Gerald's Party

by Robert Coover

  She was at the counter, decorating a tray of cold cuts with little sprigs of fresh parsley. She wore a brown apron with purple-and-white flowers on it and held a butcher knife in her left hand. There was no blood on it, but it startled me to see it in her hand just the same. Perhaps she’d been slicing the roast beef with it. ‘Ros has been murdered,’ I said.

  My wife looked up in alarm – or maybe the alarm had been there on her face before she turned it toward me. ‘Oh no! Where—?’

  ‘In the living room,’ I said, though I wasn’t sure that was what she’d meant by the question. I was having trouble breathing. She stared past my shoulder toward the door, her mouth open, little worry lines crossing her forehead. There were plates and glasses in the sink behind her, but the counter was wiped clean. I wondered if she wanted me to hug her reassuringly or something. But I had these things in my hands. ‘What … what do you think we ought to do?’ I asked.

  With difficulty, she pulled her gaze back to me. ‘I don’t know, Gerald,’ she said softly, touching her cheek with the back of the hand holding the knife. ‘Probably we should call the police.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, of course,’ I said, and went back out front, thinking of my wife with a butcher knife in one hand and a bouquet of parsley in the other, and trying to remember the special telephone number for emergencies.

  But Alison’s husband was using the phone. He was murmuring secretively into the mouthpiece, his head ducked, a sly grin on his thin bearded face. I tried to interrupt him, but he waved me away without even looking up, puckering his mouth as though blowing a kiss into the phone and chuckling softly. ‘Listen,’ I cried, ‘there’s been a murder!’

  ‘Yes, I know,’ he said coldly, putting the receiver down. ‘I’ve just called the police.’ I was troubled by the way he stared at me. It occurred to me that I knew almost nothing about him: only his name and address on a white card.

  I followed him back into the living room where Roger was still carrying on pathetically over Ros’s corpse. Tania had knelt beside him and was trying to console him, draw him away from the body, but he was beyond her reach. Beyond anybody’s. He was wild with grief, looked a terror, his front now as bloody as Ros’s. His face seemed twisted, as if a putty mask were being torn away from it, and people watching him were twisting up, too. Vic’s girlfriend Eileen had apparently fainted and was lying on the gold couch. Jim was sitting by her, holding one wrist, slapping her face and her palms gently, while Dickie at the end of the couch, keeping her shoes away from his bright white pants and vest, held her legs up so the blood would flow to her head. Vic flung what was left of his drink up her nose and that brought her to with a snort, but she went on lying there, whimpering softly to herself. Vic said something about a ‘stupid cunt,’ and Jim said: ‘Take it easy, Vic. She’s had a severe shock.’

  The contrast was there for everyone to see: Roger and Ros, Vic and Eileen. It seemed to bring a kind of ripeness to the room. Alison gripped her husband’s hand tightly and stared over at me as though in supplication, but what was it she wanted? I felt lost and confused, a stranger inside my own house. I did, however, remember now the special phone number for emergencies. Her husband, watching me, withdrew his hand from hers to smooth down the fine black hairs of his beard. ‘There’s nothing we can do until the police come,’ I said at last. Alison seemed helped by this: she sighed, her slender shoulders relaxing slightly, and turned to gaze compassionately across the room at Eileen on the couch. Her dark hair fluttered wispily, as though filmed in slow motion, as she turned her head, and I thought: I understand myself better because of this woman. This was true of my wife, too, of course.

  Tania, still trying to comfort Roger, was now completely bespattered with blood herself. ‘Oh my god, Gerry!’ she cried, showing me her bloody dress, her dark expressive eyes full of dismay and sorrow (I felt my own eyes water: I bit down on my lip), her nostrils flaring. ‘This is terrible!’

  Roger, as though in response, suddenly tilted far back, clutching his face with bloody hands, and let forth an awful howl, scaring us all, then pitched back down upon Ros’s ruptured breast, still amazingly spouting fresh blood.

