Week 3, Story 4

"A Truly Wonderful Evening with Friends, Really"

Meredith and Joanne floated off in a frothy whisk of silk-blend skirt toward the kitchen at quarter after five; it was understood that they would throw some cocktails together while the men caught up on talking shop in the living room. “There go the girls, to complain about us loafers,” Bill said, because Bill had the good sense of humor and so always said things like that. Meredith gave a noise of pretty indignation, because she was the indignant pretty one, and muttered a sometimes-I-don’t-know-why-I-married-him to Joanne as they disappeared behind the kitchen’s Dutch doors. Bill looked at David and chuckled the “psht- women” chuckle, and David nodded and gave a smile that made his face cramp up the moment he tried it on. Bill cleared his throat and hoped his whiskey sour would emerge from the kitchen soon: a piece of his old joke had stuck, a shred of grainy cheap toilet paper, at the back of his mouth.
In the kitchen, Joanne pulled the glasses down from their shelf because it was her house, while Meredith dug out the golden-hued bottles from the pantry because she had made drinks in that room so many times before. The crystal and glass and ice and swizzle sticks they handled clanked like a piano mating with a car in the pristine air of the kitchen; Joanne would have been on her fifth tongue-cluck over Christine Milliner’s honeymoon baby, if Meredith had told her the breaking news, but she hadn’t. She couldn’t: there was an ivy vine of heated prickles that grew unabashed over her neck whenever she took a breath to speak, over-cooking her words so they dissolved to steamy nothing on her lips. Joanne uncorked the grenadine and smiled at Meredith, but when she tried to part her lips to laugh at their silly silence, discovered they were frosted together in a chilly clamp. “Looks like we’re done here,” she finally managed, and Meredith offered a yes-we-certainly-are and they scooped up the trays and glided out through the Dutch doors.
At quarter to six the time was right to begin a game, but said rightness of the scheme quickly lost its confidence in the face of the selection of which one to play. “Scrabble,” was the first bid, by Bill, who was a fan due to the potential for laying down off-color words, which he exploited whenever possible. The women mildly cooed their consent, but then David protested they had played Scrabble at the last dinner party, because he was the smart, sensible one and always remembered details like that. The women’s eyes flicked onto him with falcon-dive precision. David’s lower back cemented itself with a gray thud. Bill had heard the mention of “last time,” too, and shifted in his chair, as bristle-legged ants had begun a run down the backs of his thighs. “Are you sure about that?” he asked David, narrowing his face in an attempt to look like a cowboy poised for the draw.
“I am sure.”
“I’m just saying, it’s been quite a while. Maybe you’re getting things mixed up?”
“Are you saying that it’s been too long, Bill?”
Meredith sniffed in a lovely way, and rested her hand on her husband’s warm knee, even though her palms were already the concave, hissing mouths of steam vents. Bill slipped his fingers over hers. “All I’m saying, David, is maybe you recall things in a way that isn’t necessarily the way they occurred.”
Joanne’s spine was run through by a minty icicle; she bucked with a shiver, and snuggled closer to her husband on the couch. David clamped an arm around her shoulders with the vigor of rubber rebounding. “I recall it perfectly: the evening before Joanne and I left for Hawaii, the four of us had a get-together and played Scrabble. Meredith won by four points. Don’t you remember Meredith?”
Meredith’s mouth had been roasted dry of all juices by the question: “I believe I might recall winning with a triple word score on ‘dental’ that evening.”
Joanne’s nostrils were burning with blackening bites of frost, and the pain made her sneeze out: “Yes, Meredith, that evening before David and I left to Hawaii for ten days.”
The back of Meredith’s neck rippled with a scalding pour. “That’s right, Joanne. And for your information, David, yes, it has been a very long time since we had one of these dinner parties at your home.”
Bill couldn’t take the way his pants were suddenly made of wool. He scooted around on his behind and bellowed in his rodeo clown voice: “Hey there, gals and pals, who’s up for Yahtzee?”
David smiled and bit back the charley horse that reared up in his cheek. “I believe, my friend, that if we follow the usual rotation, Pictionary night follows Scrabble night.”
At seven o’clock, Joanne and David, fresh from the victory of best recognizing what the other was doodling, called dinnertime. The couples seated themselves man-woman-man-woman at the dining table with the precision of familiarity. Bill related a humorous anecdote that had occurred at the annual company picnic, while Meredith “helped out” by dishing the Chicken a la King. David filled all the proper places in Bill’s story with hearty laughs that vibrated the air of the room like a violin string tuned too high; it finally snapped at the pluck of Bill’s punch line.
