The Whole World Over (52 page)

ALAN PRETENDED TO SLEEP
when he heard Greenie rise before dawn.
She did not linger in the house but dressed, without showering, and left
for work. Alan got up as soon as he heard her drive away. He went into
the kitchen. Oddly, there was no coffee. In New York, Greenie had
relied on coffee, every day without exception, to get herself out the door.
He had to search the refrigerator thoroughly before he found a bag of
beans, shoved to the back behind a dozen jars of mustard, chutney, and
jam. The coffeemaker seemed equally forgotten, exiled to a cupboard
below the counter.

He ate an orange from a bowl of fruit. He watched the back garden
lighten from incandescent blue to milky gray. As he began to hunt for a
newspaper or a decent magazine, anything for distraction, George came
into the kitchen. "Daddy, where's Consuelo?"

Alan extended his arms, inviting George onto his lap, but George
chose a chair of his own. "She's taking a day off, guy. You're with me."

"You'll take me to school?"

Greenie had agreed to keep him out of school for the time being—but
soon, she said, he should go back as if nothing had happened. His parents
would solve whatever legal and logistical problems his folly might
have engendered.

"No school today," Alan said.

"Why?" asked George.

Alan wished he could pretend that everyone had this day off. "Well,
for one thing, I'm here and I've missed you very much."

George smiled at his father. Alan wondered, again, if there was any
kind of manipulation here, if he and Greenie had been underestimating
their son's awareness of nearly everything. George was not a horse or a
dog, to be treated like a deaf and dutiful bystander. Even if he couldn't
eavesdrop, he could probably read between the emotional lines.

"Okay," said George. "So let's have breakfast and go see what
Mommy's cooking today. Actually, the cereal is there." He pointed to a
cupboard.

Alan fetched the cereal, the milk. "Breakfast was my idea, too, but
after that let's . . ." He was going to say
drive somewhere,
but then he
realized that he did not have a car. George waited for him to finish his
sentence.

"Let me call your mother and see about her plans." Other than leaving
him for another man.

Greenie answered on the second ring. She told him her car was still
there, at the house. She told him where to find the keys and the road
maps. "Do anything you like," she said. "Just, please, can you be back
by six? I think I can make it home by then. I could come back for a couple
hours after lunch, if you want, but I thought you might rather—"

"Yes," said Alan, "you thought correctly there."

"Alan, are you all right?"

"Of course not!" He spoke cheerfully, for George's ears. "We'll see
you later."

So she had been picked up that morning. By Charlie? Alan would
rather that she had driven her car and left him in the house all day, two
days, three days, any amount of time that would allow him to deceive
himself into thinking that she was with no one other than Ray and the
rest of his staff.

HE TOOK THE NEAREST WAY OUT OF THE CITY
. The signs told him
they were heading for a place called Galisteo, though the only destination
he had in mind was New York.

He did not have the conviction to forbid George from bringing two of
his horses; really, what was the point? For the first fifteen minutes of
their drive, Alan listened to George, in the backseat, fabricating a whispered
dialogue.

You are going over the blue hill?

I am going to the cave.

I'll go too.

But the cave is scary.

I'm not scared of the cave. I like the cave.

My brother is waiting for us at the cave. He has the secret message.
He has the magic stones from the volcano. It's the cave of treasures.

They passed small, opaquely windowed churches that looked as if
they might crumble apart and clatter to the ground at any minute. They
passed the occasional donkey, the occasional vaudeville cactus.

So insistently that the words felt as urgent to expel as his own breath,
Alan wanted to tell George that he would be returning to New York
with his father, to their old home, in just a few days.

He wanted to ask George about Charlie.

He wanted to tell George that Diego might have been a fun friend,
but he had not been a good friend, because good friends did not get you
in trouble or put you in danger. He wanted to ask George—no, not
George, and not Jerry, but someone impartial—whether he deserved to
be left by Greenie, whether his crimes were unpardonable, or whether
she was probably telling the truth when she said that Charlie had nothing
to do with Marion, nothing at all. How had their childhood longings
caught up with both of them, pulled them up short from behind,
whipped them around and yanked them apart?

