The Whole World Over (66 page)

In the half hour before Tall picked her up, Greenie thought of nothing
but her own George, wishing for nothing at all but his safety.
His and
only his, no matter what it costs:
the prayer of all mothers, even those
without a god.

Tall showed up not in the sedan he used to transport the governor but
in a compact car that looked and smelled new. "A spare," he joked quietly.
He had the radio on, and for most of that day, until they stopped for
the night in Oklahoma City, the two of them said very little. Many times,
Greenie used Tall George's phone to try New York. When they stopped
at a drive-through for burgers, he took the phone away and told her
he'd let her call again in another two hours. "They be smart, they're fine
and outta there. Me, I'd be at a friend's. Safety in numbers, you know?"

For the first time since leaving Santa Fe, she thought of Charlie. "Oh
God!" she cried out. She also remembered, the trite alongside the momentous,
the pastry she'd rolled out that morning, the eggs she had left in a
bowl to warm for custard.

"What, they got no friends?" said Tall.

Greenie shook her head. "I forgot something. I'll cope with it later."

"Need to stop at a drugstore; like that?"

"It's nothing." She would call Charlie, to explain her departure, the
first minute she could be alone. All that mattered now was to drive,
drive, drive. Her body was so charged with adrenaline that if she could
have reached George just as fast by running all the way on her own two
feet, she'd have done that instead.

Greenie was aware that she and Tall made an odd couple when they
entered each new diner and motel: dark with light, hip with sedate,
grace with guilt. Mile after mile, they listened to news on the car radio,
changing stations only when the static overcame the voices, as if their
lives depended on it. At the start of each day, they read newspapers; at
the end, they went to separate rooms and slept.

Greenie spoke to Charlie each night of her journey, from Oklahoma
City, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, and, on Friday night, from the apartment
on Bank Street, where she stayed alone before driving to Maine. She had
expected, even wanted, Alan and George to be gone already, but still
she was disappointed.

Charlie had returned to Santa Fe from Albuquerque as soon as he
heard the news. By the time he got there, Greenie had left. When she
spoke to him late that Tuesday afternoon, she had not yet spoken with
Alan or George, and she was frantic. Charlie tried to calm her down.

"Do you want me to try them, too, from here?" he asked.

"No!" she said. "Why could you reach them if I couldn't? And what
would you say to Alan? God, no."

"Something like this suspends everything else. He'd know you
wanted to know they were safe. I could speak with George."

"I don't want to hurt Alan more than I have." Charlie said nothing to
that. "It's you I love," she said. In some form, she said so every time they
spoke along her journey. Yet the farther away she traveled, the more
desperate it felt to tell him how much she missed him, as if there were
only so much distance their attachment could take, as if there were a literal
breaking point to the emotional line connecting them.

It was hard to talk about anything other than the drama unfolding in
the world at large, events they could do nothing about. Charlie was
right: something like this suspended everything else. Even the two of
them were suspended.

When she called him from New York, she said, "Well, I'm here. And
they're not. It's strange. It's strange how calm everyone seems. There's
this ghastly hole in the sky, yet all these people are walking around with
strollers and briefcases and bags of groceries. People are renting videos
and ordering Chinese food. It's all normal, but
they
are gone."

"Charlie, you asked them to leave." He sounded weary.

"I know that. I'm glad I did." She asked him about his day.

"I think we might win."

"Don't sound so happy, Charlie." She tried to laugh.

"Well, you're not here. And it's just one step. There are always more
challenges, more appeals. It's chess. We take one piece, but they take
another."

"I don't know how you have the patience."

"I have some," he said, "but it's not endless."

She told him again that she loved him.

"I know that," he said. "But I wonder if you'll come back."

"I've said I would, Charlie! How could I not come back?"

"To me, I mean."

"I know what you mean!" Why was this conversation suddenly like
conversations she'd had with Alan when she had been in Santa Fe and
he, Alan, had been where she was now? She saw herself in a passage of
dueling mirrors.

"Ssshhh," said Charlie. "I didn't mean to upset you. You just need to
get to George. It's the right thing to do, I completely agree."

