What's for Dinner? by James Schuyler (to read list .txt) 📕

“Maureen’s dress. It could only be called definitely sexy. Frankly, I was afraid a tit was going to leap out of her corsage and shoot me in the eye.”

“You wouldn’t look so bad in one of those outfits yourself.”

“Franks a lot. You know you’d hate it. My husband, Norris Taylor, may vote Democrat but at heart he’s a very conservative man. I think what it is is Biddy’s passing on. It’s had a liberating effect. Don’t misunderstand me: they loved Biddy—we all did—but, still, there’s a second honeymoon in the air.”

“They’re not the only ones on a second honeymoon.” Norris put down his paper and obscenely rubbed his crotch.

“Why Norris Morton Taylor, you old reprobate.” Lottie sighed. “I have to admit it. A shot of vodka would taste mighty good to yours truly.”

“You’ll get sick: remember you’re full of Antabuse.”

“Have no fears. Mary Charlotte Norton Taylor has bent her last bender. God willing. You know what was funny? I enjoyed mixing and serving the cocktails. Didn’t feel a shadow of a desire to have one myself. I only felt sad at dinner, when I couldn’t join in the toast to Biddy’s memory. No-Cal cherry. Ugh. And now shall we talk about Mag?”

“I feel no need to,” Norris said. Deirdre sighed loudly and had a fine hair-scattering scratch, then switched her dribbling head to the other arm and proceeded to saturate that.

“Oh, Norris, hubby, let’s just take it out for a trot in the air. All I really want to know is this: it is over, isn’t it?”

Norris leapt to his feet. “Yes,” he roared, “totally over. You can’t imagine what a numbskull that woman is. Honestly I only thought I felt a physical need, but I was really punishing myself. The prattle I had to put up with!”

Lottie laughed, heartly. “Yes the little dear does run on so. And the mileage she gets out of her widowhood! You’d think nobody’s husband had ever passed the bourne before.”

“You can say that again.”

“No, thanks. Once was enough. You know we, we really must put our heads together and dig up a Mr Right for her. She has scorpions in her pants. I don’t want her to start making passes at the grocery boy.” She laughed. “Who is about seventy five and very dark complected.”

“Tell me the truth,” Norris said. “How did you find out? I was really very discreet.”

Lottie gave a horse laugh. “Come here,” she said. Norris went and knelt by her chair and put his head in her middle aged womanly lap. “Why, even the girl at the checkout knew about it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“As a matter of fact, no one told me: though I could tell Maureen had something she wanted to tell me, which rather aroused my suspicions. No, truthfully, it was at Biddy’s funeral service. Mag thought I wasn’t observing because of my hankie but she gave you one long Medea look and the truth was out. I am not deaf, dumb and blind and I am observant. Ouch. Norris Taylor, you’re biting me.”

“I am?” Norris said in innocent tones.

“We’d better get these things off. I don’t want my new pongee ruined. Come Deirdre. The dishes can definitely keep. But we are going to help Mag. You owe her that much. How about the coach? He’s single isn’t he?”

“And in my opinion as queer as a three dollar bill. He just wants to worship the young athletic form divine. Screw the coach. To hell with Mag. Let’s get in bed.”

4

As a matter of fact, Mag Carpenter was in hell.

She took the elevator to the floor Norris’s firm was on. She looked pert in her tricorn hat sprinkled with pansies.

Mag walked down the hall and stood outside Norris’s door. The door opened and a secretary came out. “Can I help you?” she asked.

“No, no,” Mag said. “I’m just waiting for someone.” The secretary vanished into the elevator (self operated) Mag had come up in.

It was a long corridor, with a terrazzo floor. Many silent doors with panes of pebble glass let into them opened onto it. At either end was a large plate glass window. Mag strolled to one of these and stood staring out.

She opened the window and out she went.

The trim had recently been painted and from the hand grips dripped stalactites of dried cream colored paint. Mag felt to see if the window was latched shut. It was not. She tugged at the grips. The new paint job had sealed it shut.

“Damn,” she muttered.

Mag thought of taking off a shoe and battering the glass, but it looked thick. The battering would just call attention to her and make her look silly. She put the shoe back on and looked down. There in the parking lot was her sky blue convertible. She sighed and swore again.

Mag turned and retraced her steps. As she passed Norris’s office she stuck her tongue out and made a vulgar noise. The elevator came, bearing the same secretary. She gave Mag a curious look. Mag stuck her tongue out at her too. The secretary gasped and hurried on her appointed round. Mag descended.

Mag was soon seated at the wheel of her car, out of the parking lot and headed for her meticulous home.

Afterword

That the poet’s novel is confessional, replete with markworthy divulgences involving an invented human (or otherwise animate) surrogate, is generally taken as read. It is through this surrogate that the writer concocts an aesthetic politics which, like any politics out to win the day, operates with varying degrees of subtlety and artifice in the rhetoric of prescriptive assertion and expedient promise peculiar to election campaigns. Shakespeare’s novelistic sonnets, Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther and Elective Affinities, Hölderlin’s Hyperion, Pushkin’s great novel in sonnets Eugene Onegin—all wield the fairground hammer, out to strike the bell.

Shelley’s confessional novel, Frankenstein, was written by his wife, down at the old Villa Diodati in that awful rainy summer on Lake Geneva. Oscar Wilde feasted with rent-boy panthers right