Robert Coover - Gerald's Party

The wall above the dining room sideboard was eloquently vacant, the picture hooks sitting on it like a pair of pinned insects. Bottles lay tipped like fallen soldiers, liquor still, amazingly enough, gurgling from one of the open mouths. ‘What exactly happened to Vic?’ my wife whispered.

‘He … got shot …’

‘He makes you think of Tania’s painting, doesn’t he? The one with the eyes …’

‘Well …’

I tugged her on into the TV room. We seemed safer in here somehow. Maybe because the lights were softer (‘Our antique lamps are missing,’ she remarked quietly as though in explanation) or because the drapes were still on the windows and the furniture more or less where it ought to be. Or just the soothing blueness of the walls. I could feel my wife’s hip soften and I too seemed to walk less stiffly, my knees unlocking, my scrotum sliding back into place. Snow played on the TV screen, making a scratchy noise like a needle caught on the outer lip of a record, but I didn’t want to turn it off. It was company of sorts. ‘I’ll put a cassette on,’ I said, letting go her waist, and she sat down on the sofa to wait. ‘Don’t be long, Gerald,’ she yawned.

I couldn’t seem to find any of our old tapes, but there were plenty of new ones scattered about to choose from. ‘How about “The Ancient Arse?” ’ I proposed, reading the labels. ‘Or “Cold Show at the Ice Palace” — or here’s one: “The Garden Peers.” ’

‘I think that’s pee -ers. I’ve seen that one. I don’t want to see it again.’ Ah. I understood now. ‘Below the Stairs,’ ‘Butcherblock Blues,’ ‘Party Time,’ ‘Life’s Mysterious Currents,’ ‘The Host’s Hang-up,’ they all fell dismally into place. ‘Candid Coppers.’ ‘Some Dish.’ ‘Special Favors.’ I felt defeated even before I’d begun. There were tears in my eyes and a strange airy tingling on my exposed behind, like a ghostly remembrance of cold knuckles. I shuddered. ‘Put on “Hidden Treasure,” ’ my wife suggested, unbuttoning her blouse and jacket.

I searched through the pile of cassettes, intent on doing my best, getting through it somehow, but my appetite had faded. ‘It … it will never be the same again,’ I muttered, my throat tight.

‘Tsk. You said that last time, Gerald. After Archie and Emma and …’

‘Yes, well …’ It was true, I’d all but forgotten. ‘But Ros, Vic, Tania …’

‘Roger, Noble …’

‘Yes, that’s right, Roger …’

‘Fiona …’

‘Fiona—?’ I took off the cassette labeled ‘The Wayward Finger,’ and inserted ‘Hidden Treasure,’ rewound it to the beginning, punched the ‘Play’ button, wishing it were all so easy as that.

‘Yes, that was why Cyril was so upset.’ She was completely naked now, stretched out on the sofa, hands behind her head, eyes half-closed, scratching the bottom of her foot with one toe. ‘How do you think Peg found out?’

‘Found out what?’ I took off my shirt, folded it neatly over the back of the sofa, stalling for time. On the TV, my mother-in-law was getting Mark into his pajama bottoms. ‘That’s better,’ she was saying. Mark was holding Peedie, which now had one of Sally Ann’s patches sewn on its underside. ‘HOT TWOT,’ it said.

‘Well, she was pregnant.’

‘Peg was?’

‘No, Fiona.’ I sat down beside her and stroked her thighs, pushing into the warm place between her legs, but my heart wasn’t in it. Mark, on the television screen, was asking: ‘What’s a “twot,” Gramma?’ Behind him, his bedroom door was all smashed in. ‘That’s the whole point, Gerald. Didn’t you notice? It was very obvious.’

‘It’s a … a faraway place,’ my mother-in-law was explaining. ‘A kind of secret garden …’

‘I’m not sure I saw her all night,’ I said. Maybe it was the scar, cold and bluish in the light from the flickering TV image, that was bothering me. I looked around, spied one of her aprons hanging over the edge of the games table.

