Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘What in the world are you talking about, Michelle?’

‘You know, Fiona. She was telling me about the night you—’

‘ Yipes! ’ Yvonne yelled, jerking upward against her bindings and swatting reflexively at Jim, who, with help from Noble and the woman he was with, was trying to push an extension leaf from our dining table under her: ‘There’s slivers in that goddamn thing, Jim!’

‘Don’t be silly, I’m sliding it under the cushions.’

Alison and her husband appeared in the dining room doorway: they seemed to be arguing about something, but he was smiling. The two policemen went out past them, then came in again through another door.

‘Well, then, something’s biting me, I — OWW !’

‘Aha,’ said Jim, reaching under her and pulling out a shard of broken glass, stained with blood, part of a microscope slide maybe (‘How could this be happenin’?! ’ Fats was weeping, Brenda hugging him, Woody squatting beside them offering counsel, or perhaps just telling them what he knew: ‘It’s crazy! ’ ‘Oh my god , Fats!’), and Yvonne shrieked: ‘Yah — is that blood mine—?! ’

‘I don’t think so …’

‘Fiona said it was sort of like going from one room to the other without using the door,’ Michelle whispered, leaning on my arm (Alison was gone again), ‘but she didn’t mean to—’

‘Well, you’ve got it all wrong!’ I snapped angrily, turning on her (poor girl — I hadn’t even been listening), as Yvonne cried out: ‘Honest to god, Jim, I think you guys pulled a fast one on me! This isn’t my body! ’

Startled, Michelle took her hand away, and I saw my wife in the sunroom watching us, a broom in her hands like a flagpole, Louise squatting fatly in front of her with a dustpan (and yes, I was aware now that much had been done: tables and chairs had been righted, debris cleared away, plants repotted — there were even fresh bowls of peanuts and rice crackers here and there, clean cloths on some of the tables). ‘Well, I don’t know, Gerry, it’s what she said. Anyway, she’s here somewhere, you can ask her yourself.’

‘Fiona—? But I’m sure we didn’t—’

‘I never had this gray hair! And where did this fat ass come from?’

‘I think she came with Gottfried.’

‘Gottfried—?’ But, with a cautioning glance past my shoulder, she’d slipped away. I turned (‘Fats! Look! Somebody’s stolen her rings!’ Brenda cried, as Woody, suddenly interested in a bowl of black olives on a lamp table, left them, whereupon the tall cop, Bob, appeared in the doorway, one hand on his holster, his eyes asquint, lips tensed; then he relaxed and dipped out again) and kissed my wife on the cheek. She was wearing a blue-and-white apron now with red hearts for pockets, a mauve-and-crimson kerchief around her hair. ‘I was just looking for you,’ I said (‘How come all the hard parts are flopping around now and the nice soft parts have gone hard? Eh, Jim?’), and brushed at a streak of dirt near her eye. ‘Someone said you needed me …’

‘Oh no,’ she smiled, stooping to pick up a mashed tamale. She seemed amused, surprised even, but her voice betrayed her. She cleared her throat. ‘Louise is helping.’ As though on cue, Louise came lumbering up behind, but as I turned to thank her, she veered away, rolling off toward the back of the house (‘Hell of a surgeon you are! You left me the rotten tit and took all the rest! I’m not me anymore!’) with her dustpan and bag of garbage. My wife dropped the tamale bits in a pocket, stared at the brown smudges on her fingertips, then wiped them on her apron. ‘The upstairs toilet is stopped up.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’ I watched her as she untied the kerchief from around her hair and stuffed it in one of the red hearts in the apron, the brilliant kerchief making the heart seem dull. There was a thick smell of chili and warm chocolate. ‘I’m going to call a plumber, but right now the police are using the phone.’

‘Have you been into your study … since they …?’

‘I had to get something off my chest , he told me! Make a clean breast of it, he says!’

‘No, but I heard. Poor Roger. It’s terrible.’

‘Now, hell, it’s the only dirty thing I got left! ’

‘Woody said that they made people come in and confess to things in front of him. Awful things.’ Over in the glow of our carmine-shaded table lamp, Woody now offered a black olive to Patrick, Anatole slumping, hand to stomach, into the white easy chair beside them like a frail shadow. ‘The only thing harmless in this world,’ Roger had once said — we’d been speaking enviously about Dickie’s success with women, Roger had remarked gloomily that for him it would not be success but a catastrophe, and I’d said: ‘We’re not talking about affairs, Roger, emotional engagements, just harmless anonymous sex,’ and he’d burst out in dry laughter, tears in the corners of his eyes, repeating my phrase — ‘is death.’ ‘And they … they showed him the photos …’ Alison had just reappeared. She and her husband had joined Fats and Brenda at the body and were exchanging introductions, Brenda smiling and weeping at the same time, Fats rubbing his big nose, shaking his head sadly. ‘They want to … to talk to me now, Gerald. An interview, they said …’

‘Yes, I’m sure …’

They all gazed down at Ros, their faces crinkling with pain at the sight. I felt my own cheeks pinching up around my nose. I was with Fats and Brenda the night they went to see Lot’s Wife: they’d both stepped forward when the audience was invited up, and Ros had welcomed them to her body like old friends, their faces smoothed out then by a kind of glazed rapture. But theater, I thought, as the four of them raised their heads almost in unison, is not a communion service. No, a communion service may be theatrical, but to perceive theater as anything other than theater (I was talking to Alison now, she was smiling eagerly up at me, her auburn hair falling back from her slender throat) is to debase it. ‘So what did Michelle have to say?’

‘What—?’

My wife sighed. ‘You were talking together when I—’

‘Ah, yes, nothing — a dream she had …’

‘I might have guessed.’ She touched her brow lightly with the back of her hand and, leaning slightly on her broom as though to steer herself by it, gazed off across the room. ‘Why is it that people always tell you their dreams, Gerald?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe they think I don’t have any of my own.’ I tried to recapture the thought I’d just had about the debasement of theater, but to my annoyance I’d lost the thread. I didn’t remember much of Michelle’s dream either. ‘It was about being trapped in a movie house without exits.’

‘Did she have any clothes on?’

Alison’s husband had left the room, but Dickie, Wilma, and others had joined the little group around Ros. Brenda, her jaws snapping vigorously at the gum, admired Dickie’s white vest, showed off her pants suit. Alison looked around — for me, I felt sure — but her view was blocked (there was something I wanted to tell her about this, something I’d been thinking about all night) by Jim, who was talking quietly in the middle of the room with Howard and Noble’s girlfriend. Jim rolled his sleeves down and buttoned them, lit a cigarette, glanced up at me. ‘Listen, I really am sorry — but, well, I needed a moment to myself. You understand. Alone.’ My wife hooked her free arm in mine. I wanted to tell her about Tania, about the damaged ‘Ice Maiden’ and Eileen’s premonitions, Mark’s headless soldiers, the blood on our bedsheets, what I’d found in the linen cupboard — but she seemed unusually fragile just at that moment, twisting her wedding ring on her finger as though to screw up her flagging courage, so what I said was: ‘Mark’s fine …’