  Eileen at that same moment cried out. We looked up. Vic was standing over her at the couch, his legs spread, elbows out, the back of his thick neck flushed, and the way she was curled up with one arm flung over her drawn face, I had the impression Vic had just struck her. Dickie had backed away, clearly wanting no part of it. When our eyes met for a moment, I frowned in inquiry, and Dickie, tugging at the ivory-buttoned cuffs of his plaid jacket, shrugged wearily in reply. ‘No … !’ Eileen sniveled.

  ‘We’ve got to be patient!’ I said sharply, but no one appeared to be listening. Even Alison was distracted. Her husband was studying a Byzantine icon depicting the torture of a saint, a curious piece my wife had bought at an auction. Mr and Mrs Draper came in and began to discuss it with him. He turned away. I felt there was something I should be doing, something absolutely essential, but I couldn’t think what it might be. It didn’t matter: I’d had the same sensation many times before – just a little while ago in the kitchen, for example – and knew it for what it was: the restless paralysis that always attends any affront to habit.

  Not always had I read this feeling rightly, I should say. There was the terrible night, for example, of our first son’s stillbirth. Little Gerald. I’d been by my wife’s side throughout the daylong ordeal that preceded it, holding her hand through the ferocious pain that was tearing her apart: a small fineboned woman exploding with this inner force growing increasingly alien to her as it struggled, though we did not yet suspect this, against its own strangulation, having tried, its cord twisted, to breathe too soon – oh, how I’d loved her then, loved her delicacy, her courage, her suffering, her hopes, even the fine cracks disfiguring her belly, the veins thickening in her legs, her swollen teats, fierce grimace, cries of pain. It had been Jim who had suddenly guessed the truth and rushed her into the delivery room. But too late, the child was dead. Afterward, drugged, she’d slept. ‘It’s all so unreal,’ I’d said, contemplating the wreckage of so much natural violence, ‘so unbelievable …’ Jim had given me a sedative to take and, wrapping one arm around me, said I should go home, get some rest, come back early in the morning. Leaving the hospital, then, I’d had this same feeling: that there was something important I should be doing, but I couldn’t think what. Halfway home, dreading the emptiness there, still a bit awed and frightened, I’d thought of a woman I’d been seeing occasionally during the final months of my wife’s pregnancy, and it had occurred to me that she too must be needing solace, understanding, and needing too the opportunity to be needed in this calamity, needed by me, even if only this last time (yes, it was probably the last time), and I’d supposed that this must be the important thing I had to do, that thing I couldn’t put my finger on. And so, full of sorrow and distress and compassion, I’d gone by. But I’d been wrong. She’d been shocked, disgusted even. ‘My god, have you no feelings at all?’ she’d cried, still only half-awake, her face puffy from sleep and her hair loose in front of her eyes. ‘That’s – that’s just it,’ I’d explained, tried to, love (I’d supposed it was love, for someone) thickening my tongue. ‘I need someone to talk to and I thought—’ ‘Christ, Gerry, go find a goddamn shrink!’ she’d shot back, and slammed the door. I’d gone on home, feeling sick with myself (what kind of filth are we made of, I’d wondered miserably, nauseated by my own flesh, its dumb brutalizing appetites and arrogant confusions), and had found my mother-in-law waiting for me there: she’d come to help with the new baby and she was all smiles. It was like a strange nightmare memory: my mother-in-law smiling …

  I looked up from Ros’s corpse and saw Jim’s wife, Mavis, standing there like something hung from a hanger, locked in a helpless stupor, her soft red mouth agape, her eyes puffy and staring. I knew how she felt: Ros was like her own daughter, or so she often said. Jim was clearly shaken, too, but had the defenses of his profession: right n
ow, playing the family doctor, he was counseling Vic’s daughter Sally Ann. Sally Ann wore, as usual, a white shirt open down the front and knotted at the waist, and tight faded blue jeans with a heart-shaped patch sewn over her anus that said, ‘KISS ME.’ She’d painted her eyes and lashes to appear grown-up, but had only made herself look more a child. Earlier, Dickie had been moving in on her, but now she was alone with Jim. Maybe they were talking about her father: Vic was sitting heavily on the couch, his large shaggy head in his hands, Eileen stretched out limply behind him, looking less alive than Ros. Jim smiled gently and Sally Ann sighed petulantly and looked away. Tania’s nephew Anatole was hovering furtively at the outer edge of their conversation, a look on his tense angular face that seemed to say: I told you this would happen! But then, he always had that kind of look on his face.

