shamelessly into the crotch of Elliott Bay, ogled by the hoary Olympics Brothers, envied by eyeballing tourists from the Space Needle’s observatory. To keep him company he replaced Ma with orchids. Certainly his snooty neighbors had no interest in fostering friendship. In fact, they actually shunned him, as if a dwarf neighbor was something to be ashamed of. They would cross the boulevard to avoid him. They never invited him to their fancy estates, and whenever Mel attempted neighborly gestures they would recoil, stammer incoherently, and flee. Except for Joy. His neighbor Joy was the only Magnolian with the guts to befriend a dwarf.
Joy lived in another Dahl house with a city view you’d slit your throat for if you had the bucks to buy it. A regular-sized lady, Joy had jazzed hair and a perfect figure in 1973, was still young and nubile and freshly divorced from Hubby #1. Mel misinterpreted Joy’s neighborly gestures. Thought Joy had the hots for him. So he made a pass and she slapped him so hard he spun across her living room like a child’s top spinner. Even so, they would remain friends through the years. Most of them anyway.
When Mel complained to Joy about the way the other neighbors treated him, Joy said, “Hey, quit your whining. You wouldn’t have lasted five minutes on the Bluff back in the glory days.” And she told him how it was growing up in the early Magnolia days, back in the ’50s and ’60s when the rich discovered God’s Chosen Neighborhood.
Over the Magnolia Bridge in those glory days journeyed famous architects and interior designers to build and embellish fine estates for their feathered clientele, Mrs. Danforth Pierce-Arrow, Mel’s next door neighbor, now in her dotage, being one, and Mrs. Neil Robbins being another. The Robbins were Jewish. Jews-even Catholics, as long as they could afford to-were permitted to own homes on Magnolia Bluff, although generally speaking Protestants were preferred. And no colored people, no, no. Magnolians, said Joy, feared and loathed diversity, but back in those days they didn’t call them bigots. Just rich.
On many a day, Joy told Mel, Mrs. Danforth Pierce-Arrow, who’s Episcopal? And Mrs. Robbins, being a Jewess? They would come into the Magnolia Pharmacy at the same time. Maybe nearly collide at the prescription counter? Never exchanged more than a polite nod. Joy saw this all the time growing up in Magnolia.
Mel remarked, “At least they recognized the other’s living presence. Whenever I come upon Mrs. Pierce-Arrow or Mrs. Robbins they just tilt their noses and pretend they don’t see me. Mel, the Invisible Man.”
“Will you ever get over all this self-pitying?” said Joy.
Joy. A regular-sized person who’d grown up in luxury and privilege. How could Joy ever empathize? But she was still reminiscing on the good old days:
Over the Magnolia Bridge came the serving classes, housemaids in crisp uniforms overlain with thin cloth coats, shivering alone at bus stops in darkness on winter nights, snow drifting up to their bare knees before a bus agreed to stop. And the Carnation milkman who always entered homes through the
And over that glory bridge came roofers and plumbers and electricians to tweak the infrastructure, guaranteeing that all the Mr. and Mrs. Pierce-Arrows and Robbins and even the Catholic families with their unplanned children enjoyed the security and comfort of upper-class loos and hearths. Nothing like crime ever transpired on the Bluff, Joy told Mel, unless you counted when the Marvel family’s colored maid was caught red- handed with Mrs. Marvel’s sterling silver flatware, family heirlooms. The maid insisted she was carrying them into the kitchen for polishing. But Mrs. Marvel fired her on the spot. That was the biggest crime scandal on Magnolia Bluff in those early days, unless you counted three-year-old Dougie Marvel’s appearing naked in teenaged Annie Quigley’s bathroom. Annie, naked in the tub, screamed. And then the summer when little Kathleen Pierce-Arrow got caught playing touch tag with young Neil Robbins. Back then, that was about as criminal as things got.
