Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘How’s that?’

‘Or maybe …’ He grunted, sighed, drank deeply. ‘Who knows?’ He shuddered slightly. ‘Why can’t I shake this off, Gerry?’

‘Well, perhaps,’ I suggested, recalling the feel, on the back porch, of Alison’s sash giving way, thinking then of love as a kind of affectionate surrender, an alternative to both resignation and confrontation (Mee floated past us on his way to the dining room, wearing my soggy ascot now as a headband), ‘you should stop fighting it.’

‘Hmpf, you’re as bad as that dead battery I’m with tonight,’ he grumped. ‘Know what she called me? A fucking sentimental humanist! Hah! A goddamn affront to the universe, she said!’ The faint trace of a wry smile flickered across his craggy features. ‘That’s not bad, I have to admit … but goddamn it, Gerry, I hate sentimentality! I hate fantasy, mooning around — I hate confused emotions! ’

‘Too bad,’ said Jim, coming in from the hallway, his jacket on once more, a drink in his hand, ‘that’s probably the only kind there are.’ My own now were mixed with guilt: that terrified appeal on her face on the TV screen just moments ago, and then before that in the dining room — or was it in here? — and in the kitchen … ‘How’s your wife, Gerry?’

‘What? Oh, I don’t know, Jim. The police …’

‘The police what?’ Vic wanted to know, looking up.

‘You know, their inquiries, a while ago they were—’

‘What — your wife? Those goddamn fucking — what have you done about it?’

‘Well, I spoke to Woody—’

‘Ah. Good …’ He seemed lost again in his own thoughts, his elbows on his knees, staring into his glass. Jim watched him with concern. I was thinking of something my father said; it was the last time I saw him alive, about six months before he’d, as he liked to put it, reached for the inevitable. ‘Why don’t you let me check your blood pressure, Vic?’

‘What — with that gizmo they were blowing up around Ros’s neck a while ago? No, thanks!’

‘They were just getting a fingerprint. Trying to. They had to use it to clamp the X-ray film cassette to the skin, that’s all.’ He smiled. ‘What’s the problem? Figure it might be catching?’

‘It’s not that …’

‘Yneh!’ groaned Regina, sweeping into the room in her wispy gown, her hands upraised as though in protest. ‘That lady in there is too much!’

‘Lady—?’

‘That — that child molester! That geed-up dip with her fat hands in her pants! I can’t believe it!’ Time is hard and full of calamities, my father had said, but man is soft and malleable. If he chooses to endure, then he also chooses metamorphosis, perhaps of an unexpected and even unimaginable nature, such that choice itself may no longer be part of his condition. A signal, of course, which I hadn’t heeded. I draped the sash around my neck, thinking about my own metamorphoses, my diffluent condition. ‘She’s giving a blow-by-blow description — and I choose my mots carefully! — of a frantic three-way grope, featuring her, her old man, and Ros when she wasn’t ten years old yet and hadn’t even got her hair! Oh my God! Poor Ros! ’

‘It didn’t seem to do her any harm,’ Jim said quietly. Lloyd Draper came in with a screen and slide projector and started setting up in the sunroom. ‘Oh yes, many children,’ he was saying. ‘One feller strung ten of ’em up at a time, called it a warnin’ to men and a — heh heh — spectacle for the angels! I got pictures here, you’ll see!’ ‘We’re probably too emotional about pedophilia. In a lot of societies, children have sex with their parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters, aunts and uncles, all the time, and as far as we can tell they don’t seem adversely affected.’

‘I believe it,’ said Vic, his temples throbbing, hand squeezing his glass as though to crush it like one of Dolph’s beer cans, ‘but I don’t believe it.’

‘In fact, sex with their grandparents is probably good for them.’

‘Blah! Mine would’ve given me the clap!’ Regina retorted, crossing her hands over her breast. ‘I gotta admit, though, that little kid in there is sure eating it up!’ The telephone rang. ‘I’ll get it, it may be Beni!’

‘What little kid?’ I called after her.

‘I think she means Mark,’ Jim said, sipping at his drink. ‘He came down looking for his rabbit, he said.’

‘What—?!’

At the door (how many times had I been through here? I felt like I was chasing after lost luggage in an airport or something) I bumped into Alison’s husband, who turned pale when he saw the silk sash around my neck. ‘Is it … over?’

‘Not yet,’ I said and sneezed. ‘I haven’t even—’

‘ Sshh! ’ someone scolded.

He frowned and looked about, pipe clamped in his teeth, craning his head. She wasn’t in here but Mark was: right up front in his SUPERLOVER sweatshirt, sitting on the prie-dieu next to Vachel the dwarf. I had the impression Vachel might have his hands on him, but my view was blocked by all the others pressing around, I couldn’t be sure. Mavis, her skirts dragged up past her marbled thighs now, both hands digging frantically inside her shiny balloon-like drawers, was apparently describing Ros’s childish body (‘ — like cherries, and — unf! — her little cheeks were — ooh! — suffused with the — ah! — tint of roses …!’) as she squatted over Mavis’s face while manipulating her with one hand and stroking Jim with the other, sucking one of them — I couldn’t tell which, maybe both, it didn’t matter — I just wanted to get Mark out of there.

‘Hey, come on! Stop pushing!’

‘We were here first!’

‘ Psst! Mark! ’

‘Ouch!’

‘— With her velvety tongue and with her — gasp! — fingers in me like the feet of — oh! — little birds, I felt my mind just explode and spread through my — whoof! — whole body, surrendering, ah — abjectly — an incredible — grunt! — radiance and — and truth! — ’

Vachel leered at me over his shoulder as I pulled on Mark. Mavis was now hauling at her vulva as though scrubbing clothes at a washboard, her hips slapping the chair, head lolling, eyes glazed over, mouth bubbly with drool. ‘I don’t wanna—! ’ Mark whined, and some of Quagg’s crowd hissed and booed me playfully, grinning the while in open-faced admiration of Mavis’s mounting orgasm. ‘ Go! Go! ’ some of them chanted. ‘ No , Daddy! I wanna hear the story! ’

‘It’s all over,’ I insisted, dragging him away as though out of a dense thicket. All but anyway: nothing now but yelps, groans, squeals, a few blurted phrases (something about ‘miracles’ and ‘sweet vapors’ and ‘groves of wild angels’ or ‘dangers’ — Ros, apparently, had changed positions), and the rhythmical whoppety-whop of her huge soft buttocks against the seat of her chair. ‘Hang on to your pajamas!’

Too late, he’d lost them. He dropped to his hands and knees and went scuttling back in after them, but I pulled him out again — and in the nick of time, for Mavis suddenly shrieked rapturously and fell out of her chair, sending all the people around her staggering backward and all over each other — ‘You might have been stepped on, son!’ I scolded as the others choked and giggled, muttered apologies (‘But my jamapants , Daddy—!’ ‘You’ve got others …’), or caught their breath. ‘ Wow—! ’

‘And then …!’ Mavis gasped from the floor, and the crowd fell silent again. Her breathing was labored, her voice raw and as though miles away. ‘And then … Jim … Jim kissed me!’