The Whole World Over (35 page)

The next day, Consuelo took George to Diego's house for the day.
Greenie and Alan went to the fine arts museum. Everywhere they
walked, Alan kept an arm across Greenie's shoulders. They did not separate,
as couples often do, to look about at their individual paces. They
saw Georgia O'Keeffe paintings and squash-blossom necklaces so heavy
and battered they reminded Greenie of armor. They saw real armor, the
armor of Spanish conquistadores. They saw blankets, baskets, and rugs
that filled rooms with a geometric frenzy. They saw Madonnas appealing
to heaven from beneath so many layers of aging varnish that they
looked as if they were literally drowning in sorrow.

So many beautiful, solemn things to hold the eye and anchor the
mind, yet Greenie could think of nothing but Other Charlie—or, more
exactly, speak to no one else inside her head. She told him about the
weeping Virgin surrounded by butterflies, about the seven-course dinner
she would be making for the attorney general of California at the end of
the week, about George's new passion for masks. She told him every
detail she remembered of lying down with him in the soft yet prickly
needles carpeting the woods behind Circe (how the needles had stuck to
their bodies like iron filings to a magnet, how she had pulled those needles
from her clothing and hair, her bedsheets, for days after he had left
the island). She told him what it was like to start her business, what it
was like to fire up her oven long before dawn on a frigid New York
morning, what it was like to give birth, what it was like to get married in
front of all those people she'd known forever, what it was like to have
slowly forgotten him since then, let him slip into the sea behind her sailing
ship, sink out of sight so that she believed him blessedly lost till here
he was, having washed up on shore right before her eyes. All these
things she chattered about to Other Charlie inside her head, sometimes
even while Alan, the real man beside her, was talking.

After Alan left, three long weeks passed during which she heard nothing
from Charlie. By now he was just Charlie; there was no Otherness to
him, none whatsoever. There was not even, to Greenie, a time she could
imagine when he had been absent from her soul. There were merely all
the years when he might have been a part of her physical, geographically
rooted life but, inexplicably now, had not. She saw no shades of infidelity
here; wasn't it fair to say that as you grew older you understood
that marriage was not the exclusive domain of emotional attachment,
that deep connections formed elsewhere too, with men as well as other
women? She told herself that even if Alan had already pulled his act
together to move here (which he had assured her now he was doing,
though his characteristic caution, so charming once, had become an
aggravation), she would still have been glad to see Charlie. She would
still have wanted to feel this connection to her youth. The intensity, she
reasoned, was also tied to the loss of her parents.

Even the start of school for George did little to distract Greenie; in
fact, there was no longer time for him to spend mornings with her at the
mansion. Now consistently alone in the kitchen before Ray arrived,
Greenie found herself singing along, once again, with Billie Holiday and
Sarah Vaughan. No more Julie Andrews or Mary Martin.

Finally, one Saturday morning, he called.

"Hey there," he said, as if she should have expected this call. "It's me.
I have something to show you. Can I pick you up in fifteen minutes?"

Greenie paused. "I have George, you know."

"Bring George! I was hoping you would."

As usual, Ray was at the ranch, McNally in charge of his sustenance.
Greenie had spent the early part of the morning playing Go Fish with
George. Then Alan had called. He told her he had two new referrals:
couples, short-term. Their sessions should end by the new year. Greenie
told herself to be patient. They talked about Christmas in New York,
what fun it would be for George.

While she spoke with Alan, George had wandered back to his room.
She found him there now, reading one of the comic books Alan had
sent him.

"We're going on an adventure," she said.

George looked up but did not shut the book. "What kind of
adventure?"

"It wouldn't be a true adventure if you knew just what to expect or
precisely where you were going."

"No adventure. I want to stay here."

"We'll get ice cream—or some kind of treat," she said, realizing that
she had no idea where they were going, either. "You'll meet my friend
Charlie. I've known him almost since we were your age. Since we were
Diego's age, I think."

George brightened. "Can Diego come?"

"No, sweetie. Not today."

"Then no."

Greenie sat down on George's bed beside him. "Honey, I already said
we would go. Please."

George exhaled the long kind of
aaaalll riiighhht
that every parent
knows will exact a price (later outcries of "You promised!" "You
said!").

