Dinner With a Book-Loving Mad Scientist: A Tale of Reunion and Acceptance

I wrote this story for my Children's Literature course and I really enjoyed it! The assignment was to take six characters from the books we had to read and put them into a dinner party scene. Enjoy!

Dinner with a Book-Loving Mad Scientist: A Tale of Reunion and Acceptance
By Joseph Kanauss

 The table was set with pasta and water glasses and before it were my guests, all of them sitting quietly and uncomfortably. I looked on in pride and happy wonder. Aside from the occasional clinking of glasses on the table or silverware on the plates, all was silent. Not a bad start. At least they didn’t come into existence inside-out. That was a plus.
            I had been spending all my adult life for this moment and, now that it was here, I could hardly believe it was real. It had taken millions of hard earned dollars and countless hours to bring my guests into my dining room and it was well worth it.
            Here, on my left, sat Ramon Reynolds, a man, in his own dimension, who was a famous painter. To his left sat Branwell Zamborska, a professor, like his father before him, with a scar of trouble in his past. At the end of the left side of the table sat Cassie Logan, a beautiful woman who still worked on the farm she was raised on. Each of these silent adults, though drawn from extremely different worlds, all shared one thing in common: bitter animosity. And they stared at the ones who wrought said animosity in the face, right across the table.
            Here, opposite Ramon, was his brother, Leon Reynolds, whom he last spoke to twenty years ago, when he was twelve years old. A bond had been broken between them when Leon had struck deep with a comment on a very young Ramon’s heart and, ever since, they had lost each other. When Leon had left home for college, Ramon had written him out of his life.
            Across from Branwell sat a woman, smoking away at her ever-present cigarette, whom was once the object of his young boy lust, but, after a dark incident, became the object of a very adult loathing. Vivian Shawcourt was her name, and ever since dropping Nikki Zamborska, had found a pleasure in causing pain to others.
            Sitting opposite of Cassie, sat the woman whom had caused her an embarrassing and unforgettable moment in her life as a young girl: Lillian Jean Simms. She was an evil white girl who hated people of dark skin then and she was an evil white woman who hated everyone now. She glared menacingly across the table, and her personal flask she continually drank from, at Cassie.
            To break the silence, I stood and cleared my throat.
            “How did everybody like the meal?” I asked in my most pleasant voice, as if I didn’t know I had brought blood enemies together for the first time in years, in a place that was unfamiliar to any of them.
            A mixture of murmured appraisal for the pasta, as well as a “I need more booze” from Lillian Jean, was my reply and I continued on to the whole point of the evening. The whole point, in fact, for the last thirty-seven years of my life.
            “Now, I know that this might seem odd,” I said. “But better to be blunt than to beat around the bush, I say. I brought you all here for one reason and one reason only: acceptance.”
            “Whatchoo mean, ‘acceptance’?” Lillian Jean asked drunkenly.
            “My dear,” I smiled graciously. “I mean that you six are on a bad path of self-destruction.”Secretly, however, I was only trying to reach out to the three to my left. For all I cared, the three on my right could get sucked into the space between spaces.
            “Pardon me,” Ramon, in his stylized voice that only came from an artist whose paintings sold for six figures each, said. “But what exactly do you mean?”
            “I mean,” I replied. “That you, Ramon Reynolds, are collapsing emotionally because of your lack of confidence in your work. I mean that you, Branwell, are still afraid to speak up for fear of not being believed. I mean that you, Cassie, are still apprehensive when it comes to men and women with white skin and that it is keeping you from experiencing life to the fullest. I mean that the three of you are being haunted by them,” I pointed to Lillian, Leon, and Vivian. “And that I aim for you to see things how they are.”
            “This is bullshit.” Lillian belched.
            “I agree with the drunk broad,” Leon Reynolds nodded.
            “Yeah, can we get out of here anytime soon?” Vivian Shawcourt blew smoke from her mouth like a cartoon speech bubble.
            “Ramon,” I continued, ignoring the antagonists on my right. “What do you think of your brother?”
            “He’s fine, I suppose.” Ramon said, taking a long gulp of water. “Can be a bit arrogant, though.”
            “Now, Ramon,” I replied. “Please be honest.”
“I am being honest!” The painter said, but his voice wavered slightly. “Now can we please get out of here so I can get back to my latest installation?”