"But maybe I was being hysterical, making them go to Maine."

"It made sense," said Charlie. "You feared for their safety. I would
have done the same thing. I'm not even sure I like the idea of
you
in New
York. Are you staying the night there?"

She told him that she would set the alarm for four in the morning. She
needed a shower and sleep. She might not be able to call him for a few
days. Would he mind?

"Whatever you need," he said, "I'm fine with it. I have work to do.
Lots of it. So don't worry about me. You wouldn't see much of me anyway
if you were here. I'll be off pretty early tomorrow."

Greenie climbed into her old bed, between sheets that smelled of the
husband she had already left.

WHEN SHE REACHED THE BOATYARD
, it was raining. She parked the
car—which she had rented in Pittsburgh, almost physically forcing Tall
to turn around—and ran to the office above the dock. Inside was a boy
she'd never seen before; at one time, she'd have known the faces, if not
the names, of everyone working here, but she had not been to Circe in
three years. The boy would take her to the island; he mentioned that
he'd taken her husband's "party" the day before. "They looked to be
pretty well stocked," he said, trying to sound like the adult he almost
was. "Like they were planning to stay through Christmas! You need the
wheelbarrow, too?"

"No," she said, indicating her small bag. The clothes she'd packed,
days ago in haste and shock, would not be warm enough for the island
in this weather. She'd have to hope there were clothes she could borrow
in the cabin.

The motor launch wore a smart blue awning, with see-through plastic
flaps along the sides. Greenie chose to stand in the open air at the
stern, in part to distance herself from the boy—she had no energy for
small talk, least of all island small talk—but mostly so she could turn
her face to the elements. She needed a little ruthlessness.

Motoring slowly along (the boy must be new), they took the strait
between Mare's Rock and Collared Cove. The boy sped up slightly as
they passed String of Pearls. Someone had built onto the guesthouse the
only way you could—vertically—so that now it resembled a watchtower.
A sailboat nearly as large as the island itself was moored off its
tiny dock.

A gust of wind sent rain down the neck of Greenie's jacket. She
gasped at the sharp cold as it funneled between her breasts.

Rain—rain everywhere, agitating the trees on the islands, pelting and
coarsening the wide gray waters of the bay—took her back to Charlie.
Water: Charlie. Charlie: Water. How could she survive if rain and open
water—so abundant in her part of the world, though so scarce in
his—made her think of Charlie? Tumbling streams, melting snow, dripping
eaves.
NO LIFE WITHOUT WATER
, read a sticker on the fender of
Charlie's bike.

Her island (her mother's island) grew in detail, its idiosyncratic rocks
and trees, none changed; the mouse-colored houses still huddled together
like three shy girls at the edge of a dance floor. There should have been
fog, but despite the domineering, monotonous gray of everything in
sight, even the farthest horizons were crisp.

The important thing about rain, remembered Greenie, was its wetness.
The greenness of grass, the whiteness of snow, the fact that shoes
must contain your feet: according to Margaret Wise Brown, the important
things were always the obvious things. George had never loved
Good Night, Moon
; he preferred
The Important Book.
Greenie found
the pictures hauntingly frumpy, but the litany of what made each thing
"important" gave a sweet illusion of comfort.

What was the important thing about a mother? Was it that she loves
you no matter what? Was it that, like the sky, she is always there?
(Could you count on anything as much as you could count on the sky?)

No. The important thing about a mother is that she shows you love—
not just gives you love but shows it: shows how it's done. She shows you
love like a museum exhibit, laid out in good light and calm surroundings.
She shows it to you, thought Greenie, like a tray of pastries, every
one so perfect that you are at a loss to choose. But that's fine, because
any one you choose will be exactly what you need. You cannot lose.
Nothing is stale or runny, too sweet or too yeasty. That's how it should
be. Should be.

