The Whole World (4 page)

But I said, “Yes.” It was easier.

Liv never did get to celebrate with shots the way she wanted, but Gretchen marked our finding the distinction between Linda and Ginny by having us three over for dinner. She had been disappointed at first to learn that many of the best photos were of Ginny, not Linda. Ginny had really liked the camera. But anyway, Gretchen could get on with things now, and that was worth throwing a little party.

I brought wine. I had no ulterior motive here except hospitality, but I did wonder what effect it might have on Gretchen, already inclined to reminisce.

Then, with dessert, Harry poured us port. I was going to get loopy, no doubt about it.

Gretchen rambled about her childhood again. She asked Nick to read aloud a poem her mother had treasured. He blushed like a girl.

The poem had been found with the photos. It had obviously been important to someone. There was a clipping of it, from a newspaper, and several handwritten transcriptions. First Gretchen had thought that her mother had written it, but it was credited in the newspaper to “A. Simms.” Then she’d decided that it must have been her mother who cut it out and copied it. Either way, she was excited about sharing something that had been important to the woman.

Nick demurred. He really didn’t want to read it. Liv put her hand on his shoulder and shrilled, “Aw, Nick, you’ve got to!”

“Nick, it’s okay …” I said, meaning he didn’t have to if he didn’t want to. I think he really was embarrassed. But Liv is louder than I am. I don’t know if she wanted him to do it because she liked him a little off-kilter and embarrassed, or if she just wanted to make him do what Gretchen wanted. Either way, I said, “Liv, Nick can decide for himself what he wants to do.” Liv glared at me.

To keep the peace, Nick stood and read aloud:

“I hunger for a perfect fruit, a pear.
Its cello curves pressed heavy in my hand,
its robust, rounded flesh all swollen full
of juices pressed against the straining dam
of yellow-reddish skin. I’ll not be moved
by any lesser offering of food.

My empty belly whines to be indulged,
indignant at my forcefulness of will.
My salivating mouth anticipates
its base desires soon will be fulfilled.
But cheese is now too thick and bread too dry.
No arid compromise will satisfy.

Let weaker others abdicate their selves,
disclaim their true desires for a play
at momentary comfort. They’ll contort
to fit the shifting context of each day.
But I will stand within my inborn shape,
expose to all the scaffolding within.
I’ll wait for what my true self most desires
and from all else I’ll to the death abstain.”

Liv clapped, which embarrassed him even more.

“It reminded her of her commitment to me,” Gretchen rhapsodized. “It wasn’t a popular choice for her to even have me, never mind give up everything for me. But she did. And she never regretted it.

“When I was three and a half, she made a decision,” Gretchen explained. “She made a sacrifice of her glamorous life to devote herself to my care. It was—sometimes I think it was too much. She left behind so much!” But Gretchen didn’t sound unhappy about it; she sounded proud to have been worth it. “The trips stopped. The handsome visitors, the cocktail parties. It all just … the tap ran dry.” She blinked and smiled. “From then on she mothered me. The nanny was dismissed.” She described this with a clipped voice, like the existence of the nanny was something on a par with rats in the house, something to be cleared up and ashamed of, something invited by bad habits. “She resolved to fully be my mother and she did it.” She drained her glass. “Sometimes I feel like my life has a dividing line—the life before, where I lived in her wake, sailing through a glorious world, and the life after, where I lived in her arms, thoroughly ordinary.” She seemed equally enamored of both.

I tried to change the subject; Gretchen ignored me. She said loudly, nearly crowed, “She gave up writing completely. She told me that I would be her story and she would write
me
. Isn’t that a much nicer way of saying ‘mothering is a full-time job’?”

Trying to recover from embarrassment, Nick had bent himself over the transcription. He ran his fingertip over the words. Then he got up and went to the library. He returned with a few key photos, and turned them upside down on the dinner table.

The loopy, flourishy writing that had hand-copied the poem was also on the backs of several of the older photos. They were labeled “Mother” and “Father,” so that writer would be Ginny or Linda.

