by Ruth Margaret Pardee

 

I rang the doorbell. I had one shoe on and held the other in my hand. My suit was itchy and hot and my tie was choking me. But it didn’t matter because this year I had the best Halloween costume; I was Maxwell Smart, secret agent from my favorite TV show, Get Smart.

Although originally aired in the late sixties, my brother and I would rush home after school everyday to watch rerun episodes, our heads propped on our elbows by 3:30 sharp. We would watch day after day as Max got into close calls and had to be saved by his partner, Agent 99. His catch phrase was, “Missed it by that much,” and the Chief was always furious at him for his maladroit blunders. So when my mom asked me what I wanted to be for Halloween, my choice was obvious.

            In the past I had made stellar Halloween costume decisions. There was the year when I was seven and I hand-made my pig mask. It was not a dainty snout covering my nose but rather a suffocating piece of plaster encapsulating my entire face and obscuring my vision. My class paraded around the block as I stumbled on loose stones and heaved for breath. The next year I was Hermione Granger from the Harry Potter series. My robe had a diagonal seam across the back I had accidentally cut while attempting to sew the costume myself. I also decided carrying a stick was a more authentic representation of a wand than those plastic sparkly sticks Muggles use. However, no one seemed to recognize the stick-brandishing girl with a crooked seam running the length of her poncho and I had to explain numerous times who I was.

This year would be different. Not only did I have the coolest costume imaginable, I had prepared a business card so everyone would know who I was: Maxwell Smart, Secret Agent. It even had a picture. Laminated and everything by the laminator I had finally gotten for my eighth birthday.

            I patted the business card inside my suit pocket as I waited for Megan to open the door. We always went trick-or-treating together, and we always started from her house. She had stuck by me through the blind pig phase, just as I had helped her navigate the narrow streets around her house year after year. Megan tended to prefer costumes made from large boxes that represented household appliances. She had been a boom box, a microwave, and a refrigerator. This year she had decided to branch out and be just an ordinary household item, rather than an appliance. She was a hamster cage.

            “Hey!” I said when Megan finally appeared on the doorstep. She was dressed all in black, I guess to draw attention to the hamster cage she had painstakingly cut from the box her family’s new dishwasher had come in.

            “How’s the phone holding up?” Megan asked me. The day before we had, with glee, ripped apart an old rotary-dial telephone. We then hot-glued the key pad to the bottom of one of my shoes to replicate Maxwell Smart’s shoe-phone he used to talk to CONTROL headquarters while on the job.

            “It fell off when I tried to dial, but I added more glue and it’s staying now.” I looked at the shoe-phone in my hand, hot-glue visible in great globs around the edges of the yellowing spin dial.

            “Let’s have pizza before we go,” Megan said, holding the door open. I could hear the chattering neighbors in the next room. Megan lived on a busy street, with lots of kids, and they all tended to congregate on holidays. We headed off toward the swarm of neighborhood kids around the greasy pizza boxes.

            “Who are you?” a kid asked. It’s alright; I was prepared. I whipped out my business card and presented it to the inquiring youngster.

            “Who’s Maxwall Smert?” Shoot, typo. And sealed in permanence by my laminator.

            “Maxwell Smart.”

            “Who’s that?”

            I stared at the questioner, in disbelief. “Only the coolest secret agent, fighting KAOS and crime.” She stared at me blankly.

            “Ruth, let’s get food,” Megan said, tugging at my suit sleeve.

 

            Megan and I set off down the street with full tummies an hour later. I had my shoe-phone in one hand and a plastic pumpkin container in the other, with Megan waddling behind in her cumbersome hamster cage. Our problems started with the first house. Well, with the large fence that surrounded it. Megan’s box wouldn’t fit through the gate. She tried and tried, finally getting wedged in the opening. I pushed from behind until…POP!, the box pushed through. It tore a little at the side, but Megan was already edging up the stairs sideways to fit through the entranceway. I crammed alongside her and pushed the doorbell.

