Summary
"Edison, New Jersey" opens with the narrator and his partner, Wayne, trying and failing to deliver a Gold Crown pool table. Wayne gets frustrated when the owner of the house doesn't open the door, but the narrator chooses to sit down and smoke a cigarette. He thinks that Wayne takes their job too seriously. He watches a mama duck lead her baby ducks instead. The narrator goes on to explain a little bit about his work life. He and Wayne work as delivery men for a company that sells card tables, pool tables, and game accessories. He knows the types of customers they will have to interact with based on which product is ordered and where it is headed. He describes their wealthy customers, most of whom prepare by laying out newspaper on the floor in anticipation of the delivery. When the narrator gets to their houses, however, he tells them to pick up the newspapers. He notes that sometimes the customers sometimes have to step out of the house while they are working, and they usually react with suspicion at leaving the narrator and Wayne alone in the house. When those customers are gone, the narrator takes the opportunity to explore their homes. If he gets caught, he usually just tells them that he is looking for the bathroom, and they generally believe him. When they have difficult customers, the narrator asks to use the bathroom where he crams toilet paper into the toilet and "take[s] a dump" if he can (123).
When they are en route to their deliveries, Wayne talks to the narrator about women. Despite the fact that he's married, he's obsessed with a woman who works for their company named Charlene. The narrator is reluctant to talk about women because he recently broke up with his girlfriend. The narrator reveals that Wayne has already cheated on his wife twice this year, and that his wife nearly threw him out of the house the second time. The narrator notices that Wayne is moody, so he gives in and talks to him about Charlene in order to avoid a fight with him. The narrator moves on to think about his work life. When they don't have deliveries, their boss has them selling products in the showroom. On those days, the narrator's boss has him work the cash register and he steals from the company. He remembers that when he had a girlfriend, he would spend almost all the money that he stole on her. He liked the feeling of going into a store with her and telling her to pick out whatever she wanted. According to the narrator, these days, he takes the bus home after work instead of spending time with his girlfriend. He sits next to a woman who tells him about the cockroaches at work. He goes to the store and buys himself lotto tickets.
Wayne and the narrator return to the first house to deliver the Gold Crown. For the second time, no one answers the door. While Wayne is busy knocking, the narrator catches sight of a young black woman through the window. The narrator is caught off guard at the sight of her and tells the reader "I've fallen in love on less" (126). The narrator reveals that his ex-girlfriend calls him sometimes even though she is dating someone else. The new guy she is dating is a "gringo" who works at a record store named Dan. The narrator is glad that at least the clothes he tears off of her were bought with his stolen money rather than through hard work. The narrator reveals the last time that he saw his ex-girlfriend, she was already dating Dan. She avoided him in the street. Before that, he went to her house and chatted with her parents for a while. She took him to her bathroom where she put on makeup and told him that she's still in love with him. He told her that they are just friends.
On paydays, the narrator tries to calculate how long it will take him to save up for a pool table of his own. He expresses deep appreciation for pool tables, noting that they are so well made that they will outlast their owners. He likens them to cathedrals, Incan passageways in the Andes, and the Roman sewers beneath Bath that weren't replaced until the 1950s. He notes that these days he can build a pool table without paying attention. He likes watching the customers' appreciation when the pool table is finally finished. When Wayne and the narrator get back to work, their boss yells at them for failing to deliver the Gold Crown. The owner of the Gold Crown called the boss and called them "delinquents." The boss yells at them and sends them home. The narrator thinks that he doesn't have a job so he goes out and gets drunk. However, the next morning, Wayne shows up with the Gold Crown and they try to deliver the pool table again. Again, they get no response, but the narrator thinks he can hear footsteps. They go back to work and the owner of the pool table calls again. They make fun of the customer's name, Pruitt. They take their time on the delivery, going to a diner first.
When they get to Pruitt's neighborhood, the narrator notices that he lives in a recently developed neighborhood. When they get to Pruitt's house, they bang on the door. They see that there is no car in the driveway, but a voice calls out, asking who they are. The woman that the narrator saw the first time they went with the Gold Crown opens the door. The narrator asks her if she remembers them, but she says no. He tells her to hold the door open for them and they get the Gold Crown out of the truck. The narrator recollects that he and Wayne have had trouble with some deliveries in the past. He and his ex-girlfriend would make a game out of predicting what kind of day he would have in the mornings. Back in Pruitt's house, his housekeeper stays in the kitchen while they work on the pool table. The narrator goes into the kitchen to talk to her. He asks her where she lives and he guesses correctly that she lives in Washington Heights. He then guesses correctly that she is from the Dominican Republic like him. She tells him that she didn't answer the door the first time because she was worried about her boss getting mad at her. Then she tells him that she wants to get out of there and asks him for a ride. The narrator goes back out to help Wayne finish up the pool table.
The narrator then goes to the housekeeper's room and Pruitt's room. It is revealed that the narrator agreed to help the housekeeper leave. He goes to find her and she is ready to go. He tells her that she should pack her clothes, but she says that she doesn't want them. The narrator leaves Wayne working on the table to take the housekeeper home. Wayne tells him that he slept with Charlene. The narrator reveals that his mother still has pictures of his ex-girlfriend in her apartment. The narrator's sister tells him that their mother still cries over the breakup. Back in the present, the narrator reveals that he is driving the housekeeper back to New York. She has stolen the food from the house and is eating corn chips, but the narrator doesn't join in on the snacking because he's nervous. The narrator asks her if she likes the States, and she responds that she was not surprised by all of it. The narrator drops his hand in her lap and leaves it there even though he knows that it won't work. She silently looks out the window. They arrive in Washington Heights and the housekeeper makes it home.
