Maybe the Moon

by Armistead Maupin

  Mom latched onto Irene and Luther in the mid seventies at a Little People of America convention. They had presented a slide show on their long-dead career. Mom was so convinced of their wonderfulness that she drove me all the way to Phoenix so I could see them in their natural habitat. I was a moody teenager in those days, struggling more than most with my identity, so I guess she thought the experience would be inspirational.

  The Corsos were both in their late fifties and lived on the seventh floor of a suburban high rise. Luther loomed over me at nearly four feet. He had a face like a dried apple and wore plaid trousers with a button-down shirt. A recent stroke had impaired his speech, so Irene, who was aggressively lilac-haired and even taller, did most of the talking. It centered on their kids, as I remember, and their bridge game, and their fleeting moment of glory almost forty years earlier as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

  Their living room was awash in Ozabilia: plastic Tin Men, stuffed Lions, Wicked Witches out the wazoo. Even the bricks on their balcony had been painted that unmistakable shade of yellow. I’d always loved the movie (still do) but couldn’t for the life of me connect its legend with these hopelessly prosaic people. These were Munchkins in flip-flops, for God’s sake, without benefit of Deco. Munchkins with a microwave, who ate Pop-Tarts and watched golf tournaments on TV. It just didn’t scan.

  Part of the problem was their size. Irene and Luther had been teenagers at MGM, and since then they’d each grown over a foot, fleshing out considerably in the process. A lot of the Munchkins were taller now, Irene told me, a shocking revelation I absorbed without comment, feeling somehow betrayed. Most of the Munchkins had been midgets, I remembered, not dwarfs, and thus proportional, so the right punch to the pituitary would have made growth possible. When you got right down to it, the Corsos weren’t like me at all.

  Irene brought us Cokes and Ding Dongs (get it?) and rattled off the well-worn particulars of their days in Oz. She and Luther had met on the all-midget cross-country bus chartered by Papa Singer, the full-sized procurer and “handler” of the Munchkins. When they arrived in California in early 1938, they were booked with the others into the Culver Hotel. The building’s still there, by the way, though it’s full of offices now. When we drive by and I imagine the old days, I can’t help thinking of it as a sort of Ellis Island for my people.

  Like a lot of other actors signed for Oz, the Corsos first worked on a turkey called The Terror of Tiny Town, the world’s first and last all-midget musical western. Irene was in chaps and riding a Shetland pony the day Luther proposed to her. She was thrilled to death, she said, but she called her mother in Ithaca before she would tell him yes. Luther hocked his watch so he could buy her a ring, and they were married and sharing a room at the Culver by the time they got to Oz.

  When I asked Irene what they were paid as Munchkins, she just smiled and said: “Not as much as Toto.” This was the literal truth, it turned out, but she and Luther had been so enamored of the experience and each other, she said, that the money hadn’t mattered. She’d never counted on being an actress, anyway, so the whole thing had been gravy. She and Luther were really business people at heart, she insisted, which was why they’d done so well with their mail order service. And would I like to see their citizenship award from the Kiwanis Club?

  The Corsos knew only a handful of the surviving Munchkins. Three or four lived right there in Phoenix and showed up for LPA gatherings on an irregular basis. One was on their shit list: an old guy in a nursing home who’d boasted for years to anyone who’d listen that he’d been the Mayor of Munchkinland. He’d only been a soldier, Irene said, not the whiskered fellow with the big pocket watch we all remember. This seemed a tame enough fib to me, but Irene said it had caused her great embarrassment, since reporters were always calling to ask about him. The real Mayor had been a friend of hers, she said, and he’d been dead for several years.

  The Corsos were even more annoyed at Judy Garland, though they still kept an autographed photo of her on their mantel. Irene said Judy had appeared on the Jack Paar show one night and made cruel remarks about the Munchkins, calling them drunks and lechers and generally getting a lot of cheap laughs at their expense. Their feelings had been hurt by that, she said, because Judy had once been so nice. The stories weren’t even true, but the myth of the degenerate Munchkins became so entrenched that Hollywood eventually made an unfunny movie about it, Under the Rainbow. They had to hire dwarfs to play the Munchkins, though, since, due to the miracles of modern science, there were no longer enough midgets to fill the roles.

