The Whole World Over (28 page)

"I spoke with the traitress herself just a few days ago. I told her that
Tina is a princess, but nevertheless I am suffering, I am wasting away."
Walter clasped a menu against his heart. He led Alan by the arm toward
a hearthside table, a prime spot in winter. "The special tonight—and
this one's really special—is Hugo's brandade Cape Cod," Walter confided.
"There's just one left; shall I nab it for you?"

"Fine," said Alan. "Sounds great." He had no idea what he had just
ordered, but he did not want an extended conversation with Walter. He
wanted a meal that he didn't have to cook and that was meant to be
eaten with a knife and fork. He wanted to ignore his jealousy, stop wondering
what Greenie would talk about to Walter now that she was so
far away.

Gazing aimlessly about, he was stunned to see Gordie seated at the
back end of the bar, eating alone—or waiting for someone to return.
Alan tried to look away, but Gordie had spotted him, too. The other
man waved, smiling, as if everything were normal, as if he'd be seeing
Alan, side by side with Stephen as planned, just a few days hence. Or
would he? Alan gave in and waved back. Gordie returned to reading a
magazine and eating his meal.

Alan saw the diners around him now as he often saw any gathering of
people: a collection of invisibly layered lives, like a display of minerals
he remembered from the Museum of Natural History, the one he'd
known during his childhood rather than George's. You'd go into a dim
booth where a glass case held a homely assemblage of plain old rocks.
But when you punched a button, a light would click on, transforming
the rocks into primitive jewels, pocked and striated in glowing shades of
green, purple, red, and blue. Halfway through his training at the institute,
Alan had been struck by the memory of this transformation. That's
it, he'd thought, that's what my work will be like: revealing all this hidden
color and light.

Across the room, the waves of laughter, the general gaiety of spring,
he stared for a moment at Gordie, who was still reading his magazine.
Right then, to Alan, Gordie appeared as dark and dense and gritty as
any other person there. Alan thought of George, for whom the world
was still mostly aglow, so eminently knowable, even waiting and eager
to
be known,
and except that Walter was now approaching—grinning,
flourishing a large white plate—Alan might have wept.

WHEN ALAN CALLED, IT WAS OFTEN BEFORE
Greenie came
home from work. He would talk to George, and she would call
him back when she returned, if it wasn't too late in New York. Rarely
was Alan the one to call back.

That night, she came in early enough to read to George but late
enough that she had missed his father's call. The ceiling fan spun on
its wobbly axis above their heads as Greenie read a book she had
brought from the library called
Mordant's Wish,
about a mole who
wishes for a friend and the whimsical way his wish comes true. It
involved a bug that lived in a bowl of antique buttons, a pool of melted
ice cream shaped like a hat, and a girl who read a secret message in a
shopping list she picked up off the street. It was a book about how a
chain of seemingly trivial actions and free associations could change
somebody's life. (Or was it about how wishes came true in the oddest
of ways?)

"I loved that story," she said when she closed the book. "Did you?"

"It was okay," said George. "I like stories with dragons better. I like
when scary things happen. Actually." He enjoyed this new word and
tried to use it whenever he could.

"I'll look for that kind next time," said Greenie. She turned off the
lamp and lay down next to George. She would rest for a minute under
the cool stroking of air from the fan. The occasional breezes from the
open window smelled lovely for the first time in weeks. They smelled of
pine trees—but of green boughs and needles, not of burning sap. The
fires had been contained.

The phone in the living room woke her, and she stumbled out into
the light. As she picked up, she saw Other Charlie's business card on the
table beside her address book. It had been sitting there now for a week.
They'd promised to call each other, but so far they hadn't.

"Greenie?"

"Oh Alan. Hi." She sat down. "I fell asleep beside George." She
looked at the clock; it was nine-thirty.

"I'm sorry. I know you get up early."

"No, I . . ." She was going to say that she needed to take a cool bath
and make some lists, but details like this now felt awkward to relate to a
husband so far away for so long. "I'm looking forward to your visit,"
she said.

"Yes," he answered simply.

"I am. I want you to like it here."

Alan sighed. "I'm sure I will."

"I wasn't trying to make you say that. I know it's complicated."

"To state the obvious." But then he said, "I miss you both."

"We miss you all the time," she answered, but strangely, the affection
in his voice—the sentiment she was always longing to hear—made her
nervous. She glanced down and saw Other Charlie's card again. "Did
I tell you that I've run into a childhood friend here? At work, at the
mansion."

"Oh?" said Alan. "No."

He did not sound curious to hear more, but Greenie went on. "Charlie
Oenslager. Do you remember him from when we got married, that
party my mother gave the week before?"

