Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

Dickie, carefully combing his fine blond hair back over the thin spot on top, grunted, slipped off his all-gold wristwatch, and, still checking himself in the mirror, held it out to Mr Draper: just then, one of the light bulbs surrounding the mirror sputtered and went out.

‘Hey!’ Dickie exclaimed, his arm outstretched, watch waggling at the end of it as though on the same circuit as the bulb.

‘Everything I’ve painted so far,’ Tania sighed, staring down at her dress, hands clutching her laces, ‘is shit …’

‘Could you slide it on there for me, son? Can’t bend my doggone arms anymore!’

Once, during a thunderstorm, when the lights had gone out suddenly, my son had asked: ‘Which is real, Daddy? The light or the dark?’ ‘The light,’ I’d replied, just as my wife, entering behind me, had said: ‘The dark.’ Then, as now, I’d felt inexplicably guilty of something I couldn’t define. I found a new bulb on the second shelf, then pushed the linen cupboard door shut behind me, leaned against it.

‘Which … if I am what I’ve painted …’

‘My watch was in my shoulderbag,’ said Naomi, sniffling. ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Now, now, child, don’t cry over lost time! When you get as old as me, you’ll — say! looks like you folks need a plumber there!’

‘I’m going to fix it in a minute, Mr Draper.’ He peered at me over his spectacles as though discovering me for the first time. I was thinking about my wife still. What had she said about the TV? I couldn’t remember. But I felt somehow I shouldn’t leave her alone too long. I held up my arm shakily, as Tania, beside me, began undoing the laces of her dress. ‘You’ve already—’

‘Yep, I’ve got yours, son, I know. I may have lost most everything else, but I still got my marbles. And Lloyd’s the name, lad, or is your memory lettin’ you down in your old age?’ He chortled drily and winked, then gazed pensively at Naomi’s backside. ‘Y’know, a curious thing happened to my wife and me in the catacombs of Calcutta—’

‘You can’t have love or art without the imagination, but it’s dangerous,’ Tania murmured, removing her half-lens reading glasses and setting them on the edge of the tub. ‘Roger said that …’ He had also explained to me once that, in the theater, when business was bad it was brutal , and when it was good it was: murder.

Talbot’s wife Wilma came in just then, asking if we had any aspirin. ‘For Talbot,’ she explained, peering at herself in the mirror over Dickie’s shoulder. ‘His ear’s hurting him so much, I’m afraid the dope’s going to drink himself silly, and you all know how, when Talbot’s looped, it’s goodbye — why, hello there, Lloyd! My, you’ve got quite a collection!’

‘Oh, it’s not my collection! No, I’m — heh heh! — I’m not keepin ’ time, I’m just, as you might say, hangin’ on to it for the time bein’! ’

Dickie, still primping, stepped aside to let me at the medicine cabinet. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored door before I swung it open, and I was shocked at how rumpled and bloody I looked — and how natural it seemed …

‘Oh, Lloyd,’ Wilma was saying, ‘you do pop out with the wittiest things! You ought to be on television! I was just talking to your wife, and she said how you had everybody on the bus out to the pyramids just in stitches about mummies and mommies and—’

‘In stitches , did you say—?’

‘Oh my goodness! It must be catching!’ She fussed at her perm, which had come undone in places, loose curls poking out like released springs.

‘Don’t you mean all wound up? Yeh heh heh!’

In the cabinet, my wife’s manicure set lay scattered on the bottom shelf. The tiny curved scissors were gone. The tweezers, too, for that matter. And was that a bloody hair —? No … no, a piece of red thread. I was overwrought. Dickie puffed his chest and smoothed down his vest, then reached for his plaid jacket.

‘I’ve lost touch,’ Tania muttered. She gazed sorrowfully down at Naomi straddling the toilet and pursed her lips. ‘I’ve got to get back to landscapes again …’

‘You know, by coincidence Talbot and I were just discussing yesterday, Lloyd, the idea of touring the — just give me the whole bottle, Gerry. If I can tranquillize the jerk maybe I’ll have a little fun myself for a change — we were just saying we maybe ought to visit Africa and the Middle East next year, so we must get together! You and Iris can tell us what to take, the good places to eat, nightclubs — Dickie, where are you going? I didn’t mean to chase you out!’

‘Don’t leave me, Dickie!’ Naomi begged.

‘The most important thing about Africa and the Middle East,’ Lloyd Draper was saying, ‘is that they’re two different places …’

‘Dickie, please! What am I going to wear? ’

‘Go as you are, Nay, you’ll have them rolling at your feet!’

‘And of course it depends on what you’re keen on. Some folks like the cities, some the countryside, some the resorts.’

‘But what if it all starts up again—!’

‘Didn’t I see some disposable underthings in your shoulderbag, dear?’ Wilma asked.

‘I’m a temples-and-tombs man myself, though Iris goes more for the arts and crafts.’

‘ Were there?’

‘Paper panties, Dickie, a package of them,’ I called, unscrewing the dead bulb. ‘You can’t miss them, they’re all chalked out—’

‘You can send Howard up with them, Dickie,’ Tania shouted. In the mirror, I saw her, her laces loosened, emptying her pockets onto the bathtub ledge. ‘I have to talk to him anyway!’

‘All wound up! Lloyd, however do you do it? Say, wasn’t that absolutely horrid about poor Roger! I just heard about it on the way up!’ I unwrapped the new bulb and screwed it in, feeling it pop alight under my fingertips. That hole in Tania’s painting. All along I’d been supposing Roger might have done it. Now I didn’t think so. ‘They say he was very brave, but as I told Talbot, such bravery, Talbot, we can do without! If they want to ask you anything, you just — but then there’s nothing to worry about really, Talbot always makes a good impression in interviews, heaven knows he’s had enough practice! Are you leaving us, Lloyd?’

‘Yes, eh, I’m afraid I mustn’t take any more time — or rather, I must! ’ He chuckled, but his heart wasn’t in it. His arms and pants as he lumbered out seemed suddenly to be hanging a couple of inches lower.

‘Dear me, it seems I’m chasing everybody away tonight!’ I took the towel off Naomi’s back, hung it on the rod by the basin, tossed all the other towels into the clothes hamper. ‘Close the door, please,’ she begged, ‘it’s bad enough without everybody—’ ‘Oh, I’m sorry, dear. My, you’re the very model of patience!’

‘With Dickie, you have to be.’

Wilma checked herself quickly in the mirror, turned away in disappointment, fumbling in her handbag for makeup. ‘Do you think those policemen down there know what they’re doing?’ she asked idly, uncapping a tube of lipstick. ‘Well, I suppose they do.’ One night I was backstage talking with Ros in front of her mirror (she liked it best when she could do her lips in a cherry red), when an actor came rushing in, leaned over her shoulder, popped her breasts out of her costume, and kissed them with loud sucking smacks, crying: ‘Yum! I just love them!’ — then dashed out again, shouting: ‘Two minutes, sweetheart!’ She reached over, flushed with excitement, took my face in both her hands, and whispered: ‘Wait for me, Gerry!’ — then gave me her breasts to kiss, tucked them in, and rustled out. But she never came back. Not that night. It was a long way from the stage to her dressing room and, as often happened, she just didn’t get that far.