The Whole World Over (10 page)

Greenie found herself mesmerized—and briefly, falsely reassured—by
the bric-a-brac of her parents' lives as of the moment they had left this
house and, knowing her mother, as of the moment they were to have
returned. It felt as if the entire house were poised for that moment, still
unaware of the terrible news.

Reflexively, Greenie opened the right-hand door and found that, efficient
as ever, her mother had nearly emptied this part of her refrigerator.
There were a dozen well-preserved condiments in jars, but no eggs,
milk, or juice to spoil, certainly no leftovers sprouting gray fuzz.

But then she opened the left side, the freezer, and this was when she
found her true sorrow. Predictably, the freezer was full, stocked with
carefully labeled foil packets (chicken breasts, turkey sausages, homemade
raspberry muffins, chestnut purée), containers of chicken and
shellfish stock. A dozen red velvet cupcakes, unfrosted: probably awaiting
a visit from George. There was even a large plastic tub filled with
blueberries picked in Maine the previous summer—destined for pies
and preserves and a special pancake sauce that George had just learned
to adore the way Greenie always had. Looking into the smoky hum
of the freezer, Greenie saw in its generous cargo all the mothering that
had belonged, every moment of her life till then, to her and her alone,
along with the grandmothering that would henceforth become the sole
domain of Alan's well-meaning but mostly hapless mother.

She stood there a long time, clinging to the freezer door and sobbing,
letting the cloudy chill bleed out into the room, flow heedlessly around
her body. She heard the inner workings of the refrigerator grind in
protest, but still she felt incapable of closing the door, as if that act
would be too unbearably final.

The indignant call of a crow startled her; she turned to the window
and released the freezer door. She went to another door, the one that led
to the backyard, unlocked it, and walked out. The swing her father had
hung from the elm tree was still there—a swing that George, at two, was
still too cautious to trust, even in a grown-up's lap—and as Greenie
stood there, listlessly gazing, she realized that she would have to give it
all up, literally dismantle her past. This house, where she had grown up,
belonged not to her parents but to the university where her father taught
(oh,
had
taught). Where would all her parents' belongings go? Still crying,
she left the house, called Alan from a pay phone in the village, and
told him to come at once. She had finally understood the monstrosity of
her loss, which, each succeeding time she looked at it, compounded
itself, sprouting head after head, cruel as a hydra.

Ultimately, from among her mother's things, she took a few pieces of
jewelry and a white cashmere sweater wonderfully preserved from the
fifties (which, though she loved it, Greenie would never bring herself to
wear—perhaps, she came to suspect, because the label bragged that it
had been made in Scotland). Most of the rest of her parents' incidental
belongings she set aside for the church thrift shop; she was grateful
when Alan insisted on packing and taking them over himself. The furnishings
that she thought they might want in the future, if they ever
moved to a larger apartment, she arranged to store at a warehouse in
the middle of nowhere in western Massachusetts.

When all was said and done and paid for, she inherited just enough
money to cover her business loan and George's nursery school tuition,
along with a real but unquantifiable—and regrettably undisposable—
share of a family cabin on an island in Maine. There were also her
father's boats, a Whaler and a small, much-loved sailboat, but they had
already been put in the water that year. Greenie called the Boston cousin
and told him he could keep both on indefinite loan. Perhaps they were
worth a lot of money; Greenie had no idea. She knew only that she
could not imagine going to the island without her father picking her up
at the marina and her mother, swanlike and stylish, serving her perfect
meals. Gently, Alan told Greenie that she would probably change her
mind, but this time she was the one with the dark, doubtful perspective.
No, she said; no, never.