            “Trick or treat!” We shouted as a slovenly man opened the door. He looked startled by the nine-year-old girl in a suit and the giant box standing on his doorstep.

            “What are you?” He asked, not bothering to sugar coat his response to our bizarre costumes.

            “I’m a hamster cage,” Megan said. I pulled out the business card and extended it towards his face. He pulled back to focus on the neat typing.

            “Oh hey, Maxwell Smart. And a shoe-phone! Tight costume.” Thank you, finally someone who knew who I was!

            “Thanks,” I said, accepting the mini Butterfingers bar.

            “Here Hamster Girl,” the man said holding out a Hershey’s bar to the box. When no arms reached out to take it, he handed it to me. I accepted seeing as Megan’s arms, and therefore plastic pumpkin, were pinned to her sides.

            “I’m a hamster cage, not a hamster!”

            “Happy Halloween,” he said as he closed the door.

            “Ruth, I’m not a hamster.”

            “I know,” I said, retreating back towards the gate. Megan reluctantly followed, still muttering about how anyone could be a hamster and that that wasn’t an exciting costume at all, while a hamster cage…

            After shoving Megan back through the narrow gate, we kept on. The next house had an arch surrounding the porch which clearly would not accommodate Megan’s generously-sized cage bars. I walked up and waited behind a swarming group of various Disney princesses, a firefighter, and what looked like several Spidermen.

“Bye bye now. Have a spppoookkyy Halloween kids!” the woman said in a falsely high-pitched voice to the retreating group. When it was finally my turn, the woman looked at me and said flatly, “What are you?”

I sighed, pulling out the card. As soon as she processed the information she let back her head and laughed uproariously. She couldn’t contain her peals of laughter as she dropped the wax lips into my bucket.

“Could I please have one for my friend? She’s a hamster cage,” I said, pointing. The woman continued laughing while giving me an extra pair.

“Good luck fighting KAOS! Say hi to the Chief and 99! And your hamster friend!” she called as I scampered down the stairs.

“I know, I know, you’re a hamster cage,” I told Megan before she could protest. We continued on.

As we headed around the corner, we passed a group of kids maybe a year younger, some gripping their parents’ hands, others running on ahead. One girl I recognized from my class and I held up my hand to wave.

“What are you?” came the dreaded question before we had even pulled up beside one another. I was tired of pulling out the business card, and also didn’t want her to see the typo.

“Maxwell Smart, secret agent,” I half said, half sighed.

“Who?” She was a lost cause, it was clear.

“What are you?” I asked to change the subject, even though I could pretty much tell who she was with her round ears, polka-dot dress, and long tail.

“Mini Mouse! She’s a cartoon character,” she explained. Just because I had a more sophisticated costume I suppose she assumed I didn’t know Mini Mouse, probably one of the most recognizable mice on the planet. How unoriginal.

“Cool…” Well, I had to say something.

Suddenly, I heard a loud thump and then an “Owwww!!” from behind and we both looked back. There lay Megan, cage face down, the arms and legs sticking out from three sides squirming incessantly. I leaned down to help her up and saw my classmate’s patent leather shoes jumping over the box as she continued on her way.

 

House after house, every parent seemed to laugh hysterically at my costume while the other kids just stared. Megan’s box had tattered corners and an entire bar was missing from the front due to the countless tight gates she’d had to squeeze through. I was limping quite badly from deciding to wear my shoe-phone in an attempt to keep my feet warm and to keep both hands free for the two pumpkins I was now carrying. It was late, and we were ready to go home. Neither of us spoke as I limped and she waddled back towards her house.

I finally broke the silence. “What do you want to be next year you think?”

“Ooo, I was thinking it would be fun to be a television!”
“I like it. What show would be on?”

“I’m not sure, we’ll have to make a list of pros and cons for each show…”

The two of us reviewed our options as we continued into the darkness, one girl with a considerable gimp from the  plastic phone dial glued to her shoe and the other walking stiff-legged in a dishwasher-sized box.