Who’s the Great Mantini now?

One of the best things about parenthood is that I get to play with puppets all the time. It’s my secret shame. If it’s covered in plush fabric, resembles an armadillo and just, well, looks like it has something to say, I’ll pick it up and start jabbering out of the side of my mouth.

I always cringe when I watch something that even remotely appears to be mocking puppets and their puppet masters. I thought the Great Mantini actually was great. Come on, a 60-foot-tall Emily Dickinson marionette?

One can only dream.

Dana and I were watching a favorite show a few months ago, and in one scene they had to drown a possum. (Writing this makes me realize our favorite shows are pretty weird sometimes.) As the possum was being dunked in a tub, Dana’s mouth hung open in shock.

She stammered, “What the? How’d they?”

And I shook my head slowly.

“Would you look at that puppet! It’s so life like!”

A few months after Emmeline was born, I remember reading a parenting book that offered tips on getting along with toddlers — which is to say how to make them do what you want them to do with a minimal amount of tears and screaming.

“Gossip with their stuffed toys!” it suggested.

It’s an old parenting trick, I know. But as Emme approaches her third birthday, she has been testing every boundary known to man. If she were playing Risk, she would have long ago invaded Yakutsk and been moving on to Kamchatka. Her tantrums are like a Blitzkrieg — sudden and overpowering. So I’ve been using her puppets like my own personal clique of Heathers, asking them whether they “saw what Emme just did?!” (It must say something that my battlefield analogies invoke both Winona Ryder and Erwin Rommel. I’m not sure what, exactly.)

If she’s in the middle of a meltdown, I can pull any stuffed animal off the wall and in two seconds flat see a 180-degree reversal. If she refuses to get dressed, I simply start dressing the nearest frog and sure enough, we’re halfway to an episode of Project Runway. Eating’s no problem, so long as her favorite bear — Do — has a seat at the table.

Emme won’t listen to me, but for some reason she can’t possibly ignore a pink bear that doubles as a blanket. I have a feeling this is why people later develop furry fetishes. Sure, their parents loved them and offered continual praise, but they can’t get over the feelings of abandonment when the stuffed koala remained mute and lifeless.

That’s not going to be a problem here.

Our stuffed koalas don’t shut up.

Emme has one of those old school Golden Books about Pinocchio, and while they’ve curiously left out any mention of fib-fueled growing noses — isn’t that the whole point of Pinocchio? — there’s lots of talk about marionettes. Emme likes to skip ahead to the scene when the lazy roustabouts turn into donkeys, while I like to linger on Geppeto.

“Look at the workmanship,” I’ll tell her, while Emme gently brays into my ear and asks for a cube of sugar.

We were reading the book before her nap the other day and Emme demanded I read it a third time.

“Sorry, kiddo, it’s nap time.”

“No!” she screamed, “I don’t want to go to nap!”

I grabbed her stuffed bear and started chatting, “Did you hear that, Do? Emme doesn’t want to nap. Well, I know you want to nap, so we’ll just move … slowly … over … to … the …”

Emme beat us there and was already under the covers by the time I made it and handed her Do.

I still feel badly but I couldn’t help but smirk a little and think, “sucker.” It’s almost painful to watch the ease with which a child can be manipulated, and shutting the door on the way out of her room, I recalled my own childhood lovey doll, Joey. Emme hasn’t taken to it like I once did — she likes her bear — but I couldn’t help but wonder how many times my parents must have played Joey against me.

“You don’t want to eat your vegetables? OK, maybe Joey does ….”

I can imagine the childhood me, wolfing down a plate full of whatever — just to do so before Joey. For a child, saying “no” to a parent is one thing. I like to think it’s about declaring your independence, letting the world know you’re coming into your own — getting older, smarter. But there must be some vestige of infancy that’s hard to let go, this idea that inanimate objects are real and competition. On some level, Emme may know that her bear is not an actual peer. But why risk it? Why let it get something that could be hers?

No one wants to be the dummy in the person-puppet equation.

When I woke her up that afternoon, she rolled over and smiled sleepily.

“Daddy? Do you still have Valentine’s candy on top of the refrigerator?”

I didn’t know she had seen me stashing it up there.

“No,” I lied, thinking there were only a few Necco hearts left and I’d be damned to wait a full year before eating them again. Plus, she can’t possibly see on top of the fridge.

She’d never know.

I left to get her some milk instead, munching a few Valentine’s candies in the kitchen. I returned to her room and stopped at the doorway. She was talking to her animal friends and I was curious to hear where things might go. How cute, I thought. She likes playing with puppets, too.

“Oh Do,” she sighed, “I know, I know. I like candy. But he’s mean.”

Wait a minute.

What?

Mean?

Was she talking about me?

I slipped into the room and crawled over to her bed.

“Well hello Do, hello Emme,” I sang, “How are you?”

I slipped a Valentine candy out of my pocket and put it on the bed.

“Why would you like at this?” I said, and the implication was clear: Who’s mean now?

A tiny hand quickly reached out and in an instant it was gone. A smile, fleeting and hidden almost, played around the corner of her lips, and her eyes crinkled just a tad too much.

Joy? Happiness?

What was it?

No candy tasted that good.

“Let’s thank daddy shall we?” Emme said in a cheery singsong voice, holding up her bear as if to speak, “Yes, thank you daddy.”

Then she giggled. It was the giggle that sealed it. And just like that I knew what had happened.

A river of cold water ran up my back and into my neck, where it pooled and forced a shiver, almost as if there were a hand in there somewhere, pulling invisible strings.