The Whole World Over (38 page)

Now Pansy was a school psychologist in New Haven, and Frida ran a
hunger project in Boston. They had not married princes, not yet anyway.
They had not married anyone. Pansy was thirty-five, Frida thirty-seven.
They wanted to be more than aunts. They had never discussed
this in depth with Saga, but you'd have to be an idiot not to know it.

SHE WAS DOWN IN THE BASEMENT
. Oneeka was off for the day, so
Saga had volunteered to flatten the week's cardboard boxes and stack
them up for recycling. She worked carefully with the box cutter, a tool
she would not have trusted herself to use two years before.

The first time she heard a customer talking to Fenno upstairs, she laid
down the box and the cutter and went to the desk. She sat in the chair,
facing the bulletin board with the photographs of the children. Slowly,
she opened the center drawer. In its trays she found the usual things:
pencils, pens, paper clips, rubber bands, a box of staples, a roll of Wint
O Green Life Savers, a nest of crumpled receipts. Under a pack of bookplates
with the store's trademark owl, she found a Polaroid picture of
Fenno with Felicity. He looked a little younger—maybe just because he
was laughing. Felicity's wings were a blur; she might have been about
to take flight from his shoulder. They were indoors somewhere, but it
didn't look like the store.

She closed the drawer quietly when she heard Fenno say good-bye to
the latest customer, heard the string of bells on the door jostle and jingle.
"Faring well down there?" Fenno called out.

"Oh yes!" she answered. She went back to slitting seams on the boxes
until she heard Fenno talking on the phone.

The drawers on the left contained business: invoices, order forms, letters
from publishers, best-seller lists. In the top-right drawer she found
Scotch tape, scissors, a stapler, three rubber stamps, a stamp pad, a bag
of sunflower seeds.

On her final round of snooping, in the right-hand bottom drawer, she
found a soft plaid scarf (struggling, in vain, to find the word for that
very expensive, very fine wool; was it from goats?), a compact umbrella,
and a framed picture where Fenno—definitely younger, with blonder
hair and rosy cheeks—stood in front of a blooming lilac bush with two
other men. Had he mentioned brothers?

She was jolted, and nearly slammed the drawer, when Fenno called
down, "Leave the rest, why don't you, and come up for tea."

It was no longer warm enough to sit in the garden, so Saga joined
Fenno at his upstairs desk (she supposed there was no way she could
explore
those
drawers). Fenno made a series of phone calls to customers
waiting for books. Saga sipped her tea. She was happy listening to his
voice, which could carry you off to some green hilly place in Scotland.
Saga had never been to Scotland, but she had a clear image of the land.
The landscape in
Wee Gillis
, that book from Michael's box, looked a lot
like the landscape in the photo of Fenno with those children.

Cashmere.
There: that was the soft, expensive wool. A deep lavender
word, an early twilight word, expansive as the folded hills of the Highlands
but pillowy, gentle.

When Fenno finished his calls, he thanked Saga for her help, the way
he always did. "I'm not awfully good at hiring new people when I need
them," he said. "So it's a blessing of sorts that
you
found
me.
"

Saga blushed. "You have Oneeka."

Fenno laughed as if she'd made a joke. "Yes I do, and she's smashing.
But in a way she found me, too."

It wasn't Oneeka that Saga wanted to know about. She had a sudden
idea. She asked, "Do you have children? Someone to take over the
shop? So you could be, like, 'Fenno and Son'?"

He gave her a cockeyed smile, and at first she was terrified that he
had seen her snooping in the desk. He poured milk into her tea, remembering
the way she liked it. After a pause, he said, "I'm not even married,
Emily. I am quite far from being a father. Quite."

He still called her Emily, and though she'd felt for a little while as if
the name were a lie, now she liked the old-newness of it. And she liked
that Fenno was the only person in her nonmedical life who called her by
her very first, her original name.

Hoping it would sound innocent, Saga said, "So the children on the
wall in the bathroom, whose are they?"

"My brother's twins," said Fenno. "Camilla and Paul. Altogether, I
have five nieces and one nephew."

The bells on the door jingled then, saving her from having to make
conversation out of her nosy misunderstanding. She said good-bye to
Fenno before he had finished helping his customer find a book on secret
codes. Fenno looked confused at her sudden departure but called out,
"Cheerio!"

