Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Before you start that, Gerry,’ Tania grunted, ‘could you help me off with this damned dirndl? It’s a bit tight through the middle.’

Of course, if I’d been more patient …

‘Still, poor Roger! Wasn’t it frightful, I still can’t get over it!’

… But in those days I believed in energy and ingenuity: that there was nothing beautiful in the world but what you worked for.

‘Do you think the visit of that old witch had anything to do with it?’

‘What witch?’

Which was a long time ago …

‘I think it’s snagged on my bra!’ Tania called from inside her skirts, as I tugged on them. I could almost hear Ros giggling under there, trying to guess who was behind her by feeling between his legs. Ah, Ros … I was beginning to choke up again. ‘At the back!’ I pushed my hand up under the heavy material and unhooked the bra clasp: her full black-nippled breasts tumbled out of their straitjacket like a landslide and Tania was free. ‘Thanks, Gerry!’ she gasped, and shook the dress out. ‘This damn thing’s worse than a corset!’

‘It’s beautiful, though,’ sighed Wilma. ‘Wherever did you get it, Tania? No, don’t tell me! I’d look as plain in something like that as I do in this. Why is it that no matter how much I spend I always come out looking like a hostess for a ladies’ club?’

Tania fastened her bra back on, hiking her heavy breasts into the cups, then knelt to spread her dress into the soapy water. I was struck by all the color on her face and down into her neck, against the sudden vulnerable milkiness of her naked back, its soft flesh (I was thinking of age, time, loss — Ros’s giggle like a hollow terrifying echo now — and the fruitless efforts to rise above them) deeply imprinted by the checks and crosses of the waistband and bra straps. I unrolled some toilet paper, took a preliminary swipe at Naomi’s behind as though to fight back. ‘I feel so ashamed,’ she said. ‘Dickie shouldn’t have left you to do this—’

‘No, it’s all right.’

‘It’s a crime,’ complained Wilma, patting at her hairdo. ‘Even this movie star mirror doesn’t help!’

There was a sharp knock at the door and I opened it, the pad of soiled toilet paper in my hand. It was my wife’s mother. ‘Mark needs to use the bathroom,’ she said testily.

‘Sure. Tell him to come on in.’

‘Not while you’re in there!’ She glared angrily past my shoulder at the three women.

‘Then why don’t you take him downstairs?’

‘Can’t do that. There’s a dead person down there.’

‘Ah, you … you know, then. I’m sorry …’ She stood there, rigid in her implacable distrust and isolation. I knew it was hard for her here, I wanted to reach out to her, make her feel at home, but she shrank from all such gestures as though to avoid defilement. ‘All right then. Just a minute.’

‘Hurry, Daddy! I can’t wait! ’ my son called from behind her.

‘I’m just going anyway,’ said Wilma, squeezing past us. She rattled the aspirin bottle: ‘Gotta give Talbot his fix. Hello there, Mark — say, that’s a handsome sweatshirt! You look like Little Boy Blue! Remember me? Auntie Wilma? No?’

‘What am I going to do? ’ Naomi whimpered. ‘I can’t go out there like this! And if I let my skirt down it’ll get all dirty—!’

Tania dried her hands on a large bathtowel, then wrapped it around herself like an Indian blanket. I retrieved the used handtowel from the clothes hamper. ‘Here, put this between your legs, Naomi — I’ll hold it for you, just let your skirt fall over it …’ She straightened up, towering over me as I crouched to hold the towel in place: a big girl.

‘Can I come in now?’

‘Not yet!’ said my mother-in-law as the skirt fell.

‘That’s it — now hold on to it, both sides …!’ She clapped her hands front and back and I came out from under the skirt. Even standing, I had to look up to her.

‘Please tell him not to take too long,’ Naomi pleaded softly as we stepped out, Tania wrapped in her towel, Naomi strutting stiff-legged, feet wide apart like a mechanical soldier, holding her tummy and behind. ‘I feel so stupid …!’

My son rushed past us, one hand inside his pajama pants, followed by my mother-in-law, straight-backed and icily silent. ‘Don’t flush it! It’s all stopped up—!’ The door slammed shut on my warning, and I could hear her snapping the lock into place. At the same moment, across the hall, the door to her room snapped open, and Woody’s cousin Noble came out, tie loose around his neck, buttoning his shirtcuffs, heading for the bathroom. ‘It’s busy,’ I said, and Noble, looking somewhat distant, his good eye as dull as his bad one, nodded and moved on downstairs.

Tania had meanwhile started telling me about Roger and the bad time she’d had when he found out about Ros posing for her — ‘There were just the two of us women in a closed studio, but he couldn’t bear the thought of other men even seeing Ros’s naked image — when he came storming over, he didn’t even knock, Gerry, he just smashed the door down!’ — but I was only able to follow part of it, my eye caught now by Alison. She was with a group of people down on the landing — her husband, Wilma, Lloyd Draper weighted with watches, Woody, Noble still doing himself up, and a handsome dark-suited woman I didn’t know but remembered from Roger’s rampage (the dignity of her fall, even as her pendant rose to strike her on the nose) — and maybe they’d all been looking at Tania’s painting before, or simply had run into each other there on the landing by chance (her husband shook hands now with Noble), but just as I spied her there, she turned, smiled suddenly at discovering me, and then, watching her husband (he was being introduced to the woman beside her, as Lloyd Draper clumped heavily on down the stairs), tossed me a kiss by kissing her hand, putting it behind her back and flipping it up at me from her rear. ‘As it happened, the day he came to wreck my studio, Ros wasn’t even there. Howard was up on a little pedestal, posing for me in a pink leotard as a privy councilor, and he nearly died of shock and mortification when Roger came crashing in.’

‘I should imagine …’

Woody had something he was showing to everybody, and as they all leaned closer to see it, or perhaps to sniff at it (‘I haven’t been able to get him to pose for me since …’), Alison slipped away and came hurrying up the stairs, her hair flowing, her breasts bouncing gently in their silken pockets. ‘I’ve been looking all over for you!’ she whispered. She took my hand, pulled me urgently into the darkened sewing room doorway (or what we called the sewing room), out of sight from those below, and kissed me. There was an incredible taste of something like herbs and mountain air, and a strange feeling, almost of a lost memory, swept over me — but just for a moment: laughter rattling up from below broke in on us. She glanced back over her shoulder, as I licked my lips. ‘He has a piece of that girl’s underwear.’

‘What?’

‘That man down there. The lawyer? He has a piece from her panties.’

‘Woody?’

‘I saw them cutting them up. I thought the policeman — the main one with the moustache — had something in mind. But apparently he forgot and the pieces started getting passed around. Like souvenirs or something …’

‘Ah, that explains …’

‘I’ve heard a thousand stories about her tonight.’ What I was thinking about was the money. And what Ros once said about time and love. ‘You’re right, you certainly weren’t the only one …’ She turned back and gazed up at me as though pained by something, then, unfastening a middle button, ran her hand inside my shirt. ‘When it’s like a river,’ Ros had said, ‘it scares me. What I want it to do is just ooze. ’ There was a faint rustling in the sewing room darkness beyond us, a couple, perhaps more than one. I saw something red, a dress probably, and a glimmer of flesh. Alison’s mouth opened under mine and I closed my eyes, let my free hand slide down to grip one supple buttock. She kissed me, tonguing my lips apart, murmured into my mouth: ‘They killed her husband, Gerald. It was terrible.’