You can get invitations engraved overnight if you’re the British Consulate with the full force of the United Kingdom behind you. Ours was addressed to THE MAGILL FAMILY on paper so thick it unfolded itself. It was this close to a royal command.
Dad was totally stoked. You’d think the last thing he’d want to do is dress up for a party. But he worked around the clock on our costumes. Mom had to cook for the rest of the week.
I’d planned to glue straggly wood shavings down both sides of my face, top off with a floppy yellow nylon wig, and go as Perry Highsmith. But Dad had other plans.
In case you didn’t recognize us at the party, we were three characters from The Wizard of Oz—Scarecrow (Mom), Cowardly Lion (me) (thanks, Dad), and Tin Man (Dad).
It all had to be just right. Dad drove out to Long Grove for actual straw to stuff up Mom’s sleeves. Grandma Magill had been leading a quiet life since Grandpa died, but she brought out her sewing machine. And I got a velvet lion suit with a flexible tail and a silk mane. Cowardly, yes, but not Kmart.
Dad’s costume was the best. Grandma ran it up from silver foil. He found a metal worker to do Tin Man’s head.
“Dad, we could have saved a lot of trouble. We could go as ourselves, then pick costumes out of Lady Christobel’s trunk,” I told him.
“English costumes?” Dad said. “I don’t think so. We’re Americans. The Wizard of Oz is an American story, by an Illinois guy.”
“Okay, Dad,” I said. “Try to keep calm.”
“Besides,” he said. “I have to be Tin Man.”
• • •
On the night of the party the three of us were down in the front hall, waiting for Uncle Paul. He was going to take Dad in the Audi convertible because Tin Man’s head and funnel hat were too tall to fit in the Lincoln or Mom’s Subaru. We were admiring ourselves. My nose was black patent leather. My ears perked. I could do practically anything with my tail.
Under her busted straw farmer hat, Mom had big scarecrow circles painted on her cheeks. Actual straw came out of her plaid flannel cuffs. Her overalls were taken in at the waist. She was an excellent Scarecrow.
Dad was the best and shiny as a chrome bumper. Under the pointy hat his mask fitted down over his whole head, with weird round eyes cut out of the tin and an eerie small mouth. Kind of a space-alien Tin Man.
A footstep sounded on the stairs above us. My ears lay back on my velvet head.
Holly.
I’d forgotten about Holly. But here she came down the stairs, except she was Dorothy. The one with the apron, the artificial pigtails, the bobby socks, the ruby slippers, red as her lips. She’d rifled through the costume closet of the high school drama department.
“Oh, honey,” Scarecrow said, “you look darling.”
Dorothy clicked her ruby slippers.
“You’re not a sixth grader,” said Cowardly Lion, bravely. “You can’t go to this party.”
“If happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow, why, oh why, can’t I?” Dorothy said. “Besides, you little creep, look what the invitation says.”
Scarecrow was holding the invitation, and of course it said “The Magill family.”
“Precisely,” Grandma Magill said, coming in from the back way. Sort of Grandma Magill. But now she was wearing a giant pink net dress with skirts sweeping the floor. It was pretty tight on top, and she had on a crown studded with fake jewels—emeralds. She gripped a wand with a glitter star at the end of it.
Scarecrow stifled a scream.
“Mama,” Tin Man said, muffled. “Who are you?”
“I’m Glinda the Good Witch, obviously,” Grandma said. “Who did you think I was, Aunty Em?”
“Witch,” Scarecrow whispered behind me. “Didn’t I always tell you?”
Then Uncle Paul walked in the front door with the car keys in his hand. He was wearing what he wears to costume parties: a Ralph Lauren double-breasted dinner jacket, a pleated Tom Ford shirt with black butterfly bow tie, and pants with a quiet stripe down the side. “Nobody ever questions a dinner jacket,” he says.
But we stopped him dead in his tracks. We were all here but the flying monkeys. Dorothy clicked her slippers for him. Cowardly Lion did something with his tail. Tin Man stared unblinking. Glinda drew a bead on him with her wand.
“We’re off to see the wizard,” Scarecrow explained.
