There’s a gnome who travels the maze of hallways beneath the main floor of the Kennedy Center. He may be carrying the dance belt Mikhail Baryshnikov wears on stage. “Eat your heart out!” he says, waggling the elaborate codpiece at you. He may be carrying complicated wigs, or he may be lurking around the makeup room trying to make someone laugh.
Tim is a short man in his early 60s with a thatch of grey hair, a mischievous smile, and a slightly humped back, the result of decades of bending over costumes as he sews, wigs as he pulls each hair into place and performers wiggling in his chair as he applies makeup. He’s a friend of Jean’s and quickly becomes a friend of mine.
There’s an odd inertia that takes over the makeup room when the first salvo of the chorus and supers passes through on their way to the stage. It’s impossible to even read a book or a magazine. You’re always waiting for something to happen, even if the next makeup change is an hour-and-a-half away. Tim is often there to fill in the gap.
Before I really get to know him, he says, “You have beautiful makeup, but where’s your mouth? Everything below your nose disappears because you don’t wear lipstick.”
Hunh?
Tim begins a campaign to change my ways and every time I show up without lipstick, he points it out.
“You know, with that sweater, you could wear a dark pink on your lips.”
In the end, Tim prevails. Now I can’t leave the house without putting on lipstick.
Tim collects bits and pieces of antique laces, jewelry, and ’rich gifts.’ He uses the laces to make dolls, which are in some demand for several years in Washington. A crowd favorite is the Miss Haversham doll from Charles Dickens’ GREAT EXPECTATIONS. Miss Haversham is jilted at the altar and insists on wearing her wedding gown for the rest of her life. She lives in her ruined house., with long-rotted food still on the table in the dining room where the reception would have been.
Miss Haversham currently resides at the Smithsonian American
Art collection.
A couple of Tim’s dolls are in the Smithsonian American Art Museum collection.
He makes me a dear little teddy bear with a lace jacket. He also gives me two tiny bears with little his and her lace jackets, but someone steals them out of my cupboard.
I go to Tim’s house one day to pick up a piece of graphic design work he’s done for me. He does freelance work from time to time. His tiny town house is in Foggy Bottom, not far from the Kennedy Center.
I’m standing in his small living room, as he goes into the back to find the envelope. His very fat cat, Mr. Mew, sits by the fireplace staring at me in disdain at first. Then he starts the laborious process of jumping on a chair, and then climbing onto a wobbly side table next to me. Mr. Mew cants his head at me, clearly asking for a head scratch. Just I’m about to oblige, Tim shouts from the back:
“Whatever you do, don’t try to pet Mr. Mew. He’ll bite the shit out of you.”
An expression of disgust passes over Mew’s face as he tries to make his way back to the floor.
“You fat bastard,“ I say as Mew thuds to the floor and tosses a sneer over his shoulder at me as he leaves the room.
One of Tim's homemade bears with a lace jacket.
Even Tim has his limits with Mew. One day Mr. Mew breaks one of Tim’s favorite vases, and Tim rolls up a piece of newspaper to swat him with, determined to teach him a lesson. Mew lurches through the first floor with Tim in hot pursuit. When Mr. Mew gets to the dining room, he heaves himself up on the table and then somehow crawls on top of a tall cabinet. He looks over his shoulder wild-eyed at Tim and the raised roll of newspaper and jumps. Mew secures his claws at the top of the window drapes and gravity does the rest. His fat body pulls him down while his claws shred the drapes all the way to the floor.
“Serves me right for trying to punish Mew for something that wasn’t his fault,” Tim says ruefully.
When Mr. Mew dies, Tim is inconsolable. For the rest of his life, he refuses to get another cat.
Next: An ogre walks among us.
Comments