“My, who knew potato salad could make such wonderful story fodder?” Joanne mused in a cozy way, which seemed subtly strange coming from her mouth, painted Avon number forty-four Frosted Rose around her winter-white teeth. She forked a bundle of asparagus spears onto her plate and, finally done serving, drifted into her chair with a calm elegance, because she was the elegant, calm one and she moved that way.
The cooking was declared scrumptious and the new wine glasses a steal at an admitted eight dollars a piece from the Nordstrom’s sale. Bill asked David what he thought of the latest Big League trade, face twitching a little from the scab of sawdust that had moved, unannounced, into his nostril. A crab had formed its claw out of the sinews of David’s right shoulder; he shrugged and shrugged but couldn’t de-claw for anything, and the rigid opening and closing continued unabated. He answered he had heard of it and that the game had gotten far too political; what had happened to simply enjoying simple pastimes?
Meredith had a campfire in her brassiere: she fluttered her napkin over her neck as discreetly as she could, but a toasty goo of marshmallow sweat continued to pool beneath her underwire. She gracefully refused the very attractive offer of a second helping from Joanne, and was moved to again compliment the terribly lucky new wine glasses when her eyes happened over to the mantel of the dining room fireplace. All thoughts of sales and propositions of shared Nordstrom excursions combusted in a flame across her face; she choked aloud on the smoke. Bill gave his wife a queer look and accepted Joanne’s proffered last breast of chicken; he was about to bark a proper “thanks,” but then looked at her and could only let a whimper past the searing mosquito bite on his tongue.
It was January on Joanne’s face. She informed her party that coffee and desert would be taken at the table, as soon as Bill finished his dinner, of course.
Meredith felt the mantel staring at the side of her head with solar wind eyes. “Oh, but taking coffee and dessert in the living room is so much lovelier, don’t you think,” she tittered appealingly and touched a Revlon number twelve Warmest Peach-tipped finger to her nose.
“I don’t know, Meredith. I think this is a lovely room, as well. So many personal touches that are dear to Dave and I.” Joanne made a gorgeous gesture with her hand and then let it rest serenely on the table, feeling her eyes crackle in a blue gleam on Meredith.
Bill coughed out: “Maybe we should have dessert in the shower! That would certainly be personal;” an entire bale of hay in his throat stopped up further descriptions of the activity.
The muscles in David’s wrist bunched up like an empty aluminum can, and his hand formed a firm ball atop the table; he wasn’t sure it wouldn’t roll toward Bill’s face.
“Maybe we should let Joanne host. She’s very good at it, after all.”
“Maybe, David, we shouldn’t completely dismiss Meredith’s idea, though. She also has a talent for hosting.”
“Maybe Joanne is simply highly proficient at taking care of a house, though. Bill.”
Meredith’s voice singed itself white hot with the action of coming into being. “Are you saying, David, that someone else could not do as good a job of minding a home as Joanne?”
Joanne would have been narrating the second part of her husband’s explanation of what he had meant, but her face was turned fully to the mantle, eyes on the eight-by-ten photograph portrait of a schnauzer that hung, centered, over it. The deep blue of the lacquered frame was the same color as the fetching collar about the dog’s tidily small, black neck. There was a sudden thaw at the corners of her eyes, and droplets glistened there, threatening to fall from the weight of their own pregnancy.
She turned her face back to the conversation. “David is only saying, Meredith, that different individuals are maybe more talented than others with the different; small; important responsibilities of caring for a home.”
Bill wheezed through the holocaust of fleas that raged over and inside his body. “If different individuals are so disapproving, then perhaps we shouldn’t housesit for them again the next time they decide to go to Hawaii.”
“Perhaps that would be best,” said David.
Joanne rose to gather the dinner plates, Meredith with her, chirping an I’ll-help-you-with-dessert. The women rolled their eyes at one another over Bill’s whistle when they passed his chair to exit the room, hands heaped with seamless arrangements of dishware.
“Dinner at your house next week?” posed David, eyebrows rising on his face with the grind of a train braking on its tracks.
Bill raked his right nails over a spot on his left tricep where a bushy caterpillar was rooting under his skin. “Sure thing. But make no mistake, old buddy: even though it would be Rumikub night, Scrabble will be played.”