‘Is it always hot, Gramma?’

‘But you heard Peg carrying on when she left — she was telling everybody!’

‘No, it’s warm. Like a bed. Now you crawl up into yours there, young man.’

‘I guessed I missed that.’ I brought the apron over: ‘Listen, do you mind—?’

‘But then that’s why everyone was feeling so sorry for Cyril after.’ She raised her hips so I could tie the apron on. ‘Will I ever go there someday?’ Mark was asking. ‘You know, to lose them both in one night …’

‘Both—?’

‘It seems inevitable, child …’

‘Yes — my goodness, Gerald, where were you?’ I slid my hand up under the apron: yes, this was better. There was a faint stirring at last between my legs, which my mother-in-law appeared to be overseeing from the TV screen, her face marked by a kind of compassionate sorrow mixed with amusement. ‘Tell me a story about it, Gramma,’ Mark was pleading sleepily, as she led him to the bed. ‘You missed just about everything!’

‘About what?’ she asked.

‘You know, the Twot,’ said Mark, as my hand reached my wife’s pubis. I let my fingers scratch gently in the hair there, while my thumb slid between her thighs and curled into her vagina. ‘Well, once upon a time,’ she began, lifting Mark onto the bed, and I too lifted slightly, then let her down again. ‘You know … sometimes, Gerald …,’ she sighed, closing her hands gently over mine, ‘… it’s almost as if …’ ‘There was a young prince …’

‘… You were at a different party …’

‘Was his name Mark?’

I edged closer to my wife’s hips, my thumb working rhythmically against the ball of my index finger (‘Oh yes … good …’), and she took my wilted organ in her hand. On the television screen, my mother-in-law was tucking Mark in. ‘All right then, a young prince named Mark — but get down under the covers, or I won’t tell it.’

I pushed my thumb as deep as it would go, while at the same time stretching my fingers up her belly, her pubis thrusting at me under the apron, closing around my thumb, her own hand (my mother-in-law had already launched Prince Mark out on his ‘unique adventure,’ but Mark wanted to know: ‘Where’s his mommy and daddy? Is he a orphan?’) stroking me with a gentle but insistent cadence, slowly helping me forget what I’d seen sticking out from under the games table a moment ago when I’d reached for her apron: a foot, wrapped in a plastic bag, one toe poking out. Its nail painted. Cherry red. ‘No, he was the little boy of Beauty and the — her husband …,’ my mother-in-law was saying, as the prospect of orgasm swelled in my mind like a numbing intuition. I gazed down at my wife, her hair unrolled now and loose about her pale shoulders, her thin lips parted, nostrils flared, and thought I could hear Ros whispering: Oh yes, lets!

Oh no …

‘… But he was a big boy now and it was time to leave home and seek his own fortune …’

I was frightened and wanted to stop (‘We are in it, Gerry, we cannot get out of it,’ I seemed to hear Vic mumble right outside the door — had he moved somehow?!), but my wife was blindly pulling me toward her, spreading her legs, the apron wrinkling up between us, and my genitals, it seemed, were quite willing to carry on without the rest of me. ‘We can only stand up to it or chicken out …’

What? Vic—?

‘Was the Beast nice now?’

‘Oh yes, yes …!’ my wife was gasping.

‘Most of the time …’

I’d let go my thumbhold on her pubic handle and, twisting my hand around, my mouth sucking at a breast now (ah, what was it I really wanted? I didn’t want to think about it …), had slid my handful of fingers down there instead, my bodily parts separating out like a houseful of drunken and unruly guests, everybody on his own. She tugged still at that most prodigious member, the host, as it were (‘He paused at the edge of the Enchanted Forest: it was dreary and dangerous and …’), pumping it harder and harder, her other hand grasping my testicles like a doorknob: she gave them a turn, opened, and, going up on my knees as though to offer my behind to the invading emptiness (‘And … dark?’ asked Mark fearfully, hugging his Peedie under the blankets), mouth still at her breast, I crossed over between her legs.