Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Whoo! After all that excitement, I think I’m gonna hafta go out back and — wurp! — table a motion!’

Mark puffed futilely into the condom, then handed it back to Sally Ann. ‘The hole’s too big.’

‘ What—?! ’ Brenda cried.

The tall cop was crawling around on his hands and knees. ‘I lost her goddamn teeth,’ he grumped.

‘It’s also fun to fill them up with water,’ Sally Ann whispered conspiratorially, ‘and drop them like bombs!’ Mark grinned, his eyes lighting up under the woolly fringes of the ski cap, and my mother-in-law said: ‘That’s not clean! It was on the floor!’ She looked up at me accusingly. ‘Daddy, who’s the lady in the bathtub?’

‘No one, pal — now you get to bed.’ I took his hand and led him toward the door, Brenda crying behind me: ‘Oh no! My god, where’s Fats? Fats?! ’ just as Yvonne in the hallway in front of us (‘Last Year’s Valentine’ was playing on the hi-fi, a silly nostalgic song about time and loss, and it reminded me somehow of something Tania had once said to me about the way language distorts reality: ‘I know we can’t survive without it, Gerry, probably we even need all those fictions of tense embedded in the goddamn grammar — but art’s great task is to reconcile us to the true human time of the eternal present , which the child in us knows to be the real one!’ — which is why, paradoxically, she had always defended abstraction as the quintessence of realism) cried: ‘ Woody—?! ’

‘Fats said he was flyin’ light,’ someone said. ‘I think he went to put on the nosebag.’

‘ Fats—?! ’ Brenda cried, charging off toward the dining room. ‘You won’t believe it!’

‘Don’t let them take me away, Woody! Please! ’

Woody and Cynthia were standing on the stairs a step or two below the landing, holding hands in their underwear, Woody in stolid boxer shorts and ribbed undershirt, Cynthia in a heavily cross-strapped brassiere and old-fashioned umbrella-shaped lace drawers, seemingly stunned into a kind of grave compassionate silence. ‘ Cyn—?! Christ all Jesus, don’t just stand there! ’ There were tears in Cynthia’s eyes now as she took Woody’s stubby hand in both of hers (their heavy ornamentation made her hands now seem more overdressed than ever), sliding partway behind him and nuzzling her pale cheek against his bare dark-tufted shoulder. ‘ Help me! WOODY—?! ’

‘Daddy, why is the lady all tied up? Did she do something bad—?’

‘No, son, she—’

‘ Gerry?! ’ Yvonne wailed, spying me past the others, her eyes raw, her gray hair stringy and wild. She had grabbed onto the front doorjamb, and the ambulance men were now prying her hand loose. ‘Goddamn it, Gerry, you promised—! ’

‘I–I’ll get Jim,’ I offered (and there was another thing about my mother: you could have anything she had, she was utterly unpossessive, thought of nothing in the world as exclusively her own — but she never, ever — this came to me now, and I felt, oddly as if for the first time, the unfairness of it — gave anyone any presents), but before I could let go of my son’s hand, Charley Trainer came tumbling noisily down the stairs, my bathrobe stretched tight around his flab, shouting: ‘ Whuzz happenin’? Whuzz goin’ on downair? ’

‘ Charley! It’s me! Help! ’ Yvonne bawled from the front porch even as the door swung shut behind her, her voice disappearing as though into a tunnel, and Charley yelled: ‘ Hole on, Yvonne! God-DAMN it! Ole Chooch is comin’! ’ But his knees started to cave about halfway down to the landing and there was no negotiating the right-angle turn there — Woody and Cynthia ducked, clinging to each other, as he went hurtling past behind them, smacking the banister with his soft belly and somersaulting on over the railing to the floor below: ‘ PpFOOOFF! ’ he wheezed mightily as he landed on his back (I’d managed to jerk Mark out of the way just in time), bathrobe gaping and big soft genitals bouncing between his fat legs as though hurling them to the floor had been his whole intent. ‘Ohh, shit!’ he gasped (Mark was laughing and clapping, my wife’s mother shushing him peevishly), lying there pale and, except for the aftershock vibrations still rippling through his flaccid abdomen, utterly prostrate: ‘ Now wha’ve I done …?!’

‘Careful, just lie still a moment,’ Jim cautioned, kneeling by his side and palpating gently his neck and collarbone, while above them Cynthia was saying (Woody seemed to be putting yet another ring on one of her fingers): ‘Woody, you shouldn’t …’

‘Who the hell was runnin’ innerference?’ Charley groaned, as Jim reached under and ran his hand slowly down his broad back.

The phone rang, but as I turned to answer it, Fats and Brenda, tears streaming down their cheeks, came blundering through from the dining room, making us all fall back. ‘Oh my god , Brenda,’ Fats, stuffing the last half of a cheese-dog in his jaws, cried as he stumbled over Charley’s upturned feet (‘Unf! Get his goddamn nummer, coach!’), ‘this is too much! Not Tania—! ’ And then, picking himself up, he staggered on up the stairs behind her, Woody and Cynthia pressing up against the banister to let them by. ‘Yeah,’ somebody was saying into the phone (‘Woops! Damn!’ Woody muttered as the ring slipped through the railings and hit the floor near Charley — ‘Gerry, could you pass that up to me?’), ‘it’s Ros! A cold curtain, man — that’s it, gone dark! You comin’ over?’

‘Hey, Ger,’ Charley moaned softly as I dug under his ear for the ring: it was elaborately worked with a heavy stone, somehow familiar, ‘I’m in trouble.’

‘Right, Hoo-Sin’s already here — just this minute walkin’ on,’ the guy on the phone was saying, out of sight now behind all the people gathering around, concerned about Charley, who still lay flat out, motionless, my bathrobe twisted around his thick torso like a bit of rind. ‘Is it his heart?’

‘Has to be — he’s all heart, ole Chooch …’

‘But I don’t wanna go! I wanna see Unca Charley do it again!’

‘And Gudrun, Prissy Loo, the Scar …’

‘You’ll be okay, Charley,’ I said, handing the ring up to Woody (‘Great — and bring Benedetto,’ said the guy on the phone, ‘we’ll need a groaner!’), ‘Jim’s here, he—’

‘Naw, I mean — didn’t Tall-butt tell ya?’ He was nearly crying, his eyes puffy, his nose purple. ‘I juss found out … the reason ya can’t take it with ya …’

‘Ah,’ said Jim, pausing thoughtfully in his trek down Charley’s spine.

‘… Is cuz it dies before you do!’

‘He’s got a slipped disc,’ Jim said. ‘We need to double his knees back and see if we can pop it back in place.’ ‘Oh my! let me help!’ exclaimed Patrick, getting a laugh, just as Lloyd Draper stepped up and remarked down his nose: ‘See here now, looks like you’ve had a little tumble, young fella!’

‘Since Ros died, Ger, I juss can’t … can’t …’

‘For goodness’ sake, Charley!’ cried his wife, Janice, padding in breathlessly, zipping up the side of her pink skirt. ‘What have you been doing — trying to fly again?’

‘Yeah,’ he mumbled, winking at me through his tears (‘Ros is the only one,’ he used to say while reproaching himself, with that comical hangdog look in his eyes, for his clumsy haste and artlessness in lovemaking — ‘The nicest thing about Charley,’ Janice liked to say, ‘is that there’s none of that wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am stuff with him — it’s always quicker than that!’ — ‘who’s ever thanked me after …’), ‘I awmoss had it there f’ra minute!’