Jennifer Thomas
Much Later: A Dinner Party in Gloucester
I met Joshua a year ago kayaking off the coast of Maine. We were both recovering—he from two tours of duty in Iraq, I from a string of unsavory suitors I’d matched with on Tinder. I can’t figure out how serious he is about us. He rattles on about “ethical nonmonogamy,” but can’t explain what’s ethical about it.
Then one day he pops the question:
“You’re having a dinner party. What three people, living or dead, would you invite?”
I consider. “I’d like to invite Odysseus and Penelope, along with Polyphemus the Cyclops for comic relief. It’s my favorite story. Returning from war, Odysseus is cunning and brave, risking all to return home to his wife and son. But it takes him ten years to get home, antagonizing the gods, sleeping with nymphs and sorceresses along the way. Should I admire Odysseus, despise him, or both?”
Joshua knits his brow. Clearly, he skipped the required reading in eleventh grade.
“Well, how about it, will you attend?” He nods; I knew he would. He likes adventure. And variety.
This will be a special occasion, so I rent Hammond Castle, a lavish seaside venue in Gloucester. This dinner party won’t be easy to pull off, but it will be so worth it. The day before the party, I head to Trader Joe’s, Joshua in tow, to pick up the ingredients. Planning the menu has been a challenge. I think the packages of beef are safe—no god is angry over those dead cattle! Goat: not available. I grab figs and dates from the produce section, stuffed grape leaves and pungent cheeses from the refrigerator case. Wine, lots of wine; those folks were always chugging the wine, day and night. Polyphemus ate some of Odysseus’s sailors, if memory serves, crunching the bones and all, so I pick up some marrow bones. I’ll serve those to the one-eyed giant “as is.”
The day arrives; I’m awake well before the rosy fingers of dawn start poking us. We lug the provisions to the castle and set up the banquet table in the cavernous, red-curtained room. I set the table with placemats that my mother wove on her loom—a touch I’m sure Penelope will appreciate. Some of us get to finish our work!
I obsess over preparations to ward off anxiety. Will the food be good, will the people get along, will I have anything interesting to say?
“Relax, babe,” says Joshua, though he knows that’s not my preferred term of endearment.
The guests arrive. They stumble about at first, befuddled as to where they are and how they got there. Odysseus and Penelope have been in the Underworld for quite some time, sorting out their relationship. Polyphemus has been staggering around his island with his sheep, ever since Odysseus blinded his one eye. He grunts with pleasure at the change of venue.
Wine is poured. Odysseus surveys the room, spies swords and armor mounted on the walls, and spirals into a panic. I assure him nobody is here besides us.
“Nobody!” shouts the Cyclops, who lunges toward us; now I have to calm him down too. Penelope is already seated, staring down at the table and pulling at a thread on one of the placemats.
“I suggest we raise a glass to our hostess,” says Joshua, ever the diplomat.
The caterers start bringing out the dishes of figs, dates, and grape leaves. The first server, a slight young girl, takes one look at the Cyclops and drops her tray, running out after it clangs to the floor. The other servers soldier on, grimly. I’ll remember to give them a big tip.
Once we are a little “in our cups,” and the meats and the bones are served, I’m emboldened to open the topic of the evening: How much of a jerk is Odysseus, really? I don’t phrase it exactly like that—but everyone gets the gist. Penelope and Odysseus have been discussing this very question in the Underworld for several thousand years. I tell them that, in this world, we recognize that soldiers coming home from war have wounds in their souls as well as in their bodies. In fact, I tell them, to this day we celebrate Odysseus’s story as a journey of returning to society, transforming from a soldier into a normal person again. On the other hand, there was all that sleeping around, along with a few epically stupid moves. Odysseus looks smug and defiant; Penelope rolls her eyes. That, more than any words, tells me everything I want to know.
And what does Polyphemus think of Odysseus? Has time healed the monster’s wounds? Nope, he still nurses a grudge. Forced to sit politely at the same table as the wandering man, he twitches in humiliation. My heart goes out to him.
Suddenly thunder cracks overhead. The Cyclops’s dad, Poseidon, has intervened. The original helicopter parent! Polyphemus leaps up, overturns the table (he’s a giant, after all), and bolts out the door. We race to the window to watch him clamber down the hill into the sea. A wine-dark wave picks him up and sweeps him out between seaweed-festooned rocks and a swirling foam-lipped eddy. He vanishes beyond the horizon.
“Good riddance to bad rubbish,” says Odysseus, or something to that effect. I’m distraught; this kind of thing has never happened at one of my parties. Penelope clucks in disgust at the overturned table, the wine soaking the rug, the bones scattered across the floor.
“So long; we must catch the ferry,” she says.
I turn to her and hold her gaze. “I’ve always admired you, most of all,” I say. She smiles demurely and looks away. She and Odysseus leave the building, arm in arm.
The guests are gone. As darkness comes on, I sink into a chair, exhausted. “Joshua, what just happened?”
“Nothing’s happened,” he says. “What I mean is, nothing has changed, really, in three thousand years. Has it, babe?
Jennifer Thomas began writing fiction after a long career as a science writer. Her stories have been published in 365tomorrows, Flash Fiction Magazine (contest honorable mention), Bewildering Stories, Women on Writing (second place contest winner), Windward Review, and Persimmon Tree, among others. You can find some of her work at www.jenniferthomas.net.