"George, do you like enchiladas and burritos?" he said.

"Yes! The cheese kind," said George. "With the not-spicy salsa. With
the chips, but not the purple ones. I don't like the purple ones. I like guacamole,
but not if it has chunks or the red stuff in it."

"All right then. I read about a restaurant that's on an old farm.
Maybe we could go there for lunch. I'm getting hungry. Are you?"

"Yes!" said George. "I think we went to that farm with Charlie."

Alan was glad, for a change, that child-safety regulations required
George to ride behind him. "Have you been to lots of places with
Charlie?"

"Not
lots,
Daddy. Look, I see a llama! They have llama farms out
here! Do you
believe
it?"

"It's very different from New York, that's for sure," said Alan.

"Mrs. Rodrigo says llamas are from South America. A different
America."

Let the evening come quickly, thought Alan. Let everything be decided
so that I can talk to my son about how his life is going to change. Again.

"But you know what?" said Alan. "You know where your Nana
lives, in New Jersey? There's even a llama farm near there! We could go
see it next time we visit her. She misses you, too."

"I'd like to see Nana. I miss Nana. She gave me the Legos at Christmas
when we went there. And the book of giants."

"You'll see her soon," said Alan, feeling in this assurance a nugget of
pure relief. He had told his mother as little as possible over the past
year; she did not know about Marion, and she certainly did not know
about any of this new mess. He had told Joya, mainly so she'd know
how to reach him.

At the restaurant, they were waited on by an older woman who was
so friendly that Alan wondered if she had mistaken them for customers
she'd met before. She lavished tactile affection on George and winked at
Alan. Over a body like a compact mountain range, she wore a Mexican
apron striped yellow, pink, and green. Out of her silvery bun protruded
an artificial rose. She introduced herself by pointing to the rose and
announcing, "I am Rosalita." She bent toward George and said, "Smaller
people have permission to call me Rosa."

When Alan turned down her offer of beer or tequila, she poured
lemonade into two green glasses.

"There are actually bubbles inside the glass of the glass!" George
exclaimed. "And why are there limes if it's lemonade?"

Rosalita put her pitcher down on the table and touched George's
nose. "Observant boy." She said to Alan, "Watch out for this one. He
will slip secrets from under your feet like a magician slips a cloth from
under dishes."

That's just what I'm afraid of, thought Alan.

He was grateful for the starchy food, rice and beans and delicious
puffy rolls that Rosalita called sopaipillas. (Had Greenie learned how to
make these for His Royal Fucking Highness in the mansion?) He ate
half a roast chicken with a rust-colored pumpkinseed sauce. Except for
one large happy family, they were the only customers. Rosalita kept an
eye on them from beside the kitchen door, where she sat in a lawn chair
and spoke on a cell phone, laughing often.

"Where are you driving to?" she asked as she cleared their plates.

"Not really to anywhere," said Alan. "Just around. Seeing things. My
son loves the animals on the ranches."

"Well then," she said to George, "we have chickens and goats out
back. There are baby goats you can pet, if you don't mind having your
sleeves nibbled. We sell goat cheese that is very, very good."

"I know about the nibbling. Actually, I've petted goats before."

"Ah. Also, we have a very big white rooster. When he crows, he
scares away the coyotes, he is so loud. A bear could not sleep through
his crowing."

George said that he would like to see the rooster. "Can you pet the
rooster, too, or does he peck?"

This bland conversation soothed Alan, and as Rosalita told George a
tale about how the rooster had routed a pack of dogs that menaced the
goats, he took in her physical particulars—smooth reddish skin, thick
solid arms and neck, enormous breasts beneath the voluptuously colored
apron—and it struck him full force that he might, not long in the
future, accept into his life a woman other than, probably quite different
from Greenie. For so long, Greenie had been the only woman he looked
at so closely, the woman he considered his human home.

Rosalita seemed to be appraising him as well. "If you will not have
tequila, you will have chocolate."

