The Dinner Party

by Joshua Ferris

  “Brown is the color of men,” she said. She started to count off on her fingers. “Brown teeth. Brown smiles. Brown mustaches. Brown penises swinging all over the place, standing up to say hi under the brown sheets. I’m sick of those fucking sheets,” she said. “They’re going, too. We’re starting all over again with whites at the Walmart.”

  She was still pulling up the floor when I got bored. “Mom, can I have something to eat?” I asked. “Take my purse and go up to the Citgo,” she said. I moaned. “I’m so sick of hot dogs,” I said. “They got burritos, don’t they?” “I’m sick of damn burritos.” “Hey, watch it, mister,” she said. She didn’t like me cussing, even though she cussed all the time. “How come you didn’t want to marry Lawton?” I asked. “Marry Lawton!” she cried. She whooped at that. “Marry Lawton!” “But how come?” “Because of the astrological charts, Bob.” “Be serious, Mom,” I said. “Let me tell you why I didn’t marry Lawton,” she said. “Because I’m a bitch, and he’s a son of a bitch, and the two never go well together. Now go get my purse, and you can run up to the Citgo and get yourself something to eat.” “Do you think he’s a good fiddler, at least?” She was just squatting there, staring at the refrigerator. “I never heard him play the fiddle,” she said. “Now go get my purse.” I came back with it, and she rummaged around, looking for loose change for my burrito but pulling out her makeup instead. “What about his singing voice?” I asked. “What about it?” She found some lipstick, put it on, and mushed her lips together. “Do you think he’s a good singer?” “That’s all Lawton ever did was sing a sad song,” she said. She put the lipstick back in her purse and set the purse on the counter. Then she pulled the two quarters she found under the sofa cushion out from her pocket and gave them to me. “Did you like it when he sang to you, at least?” “He didn’t sing to me, Bob. He just sang.” “But did you like it?” She was still staring at the fridge. She sighed real heavy. “It was about the worse voice you ever heard,” she said, “but I guess you could still call it singing.”

  I took my two quarters and went outside, but instead of going to the Citgo, I went down to the dumpsters and pulled out Lawton’s records. I had my crappy red wagon with me, the one with the wobbly wheels that I had to pull with a rope because the handle was broke. I lined all of Lawton’s records up real snug on the wagon and pulled them past the playground that was still under water from the last hurricane, over the chicken bones and cigarette butts that were mixed in with the wood chips, and into the forest. It wasn’t a real forest, just like a hundred trees. That was where my fort was. I took everything down there: belts, aftershave, tube socks, old pocketknives, packs and packs of cigarettes. Anything anybody ever left behind. She’d say, “I’m beginning to think a half a pack of cigarettes is all they have to offer.” Did they know about the cigarettes they’d never smoke? Did they ever dream they’d end up down here at my fort? Sometimes I’d put on their old aftershave, forget all about it, and when she came home from work, she’d sniff at the air and say, “Did somebody stop by today?”

  Inside my fort, I looked through his records. The one on top was called Ghost Town Choir, by Bluford Tucker and the Abandon Boys. I knew that one. It was Lawton’s favorite.

