Gerald's Party

by Robert Coover

  ‘The Beatitudes, you mean …’ She was right, of course, and it was true. Noble turned his glass upside down, making Brenda gasp, but nothing poured out; then he took a long slow drink.

  ‘It’s that kind of openness, directness, that’s the hardest to understand, to really know.’ Alison glanced up at me and seemed about to make some gesture or other (Noble had just turned his empty glass over, pouring what seemed like pitchers of whiskey out on Ros and the floor), but just then the tall officer returned, blocking my view of her, and told Anatole to get out of the easy chair. He was threatening him, or so it seemed, with a pair of scissors. Anatole grumbled but dragged himself weakly to his feet, and Brenda, watching him, said something that made Fats laugh and turn his head to watch. ‘It was what you said about amateurs and professionals, how it was easy to see how people learned their parts, but the mystery was the part that wasn’t learned, the innerness, the – what did you call it?’ Lloyd Draper clumped through in all his golden armor: ‘Time passes!’ he called out with a kind of leaden cheerfulness. Reflexively I glanced again at my naked wrist, reminded of Alison’s slender hand when I stripped her watch from it, that mischievous grin under her freckled nose (I was recalling my thoughts about blocked views now, the special chanciness of live theater, the uniqueness of each spectator’s three-dimensional experience, the creative effort, as in life, to see past sight’s limits, all those things I’d wanted to talk to her about), the taut excitement of her body as her finger circled my nipple, its pad brushing it lingeringly across the top, the nail in turn underscoring it as though to italicize it with some gently ambivalent threat …

  ‘Gerald … ?’

  ‘Ah, the … the innateness?’

  ‘Yes. What’s in the sack?’

  ‘I don’t know, a bottle of something. Fats brought it.’ I handed it to her, and she peered inside, saying: ‘Fats? But I thought they’d already … ?’ I had apparently missed seeing the short cop, Fred, leave the room, but he entered from the dining room now with a freshly made sandwich, just as his gimpy partner, tugging his cap brim down over his brow, went lurching out: they collided in the doorway, the sandwich popping out of Fred’s hand onto the floor, and Bob, backing up with his scissors uplifted like a sword, stepped in it with his short leg (there was distant applause: the folk album was a recording from a live theatrical performance), squirting catsup and mustard out over the carpet. I felt my wife wince as his foot came down. ‘I hope we have enough food,’ she murmured. Alison was distracted by Brenda and Anatole. ‘Everyone seems to have starved himself before coming tonight, and those two are the worst of all.’ Bob scraped the mess off his boot on the rung of a chair, as, out in the hall, the doorbell rang again.

  ‘Oh no, not more … !’

  ‘Maybe that’s the ambulance.’

  ‘I’ve got everything for moussaka, I think. And I could fix some eggrolls and chicken wings …’

  ‘Can I help clean up?’ asked Naomi, rushing up with an ashtray full of cigarette butts and olive pits. She cast me a meaningful glance (I could hear new voices out in the hallway, loud and insistent, and there were quick bursts of light) and dropped the ashtray. ‘Woops!’

  ‘Oh, Naomi! I just cleaned in here!’

  ‘Honest, I’m all thumbs!’ She squatted to gather up the litter, smiling at me and nodding toward Alison.

  My wife knelt in front of her, reaching toward a little constellation of spilled pits (‘You know, I think I’m beginning to like other people’s parties better than my own,’ she sighed), then paused, her hand outstretched, sniffing curiously.

  ‘I’ll see who it is,’ I said, pulling away (someone was shouting: ‘As if it weren’t bad enough—!’), just as Soapie, an old acquaintance of ours from the city newspaper, painstakingly seedy in his sweaty press hat, black horn-rimmed spectacles, tweed sports jacket and frayed tennis shoes, came striding in with his photographer Leonard: ‘There she is, Leonard! Beautiful! Looks like she’s screaming or something! Don’t miss that bottle of pills! Or – wow! – the pinking shears!’ He greeted Woody and Patrick – ‘No, hold it! Just like that! Got it, Leonard?’ – then waved at Noble, slapped Fats on his paunch (‘Howzit goin’ champ?’ ‘Not so dusty, Soap …’), lit a smoke, watching Alison slip around behind Woody and Patrick, aimed Leonard at Brenda. ‘Holy moley, Yvonne!’ he cried. ‘What kinda party games you been playing? Leonard, get a picture of that mess!’