On her way to the subway, Saga walked down Tenth Street instead of
Eleventh. She was pleased to find that she had remembered correctly:
yes, here was the baby store with the tiny rocking chairs in the window.
She did not go in, but she paused to look at the silk booties displayed at
the foot of the chairs and at the tiny kimonos, red and orange and blue,
suspended on fishing line above them. They looked like little Japanese
ghosts—happy ghosts, dwarf ghosts—hovering, looking out at the real
people on the sidewalk, not longing for lives of their own but curious:
about what it might be like to have tasks and homes and people to take
care of. The ghosts seemed to wish Saga well.

THE FRIDAY AFTER THANKSGIVING WEEKEND
, Michael and Denise
came to visit again. Except in summer, it was unusual for them to show
up two weekends in a row, but Saga could well imagine they wanted to
bask in their good family news.

At least they'd given warning so that Saga could plan for bigger meals
on Saturday and Sunday. Friday night, they drove out from the city
straight to Uncle Marsden's favorite steak house.

"Dad, I gotta say, you have simple standards for dining out," said
Michael when his prime rib arrived. "This broccoli nearly matches
my suit."

"Are you complaining?"

"Come on, Dad, this place is great—I mean, I loved it when I was
ten, it brings back great memories—but it's amazing how they've survived
without changing a thing. Like, a menu on a cutting board? Cottage
cheese with pickles and breadsticks? There's retro, and then there's
antediluvian."

"Saga and I are happy with old-fashioned things, aren't we?" He
took Saga's hand and started to sing. " 'We're old-fashioned, and we
don't mind it.' "

"Dad," groaned Michael, "your voice is as overcooked as the
broccoli."

"Ah well." Uncle Marsden kissed Saga's hand and dropped it.

For a moment, Michael and Denise were both smiling fondly at Saga.
Had pregnancy really made them this nice? Denise started to speak to
Saga, but Uncle Marsden interrupted.

"Speaking of old-fashioned, I have quite the surprise for you two
when we get back to the house." He'd had a foam mattress cut to fit the
cradle; Saga had picked out sheets. "Even you might shed a little tear,
my sophisticated son."

"Oh that'll be the day," said Denise, but she was clasping Michael's
hand on the table. They touched so often now that you could almost
imagine the teeny-tiny baby taking its earliest food from Michael as
well, carried right through its mother's skin.

Michael's phone rang in his pocket. "Excuse me a minute," he said,
and carried his conversation out the door of the restaurant.

"Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?" Saga said to Denise.

Denise pursed her lips as if she were about to laugh, as if Saga had
asked a silly question. She looked out toward the parking lot, where
Michael could be seen pacing and gesturing, making some kind of deal.
"Actually . . ." She looked at Uncle Marsden. "Well, we have a surprise
for you too."

Uncle Marsden had finished his steak and was cutting his baked
potato into cubes. Onto this grid he would slather sour cream, then cottage
cheese, and then he would savor one small bite at a time. The broccoli
he had discarded onto his butter plate.

"Well, my girl, will you spit it out, this secret of yours, or shall we
talk about the
Farmer's Almanac
predictions for winter? I hear it's to be
a mild one."

Denise ventured one more glance toward the parking lot. Her sigh
was like an exclamation of pure amazement. "Well." She blushed at her
plate, then looked up at Uncle Marsden. "We found out yesterday we're
having twins. They thought so last week, but now it's certain. We heard
two separate heartbeats."

Saga thought of the twins at the bookstore, the picture in the bathroom.
Uncle Marsden gasped. "Good Lord. Will that age me doublequick?"

There was an awkward pause, and then Uncle Marsden stood,
startling Saga. He leaned across the table, grasped both of Denise's
hands, pulled her toward him, and kissed her on the mouth. "My dear,"
he said, "you must both be very happy." When he sat down, there were
curds of cheese on his necktie and tears in his eyes. Using his napkin, he
wiped the tears away. As unobtrusively as she could, Saga reached over
and used her own to wipe off his tie.

"Oh yes," said Denise. "Yes, we are."

Uncle Marsden stood abruptly again. "I am going to get that negligent
son of mine. I do not care if he is trading Long Island Sound for the
Caribbean."

