The Dinner Party

by Joshua Ferris

  He stopped talking. She narrowed her eyes and looked at him intently. “Huh,” she said. Something in his monologue had provoked her. She looked away. She even stood up, crossed her arms, and started to pace back and forth. She seemed to have forgotten entirely about his blurting out that he loved her. She came to a stop and said, “It’s the exact opposite with me.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, I used to have my own odors—that’s a funny way of putting it. You know what I mean. My own life. But it’s the kids’ life now, it’s the kids’ odors. They’ve blotted everything else out. God only knows what I smell like now.” He expected her to laugh, but she didn’t. It wasn’t meant to be a joke. “Do you know how hard it is some days just to find time to take a shower and put on lotion? Will I ever take a bath again? I don’t know. Will I ever smell of perfume again? Will I ever paint something that’s worth a damn?”

  “What does your husband say?” he asked.

  “About what?”

  He wasn’t sure, and shrugged. “Your painting. Your desire to take a bath.”

  “He and I have our ups and downs,” she said. “Like any couple.”

  Returning to the sofa, she folded the white onesie that had suddenly appeared in her hands, setting it down absentmindedly on a pile of children’s books. “Anyway,” she said.

  “It’s worse now,” he said. “I might have been better off never figuring it out.”

  “Figuring what out?”

  “What’s mine.”

  “That’s worse than not knowing?”

  “Perfect terror,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because now I know what I have to lose.”

  He had returned to the fact of Naomi’s abandonment and all the loss he had suffered when she hadn’t come back to the apartment that morning.

  “It’s more than just a made bed,” he said. “We talked, the two of us. We shared things. No one in my family ever talked. They shouted, they slammed doors, and then they filed for divorce. My mother had one of her wedding receptions in a McDonald’s. That’s how casual these things were. But Naomi and me, we made dinner together every night I wasn’t on set. We planned things. We did things.”

  “And now that’s over?”

  “Over completely.”

  “But you loved her.”

  “I did, yes, very much. I never used to live for my life. I lived to prove something, and to get revenge. But my life was a small, mean thing. Then, somewhere along the way, it became everything. That was terrifying.”

  “But beautiful, too,” she said, fingering her wedding ring. “Not sure I do that.”

  “You don’t live for your life?”

  “I don’t know what I live for,” she said. “I live to neglect the other half of things.”

  “What’s the other half of things?”

  “Well, for instance. When I’m painting, I’m not taking care of my kids. And when I’m taking care of my kids, I’m not painting. That pretty much guarantees that I don’t do either very well, and every night I sort of hate myself for it.”

  “And your husband?” he said. “What do you neglect when you’re with him?”

  “Calarusso, for one,” she said. “And other things. Friends. Museums. Life.” She laughed.

  “He doesn’t like museums?”

  “It isn’t that he doesn’t like them,” she said. “It’s that we never go to them. If we do anything together, it’s watch TV. You probably don’t watch TV, do you? Oh, that’s a stupid question—you’re on TV. But you know what I mean. With your wife. When you’re both tired. As the thing two people do. To be together.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “But, no, Naomi preferred to do other things. Dinners, plays. She was with me on Corsica last year when I was filming this absolutely terrible independent movie, and I remember we got out of the car and walked down these ancient crumbling stairs to the beach, and we had this long swim, but when we came back, the car was surrounded by all of these wild boars. Rutting like crazy—it was really funny. But scary, too, you know? This man from Marseille began honking his horn and somehow led them away. We’d still be there to this day if it weren’t for him.”

  She didn’t seem to know how to respond to this story. “Sounds romantic,” she said.

  “Romantic?”

  “I just mean Corsica.”

  “Oh, I guess it was,” he said. “But, you know, looking back, it wasn’t the travel we did. It was the fact that we were polite to each other. Where I come from, no one was ever polite. If I’m being honest, she taught me how to live.”

  “This is a mortal woman we’re talking about, right?”

  He laughed. “Oh, look,” he said. “She had her flaws, trust me.”

  “Like?”

  He gave the question some thought. “She doesn’t have nearly the sense of humor you do,” he said. “Or the richness.”

  “Richness?”

  He didn’t know how to answer, and the question hung in the air. She got to her feet again, walked to the middle of the room, and with her back to him stood thinking.

  “She sounds amazing,” she said at last, “and you should fight for her. Wherever she is, find her and fight for her. For your sake.”

  “But it’s too late,” he said. “We exhausted something, working through it. You try to make it work, but something gets ruined along the way. I tried her patience too many times. There’s nothing I could say now, and nothing I could do.”

  “You have to beg her. You have to vow to change, and then change.”

