The Whole World Over (24 page)

That day a small pack of Water Boys entered the dining room already
in the midst of an argument. "So
here's
an idea," Greenie heard one man
say. "We hold a statewide lottery, and the losing third of the population
gets to move to northern Wisconsin. Where they can plant roses to their
hearts' content
and
join the great northern fossil fuel grab. Let's kiss a
few
more
Saudi asses. At least the water's ours. We don't take that project
on the Gila, Arizona will."

As Greenie's sous chef, Maria, placed bowls of soup on a silver tray,
she rolled her eyes. She picked up a shaker of chili pepper flakes and
made a threatening gesture over the soup bowls. "These gentlemen,
would they call for water
then
!"

Greenie laughed. "No women today?"

"Oh no. That's why they so loud so soon. The ladies keep the
manners."

Maria and Greenie looked up to see Ray leaning into the kitchen.
Maria blushed and picked up her tray. Ray held the door for her as she
passed through, then let it swing closed. "Greenie," he said, "I never do
this to you last-minute, but any chance of that orange soufflé after
lunch? I got fifteen cranky men out there I need to impress. Or placate.
Or drug with sugar. Any or all of the above. There's this redneck dam
broker from Albuquerque, stupid enough to turn me into a socialist,
and I got me a new fish hugger from out east, courtesy of my favorite
senator. I have to drive to Los Alamos in an hour and won't be back for
dinner."

"You don't need reasons," said Greenie.

"I do not," he said, "but I like to be reasonable all the same. And
while I'm on my wish list, next weekend—angel food cake?"

"I thought you wanted pies," she said, but he was already through
the door, changing places again with Maria.

Greenie laid out plates in two rows and put the steak sandwiches on
them. Maria dished out the jicama coleslaw and shoestring yams. This
was a staple menu for lunches where pads of paper and small computers
would occupy most of the dining room table. On the center island,
Greenie began separating eggs. The shell of the thirteenth crumbled, and
a shard fell into the bowl of whites. As she reached for a discarded shell
and began to fish for the shard, she heard the door to the dining room
open. It would be Maria, with the Grand Marnier.

"Pardon me."

When Greenie turned, she saw an unfamiliar man. Except that, as she
stared at him, suddenly he wasn't unfamiliar.

He held one side of his jacket away from his shirt, as if about to bare
his heart. "I was told you might—" He stepped closer. "Charlie?"

"What are you doing here?" said Greenie.

"Good God, it
is
you, Charlie. Way out here!"

"No, Charlie, it's Good God
you
way out here."

They should have embraced, but he still held his jacket in that awkward
way, while she held her hands in midair, her fingers slippery with
egg. She wiped them on her apron as he let go of his jacket.

"Oh Charlie," she said after they had hugged, "what
are
you doing
here? Don't tell me you're a Water Boy."

"A water boy?"

The fish hugger. The fish hugger from out east. She laughed. "You
are.
You're here to save those fish." How long had it been since she had
seen someone from high school, never mind someone from that briefly
tight clique that had formed in their final, smug year, when they'd pretended
to be daring (driving too fast, drinking too much, talking too
loudly outside their parents' bedrooms), when she had gone from Shar
to Charlie?
Other Charlie,
her girlfriends had called this boy. Everything
about him—but from so long ago—came flooding back to Greenie.

"I'm afraid that's almost accurate," he said. "But you. Mom told me
you were in New York."

"I was in New York; you knew that. I was there before I was married."
That's when she'd seen him last: at her wedding. Afterward,
Greenie heard about him from her mother: how he went to law school
and joined a corporate practice in Boston. But for the past two years
she'd been cut off from hometown news.

"Well," she said, "here's where I am now. Since April."

He told her he'd arrived only three weeks before. And then he
remembered about her parents. He told her how sorry he was. As they
talked, she looked at him carefully, feature by feature. His pale hair was
shorter, blanched by age or the sun, and his jaw seemed larger, as if the
bone had continued to grow, to jut forward with greater determination.
Other Charlie had always been determined. And he must have met with
resistance, for his face bore so many new angles and lines. He was thinner.
Resolution, she thought. He looked like a man of resolution.

He wore jeans and laced leather boots, but also this pale linen jacket,
an awkwardly urban touch. There was a long brown stain on one lapel.

"You came in here looking for club soda."

"I did," he said. "But, wow. Look at what I found instead."

After she gave him a bottle of soda and a dish towel, she went back to
breaking eggs. "How is it fish get defended by lawyers these days?"

"I was a lawyer. Okay, I still
am
a lawyer. I just went back to school. I
tell people I wanted to do some good. I just wanted to be outside more
often. Desks make me antsy. I thought that would change when I grew
up, but no. Or else I just haven't grown up. More likely that."

