The Whole World Over (34 page)

"And you happened to be in the neighborhood. With flowers."

"I always carry flowers. Just in case."

She took the flowers and told him to come in.

"I should have called, shouldn't I?"

"Don't be silly." Greenie held the flowers with their heads toward the
floor, as her mother had taught her when she was small. She looked at
Other Charlie's face and recognized a nervous habit from long ago: he
set and worked his lower jaw so that the muscles beneath his ears stood
out like small marbles. She had always seen this look of consternation as
the look of a boy playing at being a man. Endearingly, it seemed no different
now that he had become a man.

She said, "You worry too much, Charlie." He followed her to the
kitchen. She pulled a glass pitcher off a shelf and filled it with water,
consciously—because here was the ultimate Water Boy—not turning on
the tap until it was right above the mouth of the pitcher.

Other Charlie sat quietly at the table while Greenie trimmed the flowers.
He said abruptly, "Charlie, I still can't believe it's you, here."

"It's me," she said, "I'm here, and you can call me Greenie."

"No. No, I don't believe I can. It's not . . . you. The you I know. Or
remember."

"I'm probably not the me you remember." Greenie felt the insincerity
of the teasing, the way it was meant to cover their genuine astonishment,
their mutual excitement at stumbling onto someone so familiar—
almost familial—in a place where they were both happily occupied but
out of place.
Fish out of water,
she might have joked. But wanting to
lighten rather than deepen the moment, she laughed and said, "My
mother always put two aspirin in the water. Viagra for flowers!" She set
the pitcher on the table.

"Charlie," said Other Charlie, his tone almost urgent, "please stop
talking about your mother. I've hated your mother for so long. I'm
sorry. No, no I'm not, as a matter of fact. I'm not sorry."

Greenie turned away. She laid the cutting board and the knife in the
sink. Speechless with anger, it took her a moment to turn around and sit
at the table. "Is that what you dropped by to tell me?"

"I make it a policy never to dwell on the past, but seeing you? I keep
on remembering that weekend, the time she invited me up to your place
in Maine. No,
her
place; that was clear."

Greenie sat still, hands in her lap. "Yes. That was ages ago. Eons."

"Do you know what happened that weekend?"

Greenie had no idea why he was torturing her. In return, she was
blunt. "We slept together, and you went off to college and didn't call me.
That was pretty cruel, wouldn't you say? But youth is—what's that
word?"

"Callow. Which I never was. Many stupid, thoughtless things, but
never that."

"So. Do you need me to forgive you?"

"It's not me you'd have to forgive." His jawbone worked incessantly,
a piece of machinery fixed inside his scowling face. "Do you know how
much I wanted you the whole summer I was painting your goddamn
house?"

"I guess not." She thought of his naked chest framed in her bathroom
window. She laughed.

"What's so funny?"

"Now that you mention it, none of this is funny. I don't know what
my mother has to do with it, Charlie. Especially now. My poor mother
is dead."

"I don't care if your poor mother is back among us in the body of the
Dalai Lama," said Other Charlie. "Do you know how much she was
out to undermine you when she was alive? She was so smart, Charlie, so
clever with her little comments that it took me years to figure it out,
how she chipped away at you, made you seem so, I don't know . . .
impossible." His voice turned mincing and learned. " 'My daughter, you
know, is quite particular about people.' 'Charlotte has her eye on about
five boys this year.' 'She's going to make a fine challenge of a wife one
day, that girl of mine.' "

"Oh, I heard her say those things. That was just her way of . . ."
Her
way of what?
thought Greenie. She remembered when her mother had
said to Alan, "Creativity and brains compensate for quite a lot. Just ask
my
husband."

"Her way of making sure you didn't get the things you deserved."

"But I
have,
" said Greenie. "I have more than I deserve. If there's
such a thing in life as deserving. Which there isn't."

"Like a husband who's nowhere in sight?" said Other Charlie.