He told her that he didn't. She was about to describe Other Charlie
when Alan said, "Listen. I called because I have something important to
tell you."

Greenie felt her mind come to attention, as if pulling away from her
will. Did he sound solemn? Joyful? Spiteful? "Yes?"

"I'm getting a dog."

Briefly, Greenie laughed.

"I thought I should tell you. Before I tell George."

"A dog? You're getting a dog? Just like that? I mean, without . . ."

"Without consulting you?" Now Alan laughed. "For starters, maybe
I'm lonely. Maybe I'm not used to coming home to an empty house.
Unless you count Sunny. Poor Sunny. Sometimes I wish he weren't such
a survivor."

"Alan, how did you suddenly decide to get a dog?"

"I'm getting her from a woman I met."

Very deliberately, Greenie could tell, he let the silence persist. He was
trained, she'd always thought, to use silence the way the Old Masters
used white. The surface of a pearl, the shaft of light from a window, the
glint on a chalice or a dagger.

She gave in. "A woman you met."

"On the street. She was carrying a box of puppies. It's a long story. I
suppose it was an act of charity—the puppy, I mean."

"To the woman or the dog?" said Greenie, unable to hide her
irritation.

"Good question."

"It's late, Alan. I think we're both tired. I think we should talk
tomorrow."

"Don't you want to know anything about the dog?"

"Okay. What kind of a dog is your dog?"

"Don't be sarcastic, Greenie. She's a funny, mixed-up kind of dog.
Just the way she looks, I mean. Part corgi, I'm told, but smaller. You
know, the kind of dog the Queen Mother has. But not that color. White
with brown spots, almost tiger spots. Brindle, that's what it's called."

Greenie marveled at his tone. It was so . . . lively.

"Is she house-trained?" This was the wrong question.

"No, Greenie, I'll be instructing her to pee all over everything here
that belongs to you. For God's sake, you act like I'm letting another
woman move in."

"What's her name? Does she have a name?"

"I want George to name her. She's called Molly, but she's still very
small, so we can change it."

"Are you bringing the dog with you? Out here?"

"I am," said Alan. "The airline lets one pet travel in the main cabin of
the plane. I made a reservation for her, too."

Greenie wondered how much it cost to fly a dog cross-country, then
hated herself for wondering. "So you'll . . . take her along with you and
George?"

"I already found a couple hotels that take pets."

"A dog," she said. "We own a dog." She waited for him to correct the
"we," but he didn't.

"Have you hidden from me that secretly you hate dogs?" he asked.

"Of course not. We had a dog when I was in grade school. Hero.
You've seen him in pictures."

"So is it that you're now in charge of all the big decisions? Because
something about this is pissing you off."

"I'm not pissed off. I'm . . . I don't know, 'thrown for a loop' is what
my dad used to say. You know, I've already told George we can't have a
dog here. It's too much responsibility, I told him. Because, of course, the
responsibility would be mine. Or Consuelo's."

"Well, there's the beauty of it," said Alan. "I bought the dog a roundtrip
ticket, just like me, Greenie. The dog will be my responsibility."

"So now George can miss you
and
a dog back in New York."

"Jesus, Greenie, this isn't some calculated move to screw up your . . .
big promotion, or whatever it is you consider that job."

"This job is good," said Greenie. "This job is actually great, as a matter
of fact. This job could pay for all of us to live here for a while. Which
it could never do back there. Which, it seems to me now, very
few
jobs
could do back there."

The silence that followed was not an artful silence. Greenie knew she
had succeeded, cleverly and stupidly all at once, in making her husband
even angrier at her than he had already been.

"You want me to drop all my patients just like that and move out
there next week? It's doable," said Alan. "That way, George could get
the dog he's been wishing for, and you—you could have a dog of your
own, a human lapdog! How's that for an idea?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I'm sorry, Alan."

"You'd save the money you're spending on that . . . nanny you've
gone and hired, and it sounds like we could be filthy rich. Maybe get to
sit on the other side of the door you work behind. Drink expensive California
wines and discuss the evils of unionized labor and state parks too
darn big for the public good."

"Fuck you," Greenie whispered viciously, mindful of George.

"You will not get me to hang up," said Alan.

Greenie began to cry. "You'll say I'm not acting like it, I know, but I
love you. Why are we like this? Why can't we talk anymore?"

"Because there's this pretty big decision we didn't make together.
That's my best educated guess."

She heard him breathing; she imagined he could hear her breathing,
too. She would not speak until she felt calmer. At last she said, "We're
nothing if not educated. We're smart enough to work this out. We simply
will. So tell George about the dog tomorrow. Whether or not I'm
here. And send a picture; he'll want that as soon as he can have it."

"You're right," said Alan.