Greenie remembered a tipsy midnight exploit: an illicitly borrowed
canoe with too many passengers, a bottle of Mateus rosé, a paddle fumbled
overboard. She remembered Other Charlie diving deep down in the
middle of the lake, staying underwater so long that everybody got nervous.
When he surfaced, he seemed a football field away. She'd thought
of the seals in Maine. Was that when she had begun to notice him apart
from the other boys in their group?

She said, "I've been ordered to make a soufflé so you'll be nicer to
one another." She pointed toward the dining room. "The notion being
that civilized food inspires civilized manners. I'm skeptical. You can
keep me company, but who'll be in there defending your helpless clients?
What kind of fish are your clients anyway? Are they likely to be on one
of my menus?"

"Silvery minnows. I don't think so." He'd made a futile attempt at
cleaning the soup off his lapel. The stain was now surrounded by a
broad wet patch. He sighed and took off the jacket. "I have another
meeting in Albuquerque," he said, as if to explain why he'd overdressed.
He handed her a card. "I go back and forth, but mostly I'm here. Would
you call me? I don't know much of anyone other than lobbyist types.
Them I'd rather steer clear of."

"I don't know anyone either," said Greenie. "Outside this house."

"But your husband's here."

"No. He's back in New York. For now he is." She said nothing about
George; other Charlie would know about George from his mother. "I
have a job to do," she said. "Grating orange zest. Go back out there or
you'll know all my secrets."

"I wouldn't mind that," he said.

"I would." Greenie waved at him, to let him go—to make him go.
She needed to concentrate, not on the past but on the present, on whisking
and folding and baking and, above all, on serving this dessert. The
only tricky thing about a soufflé was its timing.

THURSDAY WAS THE ONE MORNING
Alan had no appointments,
so the phone call at seven-thirty hauled him up from deep in a
dream about George, about waking to find George in the apartment, in
his own bed, never having left.

"Oh God, did I wake you? I'm sorry."

Alan cleared his throat. "It's all right. I ought to be up by now."

"Oh God."

Alan heard weeping. "I'm so sorry," he said, "but who is this?"

"It's Stephen, Stephen Campbell. Oh God. I'm going to hang up."

"No you're not," said Alan. "If you do, I'll call you right back.
Stephen, talk to me." He waited.

"He moved out! He—just like that, he actually moved out!"

"What do you mean? Last time I saw you—"

"He
moved out
! He left me this . . . left me this goddamn note I am
staring at here, and he actually just sneaked out in the middle of the
night, like some burglar in reverse, took his biggest suitcase and all his
meds and he . . ." Stephen broke down again. "I can't believe this!"

Alan sat on the side of his bed. His head was still thick with the
dreamed presence of his son. How he ached for George.

"Stephen, do you want to come over and talk in person? I think it's a
good idea. I have an opening in half an hour." Opening? More like a
chasm.

"Do I want to come over and talk? No, I want my life back! That's
what I want, for God's sake!"

Well join the club, thought Alan. "Can you go into your office a little
late today, or call in sick?"

"I can do whatever I please, I'm the boss!" This came out as a wail of
sorrow, not anger or pride; could Alan have held Greenie fast if he had
been capable of wailing at her with such passion?

"Then come," he said, making it sound as much like an order as he
could.

Half an hour later, a deeply distraught but beautifully dressed Stephen
sat on the couch in Alan's office. He had to pull himself together by one
o'clock, he told Alan, because he had an important lunch with two
board members of the San Francisco Ballet. "One thing you've got to
do," he said, "is help me stop crying. I cannot show up at Lespinasse
with the sodden blubbery face of a walrus. You wouldn't have any
cucumbers, would you?"

"Well, over in my kitchen I think I might have a shriveled tomato.
Sorry." Alan handed him the box of Kleenex, smiling sadly.

"You're a shrink, not a salad bar, right?" Stephen attempted a laugh,
then blew his nose.

Alan wondered if it had been wise to let Stephen come over on such
short notice, but perhaps the crisis was partly Alan's fault. It had been a
stupid idea to assign those lists, as if the two men were teenage girls
thinking about what colleges they should attend. He might have misread
Gordie, but he had taken him for a guy who thought in balance
sheets.

When Alan asked what had happened, Stephen explained that they
had indeed sat down, the night before, to list the pros and cons of becoming
parents. They had done this in silence after a nice dinner. Stephen
had made pork loin stuffed with prunes, one of Gordie's favorite meals.
Stephen was optimistic, because Gordie had been relaxed and said he'd
had a good day at the office.

He had brought along both lists, which he now handed to Alan. Alan
was dismayed but took them; he shouldn't be looking at Gordie's list, or
discussing it, in Gordie's absence, but of course the next thing Stephen
said was "Okay, so look at his list, would you?" His eyes were teary and
desperate.