Greenie might have told him that Alan was just around the corner,
that things between them looked fine, that they were working out logistics
. . . but she was mute. She realized that she had never mentioned
Alan's visit to Other Charlie. She might have asked him to join them for
dinner one night.

She realized that he would stare at her now until she answered him.
"What happened back then can't matter that much now, can it?" she said.

"Yes it can." His hands were pressed flat on the table, as if he might
leap to his feet. "Or it can now that I see you again. I don't mean I've
thought about it much all these years, but when I have, I've felt such
fury, such—"

"Let me get you a drink," said Greenie.

"I don't need one."

"I do." Greenie took a bottle of red wine off the windowsill. Alan
had bought it: fancy, Ralph Nader stuff, bottled the year of their wedding.
She took her time opening it. Night had fallen, swift as a curtain
on a stage, and Greenie saw herself in the window, her face dim beside
the bright explosion of daisies. She could not help remembering how
much she had cried after Other Charlie's abrupt disappearance that
summer. Her mother had come upon her once and had magically
seemed to
know.
"Boys will be boys, even big boys," she'd said. "My
dear Charlotte, a city boy—a city man—will be much better for you.
Just wait till you get to New York." So it had seemed, later on, as if her
mother were a prophet.

She set two glasses of wine on the table. When she did not sit, Charlie
stood.

Greenie folded her arms. "So what did my mother tell you that
weekend?"

"A lot of crap. That you had a boyfriend. That I wasn't the first guy
you'd flirted with too much. That I was too good for you. You didn't
have a boyfriend, though, did you? Later I figured it out."

"That you were too good for me!" Greenie recalled her longing. Then
she recalled her mother's insistence, years later, that Charlie be included
among the guests at her wedding. The thought of his presence even then
had pained her, but his parents had been invited because they were longtime
neighbors; how petty and rude to leave
him
out, her mother had
said. "Jesus," said Greenie.

"It's not like I've wanted you all these years, not like you're the
reason I . . ." He looked down into his wine.

Haven't married?
thought Greenie. She couldn't stand what she was
hearing, but she needed to hear it. All of whatever it was he wanted
to say.

He laughed. "Man oh man. I did not come here tonight to say these
things! Hey—where's your son? Already asleep? I thought I might get to
see him, really meet him this time. That was part of why I dropped by."

"You mean the flowers were for him?" Greenie smiled. She finished
off her wine, felt it rush through and brighten her body. "He's away for
a few days. He'll be back on Sunday." If he asks where or with whom, I
will tell him, she thought.

He said, "I'm sorry. How did we have this conversation anyway?"

"Charlie," said Greenie, "you are just as intense as ever. Some things
never change."

He drained his glass and set it down. Empty-handed, speechless, he
stood right next to her.

"I really am married, Charlie," she said. "I really am."

"I'll have to take your word for it," he said. "At the last minute, I
skipped your wedding. Did you notice? Bet you didn't even notice."

"I wondered where you were." This was a lie; after wishing she didn't
have to invite him, she
hadn't
noticed his absence—not till weeks later,
when she had gone through the proofs of the wedding pictures. He had
been to her mother's engagement party but not to the wedding.

"Since you're alone, let's go into town," he said. "Let's walk and look
at the stars. We didn't have stars like this in Massachusetts, did we?"

"Sometimes we did," said Greenie. "Let me grab a sweater."

Other Charlie smiled. "You always had to argue; I remember that
about you. Even about the little things. But everyone liked you too
much to care."

"I thought you were the argumentative one," she said as they left the
house, "the one who always had to be right."

As they made their way toward town, Greenie resolved not to think
about (or mention) her mother. Other Charlie seemed less tense. Perhaps
he was relieved to have said his piece.

Greenie pointed them toward the bar of a sophisticated restaurant on
Palace Avenue, one where she was likely to see state officials she knew, if
only to greet in a quick impersonal fashion.

