They Did Not Expect Him
My invite to the dinner that night was more of an act of coercion than an invite, really. I was getting my teeth cleaned when, squinting upwards through both the blinding light of the examination lamp and a layer of tears, I recognized my dental hygienist’s face through her sky-blue mask and perspiration-covered face shield.
I don’t know why I hadn’t recognized her sooner, nor why she hadn’t me, but all of a sudden there it was, beyond any doubt, the nearly perfectly-round face of Jeanine: an ex-girlfriend, sophomore year of college.
Immediately I gargled—the only noise I could produce without causing myself serious injury—and managed to garner her attention. She took her tools out of my mouth; I spit a bloody pulp into the little side-sink, and rinsed my mouth out with water.
“Jeanine? Is that you? It’s me, James, from… you know, sophomore year?” She squinted—and for a moment I doubted my own memory—but then widened her eyes, and had I been able to see through her mask, would’ve guessed she was sporting her characteristic half-smile at her recognition of me.
“Oh my gosh! James? You look so different! I didn’t even think… how are you? Wait. Hold on one second. Do you want to talk after I finish here? I’m almost done with the bottom row.”
“Sure,” I chuckled, gladdened by her response, “yeah, yeah, after you’re done.” I wiped some spittle off of my face and settled back down into my chair, closing my eyes. Her high-pitched drill started up again.
But like an angel or a peyote-induced vision in the desert, the bright light began to speak to me, and suddenly, I found myself captive to her voice in a one-sided conversation: the spinning diamond blade and razor-thin pokers in my mouth practically guaranteed my silence.
“I can’t believe I didn’t notice you! Why didn’t you say something earlier?” I kept still as a mannequin, maybe gave a blink or two to signal that I could hear her past her instruments. “I thought the name was just a coincidence—James Smith isn’t really the most rare-sounding name, you know.” She scraped more off of my gums, and I tasted the coppery blood trickle unswallowed into the back of my throat. I coughed.
For a bit there was silence, and then the disembodied voice spoke again. “You know this makes a lot of sense actually—I’ve gotten really used to coincidence lately. Or really, I should say, I’ve gotten used to divine intervention—I don’t know if coincidence is the best word for me anymore. I hope you’re not weirded out if I say that… I’ve changed a lot since you last knew me, you know? You’re not weirded out or anything right?”
I blinked again—a tear or two rolled down my cheekbone—and just ever so slightly wiggled my head in the negative. “Okay good. I just want to say I don’t really believe in coincidence anymore. Everything happens for a reason.” There was another pause. “There’s a reason for everything... Okay. I know this is going to sound strange, but do you think I could bring you to a dinner tonight? It’s okay if you say no, but I think it’s a sign that you’re here right now. It’s a dinner with some friends of mine that’ve really changed my mind since you last knew me... I swear it’s not anything weird or anything. I just feel like you’d really like them.”
She was working at the front of my mouth now, scraping the inside of my teeth with a mirror and a curved blade like a miniature scythe. All of this—the god-talk and the sharpness and the blood—made me a little hesitant to refute her invitation. So again I nodded my head as slightly as I could, only this time in the affirmative.
“Ooh I’m so glad! You’re gonna love it so much!” She continued to scrape, and when she was done she hugged me, gave me the address on a little slip of paper, and left without saying much else. 280-10 Columbus Street, Apartment 1C. The dentist then came to see me. Turns out I had two cavities.