  His aunt, still on the floor beside Roger and the body, had sunk back on her heels, her half-lens spectacles dangling on a chain around her neck, her celebrated vitality utterly drained away. The crowd of people around her watched as she rubbed her eyes with the tips of her long bloodstained fingers, pressed her lips together, and looked up at Mavis beside her. Mavis seemed to be trying to speak. She slumped there over Tania, staring bleakly, working her soft mouth fitfully around some difficult word, her squat pillowy body otherwise lifeless. Anatole, noticing this, tugged at Jim’s arm, but Jim was still reasoning patiently with Sally Ann and appeared not to notice. Patrick, taking a seeming interest in Jim’s counsel, had joined them, sidling close to Anatole, a tumbler of vodka and grapefruit juice – Patrick’s famous ‘salty bitch’ – in one hand, French cigarette in the other. Sally Ann glanced over at me suddenly, her eyes flashing, then stamped her foot and left the room. Beyond them, I could see Alison, alone, her head down: was she crying? ‘Who … ?’ Mavis finally managed to blurt out, and the other conversations in the room died away. Jim looked toward his wife at last, then away again, focusing on the doorway leading in from the hall. Someone in red moved past it. ‘Wh-who … ?’ It was the question, I knew, that had been quietly worming through us all. Patrick took a nervous puff on the cigarette held like a dart between the tips of his fingers, watching Mavis now over Anatole’s shoulder. Dolph came in with a can of beer in his hand and popped it open. Jim was talking with Mr and Mrs Draper, nodding his head in agreement as Mr Draper gesticulated broadly. I had the feeling he was describing some kind of pyramid or temple. Mavis’s plump white arms hung limply at her sides, palms out. She lifted her head slowly and we waited for her question. I felt people crowding up behind me like mustered troops. Or a theatrical chorus. Somebody was chewing potato chips in my ear. Vic stood up. ‘Who—?’

  The front doorbell rang.

  ‘Ah! they’re here!’ I exclaimed, and went to answer it, greatly relieved. The thick clusters of guests parted, murmuring, as I passed through. I could hear Roger moaning behind me, Tania speaking gently with Mavis. Old Mr Draper stepped forward and clutched my forearm with his gnarled white hand, surprisingly powerful. He tipped his head back to peer down his lumpy nose at me and said: ‘There’s someone at the door, son!’

  ‘I know …’

  There were people filling up the hallway, too, watching expectantly. I’d forgotten we’d asked so many. I could see my wife trying to squeeze in from the dining room, wiping her hands on the bib of her flowered apron. ‘Can you get it, Gerald?’ she pleaded from the back of the hall.

  ‘Yes,’ I called over the heads between us as the bell rang again. ‘Don’t worry, it’s all right!’

  Dickie, stepping out of the downstairs toilet, still zipping up, seemed incongruously amused by this exchange. The tank refilled noisily behind him. He glanced up at Vic’s daughter Sally Ann, staring down at me from the staircase landing over his head, her tanned belly pressed against the balustrade. ‘Hey,’ he grinned, fingering the buttons on his white vest, ‘it’s free now.’

  ‘Never mind,’ she snapped and continued up the stairs, switching her fanny huffily.

  My wife backed away toward the dining room, looking momentarily defeated, lost in the crowd. Mrs Draper, standing near me, touched my sleeve and said: ‘She’s so pale, the poor dear. She needs a little sunshine.’ The Drapers, complete strangers to me, had been belaboring everyone all night with tales of their retirement-age tourist travels, such a tonic, they’d said, and I’d found myself wondering earlier if my party might be part of some package tour they’d bought. But it was true, we hadn’t had a holiday in years …

  The bell rang a third time and I reached hastily for the doorknob, only to discover I was still carrying the bottle of vermouth and pitcher of old-fashioneds. I looked around for some place to set them down, but the door opened and a tall moustachioed man in a checked overcoat and gray fedora entered, followed by two uniformed policemen. ‘May we come in?’ he asked politely, but more as a statement of fact than a question: he was already in.

