The Dinner Party, Page 3

  “We had to put a horse down today. It was very difficult. His name was The Jolly Bones, and he was absolutely everyone’s favorite. He was almost sort of human. This one time—”

  “My gallbladder’s ruined,” declared Arty.

  “Your gallbladder, Daddy? How did that happen?”

  “Yes, my gallbladder. Dr. Klutchmaw says it has to be removed. First a low glucose plasma concentration, then the heart, now the gallbladder. I have never given a thought to the gallbladder my entire life, but evidently it wears down like an old tire. I didn’t mean to make such terrible decisions.”

  “What decisions were those, Daddy?”

  “Klutchmaw tells me I could have prevented this if I had stayed away from fatty foods forty years ago, but no one gives you a manual, Gina. No one hands you a manual.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t be so gloomy, Daddy. Not today. Not on your birthday.”

  “I want you to do yourself a favor and stay away from fatty foods, my girl, because a worn-out gallbladder is no walk in the park. Klutchmaw has a man who plans to remove it, and that means going under the anesthetic, and I may be diabetic. I’m waiting on the test results.”

  “Well, that sounds good,” said Gina. “But what about today, Daddy, what do you plan to do on your birthday?”

  “If I had known about any of this forty years ago, I wouldn’t be so gloomy today, but no one gives you a manual. The cigarettes ruined my bowels, and I smoked them only ten years before I heeded the warnings. When I go, I have a feeling it will be because of the lungs or the bowels and not the heart after all.”

  “Do you have a golf game lined up today, Daddy?”

  “I’m too fat to play golf anymore,” said Arty. “It’s a good thing you called when you did, sweetheart. I was just about to go into the kitchen and attack the Oreos.”

  Gina stayed on the line until she was called away. They were having a little ceremony for The Jolly Bones. She encouraged Arty to get out of the house for what remained of his birthday and to have a good time, maybe by riding his bicycle.

  The sun was never so part of the earth’s essence as when its golden meniscus quivered at the edge of the horizon just over Arty’s balcony, coloring the clouds and restoring to the sky all the pastoral visions of the earliest era, and filling his condo (furnished with wicker and cushion) with the light of a dying day.

  After finishing the Oreos and three glasses of milk, Arty struggled with himself not to dial a number long committed to memory. Doing so went against Klutchmaw’s express instructions, and it might tie up the phone right as someone was calling to pass along kind birthday wishes. But in the end he reasoned there was no point aging another year if you couldn’t spoil yourself. A familiar voice answered after only half a ring. It was Brad. Brad put in the order for a large meat-lover’s pizza and a two-liter Sprite. Anxious about tying up the line, Arty nevertheless announced that it was his birthday.

  “Happy birthday, Arty,” said Brad. “How old are you?”

  “Yes, happy birthday to me. Thank you, Brad. I’m a composite sixty-six, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. I’ve lost much of my aerobic potential and put the lungs at about a hundred. I put the legs at eighty-five. How old are you, Brad? They don’t give you a manual, you know. I don’t want you to be shocked when they tell you they’re coming to pull out all your teeth.”

  “Arty, man, the other lines are screaming. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “I’ll talk to you tomorrow, Brad, you bet. God bless for calling. Happy birthday to me.”

  “Happy birthday, Arty.”

  By one of those good fortunes of timing that lonely people long for, the phone began to ring just seconds after Arty set down the receiver. This racket of activity gave the impression of momentary pandemonium and brought joy to Arty’s big day. Again, he let the phone ring three interminable times before answering, and then, as the mouthpiece traveled through the air toward his lips, said casually, as if to someone in the room with him, “…think they’re going to have a wonderful season this year. Hello?”

  “Dad!”

  It was his son, Paul, calling from San Francisco. Paul worked in a hospice where he sat among the terminally ill and watched them die. Arty was proud of him—Paul had given his life to a good cause—though not as proud as he would have been if Paul were the owner of a chain of hospices scattered across the country, pulling in profit margins of 30 percent or more.

  “Oh, Pauly, God bless you for calling,” said Arty. “Happy birthday to me.”

  “Is there someone there with you, Dad? Should I call back?”

  “No, it’s just my friend Jimmy Denton. You know Jimmy. We’re sitting here talking baseball. You know how I love talking baseball with an old friend.”