  ‘Get my good side, Leonard! The back one!’

  Leonard, dipping and twisting, fired away, Soapie instructing. Some ducked, some smiled painfully, others turned away as though to ignore the newsmen. Behind me, over the simple throbbing chords on the hi-fi, I could hear my wife laugh and say: ‘Darts! Goodness, Naomi, I don’t know which end you throw at the target!’

  ‘Whoo-eee,’ exclaimed Soapie, rubbing his finger along a blotch on the wall and tasting it, as Leonard crouched for a shot, through legs, of the soles of Ros’s feet, ‘this is the real stuff! Did she get it with her socks down like that?’

  ‘No, she—’

  ‘She just got a part in some new play, didn’t she? I heard that somewhere – something about a rapist who turns out to be the President or God or the Pope maybe, I forget which—’

  ‘She said it was about a private eye who—’

  ‘Yeah, you think there’s any connection, Ger?’

  ‘You mean with the murder?’

  ‘Not likely, hunh? Nothing private about our gal Ros, right? I’ll never forget that toyland musical where she was a limp puppet with strings tied to her bazongas, but nothing else! What was it—?’

  ‘The Naughty Dollies’ Night—’

  ‘Right! Sensational! Just so long as she didn’t have to act, eh? Why was she carting around all this junk, by the way?’

  ‘Well, actually that’s not—’

  ‘I mean, like pipe cleaners? Wacko!’ He scratched out a note, his cigarette between his teeth like a blowgun. ‘Best ever, though, was that pillar-of-salt thing – remember that, Leonard?’

  Leonard licked the thick brush under his nose and rolled his eyes, then focused again on Yvonne, who, pulling some strands of stiff gray hair under her nose, said: ‘What would you say to a pillar of blood blisters, Leonard?’

  ‘Yummy,’ Soapie remarked absently, watching Brenda put her arm around a wobbly Anatole, Howard trying to hide himself in the shadows of the drapes. Soapie picked up a fallen ashtray, stubbed his butt out in it, then tossed the ashtray over in a pile of swept-up debris, fished his pack out for another smoke. I saw we didn’t have to worry about how to get the stains out in the white easy chair: they’d been cut out. ‘This is where you found her?’

  ‘No, more like …’ Suddenly we were all looking around on the floor. ‘Here!’ I said, pointing down to her chalk outline. It was almost completely trampled away, a ghost drawing.

  ‘Are you kidding?’ argued Noble. ‘That’s where I was standing.’

  ‘She was over – here!’ said Wilma, pointing down at another outline, this one of Ros spread-eagled. ‘Here’s the place!’ Yvonne stretched round in her bindings, trying to see, winced, sat back hurt and frustrated. I was afraid she might start crying again. ‘Then what about this one?’ Fats asked, standing over a third, and Lloyd Draper, disencumbered now of his timepieces, came in and, thumbs hooked in his red suspenders, pointed down at yet another, this one of Ros curled up, near the foot of Yvonne’s couch. ‘Here’s where she was, young fella, the poor thing.’

  Soon everyone was arguing about this, moving around the room from outline to outline as though on a guided tour, plumping for one chalk outline or another, even Dickie, winking at me and grinning around a toothpick, pointing at the place where Roger had knocked me down. ‘You can see the bloodstains here at the heart.’

  Yvonne reached out and took my hand, slipping something into it. ‘Listen, do me a favor, Gerry,’ she whispered (‘So what, they’ve all got bloodstains!’): a small gold loop, an earring …

  ‘Sure, Y
vonne—’

  ‘Whatever happens, just don’t let them take me away!’

  ‘But no one’s—’

  ‘Please?’ She squeezed my hand, held it tight, her own hand trembling. ‘Promise?’

  ‘Of course I promise. But nobody’s going to—’

  ‘I love you, Gerry,’ she whispered, while around us the argument raged on: ‘Her legs were together! Like this one!’ ‘No, apart! Here!’ ‘You care …’

  ‘Do you like this one better, Leonard? Okay? Then, let’s get started!’ By a kind of vote, they’d chosen the one chalk drawing I knew to be impossible, for, until Roger had knocked it over running wild, our brass coffee table had stood there. Now, Soapie instructing, Fats, Woody, his cousin Noble, and Alison’s husband began shifting the body. ‘Easy—!’

