Manuel Gonzales - The Miniature Wife - and Other Stories

She is not unattractive, my wife, in her miniaturized state. Her best features — her waist, the round curve of her hips, her shapely legs and fine eyebrows — are there still, undiminished by her diminished size. But what’s more — and more surprising — her harder, more difficult to reconcile features have softened. The hard, reproachful look in her eyes. The often angry or disappointed set of her jaw. Her rather large feet. All of her should have reduced proportionately, and maybe it all has and this is but a trick of the mind, but one night, as she slept in the small makeshift bed I made for her — matchbox, tufts of cotton, stitched squares of felt — I crept up on her and spied on her with a magnifying glass — I own quite a number of very good glasses — and it seemed to me that something in the process of miniaturization had enhanced the look of her.

As much as I hate to admit it, I felt some pride in this. One of the many complaints we face in my office is that in the process of miniaturizing a thing, we rub out the details of it. For the past two years now, we’ve been working diligently to develop — across all of our miniaturization processes — an ability to retain the sharp and necessary details, the inherent beauty, the power of a thing’s function even when shrunk down to the size of a cup, a blade of grass, a grain of sand.

Gazing down at my wife through my magnifying glass, I could see that we had finally found some measure of success. I must have made some sound, then, or perhaps the simple presence of me looming over her with my magnifying glass was all it took, but regardless, she woke and looked up at me and offered me a disdainful shake of her head before gathering the pieces of felt around her and stomping away. I looked for her but she had disappeared — more quickly than I would have thought possible — and I did not see her again for another two days.

In the construction of the dollhouse, I have not relied on a kit. Instead, I have leaned heavily on blueprints. A kit, so I assumed, would not allow for enough customization. Dollhouses made to order do not account for room size, doorjambs, ceiling heights, are not designed to be inhabited. Not to mention that what I had to build, in order to coax her into it, to persuade her that some kind of life, a temporary life inside it would be an improvement, for it to do what I required of it, the dollhouse needed to be, in miniature, a much better house than our own.

In all, the exercise has been quite enjoyable. There is the smell of sawdust and wood and wood glue, the metallic smell that lingers on the tips of my fingers after handling so many small nails. And of the dollhouse furniture, I have finished carving all but the bed, which I found to be beyond my small abilities. Excuse the pun.

I’ve asked one of the guys in production to build a bed frame to my specifications, and then I will have someone else miniaturize it for me. Then I will take the small bed home and place it inside the dollhouse and the house will be complete. The roof is already installed. The rest of the house has been furnished, despite my wife’s objections, despite her petty vandalisms, the graffiti (nail polish, easily removed), the torn curtains (easily replaced). Despite the fact that she has broken the glass out of the windowpanes, which I decided don’t need to be replaced, as there’s little threat of rain or snow.

She is against the house now, but once I have the bed in place and have the bedroom decorated, almost exactly as our bedroom is decorated now, I know she will fall in love with it just as I have fallen in love with it. Until then, however, I’ve closed the house and have blocked the door and covered the windows.

I miss her, of course, my wife. It’s strange, though, since, technically, she is here with me. Is in the house, anyway, though I don’t know where exactly, or what she’s doing. But in truth, it’s as if she has gone away for business — though she doesn’t have a job to speak of — or on an extended vacation with a group of girlfriends, though she doesn’t have that, either. In any case, I find myself, when not actively building the dollhouse, reverting to an inert state. I do not cook for myself, content to simply order in or to raid the cans of peas and green beans and Chef Boyardee ravioli with meat sauce, which I crank open and dig into with a fork or spoon, without heating it up or tasting it in my mouth.

I find it hard to fall asleep. I do everything within my power to stave off the hour that I must finally go to bed, and when I do, I throw myself into bed in the most uncomfortable positions, my legs hanging over the edge, a bunched-up pile of duvet or a small throw pillow distractingly placed under my side or the small of my back.

The bed is permanently unmade, the kitchen uncleaned. I call in sick with more and more frequency, and then spend the day in my sleepwear watching daytime television when before I did not watch television at all.

The only time I feel like myself is while in the garage, wearing my magnifying goggles, the soldering iron in my hand, or my miter shears, or when using the diamond tip carving burrs I bought only a few days ago. I think of her in these moments, or if not of her directly, of what I’m doing for her, for us, and it’s almost as if she is standing right next to me, watching me as I build.

In my imagination, my wife is training. For survival, for success.

In my imagination, she is strong, much stronger than before. She has taut arms and a strong back and thick legs. Her feet are tough, her hands gloved in calluses.

Since my wife’s accident, I have found more than the normal amount of dead flies in the house — on the windowsills, on the kitchen table, floating in the toilet water. Under the magnifying glass — borrowed from my office — most of the flies look to be stabbed through, a small sliver of wood running through an abdomen or an eye. One of them looked caught, tortured, its legs removed, wings twisted back. At normal size, my wife was never this cruel. Her need for survival, I believe, has made her so, and in a way I am proud, am glad that she survives. She is a woman who, before, could not open jelly jars, who was afraid of dogs and open closets and mice and insects. I am not unconcerned, however, that if I do not find a means of reversal soon, she will be lost — to civilization, to me.

Before she had been reduced to the size of a coffee mug — in fact, ever since we have known each other — my wife had been the kind of person to leave notes. Notes of thanks, notes of displeasure. Small reminders of things to be done, gentle and not so gentle reprimands. One night, shortly after we were married and living together for the first time, and after I had gone to bed for the night, she placed a plastic grocery bag full of dirty dishes next to my side of the bed. These were dishes I had used but hadn’t yet washed and put away. They were a day old, or no more than two days old at the most. After I woke the next morning and stepped on the bag of dishes and twisted my ankle on them and nearly fell over because of them, I picked up the bag and found affixed to it a small yellow Post-it note on which she had simply written Yours .