  We spent about two hours in all at the Corsos’. As we were leaving, Irene gave me a ceremonial kiss and a framed poem about little people called “Small Blessings.” Afterwards Mom and I bought peanut butter milk shakes and took a long drive in the desert. She didn’t ask for my impression of the Corsos, so I stayed off the subject, knowing how easily her feelings were hurt. She was onto me, though, which was why she hadn’t asked, presumably, and she seemed gloomy and withdrawn for the rest of the trip.

  Looking back, I guess she’d expected me to bond with Irene and Luther, to exchange some secret tribal handshake and become their fairy godchild for life. At the very least she’d wanted me to feel less alone. Mom was like that. God knows I’d tried to oblige her, but the chemistry just wasn’t there. I felt more real kinship with the stoned Indian hippie who sold us the milk shakes at Dairy Queen than with those sad, oversized has-beens back at the tower.

  I bit the bullet and called the guy at PortaParty to make arrangements for my first gig. His name was Neil Riccarton, and he sounded friendly enough, though he had a twerpy little voice that reminded me of Kevin Costner. He told me to join the troupe (I liked the ring of that, so theatrical) in the parking lot of the shopping center at Sunset and Crescent Heights. From there we’d proceed to the party in the official PortaParty van. I couldn’t miss it, he said; there were clowns and balloons painted on the side. The gig was in Bel Air, at the home of an obstetrician.

  After some deliberation, I decided on a sort of Pierrette effect—black polyester with white ruffles at the neck and sleeves and big red buttons down the front. This would be eye-grabbing yet durable, good for repeat performances. I scrapped the traditional whiteface, sticking with my own makeup, since I knew it would be much more comfortable, especially when summer came. I also wanted them to see who I was.

  When the big day came, Renee drove me.

  “Who are the others?” she asked, her hair whipping in the wind like clean laundry. We had just reached the crooked spine of the city and begun our descent into Hollywood. It was a beautiful morning, all things considered.

  “Other what?”

  “In the…party group.”

  I told her I wasn’t sure. Clowns mostly. A few mimes.

  “Gah!” she gushed.

  I gave her a dangerous look.

  “Don’t be so negative,” she said. “You can make anything work for you.”

  I had the creepy feeling she’d learned this pop wisdom from her Scientologist, but I didn’t say so, knowing how sensitive she was about it. By unspoken mutual consent, we made conversation about the passing scenery, avoiding both her crappy love life and my crappy career, until we finally reached Sunset and she caught sight of the PortaParty van.

  “Gah,” she said, no longer able to contain herself. “It looks really neat.”

  She pulled into the parking lot and opened my door so I could see. There were several clowns in a cluster behind the van, sucking on their last preparty cigarettes. One of them, an Emmett Kelly clone in Air Jordans, did an unrehearsed double take when he saw me. Recovering, he hollered to a young black guy crouched on the asphalt in front of a box of party favors.

  Neil Riccarton rose and bounded toward us with a blinding smile. He was wearing gray cotton coveralls, the kind that roustabouts wear at the circus, and the zipper was lowered to reveal an awesome expanse of silken breastbone. I caught my breath at the sight of him. It wasn’t until he spoke t
hat I actually attached this lanky dreamboat to the dorky midwestern voice I’d heard on the phone.

  “You’re Cadence, right?”

  “Right.” I gestured toward Renee, who was standing by the door. “This is my friend Renee.”

  “Hi,” said Neil.

  Renee echoed him, coloring noticeably.

  He turned back to me. “Need a hand there?”

  Normally, when Renee’s around, I let her do the lifting, since she’s accustomed to my weight and its distribution, and there are no rude surprises, but I made an exception in Neil’s case. His big hands slid under my arms with gentle authority, conveying me to the ground in a single hydraulic motion. I thanked him briskly, then hid my distraction by fluffing the ruffles on my sleeves. It took all my willpower to keep from gazing across at his crotch.