  “I have changed. Completely. She just doesn’t see it. To her, I’ll always be that bratty kid who couldn’t bring himself to make the necessary adjustments. Do you know how easy it is to get pigeonholed by the person you’re married to, and then you just can’t get out of it?”

  “Oh, God, yes,” she said.

  “That doomed us. We were always going to be the same people to each other, no matter how much we changed.” He gestured around the apartment. “I never considered her capable of any of this, for instance.”

  “Any of what?” she asked. “The mess? The madness?”

  “No, no,” he said. “The…the nurture. The wholeness of your lives. How there’s goodness behind every little thing in sight. Your husband must feel the same way.”

  “Oh, sure,” she said. “He can’t shut up about all the goodness. He’s always romancing me for everything he finds on the living room floor. Are you kidding me?”

  “The minute I walked in,” he said, “I thought, Here is how life is best lived. Everywhere you look, there’s a sign of life. And you created it. It’s amazing. It’s like…like a garden in here. No, hear me out,” he said when she had raised her eyebrows skeptically. “And what you are growing here, and there, and over there, are little moments, and the little moments make your memories, and the memories make a life that can’t be taken away from you by anyone or anything, not other people’s fickleness, not even death. In the long run, you know, that’s better than bowls of dried flowers, or whatever.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’m pretty intrigued by those bowls.”

  When he had finished, she came back to the sofa, curled one leg under her and sat down, looking at him with (he thought) a sexy pucker to her mouth, eyes narrowed, and held his gaze a beat longer than was strictly necessary.

  “And what about love?” she asked.

  “Love is everywhere in this house,” he said. “Everywhere.”

  “I don’t mean that kind of love,” she said. “Don’t be seduced by the children’s toys.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean? I mean love. I mean…what do I mean? Okay, it’s like this,” she said. “Do you see that toy over there? It’s some kind of caped lion. But also a digital clock. I’m not really sure what the hell it is, to be honest. But when Micah—that’s my oldest—when Micah first got that caped lion–clock thing, it was everything to him. I mea
n, it was the most precious jewel on earth. He went around all day hugging it to his chest. But now he never plays with it. Ever. You know what he plays with?”

  She plucked off the floor a spent roll of toilet paper with a twisted rubber band taped to it. “This.”

  He laughed.

  “I’m not joking.”

  She waggled the toilet roll, and the strap of her overalls fell off her shoulder again.

  “And that’s what my husband has become to me, and what I have become to my husband. He and I both remember, sort of, way back before kids, that we had something, but in all honesty now, after the kids go to bed, we go right back to playing with our toilet rolls. Oh, my God,” she said. “I can’t believe that just came out of my mouth.”

  “And what is your husband’s toilet roll?”

  “His iPhone,” she said without hesitation.

  “And yours?”

  “Whatever I’m painting at the moment,” she said. “You worry about losing everything. I worry about wanting to hold on to it. Some days, I don’t know if I have the strength to hold on to it.”

  “You’re unhappy,” he said.

  She was forced to look away but turned back quickly and looked at him as if she were seeing him there for the first time. “How did you get in here?” she asked him, smiling. “Did I let you in?” He remained still, staring at her with his chin lowered, a faint smile curling the ends of his mouth. “It must be those eyes,” she said, more quietly than before. “Those eyes are hard to say no to.”

  So she was susceptible, after all. She was not what the state of her apartment had suggested: a mother through and through, and had not fallen asleep on their ride into Brooklyn because she was above it all. Calarusso had not been wrong.

  His disappointment in her was sharp but brief, and bound up with excitement. He reached across the sofa and slowly lifted the denim strap to her shoulder. “Maybe I should be going,” he whispered.

  She nodded. “Maybe you should.”

  Neither of them moved.

  “I can’t seem to bring myself to.”

  “Seems you can’t.”

  “The truth is, I want to stay.”

  “Why?” she whispered. “Is it all the sippy cups?”

  He smiled. “No.”

  “The wide selection of Little Golden Books?”

  “It’s you,” he said. “It’s this. It’s all of this.”

  “I’m flattered.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “But you’re still in love with your wife,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

  He would always love her, he admitted. But it had been so much worse in days past, when he drifted, crying, down dead industrial blocks, and strangers removed their earbuds to ask him if he was all right. Oh, yes, it had been much worse in times past. This morning was an afterthought, a fainthearted performance, the death rattle, and when he came to his senses, what had he done? Walked straight over the bridge to her.

  “This is the life I want!” he said. “I want you!”

  “Are you sure it’s me,” she asked, “and not some fantasy you’ve constructed around my life?”