MORE SERENELY THAN SHE HAD EXPECTED
, Greenie went to work
on the governor's dinner; the suite's kitchen, though small by her
mother's suburban standards, was royal compared with the cubbyhole
in Greenie's apartment downtown. She measured the cornmeal. She held
the roast above the marinade, allowing it to drain. She trussed it,
painted it, laid it on the rack. She oiled two ramekins. She cracked eggs
into a bowl. She grated nutmeg. She measured cream and salt and the
garlic she had minced that afternoon. Half an hour before the governor
was due back—the roast crackling in the oven, cakes and cheeses all
plated and waiting to be devoured—she set the table and propped a
handwritten menu against the hotel's vase of synthetic-smelling roses.
Ordinarily, whenever she had to write something to show, she'd ask
Alan to check her spelling, but this time she did not ask, not after the
ghastly argument they had had when she told him about this adventure.
Instead, she'd spent half an hour cross-checking her words in various
cookbooks. She paused to read the menu one more time:

SWEET POTATO BISQUE WITH CRABMEAT

•

GRAPEFRUIT ICE IN A SWEET TORTILLA CRISP

•

LAMB SEARED IN ANCHO CHILI PASTE ON POLENTA
TWO CHUTNEYS: PEAR & MINT
ASPARAGUS FLAN

•

AMERICAN GOAT CHEESE, EAST & WEST, WITH RED-WINE BISCUITS

•

AVOCADO KEY LIME PIE
PIñON TORTA DE CIELO & CHOCOLATE MOCHA SHERBET

She'd invented the cake just for tonight; the sherbet came from Julia
Child, a remarkably simple confection made with sour cream. Torta de
cielo was a traditional wedding cake from the Yucatán, slim and sublime,
light but chewy, where pulverized almonds stood in for flour. This time,
instead of almonds, Greenie used the fat, velvety pignoli she ordered
from an importer on Grand Street, mincing them by hand to keep them
from turning to paste. She did not know whether you could tell the best
Italian pine nuts from those grown in New Mexico, but, she caught herself
thinking, and not without a touch of spite, she might soon find out.

PERHAPS WHAT UPSET HER MOST
about the current state of her marriage
was how often she guessed wrong, dead wrong, when it came to
predicting Alan's reactions to just about anything she might say. Commenting
on the
weather
now made her nervous. Last week, she'd complained,
as she wiped up tracks on the floor from George's boots, that
she was tired of sleet and snow. Alan snapped, "Ever notice the headlines
all fall about drought? Ever stop to think of the farmers? The food
we eat, the showers we take?"

Yesterday, Greenie had gone home for her typical midmorning break,
after putting Tina to work on Walter's white rolls and sending Sherwin
out with the day's deliveries. Knowing that Alan was free as well, on his
own break between appointments, she took along a box of apricot
scones. And there he was, at the table, reading the op-ed pages of the
Times.
She kissed his right ear and placed the box beside him. "Your
favorites."

He pulled the box toward him and opened it. "Ooh, still warm." He
looked up with widened eyes, just as George would have responded to a
treat. "Can I have both?"

"Help yourself. I've been nibbling on pie all morning." She poured
herself the last of the coffee, turned off the machine, and sat down.

"Ecstasy—the legal kind," he said as he took the first bite.

"Honeylamb, we aim to please," drawled Greenie, channeling Mary
Bliss.

"Authentic pleasure, that's something you do sell to your clients,"
said Alan. "That much I don't deny."

Before she could stop herself, she said, "But . . . ?"

He shrugged. "But nothing." His attention returned to the paper: an
article about diplomatic relations with China, hardly anything urgent.

"I heard the implied 'but.' Like there's something you do deny," she
said.

"I was going to say, but the pleasure is ephemeral. I was thinking how
it's too bad the joy of sugar can't last." Perhaps his smile was apologetic;
Greenie saw it as condescending.

"You, on the other hand, you sell your clients lasting pleasure, pleasure
that makes it past the tongue. Pleasure of the soul."

"Pleasure that doesn't make you fat, that much at least. Or guilty.
Well, the last I can't guarantee." When she did not laugh, he said, "I'm
only joking. You take me too literally, Greenie."

"I suppose." She sighed. "I came back because I had a tale to tell you."