"About something. Thank heaven." What was she
doing
? She softened
her voice and said, "I'm right about this, too: we do belong
together."

"I hope so."

"I know so," she said, and after they hung up, she knew how it would
be. As if they were together in bed, they would each lie awake a long
time, imagining conversations with the other, ones they'd had in the
past, ones they might have in the future. Greenie saw this as clearly as
she could see the Milky Way above the trees once she had turned out the
light. She still did not understand how you could be a part of something
that looked so unbelievably far away.

TO VISIT THE RANCH
was to see Ray turned inside out, his childhood
worn on his sleeve. Greenie and George had made the drive following
Ray's entourage, pulling up in time to watch Ray greet his three dogs, all
big hairy herding dogs who would have been miserable in town, all mottled
brown and dusty, just like most of the landscape around them. He
lay down full length on the gravel drive so they could trample him with
their bearlike paws and lick his face.

"I can't wait to meet Treehorn," said George when he saw this display.

"You will, honey, very soon," said Greenie. When Alan had given
George the news, George had named the puppy in an instant. No, he did
not need time to think about it, Greenie heard him say to his father. He
chose the name of the character in a book Consuelo had checked out of
the library for him that week. Never mind that the character was a boy,
the dog a girl.

Ray's ranch occupied a plain of scant grass and scrub juniper that
stretched north toward a wide mesa and, beyond it, the Sangre de Cristo
Mountains. Up close, the cows were massive creatures, with an almost
industrial rather than animal weight.

The silvery glinting Greenie had seen from a distance revealed itself
now as the corrugated metal roofing of three adobe barns; away to one
side stood a great square house built of stone. Three black-and-white
goats sauntered in the shade of a dozen cottonwoods, which surrounded
the hacienda like a council of dignified elders. The trees were in full leaf
but so dusty that they resembled trees in a sepia photograph from long
in the past. Greenie thought she noticed birdhouses high on some of the
trunks; once she was out of the car, peering up into the branches, she
realized that they were cameras.

"I want to see the horses," George said.

"Let's go inside first," said Greenie.

The house was just as she had imagined it would be: a place of
almost
genuine rustic charm. The furniture was dark, blunt, and stolid. The
native rugs and blankets that gave the rooms their only color were beautiful,
an ancient geometry of reds and browns, but they were also worn and
tired, scuffed paper thin by generations of steel-toed boots. Except for
one large, murky landscape over the fireplace, most of the pictures were
documentary: photographs of Ray with family, of Ray with other powerful
men, but, more frequently, of livestock. One wall of the living room
was covered entirely with prize-winning Angus and Hereford cows. Each
one stood in perfect profile, hooves primly together, like a cookie-cutter
cow. In every picture, the cow's handler stood squashed against the margin,
holding aloft the lead rope attached to the halter. A ribbon draped the
animal's neck, or the handler (always a man) held a trophy in his free
hand. Along an adjacent wall stood a long glass case lit from within.
Greenie was reminded of her high school gymnasium—except that the
prizes on display here had been won not by teenage athletes but by cows.

Yet everywhere amid the tarnished trophy urns and the heavy furniture
gleamed the sleekest of stereo systems, laptop computers, and
telephones. A tangled sheaf of electrical cords passed under a table supporting
a lamp made from a stuffed porcupine.

"Mommy, is he real?" gasped George.

"Well, honey, he was."

"Do you think he was shooted? Diego says people shoot animals
because they don't like them. Or actually for fun." George looked up at
her with concern and disapproval.

The porcupine, posed on its hind legs, was a creature of enormous
girth, the size of a well-fed raccoon. "It's a shame when people do that,"
she said. "I don't know about this guy, but he looks like he was pretty
old when he died, so maybe he just died fat and happy."

"How old do porcupines get?"

"I'm afraid I don't know that either, sweetie."

A maid waved timidly from the doorway. She took their suitcase and,
without a word, led them upstairs to the room they would share.

George knelt on one of the beds so he could look out the window.
"Hey, a weather vane!" he cried out, pointing.

Oh my New York City child, thought Greenie, touched by how
exotic he found such ordinary things. As for the ordinary things he
found disturbing—well, many of them
ought
to seem disturbing.

"Do the horses get their own barn?"

"We'll ask," said Greenie, tired of telling him how much she
didn't know.

"Mom, what does it mean when you break a horse?"

"It means taming a horse. Teaching a horse to wear a saddle and let
people ride it."

"Why do you have to tame a horse?" said George. "You don't tame a
cow or a sheep or a chicken. They're not like lions."

"No, they're not. Maybe it's just teaching them to wear a saddle and
be ridden. The way you learned to ride a tricycle or walk in snow boots."