He smiled at her, and with his voice full of condescension, like he was speaking to a child who’d had an accident, he said, “You know I always liked you with long hair.”
Her hand dropped to her side. One thought ran through her mind, and this time she said it out loud.
“This was a huge mistake.”
11
Everett hadn’t planned on staying in Columbus for college. In true Everett St. James fashion, he’d chosen the college he wanted when he was ten years old and had never wavered—he would go to the University of Connecticut and major in puppetry. Some nights before bed, he flipped through the college brochure and imagined his life there—taking classes on marionette performance, constructing his own puppets, and learning about costumes and design and sets. Finally, the thing he loved would be his entire life.
But then Gretel happened. When his parents sat him down on their old striped sofa with stuffing poking through the holes, he’d thought they were kidding about his mother being pregnant. In fact, he’d laughed, sure this was part of some elaborate practical joke his parents were playing, despite the reality that neither of them had ever been capable of telling any sort of joke (his dad was always rushing to the punch line, so desperate to get to the laugh that he screwed up the timing entirely; this was why Everett got his comedic training from television).
It became clear that they weren’t joking when Everett saw his mother in a hospital bed holding a tiny, squirming human, and that was when he knew he wasn’t going anywhere. The first time he held Gretel in his arms, he didn’t care about his years of dreaming and planning and memorizing the brochure. She was his sister, this little baby, and she needed him.
It turned out she did need him in more than a metaphorical sense—because his parents had had what was referred to as a “geriatric” pregnancy (a term his mother objected to, even if it was medically accurate), they didn’t have as much energy as when they’d had Everett at the age of twenty-two.
Everett enrolled in film and video classes at the Columbus College of Art and Design because there was no puppetry major. It wasn’t his original dream, of course, but he hardly cared. He studied art, he focused on puppetry when he wasn’t in school, and every other second of the day was taken up by being Gretel’s live-in babysitter. He pushed her stroller through Goodale Park, took her to story time at the Columbus Metropolitan Library, and became an expert in changing poop-filled diapers.
Although Everett already knew he wanted his own show, it was Gretel who convinced him that the show should be centered toward young children’s feelings (well, as much as someone who could barely talk could convince someone of anything). Everett had pictured himself doing an irreverent, child-friendly but grown-up-oriented program, but as he created new puppets and roped Jeremy into working with him, he realized that entertaining Gretel was far more satisfying than entertaining adults could ever be. For starters, Gretel was an unflinchingly honest critic. If she didn’t like something, she gave it a raspberry or simply toddled away and started doing something else. Children couldn’t lie to preserve someone else’s dignity the way adults did, and that authenticity pushed Everett to work harder.
But as it turned out, it wasn’t just the jokes and silliness that he loved about performing—what really mattered was helping Gretel process her emotions. And as a toddler, she had a lot of them. She constantly screeched in joy or yelled in frustration, and Everett understood. How bewildering it must have been to feel so out of control, so unable to understand the world around you. But with puppets, he and Jeremy could talk through what was happening and help Gretel accept whatever emotions she had.
If Jeremy thought it was weird to spend his free time at his friend’s house putting on puppet shows for his friend’s young sister, he didn’t say so, and soon Everett and he were working out a way to expand their audience beyond one child. The very first episode of Everett’s Place (Jeremy was more than fine with Everett’s name being in the title, as he preferred to appear on-screen only when it was absolutely necessary and even then required bribery in the form of food and beer) was filmed in Everett’s house, in his turret bedroom. Everett made his own music and built his own puppets, while Jeremy filmed, did some puppetry, and occasionally gave Everett input on design.
They put the show up on YouTube and didn’t expect much. But as parents discovered it and their small children became obsessed with it, their following grew. And by the time they graduated from CCAD, they had an offer from a local television station—suddenly, they had a real set to construct, professional equipment, and, most important, a much larger audience.
Ever since then, Everett had been doing the same thing five episodes a week: talking to children about their feelings, helping them work through family drama or friendship issues. And he loved it. Because while Gretel, as a twelve-going-on-forty-year-old, didn’t share her emotions with Everett anymore, he still had that knack for talking to kids, for getting on their level and relating to them in a way that most adults simply couldn’t.
Everett felt a responsibility to the kids he spoke to—he never wanted to let them down or phone it in, not when they trusted him to be honest in their conversations. That was how he thought of each episode—like a conversation with a kid on a topic like anger, or fear, or death, or jealousy. Childhood was a confusing and often overwhelming landscape, and although he couldn’t fix all of the problems his viewers brought to him, he always wanted at least to provide a map to figure the way out.
Which was why this new puppet was a massive pain in the ass. Someone needed to give him a map to figure it out, but unfortunately, no one had volunteered.
Everett was spending yet another night on his living room floor, alone, thinking. It wasn’t that he didn’t like working by himself, but sometimes he wanted someone to bounce an idea off of. He could call Jeremy, he realized, and Jeremy would tell him what to do.
The phone rang a few times before Jeremy picked up. “Everett?” he asked, the sound of voices and glasses clinking in the background.
“Is this a bad time?” Everett asked.
“Well, Tess and I are at dinner,” Jeremy said, not unpleasantly.
“Oh, shit.” Everett glanced at his watch. “Sorry. I had no idea it was dinnertime.”
“Is everything okay?” Jeremy asked.
Everett sighed. “I’m thinking about the new puppet, and I wondered if you had any thoughts—”
“Everett,” Jeremy said gently, “I’m out on a date night with my wife and I’ve had exactly two beers and I’m trying very hard not to have thoughts on anything except what we’re going to do tonight while our kids are at their grandparents’. I’m definitely not thinking about work.”
“Right, right.” Everett ran a hand over his face. “I’m sorry I called.”