  “Well, I’m just calling to wish you a happy birthday.”

  “I talked to Dr. Klutchmaw’s office today,” said Arty. “It doesn’t look good.”

  “Remind me,” said Paul. “Which one is Klutchmaw?”

  “Dr. Klutchmaw is my internist. He tells me the manufacturer is recalling the stent. There’s a flaw in the damn thing. It’s not fair, Pauly.”

  “They don’t hand out manuals, do they, Pop.”

  “No, they don’t. You think your heart stent is going to last you forever, and then the manufacturer recalls the damn thing.”

  “Well, everything’s okay here. The children are fine, Dana’s fine. Matter of fact, she’s sitting next to me and wants to wish you a happy birthday. Here she is.”

  “Hold on, Paul, hold it just a second before you give the phone to Dana. I want to tell you something, son. Now listen to me, Paul. Odds are, you’re going to get fat. You’re going to get goddamn fat and you’re going to get the gout. You’re going to have hypertension and high cholesterol, and you’re going to be put on drugs with the worst side effects. They’ll make you sweat in odd places. You won’t be able to focus or count. Your children will grow distant. Dana will be dead. And you’ll be lonely, Paul. I should have told you this years ago, to prepare you, but I didn’t know it myself. I just want you to be prepared.”

  There was a pause before Dana’s voice said, “Hello? Is that you, Arty?”

  “Oh, hello, Dana.”

  “Happy birthday, Arty!”

  “God bless you. Happy birthday to me.”

  Arty spoke to his daughter-in-law for a while about heart stents, gallstones, impacted bowels, insulin shots, and stomach ulcers before he announced that he was being referred to an oncologist for twinges that might indicate a tumor.

  “Oof!” cried Dana. “Meredith, you can’t do that, honey, you’re too big! Arty, Meredith just ran into the room and jumped on my lap. I’m on the phone with Grandpa, honey. Do you want to say hi to Grandpa? It’s his birthday today. Say happy birthday to Grandpa.”

  A great battle of wills commenced behind a fortress of muffled static that collapsed totally in brief intervals during which Arty heard Dana scream, “Meredith Ann! Talk to your—!” and Meredith howl as if in terrible pain, before a silence prevailed and a teary Meredith said, “Hello?”

  “Hello, Meredith. It’s your grandpa.”

  “Hello,” said Meredith.

  “Happy birthday to me.”

  “Happy birfday.”

  Like many older people who find themselves on the phone with children of unstable attention spans, Arty began to talk nonstop, flinging at his granddaughter every expression of pride and love, interspersed with questions intended not to sate a genuine curiosity but to confirm Meredith’s continued presence on the other end of the line. Arty was convinced that she had no interest in him, that as far as little Meredith was concerned, he was as good as dead. This provoked the panic that fueled the blithering that he hoped might overcome Meredith’s annihilating silence. He asked if she knew what an internist was.

  “An internist is just a doctor,” he explained. “My internist’s name is Klutchmaw. I’m not crazy about him, but he takes my insurance. One day you’ll understand w
hat an important measure of a good doctor that is. Do you like going to the doctor? I don’t like it myself because it always means there might be something terribly wrong with me. You should be very happy that there’s nothing wrong with you yet, Meredith. You have your teeth, you can go outside and run around, your bowels have yet to liquefy.”

  Arty was silent a moment. Where was he going with this conversation, and would her parents approve? Yet he persevered, for when if not now to relay to her the stealth of years, the inexorable betrayals of the body, the perfidiousness of the eventualities?

  “They don’t give you a manual, Meredith, and who’s going to prepare you if not your grandpa? I’m not going to go pussyfooting around your bowel movements on account of your young age, because one day you’re going to wake up and wonder why the world perpetuated treacherous lies against such a perfect creature as yourself, and I want you to look back on your old grandpa and remember him as somebody who told you the truth about what’s in store for you, and not as one of these propagandists for perpetual youth just because right now your constitutionals happen to be nice and firm. Do you know what a constitutional is, Meredith? I will tell you.”

  Meredith dropped the phone and ran out of the room. Arty spoke tinnily into the carpet. After a while the phone went dead. A few hours later Paul came upon it on the floor of the bedroom and wondered how he could have left it there, of all places.

