Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

‘Yes …’ She’d mentioned thievery that night at the play. Or I had. The theatrical transaction …

‘She might have been talking about her watch, I don’t remember, but it got Louise so upset she went storming out of the kitchen!’ She filled a large basket with fresh fruit from the refrigerator, brought in some boxes of chocolates from the pantry, got down a stack of dessert plates from the cabinets, stood on a chair to reach a pair of silver bowls on the top shelf. ‘Honestly, I’d just fixed her a nice hot soup and some fresh spinach crêpes; you’d think no matter what had happened to make her so grouchy, she might have been a little more gracious.’ She topped up the sugar canister, filled the cream pitcher — ‘But some people are just never satisfied!’ — then touched the coffeepot gingerly. ‘Good, still hot. If you can bring in the coffee and the fruit, I can carry the rest.’

‘Sure. Is that all?’ I felt much subdued now.

‘I think so. For now. Except … well …’ She smiled up at me, wrinkling her nose slightly as though looking into the sun. ‘I know Alison’s acting rather unpleasant, Gerald, but she is our guest. I think you should try to make it up to her somehow.’

‘I don’t know really … what I could do …’ I tried to recall that happier time, now so long ago, when her eyes had another look in them, but all I could think of was her husband on the back porch, blocking my way into the house. What had he said? ‘It was as if the very geography of the world had shifted.’ Yes, ‘something anarchical and dangerous’ — it was coming back to me now. ‘You were stroking her thighs,’ he’d said, ‘she bent down to put your—’ ‘But I’ll try,’ I said.

‘And please forgive me for what I said before. I’m truly sorry about Vic.’

‘Vic?’ I looked down at her. She was smiling still, but there were tears in the corners of her eyes. ‘Oh, right …’

‘Hey, you two lovebugs!’ Fats sang out, thumping grandly in through the dining room door, the Inspector’s gray fedora, its crown punched out, perched on top of his big head like a party hat, Scarborough, Gudrun, Michelle, Benedetto, Earl Elstob, and others in his wake. ‘You get outa here now and go enjoy yourselves! Ole Fats is takin’ over!’

‘Oh dear. Fats, I’ve just cleaned up in here—!’

‘No backtalkin’, little lady! We got some citizens with a desp’rate belly-wrinkles crisis, but you has done did your duty!’ He warbled out a striptease tune while untying my wife’s apron, jigging around her as he peeled it off. ‘La-la-la- la -la-la-la!’ sang Beni, practicing his scales and strutting around in his silken codpiece. ‘We is gettin’ up a do! ’ He tied on the apron on his way to the refrigerator, tipped the fedora down over his nose as he peered inside. ‘Whaddawe got? Cottage cheese? Good! Cocktail onions, grape jelly, ketchup — what’s in these little tin cans?’ ‘Why are we here?’ Michelle asked vaguely, looking around, and Beni, a halftone higher than before, responded: ‘La-la-la-LA-la-la-la!’

My wife glanced at me, shrugged helplessly, picked up the tray of cups. ‘What’s that you’re tracking in, Mr Elstob?’

‘Huh? Aw — yuh! — whuppin’ cream!’

‘I’m afraid it’s all over your hallway floor,’ Dolph said, lifting a foot to show us. ‘I think they’re trying to ski in it or something.’

‘Oh dear … I think that was the last of the cream …’

‘Here, Gerry, I’ll help with that, if you’ll rescue Zack,’ said Gudrun, picking up the bowl of pink pears and melon balls in her scarlet hands and bumping out backward through the door ahead of me. ‘Come on, there’s some old bawd in here queering the pitch, and Zack’s going bonkers.’

‘Ho-boy! Get ready to sink your pegs into the real bony fido, friends! Ole Fats is homin’ in on the range!’

‘La-la-la- LA -la-la-la!’

Out in the hall, people were laughing and cheering: ‘Go get her, gangbusters!’ they shouted up the stairs. ‘Hair wut? ’ I glanced hopefully into the dining room where the brandy bottles were (‘ Can -busters, more like! Ha ha!’), but she wasn’t there: only Sally Ann, wearing Tania’s heavy peasant dress now and wistfully cradling her dead father in her arms in front of the cameraman’s bright lamps and video lens; Patrick was helping with the lights, and Gottfried seemed to be interviewing Brenda, or vice versa — they were drifting, heads bent over the mike, past the abandoned sideboard toward the TV room — but all the rest were gone, and it seemed peculiarly barren and lonely in there. Some awful absence … ‘Okay!’ the cameraman barked. ‘Now tip his head the other way!’

‘It’s nice to have those guys around, they add a little color! ’ Horner laughed, turning away from the foot of the stairs, and Mr Waddilow, standing on the landing, blushed perceptibly. Or perhaps he was trying to lift something up. Beneath him, Daffie stepped out of the toilet, holding her forearm pressed against one bare breast. ‘Hey,’ she said with a vague glittering smile. Malcolm Mee was still in there behind her, under the red darkroom bulb, back to the open door. ‘Eet wass like night off fool moon, no?’ grinned Hilario, picking up the fallen overcoat, just as Zack Quagg came fuming out of the living room, sliding through the floor’s flocking of whipped cream, his dark cape flying: ‘Where the hell’s Hoo-Sin? Hillie —? Jesus! What am I working with here, a buncha amateurs? We got a fucking show on the boards in there, goddamn it! Where’s that extra grip? Horner—? ’

‘Easy, Zack,’ Horner said, ‘that mudlark’s been pulped.’

‘ What—?! Holy shit, Jacko! We’ve lost our goddamn band, half the deck crew, our new end-man’s off banging tail, that bearded dude’s pulled his lens outa the show — we’re gonna die standing up in there, if we don’t move our ass! ’ He kicked the fallen cream bowl across the hallway in pale-faced anger.

‘Awright, screw your tits on, Zack, we’re doin’ what we—’

‘ Aha! ’ Quagg cried, grabbing my arm. ‘I been looking for you!’ He dragged me toward the living room. ‘There’s some old scud in here murdering our production! She’s up the fucking flue , man, and taking me with her! You gotta do something!’

My mother-in-law stood calmly on the collapsed ping-pong table, her arms folded. That’s what it was now: a collapsed ping-pong table. Her presence had quite effortlessly disenchanted our living room. The sacred cave had become a bunch of dirty laundry, the altar a table with a dead body on it (this latter, most of the skirt now cut away, was being removed by Vachel and Gudrun to make some room, my wife, bracing one edge of the tray of cups and plates against the table, instructing), the proscenium arch merely my skis with nailholes in them. I half-expected the lamps to drop off the ceiling in sheer embarrassment. ‘It’s time to go home,’ my mother-in-law said flatly.

‘ Put it down! Put it down! ’ Vachel screamed, his head slick still with petroleum jelly. ‘ Yeu-uck! ’

‘You see what I mean? ’ moaned Zack, waving his arms around wildly. My mother-in-law only set her jaws tighter. ‘Thank you, Vachel,’ my wife was saying. ‘I know it’s not pleasant, but it can’t be helped. Now could you move that bowl of fruit nearer the center, Louise?’ ‘You gotta get this dry hole outa here, man!’

I glanced questioningly at my wife, now spreading the cups and dessert plates out on the table: she smiled toward her mother and shook her head, sent Louise off to the kitchen for the pies, slapped at Vachel’s fingers as he dipped them in the chocolate sauce. ‘I’m afraid there’s not much I can do, Zack,’ I said. ‘She’s not going to budge.’