so familiar that the men wonder if the girls have somehow gotten into their houses and cut pieces from their wives’ dresses, a thought that makes them smile dreamily.

The dolls speak in voices uncannily like the real ones, and the twins hardly move their mouths, they are getting that good. “You really think a bird could fit in that hole, Dick? Why don’t you put your wiener in it?” The girls leave character to giggle. Burt elbows Dick and they wheeze softly.

“Your diaper in the john again, Edgar? Flushing your goddamn diaper? Take that, you old fool!”

The canes appear: old wooden back scratcher, Barbie golf club, metal knitting needle. Thankfully there are no dolls of the men; the weapons, clutched in knots of dress fabric where hands would be, slash the air and throw violent shadows. Still the men wince and hold the ground so they won’t get dizzy.

Tonight there are additions: eyeballs in the form of hatpins with heads the size of marbles and colors of sky-blue and reflection-silver and end-of-days black. Four inches of steel plunging and yet the wives make no sound until the eyes are in place and then Lizzy, suddenly blue-eyed, croaks, “I can see! Now you’re really getting your ass kicked!”

The men are sure these hatpins are from their wives’ collections, ones that have pierced the meat of their bones, and practically float off the pine needles with the vision of the girls stealing into their homes to take things away from the women, taking and taking until nothing is left but their girl traces to take root and grow into new wives. The men pass this hope around without a word. They smile.

Back in their houses, in the recliners they have taken over in front of the TVs, the wives stir from half-sleep, rubbing discomfort from their eyes. Everything is blurry at first, and instinctively they glance towards their front doors and say, “Is that you, Edgar?” “Dick?” “Burt?” But then they remember who and what they are now, and gradually on the game show network before them Pat Sajak’s beautiful face comes into focus. He looks into them, knows them to the core, does not care that the letters inside them are jumbled and tarnished from broken vows and can spell nothing. They close their eyes again and share a dream of dancing across the glossy stage with Pat, of beating Vanna to a bloody pulp with a big vowel and making love to Pat. They smile.

Headlights wash over their tree, and the men spread across the ground, picturing their bones criss-crossed in a gravesite, found right here after they’ve been missing a while. When they sit back up they find that the puppets, with their new eyes, are staring each other down, not liking what they see. Weapons are poised.

“Did you say something about my husband?” says Lizzy.

“Who would waste their breath?” Izzy responds.

“Prepare to die, bitch!” Lizzy thrusts the knitting needle through Izzy’s heart. Izzy’s head droops forward. Dizzy croaks a “Noooooo—” and buries the claw of the back scratcher in Lizzy’s forehead. Before she dies, Lizzy grabs Izzy’s golf club and tees off on Dizzy. Then all of them, along with the blond heads, fall from view. The men blink in disbelief, listening to the thumping and gurgling and strangling sounds. Finally the girls reappear, hair hiding their faces. When they part the hair the men see how red and sad their faces are, looking down.

“They’ve killed each other,” the girls say in unison, the movement of their mouths now exaggerated. They take slow, deep breaths. They begin to giggle and spin, the hair picking up light and speed until it becomes a painful blur in the old men’s eyes and they have to look away.

They lie back on the soft needles and laughter bubbles from their bones, free at last, and rises through the night, little spheres that add another thousand stars to the sky.

The girls turn off their light and creep to the window. They wish to believe they are hearing the whispers of ghosts. They shiver, but they like it, and they smile.