Alan was struck right off by two things. First, by the similarity of the
two men's handwriting. Both of them wrote in a broad cursive with generous
masculine loopings. Superficially, the only difference was the left-handed
slant of Gordie's script. Second, Gordie's list (the two columns
studiously scored off with a cross) comprised nearly as many pros as it
did cons. Alan was contemplating the pros when Stephen broke in.

"Look at the last item in the right column, the nays."

Alan looked across the divide. Gordie had written there a dozen
items, marked off with bullets, each one tersely expressed in just a few
words. Last on the list of reasons to forgo children came
Issues of
fidelity.

Oh no, thought Alan. What an idiot I've been.

"I was flabbergasted," said Stephen. "I said, 'Just what does fidelity
have to do with this?' And maybe it wasn't a great idea to make a joke, I
know, but I said, 'Well, we'll probably be too exhausted, in the beginning
at least, to be anything other than faithful!' He didn't think this
was funny at all. He glared at me and said that if anyone should take
this whole thing seriously, it was me. So I asked him if he was making a
threat, and it just went downhill from there."

Stephen bent forward, elbows on his knees, face in his hands. Was he
crying again? Alan said, "Fidelity. Wow. Well, you can't say he hasn't
been thinking hard about this. But that's something we didn't really talk
about before. The whole monogamy thing. Are you guys on the same
page there?"

"Oh God." Stephen's expression, when he uncovered his face, was
weary and remorseful. "Oh, well, to be truthful, it was . . . well it's gotten
more complicated lately. I think."

"Complicated how?"

Stephen told Alan how being monogamous, for him, was essential to
their living together, their being a couple from the time they moved in
together. Gordie was less insistent, but when they had decided to make
their union official, have a ceremony, he had agreed that not "straying"
was important to him as well.

Stephen looked at Alan and sighed. "The truth is, this was always
a bigger sacrifice for Gordie, even though we never put it that way,
because I'm . . . well, I like sex fine, don't get me wrong, but when I'm
working like a maniac, which I practically always am, it's just . . . not
that big a deal. I mean I'm sexual, it's just . . ." He sighed, this time very
loudly. "Oh, what's the point? This is over, isn't it?"

"Stephen, thirteen years are not erased in twelve hours. Believe me."

"Gordie is the most incredibly decisive person I know."

"What, he never changes his mind? He never does anything rash?"

"His note was so cold."

Alan softened his voice. "Did you bring the note?"

"I couldn't. I'm sorry."

"Did he say your relationship is over? That he's breaking up with
you? That he plans to move out?"

"Not in those words. But it doesn't matter."

On first meeting them, Alan had liked Gordie more than Stephen.
When you worked with couples, that's how it was: at a gut level, you'd
almost always prefer one to the other. And your preference rarely
changed, which made the work more challenging—but now Alan wondered
if there wasn't a plain-Jane logic to Stephen that would make him
an excellent spouse, maybe the
better
spouse. He was the proverbial
Swiss watch: dependable, easy to read, well made through and through,
from his psyche to his large, strong hands.

"I think I should go now," Stephen said. "I'm wrung out."

"Will you call me this evening? Please."

"If that's what you think I should do."

"Stephen . . . what will you do with your day, other than go to that
lunch?"

"I won't call him, I promise you that. And I will resist the catty urge
to pack his belongings in Hefty bags and leave them on the curb."

"Good." Alan stood up. "I don't think he's really left. I can't be sure,
but I doubt it."

"I hope you're right. At least, I think I do," said Stephen. "Though it
makes me mad to think he might come back in a week and then think
that this . . . scare will warn me off the whole child issue. Because it
won't."

Alan nodded. "I'll walk you out." He led Stephen down the dim hall;
through the frosted glass on the front door of the building, he could see
that someone was seated at the top of the steps. A woman, he could
see from the curly sunlit hair, and for a moment he felt an irrational leap
of hope, a thrill. How naïve his emotional reflexes, how wishful his battered
heart.

He opened the door and was about to say good-bye to Stephen when
the woman on the stoop turned around and smiled at him.

"Saga?" He stepped out beside Stephen. The men stood side by side
as Saga rose and turned. She held a stack of papers. "I'm glad to see you
again."

Saga reached out to shake Stephen's hand and introduced herself.

Stephen reciprocated, but he was blushing. Alan realized that Stephen
must think she was another patient. "Saga rescues animals," Alan said.
"We met when she was walking around with a box of puppies."

"And here they are." Saga held out one of her papers; it was a notice
with a photograph, the puppies on the floor in someone's kitchen.
The notice declared boldly,
NEEDED: GOOD HOMES WITH GOOD, DEPENDABLE PEOPLE
.

"Well, perhaps that's what I need. A puppy," said Stephen. "Am I
dependable? I used to think so."

"Here, take a few," said Saga. "Put them up somewhere. Like your
office?"