“Oh,” Uncle Paul said. “Then I guess we better hit the yellow brick road.”
The town hadn’t seen traffic like this since the lockdown days last spring. It was start and stop with some limos. But finally we were out by the carriage lamps of the former Showalter place.
The press was on the lawn, aiming cameras at the glowing windows. People without invitations were being escorted off the premises by black-suited consular muscle.
The two guests waiting just ahead of us seemed to be President and Mrs. Abraham Lincoln. Honest Abe wore a top hat and a shawl. Mrs. Lincoln, who was a little larger than life, wore a hoop skirt and a bonnet.
I didn’t know them, but Scarecrow reached out and gave Mrs. Lincoln a boost on her hoopskirt. She jumped and turned around. “Is that you, Marjorie?” It was Mrs. Stanley, and Abe was Mr. Stanley. Together again.
The door closed behind them. When it opened again, Glinda took Uncle Paul’s arm. Scarecrow took Tin Man’s. Cowardly Lion muttered to Dorothy, “This is so not your party,” and in we went.
There to greet us was the ugliest woman who ever lived. And it wasn’t a mask. Scarecrow gasped.
She was a really tall woman in a towering white wig, and her left arm was in a sling. She had on a Bo Peep costume, low in front but flat. A flock of fake sheep grazed by her skirt. In her free hand was a shepherd’s crook.
“How very good of you to come,” Bo Peep boomed. “I am Horace Calthorpe. Excuse the sling. I hit a reef. And I always choose this Bo Peep costume, as I am rather the black sheep of the family, haw, haw. Do come in. My wife will be down directly.”
Beyond Bo Peep the party swirled across the marble floors under the blazing chandelier. Waiters in powdered wigs circulated with trays of punch cups. An orchestra played for dancing in the living room.
“This doesn’t look a thing like Kansas,” Scarecrow said. “Does it look like Kansas to you?”
The whole sixth grade was there in a lot of Kmart costumes. Sienna Searcy’s girls went by without Sienna. They were all princesses of some kind. There were a ton of zombies. Still, we were outnumbered by grown-ups. Coming in behind us was the Mayor of Chicago. The real one.
The crowds parted, and Hilary was sitting on a settee at the foot of the curving stairs. He was Tiny Tim with an antique padded crutch. Next to him sat a ballerina, the number one swan from Swan Lake. Feathered headdress, black glitter eyes, mile-long legs in toe shoes.
Tiny Tim was saying to her, “Sit up, Esther. Be as tall as you can be.”
I dragged Dorothy over to introduce her. But here came Lynn with two plates of food. She teetered in high-heeled shoes that buttoned up into her black skirt. She was wearing a tacky hat.
“Who are you?” we said.
“Mary Poppins,” Lynn said. “I found this outfit upstairs. It wasn’t in a trunk. I think Hilary’s actual nanny wore it.” In heels she was taller than I was. She was gaining on me. “I had to keep it simple,” she said, “and I couldn’t manage the umbrella. I have to feed these two. He can’t walk in that cast. She can’t walk in those toe shoes. They’re both dead weight.”
But now Dorothy was pulling me toward the dance floor. “I can’t dance in these paws,” I whined. “I can’t dance at all.”
“Hashtag you can’t do anything,” Dorothy said.
But I found Uncle Paul and handed her over.
It was mostly a dancing party. Tin Man and Scarecrow swooped around like they do in front of the tree at Christmas. And the Lincolns, together again. And here’s a sight burned into my brain for all time: Grandma Glinda Good Witch doing a two-step with Bo Peep.
A gong sounded from high in the house. We all headed for the front hall. A consular servant in a powdered wig stood halfway up the stairs. “Ladies and gentlemen, pray silence for the entrance of your hostess, Lady Christobel, as Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt and Serpent of the Nile, with all her retinue.”
Another gong, and there was Lady Christobel at the top of the stairs with eyes like Esther’s and a cobra crown. She was covered with jewels that looked real and held up a fake snake that looked way too real.
“There’s Mummy with her asp in a basket!” piped Tiny Tim at the top of his little lungs.
