After Party

            Kathryn Nuernberger

 

 

 

 

Dinner parties are like a jar of briny pickles in the refrigerator and now they are all in my mouth.

 

Are like sixteen jars in the cellar and one of them is a sour little something I shouldn’t have said.

 

There was a giant yellow head of dill pinned beneath the brine and now it’s pluming out.

 

All those mustard seeds rattle around the sorries of my stomach. You can pickle carrots and crook-necked squash and eggs and radishes and potatoes.

 

You can pickle every word you say.

 

Chutneys make you sweet. They do it with relish.

 

I made such a beautiful batch of chutney – everything from the garden piled in with apples and apple wine vinegar. It’s too pretty and delicious and sweet to eat, so I just look at the jars of it in rows and feel like I’m eating and it keeps me quiet awhile.

 

Someday I’ll be a raisin and all I’ll hear inside the wrinkle of myself is all the things I would be saying.

 

Then I think someone should know and care about this chutney.

 

I’m just looking for an excuse. You’re talking and I’m waiting for an opening.

 

But this is Monsanto, Missouri. There are people here who keep gardens and there are people who appreciate a good chutney and they are not the same people.

That’s just the beginning of my desperation.

 

“One time my mom told me to look for the losers on the bleachers and ask them to dance because you don’t want to marry a football player. That’s what Becky did and now she’s a divorced secretary raising two retarded kids on her own.”

 

When people laugh like they can’t believe I’m telling them this, it feels like approbation. So here’s more.

 

“I know some people who don’t like you. Shall I tell you their names?”

 

Sometimes, like every day, I take vows of silence. I never kept one yet.

 

Sometimes I think about punching my own self in the face.

 

I’m not telling you that so you can say it’s OK, I’m telling you so I can hear myself say it.

 

I have a recipe for apple sauce without sugar, but why? That’s as tart as anything. You can hardly open your mouth afterwards, but then you have to, to let that gnarled up little root of a pucker stretch out.