"A tale? I never tire of tales."

She closed her eyes briefly, to suppress her irritation. "This should
amuse you." Alan smiled when she mentioned Walter. He laughed when
she mimicked Mary Bliss again, the bit about the daw-see-ay. Greenie
relaxed.

"You are pulling my leg," said Alan.

"No, wait!" said Greenie. She told him how Ray McCrae had come
on the phone, calling her "girl."

"The environmental fascist in that
High Noon
getup?"

When she told him what the governor had in mind, he said, "Man,
what a nerve the guy's got. Like the life you have here must be some
flimsy rag you'd toss aside to run away and join his frontier circus!"

Greenie had been pleased at Alan's amusement, but now she paused.
"Well," she said quickly, "so I said I'd make the guy dinner. Tomorrow
night."

Alan had just polished off the first scone. He wiped the crumbs from
his lips with a napkin. "Now you
are
joking."

"I am not."

He stared at her for an instant before he said, "You really are. You
are cooking for him. You're what, maybe planning to poison the guy?
You know, you'd be the heroine of Greenpeace, the Nature Conservancy,
and the purist holdouts of the Sierra Club they haven't managed
to bribe into silence out there."

Greenie said, "I thought you'd see this, at the very least, as an opportunity
for me to make connections."

He stared at her again, this time as if she were crazy (the way he
would surely never look at any of his patients, even if he thought the
same of them). "Connections to . . . what . . . the Republican restaurateurs
of the Southwest? If you're planning an expansion, that's great,
but Long Island or New Jersey might be a more realistic place to start."

"Let's see. Is there someone around here who tells me I don't network
enough?"

"Networking refers to
useful
connections, Greenie. Like, do you see
me handing my card out to couples fighting on the subway?"

"Well maybe you should. Maybe that would open things up a little."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Sorry. That was insulting. But look—I mean, who knows? Maybe
we should consider something like this. Maybe a move wouldn't be
the worst thing. We're always talking about how we can never make
enough money here to give George the life he should have, give ourselves
that life!"

"I know I've said that. You're right. But we have a good life. And
this—come on, Greenie, this is not an option." He sighed. "I'm sorry. I
don't mean to sound so critical."

Yes you do,
she thought. She hadn't meant to tell him she was considering
this job in any serious way—she wasn't (was she?)—but now she'd
dug in her heels. "Tell me why we couldn't do it. Just hypothetically."

"Forget the clients I do have, and forget that we have a decent place
to live and good friends and your successful business—"

"Which you've told me isn't successful enough."

"Greenie, that's not what I've said. I've said it could be
more
successful.
Your business is your business. I don't mean to—"

Greenie felt her heart accelerate with indignation. "What is the matter
with you! What makes you so completely, predictably negative!"

Alan was clearly stunned by her sudden rage—though that's how her
rage, which was rare, would emerge, surprising even Greenie. He veered
back in his chair, as if she'd struck him. Greenie leaned forward, her
forearms pinning down an overturned section of the paper. Paralyzed
briefly by frustration and fury, sorrow at both, she could not help reading
the upside-down but all-too-familiar slogan between her elbows. It
was one of those self-congratulatory ads the
Times
ran in space that must
not have sold to purveyors of yet another bloated car or party-colored
laptop.

She stood up and pointed at the words. "Expect the World!" she
shouted. She laughed briefly but loudly. "Expect the
world.
That was
me when we got married. Okay, so I was an idiot, a typically blind
romantic idiot, right? So I learned my lessons like any new bride, and I
didn't marry the wrong guy, did I, Dr. Glazier? But now, now it's like,
expect a world of doom and gloom, expect a world of no praise, no
support—no emotional support—a world of
but this
or
no not that.
Expect to have everything I feel hopeful about just pushed right into the
mud. Expect a hole in the ground. That's what it feels like, that's me
now. Am I deluded? Am I wrong? Tell me! Please!"