[solatic]

I read it as the story of someone whose brother (Jeff) has multiple personality disorder, where Jeff's personality split to build a Michelle personality that was capable of standing up to and meeting not only his parents' expectations, but his sister's (the narrator's), as she also approves of who Jeff is as his Michelle personality. The bit about Michelle being a puppeteer is how Jeff self-reconciles having a separate personality "in control"; the bit about rich children being able to afford puppeteers is how Jeff reconciles how effortlessly the rich children at Stanford seem to be able to achieve success. The bits about Michelle stepping outside, about being contactable directly after Jeff disappears, are literary devices.

Jeff disappears from his parents', sister's, and wife's life, because none of them accept Jeff + Michelle as an integrated person, someone whose anxiety and depression is unacceptable to them (unacceptable to any of them) but neither is his attempt to pull himself together and become happy and well-adjusted (acceptable to his wife, unacceptable to his parents, acceptable to his sister but only on the condition that he make amends with his parents). Danny is Jeff's true biological son, and when the narrator thinks that she sees Jeff "pulling Danny's strings," what the narrator is really claiming to understand in the end is that she isn't capable of trusting that anyone can be genuinely happy in-and-of themselves, that the projection of happiness must be a front, intended to meet roles and expectations, and not from a genuine inner source.

The story is a tragedy, but not about Jeff. It's a tragedy about the unrealistic expectations often fostered in immigrant families (including the narrator's failure to land a rich husband or build a life outside her parents' conflict management issues and control), and how these expectations can wreck family life.