Everybody cheered. After all, she looked every inch a queen, but then she’s ninety-first in line. She nodded down pleasantly and waved her snake.
A servant woman attended her, wafting a big feathered fan to keep off the flies of ancient Egypt. The servant woman wasn’t bad either, with bracelets up her arms and a wig cut low across her painted eyes. She made several Egyptian gestures.
“Who is it?” I muttered to Mary Poppins.
“I only know because I saw her getting made up,” Mary Poppins said.
“Who?”
“Guess.”
But I couldn’t.
Cleopatra and her retinue started down the stairs. Her throne was borne aloft by two gigantic Egyptian strongmen. Their costumes were skimpy. I mean skimpy. And the thongs on their sandals wound up to their massive knees. Their headdresses were higher than the feathered fan. I looked again, and one of them was Reginald. I looked one more time, and the other one was Andy. Westside Elementary’s Andy, the guard who faints at needles. He seemed to be okay with Cleopatra’s asp.
Down the curving stairs they carried Cleopatra into the midst of her loyal subjects. At the bottom her ancient Egyptian muscle helped her off her throne, and her handmaiden dropped a final curtsy. Several people dropped curtsies just to be on the safe side. And I’ll say this about Lady Christobel as Cleopatra. She made a much better-looking woman than Lord Horace did.
I finally saw up close who her handmaiden was. It was Ms. Roebuck.
Later on, I caught another glimpse of Ms. Roebuck. She was on the dance floor, turning slowly in Reginald’s arms.
“It could work,” said a voice near my velvet ear. “Reginald and Ms. Roebuck. Why not?” said Mary Poppins. “And by the way, I’m going back to Lynette. I was never really a Lynn. And ‘Lady Lynette’ sounds better.”
“And you’ll be Lady Lynette because . . .”
“I’ll be marrying Hilary.”
“Does Hilary know?”
“He’ll know when he needs to know,” said Mary Poppins.
• • •
There’s a cozy study off the living room, tucked under the curving stairs. It may have been Mr. Bob Showalter’s man cave. Now portraits hang in there of all the Harewood family members the Calthorpes have married.
Tin Man sat on a sofa, looking into a fire snapping on the hearth. Cowardly Lion sat in a chair. Dorothy had danced Uncle Paul into the room, sharp in his dinner jacket.
“What are you guys doing?” he said, settling on the sofa.
“Taking a breather,” Cowardly Lion said. “This partying is hard work.”
“Be glad you’re not Bo Peep,” Uncle Paul said. “He’s having to do it all in high heels.”
“It’s a great party, though. Right?” I figured Uncle Paul had been to enough parties to know.
“I can truly say I’ve never been to one like it,” he said, “and everybody’s here.”
“Funny you should say that, Uncle Paul. I think Mr. McLeod’s here. I think I saw him.”
Uncle Paul smacked his forehead. “Nooo,” he said.
“I think it was him.” I scratched my patent-leather nose.
“I’ll go out the back way,” Uncle Paul said, and elbowed Tin Man. “Hey, Tin Man, you ready to call it a night?”
“How come you don’t even want to see Mr. McLeod?” Cowardly Lion asked.
“Because I might weaken,” Uncle Paul said. “After all, I’m passing up the greatest guy I’ll ever meet, and I’m not going to feel like this about anybody else.”
“Right,” said the lion. “And I’ve looked ahead—I’m beginning to do that. Lynette Stanley’s been doing it for years. Anyway, I’ve looked ahead, and you know what I see?”
“I don’t,” Uncle Paul said. “And it’s a little hard to take you seriously since you look like a big stuffed toy.”
“Well, do your best, Uncle Paul. Because Mr. McLeod’s going to be deployed, sooner or later. Right? The National Guard’s going to send him—”
“Yes,” Uncle Paul said. “Get to the point, Lion.”
“After it’s over, he’s going to need somebody to come home to. That’s the point.”
Uncle Paul looked away from the fire.
“And it ought to be you,” said the lion.
Uncle Paul said, “Archer, don’t con—”
“Yes, it ought to be you,” said Tin Man, and took off his head. It was Mr. McLeod.