Alone with Denise, Saga said, "Wow. I mean,
wow.
"

Denise looked flustered. "You'll have to be an honorary aunt," she
said.

"Thank you," said Saga. "I would love that."

Denise seemed on the verge of saying something else, but then she just
kissed Saga on the cheek. Why was Denise suddenly so attentive to her?
Did getting what she had wanted make her sorrier for Saga?

When father and son returned to the table, Uncle Marsden had possession
of Michael's cell phone. He grinned as he put it in his own pocket.

"I'll pay for that," said Michael, but cheerfully.

"Oh nonsense," said Uncle Marsden. "The world will turn quite happily
without your help." He called the waiter and ordered cold duck, the
closest thing they had to champagne.

Michael kissed Denise and said, "I want you to know, babies work as
an excuse in my line of work for about fifteen minutes. And let's not forget
that now I'll have
two
new mouths to feed."

Denise kissed him back. "And a bigger apartment to find."

Michael raised his hands in surrender. "House of cards. What can
you do?"

Back at the house, Saga found that she was too exhausted to clean up
the day's dishes, a ritual she often shared with Uncle Marsden, though
mostly he liked to sit nearby on a stool, drink tea, and talk.

"My dear, I will do it with the help of Mr. High Finance here. You
two girls get on up to bed. Tomorrow we have our lichen expedition."

"Oh," said Denise, "can I go along?"

Uncle Marsden looked pleased; even Michael looked pleased. He was
putting on his mother's apron as Saga led the way upstairs, turning on
lights.

In her room, she took her notebook from her knapsack. Out of it
fell the picture of Fenno and Felicity. She held it, hands trembling. She
remembered finding it, but she did not remember stealing it. Saga stared
at it for a moment and then propped it against the lamp on her bureau.
Well, she reasoned, it
had
been buried in a drawer beneath things that
were probably never used, hadn't it?

As she put on her nightgown, she heard the reverberations from the
kitchen, carried upward along with the heat. She heard plates clattering
too loudly against one another, the way they always did in the hands of
men. She heard, though at first they were muffled by running water, the
voices of the men manhandling the plates. And then the water stopped.

"It's just an idea," said Michael. "I've been thinking I could start my
own little firm in New Haven, maybe by next year sometime. I could
commute for a while before then, if I had to."

"You'd better not expect me to babysit," said Uncle Marsden.

Michael laughed. "One day, we might just have to babysit for you. I
can see it now, the Snail Guy wandering up and down the beach in his
mad-professor daze, hurling insults at the residents of the new condos."

Uncle Marsden made a growling noise. "What 'mad-professor daze'
are you referring to, young man?"

Water ran briefly again. "Listen, Dad, I called that broker we grew up
with, the one who used to lifeguard at the club, and she told me there's
a small house coming up for sale in a few months, closer to the village.
An old one, a gem. A captain's house. It would be perfect for you. If I put
our apartment on the market right away, I'm sure I could—" Water again.

Saga stood directly over the vent. Warm air filled her nightgown, soft
and feathery up across her belly and breasts. The gown swelled like a
tulip in bloom, like a pregnancy. She moved to the side and bent over.
Now the warm air blew, less pleasantly, straight in her face.

When the water stopped again, she heard Uncle Marsden say,
"—Saga. That would have to be a condition."

"Sure," said Michael, but Saga could hear his reluctance, along with
his agreement, ricochet all the way from two stories below. "Dad, we
have to talk about Saga, not just about where she's going to live. With
Denise pregnant, I've been—" The dishwasher changed from a hiss to
a roar.

AFTER A FINE WEEKEND OF WEATHER
that yearned back toward
summer, a sea of flat, monotonous clouds moved in. It rained for days.
Saga spent Monday and Tuesday typing up her uncle's notes on the
lichens and mosses he had collected on their family hike. She helped him
label slides and put them in the carousel. (His hands shook just enough
now that this simple task was nearly impossible for him.) She felt glad to
be useful, but she did not know what it meant that Uncle Marsden,
through all this time they were spending together, said nothing about
the proposal Michael had made that night in the kitchen. By Wednesday,
she felt anxious and hurt, but what could she say? She decided to
take an early train into the city, to hell with the tempest.