  Her boy come by after she threw that mug at me and I got to holler at him from the sofa. “You cain’t come around here no more, boy!” “But how come?” he says. “I like it down here.” “I don’t care,” I tell him. “Go on, sing it somewhere else.” Then, don’t even ask—just climbs the two cinder block stairs and enters the trailer. I got to remind myself to put a door on. “You not hear me, boy?” I have more than once expressed to his mama the need for a restraint of some kind, be it medical or an old-fashioned collar. He’s holding something behind his back, and when he brings it out real proud and happy, you’d think he had himself a gold seal on the Ten Commandments. “What you got there?” I ask. It’s one of my old 45s his mama’s been hoarding from me on account of her spite and damnation. Ghost Town Choir by somebody called Bluford Tucker. Tell the truth, I don’t much listen to music anymore. But his mama’s got a real advantage on me, not giving them records back. So I nod a bit to show him he’s done good, trying to recall that Bluford Tucker sound and drawing a blank. Hillbilly music, in all likelihood, but I’d have to give it a spin to recollect it proper. Just never too sure where that old player is around here. I take it out anyways, as if to inspect it for scratches and whatnot, and sure enough that’s when I see there ain’t no sleeve. “Where’s the sleeve?” I ask him. He acquires that look, the one his mama wears when I talk music, that says “I don’t speak music.” “See, now—all my records have plastic sleeves. Keeps them from getting scratched all to hell. Now where’s this one’s sleeve?” He don’t say a damn thing. “Has your mama been fucking with my sleeves?” “I don’t think so,” he says. “You know how important this album is to me, boy?” He nods like he does know. He ain’t got a fucking clue. Music is what I’d call a highlight in an otherwise low life. What’s the point of going on without your damn music? “You know what this means,” I say to him. “I guess she never really loved me, your mama.” Seems the right moment to drift off and lick my wounds, but there ain’t enough room in this goddamn trailer for that. So he says, “How come you and my mom broke up?” He’s got the one talent in life, and that’s making people talk. “What makes you say we broke up?” I ask him. “Didn’t you?” “Well, I guess it’s true she didn’t like the way I was treating you at that picnic.” “How were you treating me?” “I didn’t treat you any which way,” I tell him. “But you ask her, I wasn’t treating you like I was your daddy. Well, you know what, son? I ain’t nobody’s daddy. You see?” He goes quiet, but you can see him calculating. “So…you broke up because of me?” Now see that? That’s that boy for you, right there. You don’t even recollect taking a seat down next to him, but when you look up, there you are. “It’s more than that, boy. It’s a way of looking at things, and your mama and me, we ain’t ever seen one thing that looked the same.” “But you liked her, though, didn’t you? Didn’t you like her?” “Things about her I liked.” “Like what?” “She could drink a beer now and then. I liked that about her.” “What else?” “She was a roofer. You don’t find too many lady roofers. Liked when she’d come home in that pair of knee pads.” “I want you to tell me something and be honest,” he says. “Did you love my mom, or didn’t you?” “Now how can I love a woman who’s hoarding all my record albums?” I ask him. “You know what them record albums mean to me? They’re just about my whole damn life.” “What if she gave them all back to you?” he asks.

  What the boy don’t know is how awful happy I was to be taking them down there in the first place. I was wanting his mama and me to make a night of it. She had one of them players on top of her tape deck/radio. Boy was there, too. We all listened. It was real home-like. Not bad, I thought, not bad at all. I should try, I thought, I really should. Why not? She’s got that player. Player works. Why not? Could have us some more nice nights like that one. It didn’t come to that, though. Nope, came to something else. And now it’d be a shame to have them back. Don’t listen to them myself. Ain’t had a player in a hundred years. Don’t give a good goddamn about music anymore. I get them records back, they’d be another reminder that it was all over and nothing more to talk about.

  So I give Bluford Tucker back to him and tell him I don’t want it. Tell him take it back down to his mama. “But why?” he says. “I thought you said you wanted them. Don’t you want them?” “Not one at a time, I don’t. I want all of ’em at once or none at all.” “But if she gave them all back, you wouldn’t have any reason to come by anymore.” “Ain’t you been hearing her, boy? She don’t want me coming by. She don’t want to have a damn thing to do with me.” “But she does!” he cries. “She likes the way you sing! Don’t you know that? She thinks you have a good singing voice.” “Does she now,” I say. And you almost want to believe him, the way he nods his head. “She tell you th
at?” He nods again. “Won’t you come back?” he says. “Come back just one more time,” he says. “The two of you can make up, I know you can. And then you can get your records back.” “You think so, do you?” “I know so,” he says. “I know it for a fact.”

  And would you look at that? He’s got me talking again, talking and thinking. I reach out and lift him up by the scrawny arms.

  “Your mama and me, boy, we’re done. I’m sorry to say it, but that’s what happens when a man gets tangled up with a woman. Shit gets lost. Sometime it’s things, and sometimes it’s people.” I carefully deposit his ass directly outside the trailer. “Say you were her cousin, I might allow you to be down here from time to time, providing you had beer. But she shit in her own nest when she had you, and I cain’t stand the smell of it. So go on, get out.”