  Arty had hoped Jimmy would call, but after his conversation with Meredith, despite his importuning eyes, the stolid black machine remained mute. He imagined a conversation with Jimmy, who, knowing that it was his birthday, would indulge him, on this one day only, as he complained once more that neither Bob Sherwood nor Chaz Yalinsky invited him to play golf anymore. They made a great foursome, Jimmy and Arty against Bob and Chaz. But now he had no one to play golf with, no friend but Jimmy, no companion in life—not even one person who might call him on his birthday.

  The doorbell rang. Mrs. Zegerman’s Shih Tzu pierced the air with high-pitched barks, which ordinarily felt to Arty like an ax whooshing around his head, but as he rose from his recliner and moved from rug to Spanish tile, he tried not to let it get to him, because someone, someone, oh someone was at his door! He dismissed speculation of a late delivery of flowers from one of his children in favor of his old friend Jimmy Denton, there to take him for a beer after shaking free of Jojo, his lusty and calisthenic Oriental wife, who had never liked Arty and made no attempt to hide it. But just as he had taken hold of the doorknob, he realized with a sinking heart that it was probably not flowers and probably not Jimmy Denton, but Dusty, Brad’s counterpart, there to deliver the meat-lover’s and two-liter.

  It was not Dusty.

  Standing opposite him, partially lit by the bulb shining from its gaslight cage, was a young woman dressed in a miniskirt of stretch fabric and a bosomy blouse of silver lamé. Beneath her makeup lay a pallor that had been set in place by long, hard winters. Her hair, straining to be blond, had washed out into a color resembling sugarless gum after a long chew. It fell to her shoulders in two coarse and frizzy cascades. She carried nothing in her hands, no purse, no personal possessions of any kind, but when Arty opened the door she raised her hand and dimmed her eye, taking one last drag on her cigarette before dropping it to the tile, where it landed with a tap, and extinguishing it under a bright silver heel.

  “You are Arty Growsie?”

  “Groys,” said Arty.

  “Your friend is Jimmy?”

  “Jimmy Denton?”

  “Is not necessary to know last name.”

  Arty was pretty sure the woman was a prostitute. He was at his core a fearful, law-abiding, overly cautious man, yet he let her walk past him without a word. She was spritzed for a cheap night at a loud club. Before shutting the door he sensed, by way of Cookie’s silence, Mrs. Zegerman at her peephole, holding the trembling dog to her crepe-paper chest.

  Arty closed the door. The girl took a seat on the wicker sofa, and a minute later Arty had situated himself next to her, not so close as to fall within the weather of her communicable diseases, but not so far as to appear rude. He was touched that Jimmy Denton would do this for him. The last time he’d seen Jimmy, at the dog track, Jimmy had said that Arty’s yapping was as annoying as his faggot cousin’s at family gatherings. Arty had been going on about Bob and Chaz just as one of Jimmy’s dogs had come in dead last. Arty excused himself, bought a hot dog and a jumbo pretzel, which he ate in the car, and drove home. They hadn’t spoken since.

  “Well, God bless you for coming,” he said to the girl, reaching out to touch her hand but pulling back in time. “God bless you and God bless Jimmy Denton. It’s my birthday, and I was feeling lonely.”

  “Ridiculous for handsome and strong man ever to feel lonely,” the girl said.

  “I am no longer handsome and I was never very strong,” Arty said. “I’m fat and I have a bad heart and my internist has warned me that I’m on the very cusp of diabetes.”

  The girl said, “Two requirements to continue.” She reached into her bra and pulled out a condom and a blue pill. “Condom is necessary to use during making love. Erection pill is added expense but is paid for already by friend of yours.”

  Arty giggled. “Well, happy birthday to me,” he said. “Happy birthday to old Arty Groys! But, no, I’m afraid I can’t take that pill. It is expressly forbidden by my internist, Dr. Klutchmaw. It interferes with the nitrates I take for my bad heart.”

  “Do you need pill to make penis work?”

  Arty nodded.

  “We give it good try, then,” the girl said as she stood.

  Arty surprised himself by reaching out and grabbing her hand. “Wait,” he said. “Don’t leave. Have you eaten? I have a pizza coming. We could have dinner.”

