The Miniature Wife: and Other Stories Read Online Free PDF

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