The narrator gets in trouble at work for driving the housekeeper home, but Wayne convinces their boss to let the narrator come back. He is put to work painting the warehouse. The next week, the narrator and Wayne are back on the road for deliveries. The narrator calls Pruitt's house, and the fourth time he calls, the housekeeper picks up. He hangs up without saying anything. He knows that she is in love with him. They have finished the deliveries for the day, and Wayne asks the narrator where they're headed next. It's a game that he and Wayne play. The narrator drags his finger down the list and finally decides on Edison, New Jersey.
Analysis
"Edison, New Jersey," is a look into an unnamed narrator's life as a deliveryman. As he delivers pool tables with his partner, Wayne, we also learn about his love life: he was in a serious relationship that has recently ended and he is still heartbroken over it.
Themes of race and class rear their heads throughout the story as the narrator has to deal with difficult customers. He tells us that he can tell how a customer will treat him based on where they live: "The order forms tell me everything I need to know about the customers we'll be dealing with throughout the day. If someone is getting a fifty-two-inch card table delivered then you know they aren't going to give you too much of a hassle but they also aren't going to tip. Those are your Sportswood, Sayreville and Perth Amboy deliveries. The pool tables go north to the rich suburbs—Livingston, Ridgewood, Bedminster" (122). These customers exist a world away from the narrator himself, who comes from a poorer neighborhood. As he explains, their names are incredibly different from the ones from his neighborhood: "What the hell kind of name is Pruitt anyway? Wayne asks me when we swing onto the parkway. Pato name, I say. Anglo or some other bog people. Probably a fucking banker... Most of our customers have names like this, court case names: Wooley, Maynard, Gass, Binder, but the people from my town, our names, you see on convicts or coupled together on boxing cards" (130).
When they are setting up the pool table, the narrator and Wayne have to deal with the customer's suspicion, especially if they have to leave the men alone in the house: "Sometimes the customer has to jet to the store for cat food or a newspaper while we're in the middle of a job. I'm sure you'll be alright, they say. They never sound too sure. Of course, I say. Just show us where the silver's at. The customers ha-ha and we ha-ha and then they agonize over leaving, linger by the front door, trying to memorize everything they own, as if they don't know where to find us, who we work for" (122-3). As the passage above shows, the narrator does not take the customers' racism and suspicion lightly and fights back in his own ways. For example, he clogs rude customers' toilets before he leaves.
Additionally, at his job, he steals from the company: "Since I'm no good at cleaning or selling slot machines I slouch behind the front register and steal... A hundred-buck haul's not unusual for me and back in the day, when the girlfriend used to pick me up, I'd buy her anything she wanted, dresses, silver rings, lingerie" (125). In a sense, the narrator's theft is his own kind of protest against the system that keeps him down. As he explains, when he takes his girlfriend shopping with the stolen money, it is "the closest I've come to feeling rich" (125). Because his life is defined by delivering tables that he loves so much but can never have, these moments of theft are, for the narrative, examples of his own self-actualization in a system determined to keep him down.
Throughout Drown, you might have noticed that there are two different kind of men. There are men like Rafa, Boyfriend, and Wayne, who seem to have no trouble getting girls. These men are typical machista tígueres who see women as a conquest. For example, despite the fact that Wayne is married, he cannot stop himself from seeking out other women: "Twice this year Wayne's cheated on his wife and I've heard it all, the before and the after. The last time his wife nearly tossed his ass out to the dogs. Neither of the women seemed worth it to me. One of them was even younger than Charlene. Wayne can be a moody guy and this is one of those nights... I don't need a collision or a four-hour silent treatment so I try to forget that I think his wife is good people and ask him if Charlene's given him any signals" (124).
As this passage suggests, there is another type of man in these stories who is more like the narrator, Yunior, and the narrator of "Boyfriend." These guys are generally heartbroken over a woman who has left them for another man. In "Edison, New Jersey," the narrator is tormented because his ex-girlfriend has left him for a white guy: "The girlfriend calls sometimes but not often. She has found herself a new boyfriend, some zángano who works at a record store. Dan is his name and the way she says it, so painfully gringo, makes the corners of my eyes narrow" (126). Like the narrator of "Boyfriend," the love of his life has moved on with a white person. Similar to "Boyfriend," this causes a feeling of resentment in the narrator, who has had to spend his entire life facing racism. Insult adds to injury for the narrator of "Edison, New Jersey" as he tries to get with Pruitt's housekeeper. She turns him down because she is in love with her boss. Seemingly, the narrator of "Edison, New Jersey" can't seem to catch a break with women, who instead choose white men as the objects of their affection. The second class of men in Díaz's fiction aspire to be like the first type of men, who easily get women and seemingly do not mourn over breakups. When the narrator talks to Wayne about the housekeeper, he lies to his partner and tells him that he slept with her. It can be assumed that he does so in an effort to keep up his image and bolster his masculinity. However, like Rafa, Wayne, and Boyfriend, they also operate under a sexist view of women that sees them as sexual conquests.