Five pairs of sneakers surrounded the welcome mat, but I heard no voices or sounds coming from behind the door, even after placing my ear up to it. This was the address Jeanine gave me, though, I was sure of it. Still, I almost hesitated to knock: the door was coated in a thick layer of red paint, which still felt a little wet, and there were about two or three vacate notices taped on top of each other right beneath the peephole. The lights were all off inside too, from the look of it. I read the letter on the top of the stack: “Dear Tenant, your lease has been cancelled effective immediately…” I had the immediate urge to leave, but skimmed further down first, “breach of community practices…” and further, “refusal to respect and value the unique challenges of…”
What kind of notices are these…? I peeled off the top sheet and the one underneath was just a blank sheet of paper; suddenly, though, Jeanine appeared in front of me and I realized I must’ve been leaning all my weight on the door because I fell right into her. She caught me and gave me a huge bear hug. The lights were all on now and looking out into the apartment over her shoulder I could see the whole layout. It was a simple one-bedroom apartment, the walls covered in photographs and a few large, ornately framed paintings. The floor was covered in a thick layer of shag, its numerous stains visible in the yellow light of an old-fashioned, porcelain lamp hanging from the ceiling, which, as I gave the room another once-over, I noticed was the only light source. Directly underneath the lamp was a long rectangular table, topped with white tile and surrounded on all sides by Jeanine’s friends. There were four of them in total.
“James! I’m so happy you made it. We were just starting to get worried!” The others agreed, and there was a mixed chatter of welcomes as Jeanine motioned me towards the table. I sat opposite Jeanine, and she introduced me to each one of her friends: “This is Patty, this is Michael, this is Margaret, and this is Tessa!” As she introduced each one they smiled and gave me a quick nod of the head. There was a bounty of food and drink already set on the table: a huge tray of mashed potatoes, a large brisket swimming in a tomatoey-looking sauce, a whole rotisserie chicken that’d been halfway pulled apart already, a salad, and a big pot of soup. Each one of them had a plate with a half-eaten meal, and they all had near-emptied wine glasses too. I began to serve myself at Jeanine’s behest.
Quickly they returned to their conversation, which was about nothing in particular—the weather, traffic—until Tessa, a short woman with an extremely tightly-pulled ponytail of blonde hair, spoke over the chatter: “Alright people. Are we going to keep talking about nothingness all night? What do you think James is going to think of us?” She turned to me. “Welcome, James, to my home. We were just having a chat before about that painting over there; I’d really like to keep it going, you know, instead of talking about the traffic. I mean, we all know what traffic is like, sadly.” Everyone nodded. Patty chuckled. “So at risk of putting you on the spot, what d’you think of it? I just got it the other day.”
I looked over to the painting in question. It was quite large and was squeezed in-between a few family portraits. It portrayed a disheveled man just entering a very well furnished, brightly lit blue-gray room and surprising its inhabitants, all of whom held varying states of shock and disbelief on their faces. The man was wearing a ragged leather jacket and the others were all in formal, aristocratic dress. His eyes were wide open and sunken-in, so much so that they could’ve been two holes cut out of the canvas itself.
One of the well-dressed ones, a woman, was posed mid-movement, rising from her chair in astonishment. She faced the man directly, and was perhaps his wife, or maybe his mother. They surely knew each other, that much I knew. Her expression and positioning held intense worry, but also a certain strange elation.
I relayed all of this to Tessa, hoping for some reason that I had said the right thing. The group was quiet for a moment, but then Tessa spoke, as if they were all waiting for her to evaluate my comment. “You’re right—the woman is his mother. Nice one James!”
Michael chimed in: “I don’t know if I’d say she’s too elated, though—it’s like what you were saying earlier Margaret—she’s probably wondering how she’s going to explain him to the rest of the children at the table.” Michael was about two heads taller than Tessa and had closely cropped black hair and grayish eyes.
Tessa commented again. “Maybe—James you missed this part; I was just explaining the story of the painting. It’s probably Repin’s most famous. I don’t know if you know much about Russian art”—she was right, I didn’t—“but of course it’s just a print, the real thing’s got to be priceless. Anyway it’s a depiction of a Narodniks return home from exile, probably in Siberia somewhere.”
I decided not to ask what a Narodnik was, but I assumed it was some kind of revolutionary. Patty spoke next with a voice that sounded like something like how I imagined a bunny rabbit would speak: “The Narodniks probably hadn’t killed the Tsar at that point—otherwise this guy’d be hanging instead of at home. I mean I doubt his mother is thinking anything else aside from how long her son’s got left alive at this point. Or if her whole family’ll be killed at some point for hiding him there.”
Michael, looking down at his phone, jumped in—“well here it says that they killed Alexander II in 1881, and this painting is probably dated to 1883, so I think you’re wrong about that one, Patt.”