She returned to the table with two shallow bowls of chocolate pudding.
Onto George's, she spooned whipped cream; onto Alan's, she
poured a small amount of dark liqueur. "Stir," she ordered, twirling a
finger in the air.

Before they went out back to meet the celebrated rooster, Alan told
her that he hadn't had such a delicious meal in ages. "You needed that, a
good meal," she said. She pointed at her own chest. "I see such things."

Though he knew it might spoil before they returned to Greenie's,
Alan bought a cake of goat cheese, wrapped in one large shiny green
leaf.

THE HORSE PROVED RESILIENT
, its leg completely salvageable.
Thank heaven it wasn't a racehorse, Greenie observed, to Alan's irritation.
The owners of the ranch had installed a video security system and
planned to put more elaborate fastenings on the stalls in the barn.

Within two days, the threat of a lawsuit vaporized. Alan was never
sure what happened, but he imagined that Ray was involved. Ray could
probably vaporize anything—even Alan himself, if Greenie had asked.
But this was conjecture, since she was the one who handled the phone
calls, all conversations about the horses, the accident, the awkwardness
with Diego's family.

Except in his role as a father, Alan's presence seemed immaterial to the
crisis at hand. Finally, there were no more reasons to prolong the torture
of his stay. On his third unhappy evening in Greenie's place—whose
native charms were now nothing more than a reminder that she had
become an alien being—he called her in the governor's kitchen and
asked when she would return.

"I told you: probably nine, maybe sooner."

"Sooner would be better," he said.

"Is George upset I can't put him to bed tonight?"

"No."

Dishes. Laughter. Unintelligible conversation. The roar of a blender.

"We need to sit down and talk as soon as George is asleep. Not too
late. I'm leaving day after tomorrow. I need tomorrow to talk with
George."

Over the blender, someone called Greenie's name. The blender
stopped. She called back, "The soup bowls are to the left, above the butter
plates! For the salad, I want those blue glass plates. Yes. Those."
Where wasn't she in charge?

She was back at eight-thirty. George was still awake, though his lights
were out. She went into his room to kiss him good night. Alan waited at
the kitchen table.

When she came in, she sat down across from him. She forced a smile,
but it was unmistakably wary. "So, should I have a lawyer present?"

"This won't be easy," said Alan, "so let's not be sarcastic."

"You're right. I'm sorry."

"Listen, Greenie, if I thought I had any kind of moral footing, I'd try
to get you back. It's you I'd take on the plane day after tomorrow. You
as well as George." Did he actually utter the words
moral footing
?
Christ.

Greenie whispered, "Please don't take George. I know it seems like
the right thing to do, but it's not."

"I know it's not the right thing for you, Greenie. I'm not doing this to
punish you. That's the first thing you have to know."

"And what's the second? The third? Listen to you, Alan. Who needs a
lawyer with you here? You're cold enough for a whole boardroom of
lawyers!"

"I'm not cold. I'm holding myself together," he said. "That's the truth,
Greenie. You've always been good at that, holding yourself together.
You are Iron Woman. I'm not saying it won't be hard—"

"What about George's school? You can't just take him out like that."

"I can enroll him at P.S. 41. You know that, Greenie. He can miss a
couple weeks of kindergarten."

"His friends . . ."

"You mean, Diego?" Alan stared sadly and pointedly at Greenie.
"Do you see how, in a way, this will be easier for George? I'm not saying
I'll act as if this never happened. I'll keep a very close eye on him—"

"Like you're sure I didn't."

On the plane from New York, Alan had wondered if he would take
any pleasure in this moment, if he would feel as if he were finally the one
in control. But now he saw that his hands, on the table before him, were
shaking. He stood, walked around the table, and knelt next to Greenie.
He would have sat if there had been a chair beside her, but there wasn't.

"Don't put George in the position of choosing. Because that's the
alternative." Alan tried to put his arm around Greenie, but she kept her
back firmly against her chair. Her head hung down so that he could not
see her face. It was obscured by her beautiful hair.