  ‘Of course. I’m sorry, I was just—’

  ‘Inspector Pardew,’ he explained with a slight nod of his head. ‘Homicide.’ He removed his gloves carefully, finger by finger, tucked them in his pockets, unbuttoned his overcoat. The two officers watched us impassively, but not impolitely. They were armed but their weapons were holstered and the holsters fastened. The taller one carried photographic equipment and what looked like a paintbox, cables and cords looped over his narrow shoulders; the short one had a toolkit and a tripod. ‘Now, I understand there has been a murder …’

  ‘Yes, a girl—’

  ‘Ah.’ He slipped out of his overcoat, reached for his fedora, gazing thoughtfully at Dickie’s girl Ginger, who had just, as though prodded from behind, stepped up beside me. ‘Of course …’

  Ginger, under his steady gaze, kept shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot, fumbling at my elbow to keep her balance. Her long lashes seemed almost to click metallically when she blinked them and her pickaninny-style pigtails quivered like little red Martian antennae.

  Inspector Pardew handed his coat and hat to me, but, glancing away from Ginger, saw that my hands were full. This caused him to frown briefly and study my face. There was something incisive and probing about every move he made, and his gaze chilled and reassured me at the same time. I tried to explain: ‘I was serving drinks. I – I’m the host and I—’ But he stopped me with an impatient flick of his hand, a disinterested smile. He folded his coat on the seat of a hall chair, placed his fedora on top of it, smoothed down the few hairs he had left on the top of his head, and, still wearing his white silk scarf, strode on into the living room, his thumbs hooked in his vest pockets.

  The hallway emptied out as the others, rapt, curious, followed him in, some circling through the dining room to get there ahead of the rest. Ginger, made awkward by her own self-consciousness, picked out her steps behind the others as though negotiating a minefield. Or maybe it was just the exaggerated height of her glittering red stiletto heels that made her walk that way. The two police officers paused in the doorway to watch her go. It was hard not to watch. She wore an alarmingly eccentric costume which seemed to be hand-sewn from printed kerchiefs of Oriental design, intricately multicolored but primarily in tones of mauve, crimson, emerald, and gold. They were stretched tight in some places, hung loose and gaping in others. Sort of like Ginger herself. Dickie called her a walking paradox: ‘More cunt inside than body out, Ger. Fucking her’s like pulling a prick on over your condom.’ I watched, too (‘What’s within’s without,’ as Tania would say, ‘without within …’), but when I looked back at the policemen, a faint smile on my face, it was me they were staring at. Nothing malevolent about their stare, but something was clearly bothering them. They bulked large and alien in the living room doorway, their brass buttons and leather straps stranger to me than Ginger’s kerchiefs, their noses twitching, and, though nothing was said, it felt like an interrogation. I found myself running over the night’s events in my mind as though hunting for dangerous gaps in the story (but it was the gaps I seemed to remember, the event
s having faded), my smile stiffening on my face. It was like crossing a border: what might they look for? what might they find?

  But then Roger started bellowing wildly again and, touching their hands to their holsters, they whirled around and, in a crouch, the tall one bobbing on a leg that seemed shorter than the other, left me.

  I released a long wheezing sigh, aware that I’d been holding my breath for some time. My arms ached with the weight of the bottle and pitcher, and I could feel sweat in my armpits and on my upper lip. Tania’s husband Howard came down the stairs behind me. ‘What’s going on, Gerald?’ he asked softly, looking a little flushed, his hand at the knot of his red silk tie.

  ‘Ros has been murdered,’ I said. I felt like I’d just been the victim of something. Or might have been.

  ‘Is that so … !’

  I went into the dining room to leave the vermouth and old-fashioneds on the sideboard with the rest of the drinks. I noticed that all the ice in the pitcher of old-fashioneds had melted and, recalling Alison licking the ice cube, shuddered at the world’s ephemerality. I looked at my hands as if to see time falling through them like water. My wife came in with the cold cuts. ‘Can you move that empty tray, Gerald?’ she said.

  ‘It was the police,’ I told her, my voice catching in my throat. ‘They’re in looking at Ros now.’