  ‘Jesus, she’s so fucking cold!’ Noble complained, letting go and wiping his hands on his trousers, and Lloyd, patting him on the shoulder, took over for him. ‘That’s right, old man,’ grumped Noble, ‘it’s more in your line.’

  ‘Really? In a swoon?’ his girlfriend asked, fingering her medallion, and Patrick, commanding a small group with his tale of Roger and the old hag, nodded gravely: ‘That’s what he said.’

  ‘You’ve got it all wrong,’ Brenda butted in (she was clinging to Anatole, or maybe holding him up), and Patrick went red, his eyes narrowing. ‘You always overdramatize, Patrick.’

  ‘By the way, Yvonne,’ I whispered, rubbing the little golden earring gently between my fingers (I’d just, averting my gaze from the resettling of poor Ros, caught a glimpse of Alison past the bent back of her husband: she’d also turned away and was now watching the tall police officer, Bob, scrape dried blood off the walls into little pillboxes, and I thought, captured once more by the illusion of pattern: What love shares with theater is the poetry of space …), ‘who’s that woman who came with Noble? I missed her name when—’

  ‘Who, Cynthia?’ Yvonne hollered out, and the whole room seemed to stiffen. ‘With that one-eyed pig? Come on, Gerry, give the lady credit – that’s my husband’s new mistress!’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry—!’

  ‘Sorry? What’s to be sorry?’ What had Tania said earlier about Yvonne? I should have been listening. The earring seemed to be dissolving between my fingers like a melting coin. ‘I mean, what the hell, you can’t blame him – who wants to poke his little whangdoodle in me and catch a goddamn cancer?’ Her voice was breaking. ‘Right, Soapie?’

  ‘Right,’ replied Soapie absently, tipping his hat back and lighting up. ‘Okay, that looks terrific – don’t worry about the stockings, just leave them down like that, it’s a nice touch. So what do you think, Leonard?’

  Yvonne burst into tears again, and Cynthia, holding her hand, cradled her head against her stomach. ‘I’m so goddamn miserable, Cynthia!’

  ‘I know. It’s okay …’

  ‘Reminds me of a sailor I once saw clapped in bilboo-boots,’ Lloyd Draper drawled, staring down his long lumpy nose from the foot of the couch.

  ‘Hey, Ger!’ Soapie called, arm outstretched. ‘Come over here a minute!’

  ‘Iris and me were in Singapore at the time, thought bilboos had gone out of fashion, but nothing does really. Let an idea come into the world and you’re stuck with it till the cows come home, seems like.’

  ‘You weren’t here! You didn’t see him! How do you know what he said?’ Patrick cried, becoming a bit hysterical as Brenda linked her plump fingers with Anatole’s and smiled icily back at him, grinding her jaws.

  Soapie guided me around behind Ros’s body, then stepped back (something cracked under his sneakered foot, he kicked it aside: glass, it glittered) to peer at me through a frame made by his thumbs and index fingers: ‘That’s it, Ger, just – no, turn a little to the right, your right!’ While Soapie focused on me through his fingers (I tightened the ties on my rust-colored shirt which had fallen loose, the earring pressed to the hollow of my palm with two oily fingers), Leonard knelt behind my ankles shooting Ros’s profile against the lights. ‘Okay, good – now where’s your wife?’

  Michelle, hands crossed at her shoulders and elbows tucked in, danced alone in the sunroom now, swaying trancelike to the whining nervous music. ‘I guess she’s gone back to the—’

  ‘That’s okay, never mind.’ Soapie pulled Alison away from her husband to stand beside me. ‘Just need a warm body.’ Her husband went over to watch Leonard, who was setting up a tripod about fifteen feet away, the tall cop complaining: ‘Somebody has stepped on my X-ray unit … !’ ‘I’m telling you, Patrick, I know. I was the one who sent that old lady to him! She’s a welfare client of mine.’ Brenda popped her gum, Patrick bit his lip; Anatole, looking confused, gazed through both of them, letting himself be fondled. ‘No, not like tin soldiers – relax, you two! More like you’re talking or joking about something!’

  Woody started to slip away, but Soapie clutched his sleeve and guided him behind Alison, jostling her slightly, so that, having tried not to, we touched.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said, clearing my throat, but Alison was looking the other way: yes, the left one was missing.