"Pick out some toys to bring in the car," she said.

She packed juice, pretzels, and Oreos. She cajoled him into the bathroom,
smoothed sunblock onto his arms and face. By then, Charlie was
at the door.

He looked first at George. "I am so glad to meet you."

George stared at Charlie but said nothing.

The awkward silence did not last. George handed his mother two plastic
horses. "Will you carry them?" he said. "
Please
will you carry them?"

Sometimes she wondered if she ought to be worried about George; he
had grown more solemn, less silly, in recent weeks. But he had also
grown taller and slimmer, and perhaps these changes were logically
aligned. She held the horses in one arm and laid her opposite hand on
top of his head as they walked to the car. Perhaps, like his father, he
needed a little distance from Greenie. She felt a twinge of loneliness.

"I can't promise anything," said Charlie as he pulled away from the
curb, "but I have a hunch."

"Stop with the teasing," said Greenie. "How're your clients doing,
your little fish?"

"Not well. An upstream battle. Ha ha." He told her about a panel of
federal judges known as the God Squad, who could be asked to override
the Endangered Species Act if the consequences of enforcing it meant
that people would be adversely affected. "The whole point of the act
was to trump this kind of selfishness! No one wants to talk about
'adversely affecting' an ecosystem!"

To leave Santa Fe by car was nothing at all like driving out of New
York. New York was a city whose reach seemed never-ending, even
greedy; for miles and miles, the only perceptible changes as you tried to
leave it behind were a diminishing of scale and encroaching grime, as if
you were leaving a literal heartland, heading out to the extremities of an
old, weary body with poor circulation. But as you drove away from the
heart of this town, you might turn your attention from your surroundings
for just five minutes and look up to find yourself somewhere altogether
different, driving between rustic tin-roofed shacks where goats or
chickens loitered in the shadows; crossing empty arroyos, stretches of
sagebrush and cowering pine (much of it still visibly singed by the fires).
You'd enter and leave villages that, but for their satellite dishes and cars,
looked nearly ancient, lost in time. Civilization remained ever-present in
the grand houses perched on hills and ridges—haciendas of Old World
ranches; glinting glass mansions built by the newly wealthy—yet how
far you would feel from the city's galleries, restaurants, and street
shows. In the time it took to get from the Empire State Building to the
middle of Queens, you'd find yourself rising toward the arid austerity of
pine groves and mountains.

Charlie paid frequent attention to the sky before them, dipping his
head and squinting his eyes every minute or so. It looked as if a storm
might break—or that was how an easterner would have read this sky;
by now, Greenie was accustomed to the false anticipation, the fleeting
showers that never became true rain.

She could hear George, in the backseat, muttering some sort of dialogue
between his horses. She heard the words
buckskin, pinto,
and
hackamore.

When they passed a horse alone in a field, she said, "Look, George."

She heard a break in his wordplay, but he did not comment.

She turned around. "Did you see that horse?"

"He's lonely," said George. "He needs friends. Actually, you should
give animals friends."

"Yes," said Charlie before Greenie could equivocate. "That's true,
George. Animals should be kept in twos, at the very least. Maybe except
for cats. Cats like their privacy."

"Yes," said George. "Cats are hunterers, and hunterers do the best
hunting alone."

"Treehorn's happy with you and Daddy as friends," said Greenie.

"Actually, Treehorn gets to meet other dogs on the street, Daddy
says. So she can talk to other dogs sometimes. Dog-talk, not real talk."

"Right. That's one good thing about the city," said Greenie.

George did not reply, and Greenie heard the critical echo of her
remark, as if there weren't much to recommend the city at all. For
months, Greenie had braced herself for George to be homesick, to say
how much he missed not just his father and now Treehorn but his old
haunts and friends and other touchstones—yet he hadn't. And although
he'd been told that his father would be moving out soon, he did not ask
when this would happen.

Charlie turned off the road, onto a dirt track. "There," he said.
"There we go." He drove for several yards and stopped at a gate. He got
out, and Greenie followed his lead. She expected him to open the gate,
but he leaned against it, then beckoned to George.