“Either way,” Patty jumped back in the ring. “He’s probably so starved he’ll die in a few days all by himself.” She scooped a mouthful of mashed potatoes into her mouth and continued, “poor fella… he was just trying to free his brethren.”
“Hmm.” Michael mumbled something inaudible and Jeanine shot me a quick glance. Her eyes were wide with excitement, and she was staying silent if only just to listen to her new friends argue about this grim, out-of-place painting.
Margaret leaned forward in her chair to speak. She was truly skinny, a redhead, and wore her hair in a huge, fluffy bun directly on top of her head. “Does it even matter what the mom’s expression is? Great. She’s surprised, whatever. Patt you’re right—clearly the whole point of the thing is to praise the Narodnaya Volya for killing that bastard. I mean there’s a painting of Golgotha in the back of the room there for Christ’s sake—no pun intended—of course everyone’s shocked that he’s back. Decidedly uninteresting.”
“Why would anyone praise those horrible terrorists?” Tessa spoke with a chicken leg between her fingers. “First off, the peasantry themselves—the very ones that they were trying to liberate (here she used air-quotes)—abandoned the Nardodniks after they killed the Tsar, if they had ever even supported them in the first place.” She motioned again towards the painting. “Really this guy was nothing but a big failure: a failed terrorist, a failed intellectual, and probably most of all, a failure of a son.”
Michael nodded back with his wine glass, “yup—if they even knew about the movement in the first place. They couldn’t even read anything…”
As they continued to argue, the position of each member of the group became clearer: Tessa and Michael were essentially on the same page—socialists, but critical of the violent means of the Narodnaya Volya, whom I learned were the terrorist branch of the Narodnik movement that assassinated the Tsar; Patty was mostly silent on the issue of land redistribution, but agreed with most everything Tessa said; Jeanine largely refrained from speaking at all, she was moreso just excited to be there; Margaret was the most fervent advocate of the Narodniks and the only true supporter of their violent idealism. It also seemed like she was the most knowledgeable about the Narodniks and their philosophies. She now, leaning forwards with her whole weight against the table, spoke up again in defense of the ragged man’s likely violent past.
“Does anyone here have a backbone? Had they not done what they’d done, the revolution probably would have never even happened! Chernyshevsky—whom without, by the way, the Narodniks wouldn’t have existed in the first place—wrote in 1850: ‘A man is bad when, in order to obtain pleasure for himself, he is obliged to cause displeasure to others. Here human nature cannot be blamed for one thing or praised for the other; everything depends on circumstances, relationships, institutions.’” Impressively, she recited the entire quote from memory. “Therefore, people, it was the very institution of Tsarism itself that forced the Volya’s hand in 1881! Do you think that it was really the will of the assassin to do what he did? No. Much truer to say that it was the Tsar who assassinated himself. He should’ve known from the very first moment he was crowned that he was going to be killed.”
Her logic and appeal to authority seemed to work. The rest of the group nodded and ate small bites in silence. Almost as if on cue, there was a heavy rapping at the front door.
Tessa yelled. “Go away! I’ll have my damn rent soon enough.”
Margaret picked up a spoon and launched it at the door. “Pig!” There was a brief let-up but the banging soon continued. She got up from her chair, sliding it back angrily and at the same moment, the door opened. There stood, starkly in the dimly lit hall, a tall, hunched-over man with a scraggled mess of hair on his face and two white boreholes for eyes. He was wearing a patched up motorcyclist’s jacket, torn slacks, and soiled bandages for shoes. “Um…” Margaret froze. “Who are you? And how did you just open that door?”
The man cleared his throat. “My name’s Nick. I… I saw your light on from outside and heard all you talking, and when I came closer, I saw all the food on your table, and…” He smacked his lips, looking straight past Margaret towards the table.