  ‘I feel so exposed,’ she muttered between her teeth, tugging at the green silk sash at her waist.

  ‘Hey, Doc—?’

  ‘I can see now why the old lady came away convinced that Roger had a goddamn screw loose!’ Brenda laughed behind us, and Patrick hissed: ‘That’s stupid!’

  ‘Well, he wasn’t stupid,’ Wilma said, ‘he certainly wasn’t.’

  ‘Somebody’s going to pay for this,’ the cop swore as he limped past us, and Anatole said: ‘Can I sit down again?’

  Jim had come over and, directed by Soapie, had removed his jacket once more and rolled up his shirtsleeves. He plugged the stethoscope into his ears, knelt down in front of Ros: ‘Like this?’

  ‘You got it, Doc – but sit back so’s you don’t block the view! And here – let’s open her up in front like you’re listening to her heart or something.’

  ‘Jesus, Soapie! Do we need that?’

  ‘Leonard needs it. Flesh keeps him awake. Besides, how else will all her fans recognize her?’ Leonard pretended to doze off until the breasts appeared, then perked up and started fiddling with his camera with jerky speeded-up motions. ‘Barfo! What did they ram in there, a steam drill?’

  ‘It wasn’t that large before,’ said Jim, glaring up at Bob, who was back with a miniature vacuum cleaner, sucking dust samples up through little filter papers from cuffs, hems, pockets, shoes: I closed my fist around the golden earring. ‘Someone’s made it worse.’ His gray hair lifted and fell as Bob’s vacuum sweeper passed over it.

  I heard the thin rattle of applause again, as Soapie plumped up the shrunken breast by pulling the cloth tight under it: Michelle, alone in the sunroom, no longer danced but stood impaled as it were by her own trance, eyes closed, clutching her shoulders as though trying to hold herself in. ‘Okay, the rest of you people back there: step in closer, come on, crowd around—!’

  ‘What? Are we having our picture taken?’

  ‘Hey, leave a little room for ole Fats!’

  ‘You know, it’s curious,’ I murmured, ‘we’ve had that painting in the dining room hanging there for years, and only tonight did I notice for the first time that Susanna was wearing gold loops in her ears …’

  Alison caught her breath, glanced up. ‘I’ve got to see you,’ she whispered, letting the hand between us curl around my thigh for a moment, as the others pushed up around us. I wanted to show her what I had in my hand (I was sure it was in there, though in fact I’d lost the feel of it), but we were ringed round with spectators. ‘As soon as this is over …’

  ‘I look such a fright,’ Wilma was protesting, primping nervously at my shoulder. ‘But then I guess that’s nothing new.’

  Photos, Tania believed (Soapie had pulled the shades off some lamps, bent others up to aim the light at us, using Cynthia and Alison’s husband to hold the shades in position), did not preser
ve the past, they only distorted it. Memory, left alone, even as it purged and invented, was always right. Photography could only be defended, she felt (I understood this, recalling the collection of old postcards my grandmother used to let me play with as a child), as a fantastic art form.

  ‘Okay, we’re getting there!’ Soapie dropped his butt on the carpet, ground it out with his heel. ‘Why’s it getting so cold in here?’ Yvonne, left to herself, wanted to know. ‘Howard? Come out from behind those drapes! Don’t be shy, press up in there – say, what’s wrong with that kid?’

  ‘He’s not feeling so great, Soapie.’

  ‘Well, hold him up!’

  ‘This reminds me of the time Archie took me to one of his high school reunions,’ Wilma said.

  ‘I’ve told you, Patrick, they’re yours,’ Woody was murmuring just behind my ear. ‘If you want them, take them. You’re perfectly within your rights.’

  ‘Only I ended up in their group photo somehow and Archie didn’t.’

  Bob came over, pulled a thermometer out of a hole in Ros’s side I hadn’t noticed before, and left the room, scowling at it. Alison had felt me flinch and now gave a little squeeze. ‘They couldn’t get it into her behind,’ she whispered, ‘there was something in there. They had to punch a hole through to her liver.’

  ‘Ah …’ Was this what I’d wanted to know?

  Jim, sighing, put an adhesive strip on the hole and covered it with a loose tatter of her dress. ‘We oughta get Cyril and his goatee into this picture,’ somebody remarked, and Wilma said: ‘Did you know Peg had a tattoo?’