  Get a grip, I told myself. Don’t objectify this guy. The black man as superstud is a dehumanizing myth. There was also the chance he was gay, of course, but I seriously doubted it, and my radar in that area is usually pretty good. Fortunately, my unclean thoughts were kept at bay by his bouncy Kevin Costner voice, which made Neil sound like the victim of a bad dubbing job. By focusing on that, I decided, I could get through the day without making an ass of myself.

  Neil turned to Renee. “I’m afraid we’ve only got one place in the van.”

  Renee looked confused, so I jumped in. “She’s not going with me. She’s just my ride.”

  “Oh, I see.”

  Renee gave him the most fetching little smile. That girl’s mind is such an easy read. “I’m going to the Beverly Center,” she said. “It’s my day for that.”

  “Right.”

  “We need to arrange a pickup time,” I told him. “How long do you think this’ll take?”

  Neil’s brow wrinkled. “I’m not sure I can be that exact about it. Five o’clock or so.”

  “I can just wait here,” Renee offered, “if you’re not back by then.”

  “Or”—Neil shrugged, looking at me—“I could drop you off myself.”

  I told him I lived in the Valley.

  “I know,” he said. “So do I.”

  “Really?” It was Renee who said this, and a little too eagerly, I thought.

  “It’s no problem,” said Neil, still looking at me. “I do it for the troupe all the time.”

  The next thing I knew, Renee was gone and I was scrunched up in that van with Neil, three clowns, a shitload of party stuff, and a haggard-looking fairy princess named Julie. A seat would have been wasted on me, so I made a nest out of a pile of painted backdrop. As we tooled down Sunset toward Bel Air, Neil broke the ice by announcing to all and sundry that the newest member of the troupe had made her debut in the movies playing you-know-who.

  “Shit,” said Julie. “I could die tomorrow if I had a role like that.”

  I told her it hadn’t exactly changed my life.

  “Still,” she said, “it’s a legend.”

  One of the guys, a gawky red-whiskered clown named Tread, looked over his shoulder at me and said, “I really got off on that part where Mr. Woods eats the loaded brownie.”

  “And gets the munchies!” said someone else.

  “That was way cool,” said another.

  “They wouldn’t even make that scene now.”

  “Fuck no, man. No fuckin’ way.”

  Neil gave Tread a funny sideways glance.

  “Hey,” said Tread. “I’m clean.”

  “Just not at the house,” said Neil. “That’s all I ask.”

  “Jeez,” muttered Tread.

  “Hey.” Neil’s expression was pleasant yet pained. “Do I look like Marilyn Quayle?”

  “Totally!” Julie emitted a froggy laugh, then reached over the seat and slapped Neil’s shoulder. “Especially when you do that little pursing thing with your mouth.”

  “What little pursing thing?”

  “You know.” Julie squinched her mouth up, prompting Tread and another clown to follow suit, to the enormous merriment of everyone but Neil.

  “Guys,” he said, drawing the word out in a sort of Valley whine. “Not in front of the new person.”

  Julie hooted, then lunged into a real get-down Janis Joplin coughing jag. Emmett Kelly regarded her in doleful silence, then thumped her on the back a few times, to no avail. Neil gazed back at me and winked. “It’s not too late to back out.”

  “Hey,” I told him. “No problem here.”

  The obstetrician’s house was a low-slung fieldstone affair with a pristine gravel drive, crisp lawns, and a blood-red front door that seemed higher than the house itself. The caterers were erecting a tent on the lawn when we arrived. Neil received his orders from the obstetrician’s wife—a nervous anorexic with one of those carefully windswept lopsided hairdos so popular in Bel Air—then parked the van, as instructed, in a space next to the tennis court.

  On my feet again, I stretched and took several deep breaths. My left foot had gone to sleep during the trip, so I stamped it a few times in the gravel, like an old vaudeville horse doing arithmetic. Neil caught this action and grinned at me. “You OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Whatcha wanna blow?”

  “Pardon me?”