  Then he told her that there was a woman who kept recurring in his dreams. “She shows up every few months, always while I’m in transit. I’m on a boat, or an airplane, and she just happens to be seated next to me. We talk, and then she looks at me, and I wake up. I’m always sad to wake up. I’ve had this dream for twenty-five years, ever since I was a kid, and I’ve always just believed that she was a figment of my imagination. Until I sat down next to you at dinner four nights ago.”

  “We weren’t in transit.”

  “I drove you home.”

  “Does that count?”

  “I’m counting it. And do you remember the name of the painting Calarusso auctioned that night?”

  “Across the Waters to Saint-Tropez.”

  “While we were on the bridge, a favorite song of mine came on the radio. An old song called ‘San Tropez.’ ”

  “Hey, I know that song,” she said. She sang the first two lines. “That one?”

  “ ‘And you’re leading me down to the place by the sea,’ ” he sang. “That’s the one.”

  They shared another look, and then she kissed him. After the first few tentative kisses, she crossed a leg over his lap and straddled him.

  When they broke off, she looked at him from only a few inches away.

  “Oh, my God,” she said. And she suddenly threw her head back and laughed. “This isn’t happening.”

  “Yes,” he said. “It is.”

  They kissed again and afterward began a series of goodbyes, for her husband would be home from the park soon with the boys and the dog in tow, and everyone would be hot and cranky and in need of a snack, and it would be better, she said to him, thinking vaguely of the future, that he not be seen, not known, yet. They had every intention of getting up from the sofa but remained there, kissing more freely now, and between kisses he shared with her more of his childhood and recommended that no one act too rashly, for the sake of the children.

  “No, yeah, of course. No one’s going to…no one’s doing anything stupid,” she said. “But, listen…”

  “What?”

  “Well, I don’t know,” she said. “I just…I just know that I have to paint, that’s all.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “Always. We’ll make sure of it.”

  Was that what she meant? Or did she mean right now, she needed to paint right now? Had he overplayed his hand? No—she was smiling, nodding. They were on the same wavelength, thank God.

  Another ten minutes passed, and now it was imperative that she send him on his way. But they stole another minute, and when they left off kissing again, she backtracked, saying it could never work out between them, because he was used to an apartment that smelled nice, where you could read the paper over bagels on a Sunday morning, and not a pigsty where toys were scattered everywhere.

  “But I can’t live like that anymore,” he said. “It’s too precious. I need a good mess.”

  “That’s too bad,” she said, “because I wouldn’t mind a little verbena in my life.”

  “Oh, well, that I can do,” he said.

  Then it was time, they had to get up, and four daring and exquisite minutes later they did. Holding hands this time, they returned through the baby’s room to the front door. The baby stirred, then let out a cry—and then it didn’t matter how carefully she shut the door behind her. Nap time was over. “Shit,” she said.

  “Go,” he said. “Take care of him. I’ll see myself out.”

  “It’s a her,” she said, and they kissed a final time. He was halfway out the door when she called him back and hurried across the room.

  “Maybe I should just tell him,” she said.

  “Tell who?”

  “My husband,” she said. “Doesn’t he deserve to know?”

  “What would you tell him?”

  She thought about it. “I don’t know,” she said, and caught herself. “What’s even happening?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “And everything. Maybe you should. I don’t know—whatever you think is best.”

  She leaned in to him to steal one final kiss. Then he left the apartment and walked toward the elevator, which disgorged an unhappy man, two hot and sullen boys, and a Jack Russell terrier panting from the heat.

  He had arrived there in the depths of despair but was leaving now wordless with joy. At the station, he realized again that he didn’t have his wallet and had to jump the turnstile. He wanted to text her, or call her, for some reassurance—and to recapitulate every sentiment of the past hour and then, as the conversation meandered, to exchange the bolder impressions that each must have of the other, which could come spilling out now that they had broken through to a level of intimacy. Ah, what happiness! To have found her at last, someone who would never leave! But he couldn’t text or call, because he had thrown away his phone.

  The doorman lo
aned him a spare key, but it must not have been the right one or something, because, though it slid inside the lock just fine, it wouldn’t turn. He was about to give up when he heard footsteps, and a few seconds later the door opened from the inside. Surprised, he stood upright.

  “Oh,” he said. “You’re home.”

  His wife turned on high-arched feet and padded away soundlessly, disappearing into the bedroom. He stood there a minute with the door open, feeling the cool, settled calm of the rooms filling up with dusk. After turning and shutting the door, he remained standing there a minute longer. Finally, he shuffled across the apartment and stood on the brink of the bedroom, looking in. She was packing an overnight bag that lay open on the bed.

  “You thought I had left,” she said.

  He nodded, looking sheepish.

  “But you see now I didn’t.” She dropped a camisole on the bed and held up her arms. “How many times, Nick?”

  “I really did think you were gone this time,” he said.