They were looking at a stretch of rough, meager pasture enclosed in
barbed-wire fencing. The vista was still and bleak.

"Where are we?" asked George when Greenie opened his door.

She looked at Charlie, but he was staring at the sky.

"I'm staying here where it's warm," George declared.

"Fair enough," said Charlie, and then, to Greenie, "Look at that."
He was pointing to the horizon—above the horizon. "See those clouds?"

"Hard to miss," said Greenie. In contrast to the wind-flattened landscape
below them, a gathering of elephant-colored clouds stretched
upward in towering formations, ominous in their verticality. Their rising
force seemed infinite, yet the bottom of the cloud mass was so perfectly
planed that it might have been resting on a thousand-acre sheet of
glass.

"Cumulonimbus. But what do you see below them?"

"The land. Nothing much."

"No. Right below them."

Greenie shaded her eyes, for though the sun was hidden, the very
expanse of the sky exerted a milky brilliance all around them. "Haze."

"Rain," said Charlie. "That's rain." He invoked this ordinary noun
like the name of a lover.

"That's great," said Greenie. "That's good news. Isn't it?"

"Look again. It's rain, and it's not rain. It will never reach the
ground."

Greenie could see, then, that the veil stretching from the bottom of
the cloud mass dwindled to invisibility. "Why? Why won't it?"

"Because the air is so impossibly dry. The rain evaporates before it
reaches the ground." He looked at her again. "The other day, you asked
me why there's so little rain. It's not that there's so little rain; it's that
we don't receive that rain. It's taken back before we can get it. That's
half the story of why this part of the world is the way it is. People wish
otherwise—they think they're wishing for rain when what they ought
to pray for is humidity. But that's not in the
nature
of this place. If farmers
could run acequia straight from the clouds, it might be a different
story."

Greenie shivered. "It's cold out here."

"Well, that's it," he said sharply. "You asked about the rainfall, why
there's so little. I like to
show
that to people. It means a lot to see how
the rain disappears, how the air just drinks it up."

"Mommy, I'm hungry," said George. "You said we'd get a treat."

"First, how about lunch?" said Charlie as he looked over his shoulder,
backing toward the road.

He took them to his apartment. When they arrived, Greenie could tell
he had planned their visit beforehand. "I'm very good at grilled cheese,"
Charlie told George. "Do you like grilled cheese, maybe with tomato?"

"Not tomato," said George.

"But the cheese? Is that okay?"

"Yes, I like cheese. Is it cheddar cheese?"

"It is," said Charlie. "All the way from New York. Nice and sharp.
And George, come in here a minute."

While Greenie looked around the one room that served as everything
but kitchen and bathroom, George joined Charlie in the tiny kitchen.
"Oh wow!" she heard her son cry out. "Wow, T. rex!"

She wondered what had rekindled his interest in dinosaurs; he ran
to her from the kitchen and said, "Mom, he can cutten the cheese into a
T. rex!"

Charlie leaned out the kitchen door. "You want a grilled T. rex, too? I
have T. rex and stego." He held up a pair of oversize cookie cutters.

"Mom, choose stego," urged George.

"That's fine. I'm a pacifist, so I prefer stego," she said.

"What's a pacifist?" asked George.

"Someone who likes things peaceful, who doesn't like violence."

"Stegos can fight, Mom. They can crush things with their tail."

"I'm sure they can. Or could. But . . . well, I like their shape, too. I
like their . . . fins. Are they called fins, George?"

"Plates. They are called plates," George said emphatically.

Charlie's place was spartan yet also, in a quiet way, filled with treasures.
His bed—a mattress in a simple frame—took up one corner, covered
with a faded patchwork quilt. In the center of the floor lay a single
rug, a gray-patterned rug made by local Indians. Stretched across the
wall above the bed was a map larger than any she'd ever seen, nearly the
size of a garage door: the Grand Canyon, intricately surveyed in pinks,
purples, blues, and tropical greens, swarming with infinitesimal numbers
and jigsaw lines. At the opposite side of the room stood a couch, a
coffee table, and two antique folding chairs with wooden pockets on
their backs—chairs from a church, designed to hold hymnals or prayer
books. Three small paintings, all desert landscapes, hung on the wall
above the couch.