  “You eat greasy pizza when you have bad heart?”

  “Please, sit down.”

  The girl sat.

  “Pizza is one of my compensations,” Arty said. “I don’t have to take a pill to eat a pizza. Well, to lower my cholesterol and blood pressure, but that’s different. I eat the pizza and take those pills, but I don’t die. I take that pill, I could die. I could have a heart attack.”

  “Friend of mine from my country swallowed twenty-four pills with liquid pipe cleaner and then took razor blade and cut open left arm from wrist to elbow,” said the girl. “Now she lives in North Carolina and works at Holiday Inn.”

  A stunned abatement of his own concerns stole over Arty and forced him to look at the girl more closely. She stared back at him with the neutral innocence of a child waiting obediently for the start of a piano lesson.

  “She survived?”

  “Now she is married to American undertaker who steals all her money, but he doesn’t beat her, so is good for time being. He fought for America in Vietnam War. Did you fight for America in Vietnam War?”

  Her questions ended not in an inquisitorial lilt but with a descending, matter-of-fact thud.

  “I was in the service from 1963 to 1966.”

  “Were you shot?”

  “Shot? I was never shot. I fixed chairs and typewriters and other things. I never left Texas.”

  “I have been shot twice. Here,” she said, “and here.” She showed him two scars, each a quarter-sized debit of loose yellow skin, one in the stomach and one in the leg.

  “What was that?” he asked.

  She lifted her blouse again. “This? From exploded appendix. Ambulance driver taking his sweet time. Nurse and doctor taking their sweet time. Everyone is taking their sweet time while I am drowning in poison. I am in hospital twenty-six days.”

  “How old are you?”

  “I am eighteen, baby.”

  “Eighteen?”

  “Sorry, I am not telling real age to anyone.”

  Arty looked at her again. Though he guessed that she was no older than thirty, her pale demeanor and sodden dye job had consigned her to an eternal middle age. He imagined her on her days off lighting cigarettes fro
m noon till dawn, imagined them burning down in rooms defined by drawn shades and muttering talk shows. He saw the crow’s-feet that worked against her beauty, but he also saw the beauty. She must have a robust constitution, he thought, immune to colds and despair, unsentimentally surviving. He knew that if he had been born into the same conditions, he wouldn’t have made it to ten years old. He had said it a hundred times, a thousand, a hundred thousand, to whoever would listen, but now he merely thought it, with that shock of having discovered that it contained the truth, after all: They don’t give you a manual.

  “I have question,” she said. “Life is so tough, you are afraid of one little pill? It is one little nothing. You take it and we have good time. Maybe I come back next week. Every week we have good time together, and you no longer sit on this nice sofa and think, Oh, poor me, I’m so lonely, I’m such lonely old man.”

  She drew closer. He was starting to like her overbearing perfume. She placed the pill on his knee. He stared at it. He had never had to consider this option before. He rarely met new people; he was too scared of rejection. Yet here was a girl willing to take him in her arms and kindly ignore the humbling sight of him blundering his way toward ecstasy. And those stern warnings to heart patients not to take such pills—weren’t they likely to be, at least in part, the exaggerations of executives afraid of lawsuits?

  The girl straightened herself on the sofa and reached around her back and untied something essential. She lifted her blouse to reveal the kind of breasts that Arty believed were seen up close only by men who dealt cocaine and played professional football. There was disbelief, and then there was what passed beyond the realm of the comprehensible into the sensuous world of warrior-kings. Dusty arrived with the pizza. Arty ignored the doorbell.

  Mrs. Zegerman resembled a mosquito. She had long thin limbs and a small, very concentrated face whose severe features were drawn dramatically forward, culminating in a sharply pointed nose.

  She had passed the day waiting for an apology from Ilsa Brooks, with whom she had had a falling-out after arguing over a movie they had seen together on a recent Sunday afternoon. Ilsa thought the film had been a return to the screwball romantic comedies of the 1930s, but Mrs. Zegerman wanted to know in what 1930s comedy was everything “F this” and “F that.” Isla told her to get with the times. Mrs. Zegerman responded by saying that matters of common decency were timeless, and now the two women weren’t speaking.