  When I came back from Lawton’s I was super hungry because I never made it to the Citgo, so I opened the fridge for some cheese slices and my hand came back all wet and cold. The whole fridge was painted white! I couldn’t believe it. I looked at it up close. I guess it had been brown before. It still looked a little brown because the old color was coming through. “Mom,” I said. “Did you paint the fridge?” She turned and saw my handprint on the door handle. “Oh, Bob!” she cried. “Now look what you’ve done! I just finished with that two seconds ago.” She got the paintbrush from the sink and smoothed out the handle. There were still lots of drips everywhere. “Why’d you paint the fridge?” I asked. “Because I got sick of putting our food in a cold turd,” she said. “But can you do that to the fridge?” “I guess I can,” she said. “Last time I checked it was our fridge.” “But why paint it?” “Don’t you ever want just a little change, Bob? Huh? Even if it’s just a color? Just some stupid little change?” “Are you ever going to fix the floor?” I asked her. “It’s only been a few hours, Bob. I’m working on it.” “This place is a mess,” I said. “Hey,” she said. “You don’t like it, you can go live somewhere else.”

  We both heard Lawton at the same time. “Sheryl Lynn!” he yelled from outside. “I want my records back, goddamn it! Give me my goddamn records!” We just stared at each other. Then I went to the window and she went to the door. He started calling her all sorts of names, like slut and bitch and cunt and whore. She turned around, grabbed food from the cabinets, and started throwing it at him. Boxes of spirals and cheese at first, and packages of microwave popcorn. But then a can of Campbell’s soup. It landed in the gravel, and he got mad. “Stop your throwing, Sheryl Lynn! It ain’t right what you’re doing, putting that boy between me and you. You just hand over all them records and I’ll be on my way.” “Don’t pretend you give a damn about this boy!” she cried. “You can’t even be bothered to throw a Frisbee with him at a picnic, you piece of shit!” She hauled a jar of pickle relish at him, and even though he ducked, it came real close to hitting him on the head. He picked up my bat after that. A Louisville Slugger. I kept it leaning up against the trailer. “I like that boy, Sheryl Lynn,” he said. “But I told you already. I ain’t his daddy. So what I do at a picnic ain’t nobody’s business but my own.” She threw a two-liter bottle of soda at him, and he hit it with the bat. Soda went everywhere. “Goddamn it, Sheryl Lynn!” he said. “Stop it, now! What’d I tell you? I ain’t ever doing to your boy what my daddy did to me! Never never never never never! If you only knew—good Lord, girl, you should be grateful. You should, Sheryl Lynn. I swear to God you should. So just give me my records back and let me be!” “I threw all of your stupid old records in the trash!” she screamed. “Every single one of them! Exactly where they belong—and where you belong!” I thought for sure he was going to come inside and swing at her when he heard that. But instead, he dropped the bat and fell to his knees. “Oh, take me back, Sheryl Lynn!” he cried out to her. “Honey darling, please!” he said. “Don’t you see I’m just begging you, darling? Give me just one more chance!” But I guess she didn’t want to, because she just kept throwing stuff, like refried beans, and a half-full bottle of dish soap, screaming, “Go fuck yourself!” I couldn’t take it anymore. “Please stop!” I yelled. “Please don’t fight! I got your records, Lawton! They’re down at my fort! I’ll take you there! I’ll give them back!” He got up off his knees. I guess I thought it was all over after that. He’d go down to the fort with me, and I’d give him his records back. But before I could walk out of the trailer, he took hold of that Louisville Slugger again and started swinging. He hit the potted plants that hung from the trailer, and the cans of white paint that my mom had used to paint the fridge. He didn’t stop swinging until dirt and paint were everywhere. Then he dropped that bat and walked home.

  Few hours later, that boy come by carrying something in a garbage bag on a wagon real careful-like so as not to let it spill over. I see it all from the window. I feign business when he comes up to the door, just me and my magazine. He don’t so much as step foot on the first stair when I got no choice but to notice him. “Well, don’t just stand there in a man’s doorway,” I tell him. “That’s liable to get you shot.” First time he don’t just come on in, even with an invitation. He takes up that garbage bag instead and gives it the heave-ho. It lands just inside the trailer there, and I see it for what it is, a stretched-out thing full of record albums. He stands in the doorway making ready to leave. “Well, you’re here,” I say. “Might as well come in.” “I can’t,” he says. “Get in here, boy,” I say.