And, too, the sacrosanct Magnolia Bridge delivered upper-class men like Joy’s Husband #1 in sleek automobiles from their luxurious estates into the city’s languishing heart, where they doctored and lawyered, ran their banks and visited their clubs, and wouldn’t hesitate to drive right over the drunk Indian weaving against the stoplight.
“Back long ago?” said Joy. “What they call Magnolia now? It was an island. Separated from the mainland by a bracken-ishy slough. When the city’s rich folk saw the potential out here, why, they filled in the slough and built the first bridge onto the island.”
“Why did they name it Magnolia?”
Joy shrugged. “It was a mistake Captain Vancouver made back in history. See-”
“I’ll bet Captain Vancouver hated midgets.”
“Mel, how many times have I told you not to refer to yourself and others like you as midgets? You are a dwarf, a small person. You are not a little fly.”
“I hate myself.”
“Oh, stop whining. In my heart you’re bigger than me.”
In her regular-sized heart.
Then one day, less than a year after staking his claim in God’s Chosen Neighborhood, Mel received a call from his banker. “Your account has five dollars left in it,” said the banker. “You want us to apply that to your monthly fee?”
Having exhausted his inheritance on the house and big floater car, Mel needed to “work,” a word only whispered by his neighbors. But he had no real training in any kind of work. Desperation unleashed a flash of genius. He invented Mel the Diminutive Man, learned the tightrope, and joined a traveling carney act. Joy told him, “One day, you’ll be a star, Mel. In my heart, I know that.”
Mel made his public debut in 1973 on that fateful evening in Walla Walla, Washington, when he rescued the famous carney dwarf Skippy Smathers from disgrace. And then Skippy Smathers rescued Mel from financial ruin, moving into Mel’s house and paying monthly rent. Mel regained faith in his future.
When Mel introduced Joy to Skippy Smathers, he felt their instant chemistry. Joy broke Mel’s heart the day she and Skippy wed, Mel standing as the best man. All along wondering to himself,
III
While Skippy mounted Joy’s bounteous gifts, Mel spent three years solo, pampering exotic orchids in the solarium of his showcase home, waiting for his friends’ marriage to fail. After the divorce, Mel and Skippy teamed up again, and this time they rode their dreams to Hollywood.
In Hollywood, Skippy’s star skyrocketed, while Mel’s career never took off. Skippy played the little man in every stage and film production where a dwarf counted, while Mel languished in his pal’s burgeoning celebrity shadow.
Mel, destined to play the extra. Mel, destined to lose every casting call to Skippy. Destined, it seemed, to live off Skippy’s earnings, while he propped up the star’s fragile psyche. It wasn’t a proud destiny, and Mel was a proud man. But destiny, like a fickle friend, can turn in the wink of an eye.
They never actually moved to Hollywood. Personally, Mel would have preferred moving from Seattle, fleeing God’s Chosen Neighborhood. Mel wanted to live in Los Angeles, in that house next door to Jack Nicholson, the house he had always dreamed of owning. Overlooking Hollywood’s glitz and glamour. That’s where Mel knew he belonged. But Skippy balked at the idea. Skippy was afraid of Los Angeles. As if Los Angeles was a dwarf-eating monster. And Skippy always got his way.
Twenty years passed. Mrs. Pierce-Arrow got crushed by her dumbwaiter and her son Danforth III now occupied the Pierce-Arrow estate. Neil Robbins married Kathleen Pierce-Arrow, they placed Neil’s parents in a luxury senior complex and now occupied the Robbins nest. Mrs. Marvel, a crotchety crone still lived in the Marvel estate and her servants came and went. Annie Marvel married, had a bunch of offspring, converted to lesbianism, and fled the Bluff.
As the century turned, the bigotry clause disappeared from real estate contracts but that didn’t mean it disappeared from some Magnolians’ deep-seated preferences. Persons of color and dwarfs received a friendly nod at Tully’s but rarely got called over to join a table of fat cats. Nothing much had changed in God’s Chosen
