“You ruin my life and I’m not supposed to get hysterical? You chase me out of my adopted home at the most defenseless and impressionable age for a young woman, and I’m not supposed to be hostile! What kind of animal are you, Papa Bear? Don’t you ever think about anybody but yourself?”
Giving under the weight of an exclamatory little stamp, Goldy’s left stiletto heel broke with a resounding crack. Goldy staggered — but, as usual, she didn’t fall.
“You bastard!” she shouted at Papa Bear. “You hairy ball-less honey-sucking bastard!”
The words didn’t make an impact so much as clear space in the room. Then, from the upstairs landing, Papa Bear heard it, a soft assembling presence like rain gathering behind dark clouds. Footsteps, a slamming door, an aimless cry in the dark.
“I can’t stand it! I can’t stand it anymore!” Baby Bear screamed from the summit of stairs. He was wearing his sloppiest Varsity sweat suit and a pair of buzzing stereo headphones. As he pounded the floorboards with his hairy adolescent feet, lamps toppled from tables and windows rattled in frames.
“All I ever hear about is you you you!” Baby Bear cried. “But what about my feelings? Why doesn’t anybody stop for a minute to think about me?”
When things finally settled down again, Mama Bear fixed everybody porridge. Hot and lumpy for Papa Bear. Tepid and slightly mushy for herself. And in-between for Baby Bear and Goldy, who, like all good children, preferred to drive straight down the middle of roads so they didn’t veer too dangerously toward either side.
“You can sleep in your old room,” Mama Bear bossed abstractly as she pottered at the sink. “And Baby can sleep on the convertible sofa in the den. It’ll be just like old times again, won’t it? Goldy and her three bears. Arguing about every little thing, but living their lives just the way they’re supposed to. Together — and happily ever after.”
Goldy dipped steadily into her porridge with the just-right-sized silver teaspoon. Meanwhile, Baby Bear sniffled into his checkered linen napkin, and kept close tabs on how much of his porridge was being eaten by her.
“I’m telling you, Sid,” the chauffeur said discreetly into the hall phone. “Take a left on Enchanted Forest Boulevard and drive straight past 7-Eleven. Get your butt over here and see for yourself.”
It’s all so futile, Papa Bear thought. All four of them sitting around the table just like old times, nursing their private hurts and grudges, learning a lot of complicated ways not to tell each other anything. Papa Bear felt it blossom in the pit of his stomach like gastritis. So much for so long. He couldn’t stand to hold it back another minute.
So Papa Bear roared.
Causing everybody to jump at least three feet higher than the backs of their chairs. Except, of course, Goldy. Who simply stared into Papa Bear’s eyes and smiled.
“I knew it,” Goldy said. “I knew he’d raise his voice eventually. When Papa Bear can’t persuade people by means of superior reason, he threatens to use force instead. It’s such a goddamn dick-thing it makes me want to puke.”
Papa Bear took a slow moment to catch up with his own impact. It didn’t seem right somehow.
But I’m the one who’s scared, he thought finally. And I don’t know any way to tell you but this.
“We gave you a bed to sleep in,” Papa Bear pleaded. “We gave you food to eat and clothes to wear. And believe me, I tried to be patient and put up with your endless constant complaining. ‘This cereal is too cold,’ or ‘This bed is too hard,’ or ‘You can’t have red wine with fish — whatever happened to that nice little Chablis Papa Bear was saving in the cellar?’ I tried to be a good foster-father, Goldy, but okay, maybe I didn’t do a very good job. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and I chased you the hell out of my house. I chased you into the dark woods and you never came back. Jesus, Goldy, I’m sorry, I really am. I’m sick about it nearly every night, I can’t sleep, I can’t enjoy a decent bowel movement. Please, Goldy. I’m begging you. Help me make amends.”
As Papa Bear talked, Goldilocks grew increasingly out of breath, as if she were performing a weird act of ventriloquism. She stood with her tiny fists planted on her overgrown hips, her large round face flushed and damp. She had been waiting for this moment all of her life.
“You want to make it up to me, Papa Bear? You want to make everything all right again?”
Papa Bear breathed silently for a moment.
“Yes, Goldy,” he said softly. “Anything. I’ll do anything I can.”
Goldilocks permitted her frozen expression to lapse into an equally frozen smile. Then she removed the tidy white rectangle of legal documents from her purse and showed them to Papa Bear the same way she might show a fly swatter to a fly.
“Well,” Goldilocks concluded, “let’s see what we can come up with. Okay?”
“There may not be third acts in American lives!” Sid Croft shouted through an old-fashioned plastic megaphone. “But there sure-the-hell are third acts in a Sid Croft Motion Picture Production! Let’s work together, everybody! And roll on three!”
Papa Bear was so exhausted it felt like catharsis. Seated in his familiar recliner with a bottle of Weiss Bier braced between his thighs, he let Mama Bear mop his feverish brow with an ice-cool dishcloth.
“One!” Sid Croft shouted. Technicians and administrative assistants went scurrying. The high hot lights activated with a flash.
Jumping her cue, Goldilocks charged out of her dressing room, trailing a haze of anxiety and talcum.
“Where’s that bitch from Continuity!” Goldilocks shouted, frantic with black eyeliner. Her artificial beauty spots were popping off her face like buttons from an overextended blouse. “I asked for forty-one minor changes to this scene and all I’ve counted so far are seven! Don’t you guys understand comedic development around here? I can’t go chasing after Papa Bear! Papa Bear’s got to come chasing after me!”
On shooting days, Papa Bear didn’t know why he bothered. Four months ago he had happily signed away every legal right he ever had just to get Goldy off his back. Now, as a result of those very same concessions, it was beginning to look like she would leave.
“I’m starting over again from two, folks!” Climbing atop the exhausted luncheon trolley, Sid stood among the pink shell-shards of King Crab and Jumbo Shrimp like a height-challenged swashbuckler. “And you, young lady! I’m talking to you, right?”
Sid Croft pointed directly at Goldy. All around her, studio technicians (especially the male ones) started to snicker.
“You take another look at your contract. And do it with a good lawyer, okay?”
Papa Bear retreated into a slow shrug. He felt totally alone, and, as per usual, he was totally wrong.
“First we live our lives,” Mama Bear whispered, “then we get on to the equally hard job of making those lives make sense. We eat jam, drink coffee, belch, defecate, bump our heads in the night, make love, eat more jam, suffer toothaches and bad faith. Then we wake up the next morning and tell stories about what we think really happened. We call our friends on the phone. We write letters and compose poorly punctuated e-mail. We publish books, outline screenplays, adopt the latest word-processing equipment, and dream our way through a thousand endless hibernal lapses. All I’m saying, Papa, is that maybe you and Goldy aren’t so different after all. She needs her anger and you need your guilt. Where would you be without each other, huh?”