  It takes him a while, but eventually he has a seat next to me.

  “Brought me my records, did you?” He nods. “That’s a good man,” I tell him. “A man can’t do without his music.”

  He’s an unhappy boy. Life’s made him that way, life and his time of life. There’s nothing working out for him and everything a frustration. What he needs is a daddy. I could use a daddy myself. Hell, who couldn’t use a daddy? “I’m sorry I couldn’t be more of a help to you, boy. Honest to God I am. But if you only knew. You’d be grateful. You truly would.” “Can I see your wallet?” he says to me. “My wallet? What do you want with that for?” “Can I?” he says. I consider it. “If it’s my wallet you want,” I tell him, “it can’t be my fortune you’re after.” So I dig it out and hand it to him. He opens it up and points. “Can I have this?” he asks.

  It’s my daddy’s Cowboy Hall of Fame card. Those record albums, what do I care about them? Music’s all over and done with. But that card, that’s an honest-to-God card right there. Only thing I ever got from that man, and not exactly something I care to part with.

  But I guess it’s like I told the boy. Shit gets lost.

  “Take it,” I tell him. “But then we’re even. And I don’t ever want to see you down here ever again.”

  For as long as I can remember, my mom drove a two-door Ford Pinto with a brown exterior she called “shit brown.” The body was marred by many dents big and small. The hood was warped, which meant the car rattled over even the slightest uneven ground. The red engine light never went off. The legend of a backward-bucking horse branded the glove box and the floor mats. I spent as much time searching that car’s nooks and crannies for loose change as I did riding from place to place in the passenger seat. She hated that car more than anything, and when I got home that day from Lawton’s, it was gone. Just gone. The world is stable until it isn’t, and afterward there is no going back.

  She was waiting for me out front, sitting inside a white pickup truck with blue racing stripes. I didn’t even see her. I was heading inside when she said, “Don’t go in there, Bob.” It startled me. “I made a hash of things in there,” she said. “Just get in.” I went up to her at the window. “What are you doing in that truck?” I asked. “This is our truck now,” she said. “Do you like it?” “Where’s our car?” “I made the man a trade,” she said. “I thought we’d be more like cowboys in a pickup truck. And I know how much you like cowboys.” “You got rid of the car?” “I was sick of that car,” she said. “I made a good trade. Now come on, get in.” I went around the
back of the truck. This was our truck? There was no gate where there should have been one. All our stuff was back there, some of it inside boxes. I guess she was just praying to God it stayed put.

  My door wouldn’t open. She tried it from the inside, but it still wouldn’t open. “Must be broke,” she said. “Come around to my side.” I went back around the truck, our truck, and crawled in through her door and over the seat.

  “What you got there?” she asked me. “Nothing,” I said. “I can see it’s something,” she said, “so stop trying to hide it.” I showed it to her. “Cowboy Hall of Fame card,” she said. “I see.” “Can I keep it?” I asked. “Didn’t I tell you not to go down there no more?” “I didn’t,” I said. “I was just giving him his records back.” She shook her head. “Are you mad at me?” “You got too soft a heart, Bob,” she said.

  She shut the door and turned the engine over, but it wouldn’t start. “Shit,” she said. “What’s wrong with it?” I asked. “Shit shit shit shit shit,” she said. She kept trying and trying until she gave up. “This happens,” she said. “Just means it’s flooded. When this happens, just give it a minute, the man said.” She took out a cigarette and punched in the lighter and waited. I looked out the window at the white paint and the brown dirt and all the food she threw at Lawton, still out there on the gravel. “Are we going somewhere?” I asked her. “What’s it look like, Bob?” “Looks like we are,” I said. “Where are we going?” “Not sure yet,” she said. The lighter popped out, but she didn’t light her cigarette; she just held the lighter in her hand and stared out the window. That was my mother, lost from the beginning of time. “Got any suggestions?” she asked.