They stood and talked till they could sit and talk. They talked about
the years between her wedding day and the day that ended with the two
of them sitting right there, wanting the bar never to empty and close,
wanting not to be alone together yet not to part until they had filled in
all the missing space between them. When Greenie told him the story
about the implausible way in which she had landed her job with Ray, she
had to tell Other Charlie about Alan's resistance. He was quick to
defend the other man's caution as necessary, probably even wise. At
first, Greenie was annoyed, but then she realized how generous Other
Charlie's reaction was. He might be, like Greenie, a creature of impulse
and passion, but he was the more empathic one. That was when she
ought to have told him about Alan's visit, but how would this look
when she had neglected to mention the visit hours ago?

Other Charlie walked her home, along the sinuous route of the
acequia, under the willows and cottonwoods and aspens fortunate to
grow along its banks, under leaves that rustled more crisply than eastern
leaves. As they walked through the gap in the wall that led into
Greenie's tiny garden, he said, "Wait. I have something for you."

Other Charlie owned a car but bicycled everywhere he could, even to
meetings at the mansion. In the governor's parking lot, his bike looked
especially comic alongside the town cars and Hummers. Now, in the
dark, he fumbled with bungee cords that fastened a package to his
bike rack.

The package was so heavy that Greenie nearly dropped it. When she
took off the newspaper, she burst out laughing.

"A brick?"

"It's to put in your toilet tank." He blushed. "Okay, I know how
geeky it is. It's nothing personal; I always have three or four in the trunk
of my car, and tonight I just thought . . . I get obsessed about these
things. I've learned to go with it. I sleep better."

"So you just happened to cruise by my house on your bicycle with
daisies and a brick." Greenie clasped the brick to her chest. "Well, that's
nothing if not charming. Sort of."

"Sort of charming," he said. "That's a whole lot better than obnoxious,
which is something else I can be."

They said good night while they were laughing. Once she was inside,
Greenie raised the brick to her face. It smelled like any other brick, like a
flowerpot, like soil. She went to the bathroom and opened the back of
her toilet. Careful not to jar the flushing widgets, she maneuvered the
brick down into the tank. She waited till the ripples settled to close it
again.

ALAN DROVE UP TO THE HOUSE TWO
nights later, after midnight.
Greenie had begun to worry, even to wonder, in her wildly distracted
state of mind, whether Alan would do something as rash as kidnap their
son and head for Mexico. She felt acutely ashamed when she saw the
car. Treehorn jumped out first, avidly patrolling the borders of the yard.

Alan carried George, fast asleep, straight to his room. Without a
word, Greenie pulled back George's bedspread and removed his sandals.
On his little feet, the pattern of the straps was outlined precisely in red
dust. She turned on the fan, then bent to kiss his grubby cheeks.

Alan told Greenie that George had been fairly quiet for much of the
trip. The heat and all the driving had made him sleepy, though he had
enjoyed running freely around the ruins of Chaco Canyon. "He does
love this dog," Alan said.

"Did you have a good time?"

"Oh yes. But I promised him he could tell you about the dance on the
mesa and the bison heads in the hotel."

A band of rosy skin lay across Alan's nose, from one cheek to the
other. Greenie was glad to see him look so alive, so out in the world.

"I brought you something," he said.

She lifted the lid of a white box. It contained a turquoise necklace: a
string of rough beads, pitted like moons, in various shades of green. She
held the coiled necklace in her palm. "It's gorgeous," she said. "Is it
old?" She fastened it behind her neck before she realized that he had
hoped to perform this intimate task.

"Yes, but it's not pawn," said Alan. "I couldn't get over all those
pawnshops filled with all that exquisite jewelry. It gave me the creeps."

"I've heard about that. Even saddles turned in to get money for
booze. That's what they say. It's all for booze. Even those beautiful patterned
blankets."

He touched the beads where they lay against her throat. "I didn't like
the idea of some forsaken heirloom around your neck."

But isn't that what all antiques are? thought Greenie as she looked at
her reflection in the bedroom mirror. Isn't it all discarded, abandoned,
whether by choice or compulsion? She had recently noticed that her red
hair was fading in the sun. She wasn't outdoors a great deal, but she had
lived here now for two seasons and the climate was making its mark.