But the newer photos, the color ones of a teenaged Gretchen, had a smaller, more careful style of writing on their backs. This was strong, though not certain, evidence that this writer was her mother. It would make sense for her to label the photos she took of her daughter’s friends. That would make the first writer Ginny. I was beginning to like Ginny. She had her mouth open in several of the pictures, laughing out loud. And it was she who had copied the poem. I knew Gretchen would be disappointed again. Liv put out her hand to stop Nick, but he told Gretchen anyway.

She took it better than I expected. “All right, then, the poem wasn’t Linda’s. So I had an aunt who liked pears. Who doesn’t?” The words were flippant, but her voice was tight.

Pears. Picasso’s violins. The female figure.

As if reading my mind, Gretchen defended her aunt’s heterosexuality. “You don’t know Gin. Love affairs with inappropriate men were her specialty. She died in a boating accident on the Mediterranean when I was seven. Mother told me that she’d been with a married man.” She whispered those last two words in an exaggeration of scandal.

Nick ducked his head. Liv would say that he was a prude. Gretchen’s memories of her mother were full of sexual conversations.

Still reminiscing, she told us about the Brussels Motel Expo, a temporary building designed only to last through the fair. They’d stayed in a cheap-looking room that was identical to all the others. The layout of the building was also repeated without variation throughout. Gretchen said that, one evening, they walked into the wrong room, interrupting a couple having sex. I winced, embarrassed for the three-year-old walking in on sex, and embarrassed for the fifty-year-old telling us about it. The man threw a shoe at them. Linda and Ginny and the nanny all laughed, and Gretchen says she laughed too, because they did. She laughed telling it.

Nick interrupted. “Do you really remember that, or did your mother tell it to you?” He shouldn’t have used the word “really.”

She bristled and insisted that she knows she remembers it, because she sees it in her mind. She says the man had a hairy chest, and that the shoe he threw was pointy in the heel and actually could have hurt one of them. But it hadn’t, and they’d laughed.

Harry tried to break the tension then by talking about his birds. Gretchen overrode him. He looked pretty beaten down, so I said, “May I see them?”

His face widened, I swear. It had to, to fit a smile that big.

The bird room was at the top of the house, a converted attic. The fluffy Norwiches chirped and flitted in their cages when we entered. Maybe they were anxious about strangers, or happy to see Harry. It was hard to tell the difference.

Harry greeted them as individuals, recounting their pedigrees and awards. They were all linked. He narrated every connecting thread: That one sired that one; that one mated with that one. The relationships made a web of the room. It was like being inside a mathematician’s brain.

The three of us walked home. We were tipsy and happy. Nick was between me and Liv, and we had our arms linked with his.

Liv teased him about the poem he’d been made to read at dinner, and she joked about his perfect life. “My life’s not really perfect,” he said. “But I know I’ve been lucky.”

And she said “Lucky!” to emphasize the understatement.

He said she should talk to his sister about luck. She hated British weather and wearing a school uniform. She read teenage novels set in America.

Normally you’d hit Peterhouse first, but Nick took us up Queen’s Road to drop Liv off at Magdalene.

Then he and I walked through town, past St. John’s and Trinity. At Trinity Lane, Nick grabbed my hand and pulled me into a shadowy corner next to a cobbled wall. His mouth had the tang of port still in it. We kissed like mad.

That’s not the time I had to push him away. That time I was as into it as he was. It’s not like we were in private or anything. It’s not like anything else could happen there.

Someone came around the corner and Nick jumped back about two feet. “Sorry,” he said.

I wasn’t sure if he was apologizing to them or to me.

“I’d forgotten where I was for a moment,” he explained, looking down. “They took me by surprise.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Is something wrong?”

“No.”

He didn’t kiss me again, but he held my hand. “I really like you,” he said earnestly. Everything flip-flopped: It wasn’t an insult that he’d jumped; it was a compliment that he’d been so carried away that he’d kissed me in public in the first place.

“Do you know,” he said as we moved on down King’s Parade, “I saw you once before. Before we met at Magdalene. It was at the Penrose lecture. I sat behind you.”