  His lip flickered. “Balloons or bubbles?”

  “None of the above?”

  He chuckled, then dug into the back of the van and handed me a bottle of bubbles. “Give it a try. It works well with the little kids.”

  I asked him how little they were.

  “Five or so. It’s a fifth-birthday party.”

  “Check.”

  “We’ll sing ‘Happy Birthday,’ bring out the cake.”

  I smiled at him. “Want me to jump out of it?”

  He took that as nervous humor, I guess, because he smiled back and said, “Don’t worry. You’ll do great.”

  Anyone else who’d reassured me about this mickey-mouse gig would have caught some shit, but Neil was different. As the day wore on, I saw how much he loved his work and how much he wanted me to love it as well. He was terrific with the kids, never condescending, dealing with their minicrises like someone who remembered how it felt. Here’s the image that remains with me: Neil at his keyboard, onyx eyes aglimmer, serenading the birthday girl with an up-tempo rendition of “You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby.” When I jumped in unannounced for the second verse, he was surprised I could sing so well, but he winked at me and welcomed me into the song. It was a satisfying moment.

  The other guys had their functions too. Tread did magic tricks and made balloon animals, Emmett Kelly and his buddy were tumblers, and Julie shlepped around with her magic wand, telling knock-knock jokes that were incredibly lame, even for a fairy princess talking to preschoolers. I didn’t fare much better with my roving bubble-blower routine, but most of the kids, bless their voyeuristic little hearts, leapt at the chance to study a grownup shorter than themselves.

  We were finished by five o’clock, packed up like gypsies heading for the road. I’d already begun to think of the job in those terms, for purposes of sanity, if nothing else. It was easier somehow to tell myself that this wasn’t Bel Air 1991 but Romania a century earlier (minus the pogroms), and we were all actors in a wandering troupe, plying our trade at a village fair. There was grass beneath our feet, after all, and simple music of our own making, and a blue dome of sky above our heads. So what if the villagers were all the same age and the local noblewoman had a ridiculous hairdo? Fantasy is the art of not being picky.

  We dropped off the others at the parking lot, and Neil drove me home according to plan. As we climbed into the canyon, he apologized for the obstetrician’s wife, who, among other things, had called me “cute as pie” to my face in the same simpering tone she used with her five-year-old.

  I told him I was used to it.

  “Yeah, but still…”

  “Did she commend you on your natural rhythm?”

  He smirked and looked over at me. “She told me how much she liked Do the Right Thing
.”

  I laughed.

  “They’re not all that bad.”

  “Praise the Lord.”

  “The kids were fun, though.”

  It wasn’t a question, but I made a little murmur to be a good sport. I doubt if he was fooled. I don’t hate children or anything; some of them are very nice individually. I just prefer to avoid them en masse. When they hold big conventions, for instance, and get shitfaced on sugar.

  Neil asked me where I’d learned to sing like that.

  “At home. In Baker.”

  “Baker?”

  “It’s in the desert. No one’s ever heard of it. They call it ‘The Gateway to Death Valley.’” I rolled my eyes. “How’s that for another way of saying Purgatory?”

  He chuckled. “They don’t call it that seriously?”

  “Oh, very seriously. Big sign and everything. Right over the road.”

  “I can’t picture it somehow.”

  “Lucky you.”

  “So you sang in school?”

  “Sometimes. One or two assemblies. Mostly I stayed home and sang along with my Bee Gees albums.”

  He took this in thoughtfully. “I can see the influence, now that you mention it. Your voice has a quality that’s really sort of…”

  “Gibbsian?”

  “Yeah.”

  I told him Arnie thought I sounded like Teresa Brewer.

  “No,” he said, “more like the Bee Gees.”

  “Well, fuck you very much.”

  “No, really. It’s a great sound. You could have something there. You should cut a record.”

  What’s that they say about Hollywood? A town where you can die of encouragement? I didn’t want to look overeager, so I reacted with a skeptical expression.

  “What’s the matter with the Bee Gees?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes at him. “Do I really have to explain this to a black person?”