Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘You’re a big girl, Naomi, you can—’

‘Please, Geoffrey? I always split these things …’

I knelt with a sigh and, clumsily, one hand braced on my back, the other on the sink, she pushed her feet through the legholes. I could see it was going to be a tight fit. ‘Are these your size, Naomi?’

‘How should I know?’

Tania opened the linen cupboard. Maybe she was looking for some place to hide Howard’s knife. There was nothing I could do about it — the panties were caught halfway up Naomi’s thighs and had to be inched the rest of the way. ‘You’d think the oil would help,’ I complained, one eye on Tania.

‘Your wife, ahem, asked me to tell you, Gerald, she needs some things from the top shelf of the pantry and — burp! — can’t find the ladder.’ The ladder was in the pantry, but never mind, I understood. Naomi lifted her skirt out of the way, as I tugged at her flesh, pushed at the band. ‘I think we’re almost there, Naomi … easy now!’

‘Mmf! Whoo — thanks!’ she gasped, helping me at the crotch. Howard’s head was twitching from trying to look at Naomi and not look at her at the same time, making his thick fractured spectacles flutter with reflected light and his pink jowls wobble. ‘Now, just so I don’t have to bend over …!’

‘Also, eh, something about food stuck in the freezer, and the garbage was filling up and, well, she seemed …’

‘Yes, all right, Howard, tell her—’

‘You know, it’s funny,’ Naomi interrupted, ‘but these pants feel like they’ve already been worn by someone.’

Tania smiled; Howard was gone.

Naomi wriggled her hips to let the skirt drop. ‘Maybe I could do something to help, Geoffrey — I mean, if you want to see that girl. Like, you know, I could go talk to your wife for a while maybe, or get her to go to the basement with me and play darts or something …’

‘It’s too dangerous, Naomi,’ I said, wiping my hands. ‘She throws a wild dart. Anyway, I don’t see why you—’

‘Love!’ she said with a kind of sweet breathless tremor in her voice. ‘It should have a chance, wherever and whenever it appears. It’s so rare … and wonderful!’

Tania snorted. ‘Roger once told me he thought love was the most evil thing in the world — and seeing what he got out of it, you can hardly argue with him.’

‘Oh golly—!’

‘Don’t bring up Roger, Tania, I’ve just got her all cleaned up.’

Tania smiled wanly, leaning back against the linen cupboard, wrapped in her towel like a desert mystic, the tip of my ascot peeking out between her feet. I glanced up at her face, but it told me nothing. ‘It was that day he came breaking into my studio. Once he’d calmed down, we had a long talk together. He knew what was happening to him …’

‘But that wasn’t love, that was something … something crazy! ’

‘He told me he used to believe, before he met Ros, that love was a kind of literary invention, that people wouldn’t fall in love at all if they didn’t read about it first. He said he always thought that we learned our lines about love, as it were, from fairy tales, then went out in the world and acted them out, not even knowing why it was we had to do it. But he said he forgot all that when he met Ros, forgot everything. He said she left him completely stupid, an illiterate, a wolf-child, a man utterly without a past, she invented him where he stood — it was as if he’d been concussed, suffered some kind of spectacular fusing of his entire nervous system, reducing it to the simple synchronous activity and random explosions of a newborn child.’

‘I can understand that,’ said Naomi softly, staring at me. ‘It’s great …’

‘He was terrified, He said it wasn’t that he needed to possess her, it wasn’t even selfishness, not in the way one would think. And he didn’t feel protective, didn’t feel kind or generous toward her, didn’t especially want her to be happy or successful or feel fulfilled — it was something much more immediate than that, something much more frightening, it was something almost monstrous …! ’

‘Oh my …!’ Naomi fled, holding her tummy, brushing past Vic’s girlfriend Eileen, who had just come in behind us, looking dazed still, one whole side of her face now swollen and turning blue.

‘You’d think, after such a colorful childhood,’ I said, wiping the sink, then tossing the towel in with the others (yet I, too, was thinking about love), ‘she’d be a bit more callused.’

Tania laughed drily. ‘My god, Gerry, I knew the girl’s parents. Her father was a teacher and poet, her mother a musician, played the viola, gentlest people in the world. I’m sure Naomi’s never had a real spanking in her life. Not that she couldn’t use one …’ Eileen set her empty glass down on the rim of the basin, stared at us bleakly for a moment as though trying to place us, then dropped the seat of the toilet, lifted her limp skirt, pushed her pants down to her knees, and sat to pee. ‘Or maybe she’s at the wrong party …’

‘It’s blocked, Eileen,’ I said. I noticed that my electric razor was missing. Not (Tania was staring down at her dirndl in the tub of suds, lost in thought, it was as good a moment as any) in the linen cupboard either. ‘You should use the one downstairs.’

‘Somebody’s in there,’ she replied dully. ‘I think it’s Janice Trainer and some guy.’ I hung fresh towels on the racks, got out a washcloth and soaked it in cold water. Eileen looked down at her shoes and, peeing disconsolately, said to them: ‘I’m sorry …’

‘Here, Eileen, hold this against your face.’

‘It’s so sad,’ she said, ‘and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ She blew her nose in the washcloth. ‘And the worst thing is, I don’t feel a thing. That’s what’s horrible. They’re both killed and I don’t feel a thing.’

‘You feel sad.’

‘I felt sad when I came here.’ She’d left the door open: Alison didn’t seem to be around, but the sewing room light was on. I felt vaguely frightened and wanted her close to me again. Eileen twisted her finger in her cotton drawers, looked up at me. ‘Your wife was asking for you, Gerry.’

‘I know. I’m going.’

‘Gerry, do me a favor,’ Tania said, stopping me just as I stepped out the door.

‘It’s … it’s not over, you know,’ Eileen murmured softly behind her, posted there as above some deep abyss. Her urine had dwindled, but now it started up again, rattling against the clog of paper like a disturbing thought.

‘I’m worried about Mavis. Something about that look on her face. I can’t get it out of my mind. Check on her for me, will you?’

‘Sure, Tania. Should I—?’

But something she’d seen past my shoulder had made her frown suddenly and close the door. I turned to look: the two uniformed officers were coming up the stairs. Nobody in the sewing room now except Sally Ann and Dickie. My mother-in-law’s room was locked. The policemen had paused on the landing, hats tipped back, arguing about something around mouthfuls of food: it seemed to be about which sandwich was whose, but the party noises from below drowned them out. In the sewing room (little Gerald’s room actually — left more or less as it was ever since the stillbirth, the walls still a bright green, decals on all the furniture and closet doors, only a couch and a sewing machine added), Sally Ann was trying to thread a needle, and Dickie, cuddling behind her, had reached around and pushed his hand down inside her jeans. She glanced up, saw me watching, pulled his hand out as though to kiss it, and stabbed it with the needle. As the policemen started up the stairs again, alerted by Dickie’s yell, I decided it might be a good moment to get changed. Also I needed time to think. Too much was happening too fast and I was beginning to feel like my mother on that ski slope, sit down, sit down.