Greenie's face was dripping with rain, her hair nearly soaked to the
scalp. She felt water beneath the waistband of her jeans and inside
her sneakers. As the boy turned the boat's shoulder toward the dock
beneath Circe, she was reminded of the way she'd seen Ray's cowboys
rein their horses away from the edge of a herd: close but never too close.
And as the boy lowered the throttle and cut the motor, allowing the boat
to drift the last several feet on its own momentum, it occurred to
Greenie that she could not remember anyone other than her father at
the helm when she came to this place for the first time each year. He'd
always docked the boat like a predatory bird coming in for a sideways
landing, compensating for wind shear yet showing not an ounce of
timidity. Always, this approach had enhanced her excitement about the
time ahead. Yet now that this boy from the marina had brought the boat
to a standstill with such perfect aim and timing, she saw that her father's
way had been little more than stylish, like a pointless curlicued flourish
at the end of a signature.

When we leave, she thought, I will sell my share in the house. To be
reminded of Charlie and her father all at once was simply too much.

She looked up. There, right away, almost too soon after all her yearning,
was George: in the rain, leaping from rock to rock, with Treehorn
just behind him. Treehorn's short legs did not serve her well on this terrain.
She'd scramble down a wet slope only to find herself stranded in a
crevice, then crouch and leap, stiff and cautious, to the next rise—then
do it all over again.

"Mommy!" George cried joyfully. Alan appeared just behind him,
calling Treehorn, trying to show her the path whose twists and turns
George had refused to follow.

The boy from the marina helped Greenie out of the boat, and she
tipped him. George arrived on the dock at the same moment, making a
song of her name. Alan waited behind George, at the foot of the notched
gangway, perhaps for some kind of signal, but she didn't have one to
give him. After holding and rocking George until he wriggled free,
Greenie leaned down to greet Treehorn. She still did not know what to
say to Alan, other than the simplest thing, an echo to his careful
"Hello." He picked up her bag. "We're so relieved to see you," he said.
"Saga's good at building fires, I've discovered. A good thing, or we'd
have frozen solid last night. I was the world's worst Boy Scout."

I remember,
she might have said, because that had always been one of
his self-effacing refrains.

"Icicles!" said George, tugging at Greenie's sodden jacket as they
crossed the gray rock that led to the lawn. "We'd've been turned into icy
icicles. That's what would have happened, you know."

There had been precious little time—or precious little space in her
mind—to picture what it would be like returning to Circe for the first
time in so long. It was certainly not like those Hollywood movies where
the heroine steps through shafts of dusty sun, sweeps aside draperies of
cobweb, unveils the furnishings to find them (while eerie music plays)
exactly as she had left them. Greenie could not run her fingers over
cushions last plumped by her mother, did not find in the sink a ghostly
wineglass bearing still the impression of Olivia's lipstick, a spoon still
encrusted with oyster bisque.

Greenie's cousins had—quite reasonably and with no disrespect to
her mother—freely changed things around. New curtains, in a faux-Hawaiian
print, hung from the window by the stove. The picnic table at
which they'd eaten all their meals had been replaced with a bona fide
dining table and ladderback chairs, probably from L.L. Bean. A shag
rug, blue polka dots on white in the shape of a boomerang, now occupied
the floorspace in front of the woodstove. As Greenie took in this
comic touch—was it hideous or hip?—Alan said, "My first thought
was, where's the matching lava lamp?"

Greenie looked him in the eye for the first time, and she couldn't help
smiling. "I'm trying to imagine what my mother would say."

Alan returned her smile. In the old days, he would have ventured to
guess Olivia's remark, and he would have nailed it precisely, making
Greenie laugh.

She took a towel from a rack by the sink and dried her hair.

"Hello. Hello." Through the back door, shaking out an umbrella,
came the friend Alan had mentioned, the one he'd told Greenie he was
bringing along to the island. He had described her as a woman whose
life was in serious crisis. (
And what am I?
Greenie had thought selfishly.)
George had come on the phone and described her as Treehorn's
godmother, leading him to ask, "Do I have a godmother, Mommy? Why
don't I? Does God have a mother?" According to Alan, Ford was no
longer proselytizing, but George's world had grown wider all on its
own, demanding further questions alluding to the supernatural. Greenie
had her work cut out there.