            “Leon,” I said, turning to the man in a dark jacket with a scraggly beard. “What do you think of Ramon’s work?”
            “Oh, come on! Why are you asking him?” Ramon burst out.
I held my finger out for silence and urged Leon on. “Come on, friend, tell me what you think.”
            “It’s pompous.” Leon shrugged. “Absolute nonsense.”
“Ah, what do you know, you small-minded brute?” Ramon growled. “My work is abstract! Look at you sitting there! You’re a dirty mess and you stink like urine. Where did you find this guy?” he asked me.
            With a small smile that only Ramon could see I said, “He was behind a fast food joint, scrounging through a dumpster for some expired fries.”
            “Ugh!” Ramon exclaimed in disgust. “You’re a homeless, gross ape! I cannot believe that I have held you �" you!- as a bar of excellence in my heart for so long!” The painter looked at me with a cheerful smile. “You were right. I don’t know how, but you were right! I was always thinking about how my work never was at Leon’s standards. But now, after seeing what he is, I believe I will be even better than before!”
            This seemed to bring the other two from the denial I could see inside them by their faces. Branwell, the professor, shook his head.
            “You b***h.” He muttered to Vivian, who had begun on a new cigarette. “Look at you.”
            “What about me, Branny?” Vivian said in sultry voice.
            “Don’t do that. That hasn’t worked on me since what you did to Nikki. You’re all dolled up tonight. Who’d you assault this time, Vivian? Another baby?”
            “What if it is?” The woman, mid-right, growled. “I’ll get off once again.”
            “Like hell you will,” Branwell shook his head again. “You’re washed up. You know what? This guy was right. I’ve been afraid to speak up for years. And you know why? Because I thought, as silly as it sounds, that you’d show up to beat me down like you did when I was a young boy. Now, looking at you, I see you can’t do it. Your charm is all gone. Dried up with your wrinkled flesh! You,” he said punching a finger straight toward the prematurely aging English woman. “are powerless.”
            Like Ramon Reynolds before him, Branwell Zamborska looked me in the eye with a look of pure gratefulness. “Thank you, sir, for showing me that the face I had been seeing anytime I wanted to go against the current was only a mask, covering this harlot’s monstrous face.”
            Then the table turned to the end, where the two women, Cassie Logan and Lillian Jean Simms, sat, facing and snarling at each other, Cassie with a woman’s secret detest and Lillian Jean with a mad dog’s glare.
            For a long moment the room was silent and then Lillian Jean slurred, “What abou’ you, b***h? Whatchoo gonna say ‘bout me?”
            “What is there to say?” Cassie spoke with a polite air, saying without words I won. “Since the year of the fires I have secretly despised white people. And not because of those racist arsonists, but because of the quiet one right in front of me. You, the one who caused me so much embarrassment that day in Strawberry. You, the one who made me carry your precious white-girl books around! I have been scared to death, ever since, to truly speak my mind in front of white people because of you! And now, this man, this beautifully kind and amazing man has brought me into his home to stare into the dragon’s den. And what do I see? I see a poor little girl who never grew up, but instead shrunk so the only way she was comfortable in life was through a bottle. This man,” she looked at me with grateful pleasure in her eyes. “this white man, gave me more power than anyone, except maybe my father, than anyone has ever in my life. Thank you, sir.”
            Silence swept over the room, half of it filled with tremendous pleasure and victory, the other melting in loathing. However, the latter side had always been filled with loathing, and not just outward hatred, but also inner. They were small shells of people, characters really, while those on the former side were flesh and blood and dreams and hopes. They had their doubts and their struggles, but, after looking into the maw of the great beast and finding it to only be gumming at its victims, were able to rise above those self-doubts and become their full selves for, perhaps, the first time.
            And it was all because of me, I couldn’t help thinking as, after dinner, I sent them through the dimensional hopper from which I had brought them. Back to, for Ramon Reynolds, Branwell Zamborska, and Cassie Logan, lives fuller and richer than before. Back to, for Leon Reynolds, Vivian Shawcourt, and Lillian Jean Simms, lives as low and dull and poor as before, but with their true selves showing.
           
            In the quiet of my home I opened my notebook and, with a permanent marker, etched out the following:

Roll of Thunder, Hear my Cry by Mildred D. Taylor
Silent to the Bone by E. L. Konigsburg
Ish by Peter H. Reynolds

Who to bring forth next? I thought to myself as I looked up and down the list.