I remember that lecture. It was soon after I’d arrived in Cambridge. Even though I’m not up on theoretical mathematics, I’d attended because Penrose is famous. I’d expected his presentation to be polished and intimidating. But he used an overhead projector, like one of my old grade school teachers, instead of a laptop and PowerPoint. He’d made the illustrations himself, in a dozen different colors of magic marker, with underlines and squiggles, and dashes radiating out around the most important words. Each sheet was like the cover of a thirteen-year-old girl’s notebook. A thirteen-year-old who’s really, really good at math.

“You had a stack of library books in front of you. Some Muriel Sparks and Hilary Mantels, and then, on top and out of place, one of the
Famous Five
books. I thought you were charming.”

I felt ridiculous and foreign. I’d stuffed myself with British authors when I first arrived, mostly authors my mom used to read, right down to a children’s book on top. I didn’t think anyone would have noticed my silly burst of Anglophilia. “I just went kind of crazy with Englishness when I got here.”

“It was sweet,” he assured me. Our arms swung together as we walked. “Do you like it here?”

I stopped and looked around. I didn’t know. “I’m having a good time,” I said. The thumping in my chest sped up.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said. He squeezed my hand.

I unhooked from him and pointed with the hand he’d held. I could have used my other hand, but I didn’t. “Oh! Look!” Fitzbillies had put new cakes on display. We crossed the street and stood in front of the window, arms touching. There was one with a pirate ship on top of a delicate icing sea. There were little white tips on the blue waves, to show how wild the water was.

“That’s why I’m here,” I said, still pointing. “That’s why I like science. It’s bigger than me. Like the ocean is bigger than a ship. A ship isn’t trying to control the ocean, or make the ocean. A ship is just trying to get along with the ocean, and figure it out. If you get to know the way the ocean works well enough, you can ride it. You can, like, go for this amazing ride….” I put my hand over my mouth. Sometimes I blather.

“That’s why I like science too,” he said. He didn’t think what I’d said was weird. He didn’t think it was profound or impressive or intimidating either. It was just ordinary conversation. It could happen every day.

“I love it here,” I said, meaning it.

He put his arm around my shoulders. I let myself lean a little.

“So do I,” he said.

That’s not the time I had to push him away either. He walked me the rest of the way home and we pecked good night in front of St. Peter’s Terrace.

Telling Linda from Ginny wasn’t quite the job done. There were still the rest of the pictures to sort out, which was now much easier work but even so required thoroughness and effort.

“Is there anything after she turned four?” I asked Liv. She grabbed a small pile and handed it to me. These were mostly photos from puberty onward. Gretchen had the typical adolescent awkwardness and animation, and I could tell her sight had dimmed considerably. The fashions were laughable. The house behind her looked homey and plain. She looked happy. The photos usually had friends in them, boys and girls matching her age.

“I guess her mom was less interested in being the center of attention once their lifestyle changed,” I said. Previously, Linda had put herself into most of the photos. In these she was always behind the camera.

“That’s just age plus vanity,” said Nick. “The last time I have a photo of my mum and me together I’m in a chorister’s robe.”

“Are there any of her dad?” Liv asked.

“He’s the one in the white dinner jacket with a martini glass in his hand.” Gretchen was suddenly there. She didn’t need to tap a cane in her own home. Liv stammered, embarrassed to have been caught prying.

Gretchen overrode her. “Do you have the photo to hand?” She leaned against the doorframe while Nick fished it out. “Jim” was written on the back. “He was my mother’s accountant. They remained good friends. They were never really lovers. Well, of course they were, but I mean in the social sense. They were never a couple. He was kind to me. He always had a toy or something in his briefcase for me, I remember that.” She smiled. This seemed a genuinely pleasant memory to her; there was nothing of the deprived or abandoned about it. “Their friendship ran its course. The only thing she’d ever really been devoted to utterly was me.”

“Do you want us to keep this one out, to frame it?” Liv asked.

“He’s not a ‘daddy’ to me, dear. He was just a friend of Mother’s. I don’t need to have him on display.” She moved to face the window. I think she could see strong contrasts—light and shadow. “Nick, do you have the one on the island to hand? There are palm fronds and such. It’s Mother, Aunt Ginny, and me. We were all laughing. I remember when that was taken. Mother’s Pekingese had run off with a cutlet from the kitchen and was wrestling it on the carpet. We all laughed instead of stopping him. We spoiled that thing rotten.”