She stepped aside and glanced back at the table too. She must’ve forgotten her concerns about the door, because continued as follows. “Well of course, you poor thing. Go right ahead. Jeanine? Get him a plate and something to eat with!” Jeanine, still partially frozen with terror, yelped and immediately went into the kitchen. She came back not a moment later with a plate, knife and fork, and handed them to Margaret, who placed them at the head of the table, where she had just been sitting. “Please, Nick, sit. You get the head of the table.”
Tessa stood up. “Wait a second. Hold on. This is my house Margaret—I’m sorry, but he cannot come in here.” Nick hobbled over to the table. “Hey, hey! Excuse me? Get out of here, please.” Nick sat down in the spot Margaret had set. “Margaret! Margaret! Tell him to leave, now!”
“Alright everyone, just calm down,” Margaret sat down next to the man, “he’s clearly starving. And we have a ton extra. We can spare some, right people?” Michael, Jeanine, and Patty looked back and forth from Margaret to Tessa. The three of them sat petrified in their chairs. Margaret began to scoop mashed potatoes onto Nick’s plate, and Tessa sat back down. “Okay. Fine.” Tessa looked at Margaret, afraid even to meet Nick’s gaze. “But after he eats, he has to leave. I’m sorry. I can’t do this.”
Ignoring Margaret’s gesture, Nick reached out with both of his hands and grabbed what was left of the rotisserie chicken. He began to rip at it with his mouth, and after a few bites, dropped it on the floor. Tessa screamed, and Margaret picked it up off the floor, placing it back onto the table. “It’s okay everyone,” she reassured, “it’s okay. What were we talking about again?”
All eyes were on Nick. At this point I decided to chime in and reminded the group of where we were in our discussion. There was some further talk, but no one could concentrate—Nick was pulling fistfuls of food off of each dish and shoving them into his mouth one by one. He hardly finished what he grabbed off of the table, either, and most of the food slid back out of his mouth onto his chin, chest, and lap. Nobody moved, and Tessa started to cry silently in her seat.
“I think this is disgraceful people—get your acts together! What? Just because we don’t all have the same table manners we’re going to shame this man into—“ Nick reached over onto Margaret’s plate and fisted a handful of brisket into his mouth, and again barely chewed or swallowed any of it. Grease and sauce ran down his whole face and beard. “Sh… shame this man into starving?”
Nick then reached over the table towards Jeanine, knocking over a glass of wine with his elbow in the process, and did the same to her plate as he just did to Margaret’s. I was too stunned to object at this point, and I assumed the same about everyone else; no one tried to stop him. Nick grabbed Patty’s glass of red wine and poured it over his outstretched tongue and lips. He let out a huge belch.
“That’s it!” Tessa screamed. “I can’t stand this. I can’t. I’m calling the cops—I don’t care!” At the word ‘cops,’ Nick dropped the wine glass and stood up. His eyes went wide as plates again.
“Never! I’m not going back!” He unsheathed a sparkling fragment of glass from his coat pocket, and with a speed that betrayed his frail, sickly manner, lunged directly across the table at Tessa. Plates crashed. Everyone screamed and catapulted out of their chairs at once. Before anyone knew what was happening, though, he’d plunged the broken bottle into Tessa’s side. Then, after rolling off of the table, which collapsed as he did so, Nick ran back out through the door.
Michael pulled out his phone and called the police, and the rest of us rushed to Tessa, who was sitting up against the wall. Jeanine was the only one who didn’t move from her seat—she stood there with her eyes clenched shut, repeating to herself over and over, “everything happens for a reason, everything happens for a reason, everything…”
Tessa clutched the side of her abdomen; her shirt had a saucer-sized bloodstain around the wound already and blood trickled out from between her fingers.
“Get this ou-hugh-out of me…” She winced in-between sobs and I called an ambulance.
Margaret stood up, righted the table, and calmly sat back at its head. “Tessa, can I tell you something? I think you’re being a little classist.” The porcelain lamp swung back and forth above the table, and the buzzing yellow light took turns with the darkness on Margaret’s face. “Are you seriously going to blame him?”
I think it goes without saying, but that was the last time I saw any of them. I haven’t even seen the dentist in five years now.
Ilya Repin, They Did Not Expect Him, 1884-88. The State Tretyakov Gallery