Stephen took several sheets and said, "Keep up the good work. Who
knows, I just might give you a call. Seems I have an unexpected
vacancy."

After Stephen was gone, Alan and Saga stood facing each other on
the stoop. "I brought something for you. To thank you." She bent over
and picked up a potted plant with dry-cleaning plastic wrapped in a
quirky turban around its top. "I hope you can grow these somewhere."

Alan couldn't help examining Saga. Her jacket was wrinkled, but her
hair looked clean, her jeans and sneakers almost new. He should probably
invite her into his apartment—though now, so early in the morning,
being with her felt more awkward than it had the first time, when there
was an urgent purpose.

He accepted the plant and held the door. "Would you like some
coffee?"

"Tea would be nice," she said, "if that's not too much trouble."

"None at all," he said. "Why didn't you ring the bell?"

"When I got here, I thought it was maybe too early," she said.

"My work starts early and ends late," said Alan, "often with too
much free time in the middle." He carried the flowerpot into his living
room and set it down on the table in front of the sofa. In the kitchen,
he filled a kettle. When he returned to the living room, Saga had
unwrapped the flowerpot. From the dirt protruded a dozen tall green
spears. They resembled asparagus stalks.

"Peonies," said Saga. "My favorite. I brought them from my uncle's
garden; he doesn't mind, he has lots." She looked around the room.
"Though I realize now, maybe you don't have a garden. I didn't remember
that. Sorry. Where I live, everyone's got a yard."

Alan smiled at her. "I thought you told me you live downtown."

Saga blushed. "Just sometimes," she said.

Alan waited a moment, hoping she would explain. When she didn't,
he said, "Well, I do have a fire escape that gets a couple hours of sun."
He carried the plant through George's little room and opened the window.
Saga followed.

"You have a fish!"

"My son's fish," said Alan. Sunny was doing his jackknife laps, hopeful.
Alan hadn't fed him yet. He reached for the food shaker.

"How old is he? Is he in school?"

"Excuse me?" said Alan.

"Your son."

"No. Away on a trip with his mother. He's four." Alan remembered
that he had told her all about George before.

"Maybe he'd like a puppy," said Saga. "You'd be the one who'd
have to take care of it. But you could surprise him. If you wanted. Stan
thinks these are part corgi. Corgis are nice, like little dogs with big-dog
personalities."

Alan laughed. "Oh, he'd like that all right. But it's the old dog-in-the-city
dilemma. When you grow up with dogs in the great outdoors—even
the suburbs—the city seems too cruel." The kettle began to whistle.

Saga was clearly startled. She frowned. "Oh no," she said.

"What?" asked Alan.

"The clothes, the ones I borrowed. I forgot them. Till just this minute.
I'm sorry."

"It doesn't matter. There's no need to return them."

She looked at him fiercely, as if he'd insulted her. "Oh, but I will," she
said. "I absolutely will."

So Saga would visit again, thought Alan. However much she might
keep him off balance, he didn't mind the prospect of seeing her again.

"So," he said as he poured the tea, "tell me more about those puppies."

FOR SO LONG, ALAN LIKED TO SAY
that he knew Greenie was the
one he should marry long before she knew the same of him. Among
friends, Alan's scripted tale was one that had always flattered them
both, in each other's eyes as well as in the eyes of those around them. A
decade into their marriage it was set in stone, and Alan would typically
tell it like this:

"There I was, doing my white-glove psychoanalytic training at this
mausoleum on the Upper East Side, and there's Greenie, working behind
the counter at this equally uppity French patisserie just down the street,
where all my teachers buy their café au lait and pain au chocolat every
morning before they sit down to become these quasi-Freudian deities
from nine to five. Well, thank heaven I'm a good student and follow
their every example, down to that pain au chocolat, because who gets
up while it's still dark and makes these sinful confections?" A laugh,
a look across the room, because the story was told this way only if
Greenie was present.

"Cut to the chase, to our very first date—a drink at a local bar,
because I wasn't a guy with much in the way of guts or imagination. Or
money.

"We're going over the usual ground, and of course I ask her about
what she does for a living—this pastry business, how you fall into
something like that—and she looks me straight in the eye and says,
'I'm one of the lucky ones. I knew what I wanted to do with my life
from the time I was five years old. I've had it easy.' And me, I'm a little
speechless, because here I am leading this double life of full-time psychic
excavation—in therapy
and
analysis myself, while seeing my first
patients. Their doubts and regrets and agonies, along with mine, would
make quite a fruitcake, I tell my date, and she says, 'Just because I've
had it easy doesn't mean I don't wish sometimes that I got to this place
by a road that winds a little more.' And I am smitten. I am down for the
count. Certainty. Clarity. Packaged up with modesty. Oh dear God, I
thought. Don't tell me this is it. I practically fled right then and there."