The Whole World Over (45 page)

"That's because your butt is up against another living creature who
is
freezing its butt off," said Greenie.

"Girl, don't talk horses to me. Your son knows a hell of a lot more
about horses than you do. Bet you did not know that in Mexico they
call a Palomino an Isabella. Or that George Washington's warhorse was
an Arab named Magnolia. I sure as hell did not. Hey, Magnolia! Takes a
mighty secure man to ride a horse into battle with a name like that; well,
to ride a horse into battle at all. You watch out or I'll send Small to the
ranch to study up. Like Rumpelstiltskin. You would never see that boy
again, no you would not."

Greenie had brought together ingredients for cherry bread. It was a
variation on Irish soda bread, baked in a cast-iron skillet with dried
cherries and pepitas instead of raisins and caraway seeds. At lunch, she
would serve it with a spinach gorgonzola salad (the dressing sweet, to
appease Ray) and a veal roast studded, porcupine fashion, with long,
thin slivers of garlic, ginger, and chili pepper. She'd heard everything
Ray said, but her body was a fugue of memory: fingertips, kneecaps,
soles of feet, palms of hands, eyebrows, the hairs at the very top of her
spine, every part of her playing its own hectic tune.

When Ray had been quiet for several seconds, Greenie turned
around. He was chewing his food, but he was also staring at her, squinting,
unsmiling. "Nor would you see that boy—or so much of him—if
Alan were to find out what kind of cookin' you appear to be doing outside
my kitchen."

"Ray," she said, a quiet warning. Just because there was no fooling
Ray did not mean she owed him explanations. "I don't want to talk
about this."

He laughed rudely. "Boy oh howdy you don't. I'd bet the ranch you
don't."

"Fine. You need to tell me you disapprove? Now you have." She
crossed the room to the sink. She ran water briefly into a large bowl. She
put two towels in to soak, then squeezed them out and laid them across
the bowls of dough. "So, would you fire me?"

"Oh please, let's not get dramatic here, Greenie. I'm thinking about
your son. I'm thinking about that husband of yours, who just needs the
well-placed steel toe of a Lucchese boot to get his ass in gear. I'm not
sure you tried that hard when he was out here last summer. Mystified
me just a little, it did."

"How would you know? Did you bug my bed? Does my daw-see-ay
now include my pillow talk? My bathroom talk with George, my views
on cavities and bath toys and drinking milk? And what would you
know about marriage and monogamy and what it's like to be the number
one parent?"

"Who says I know nothing about monogamy?" said Ray.

Greenie carried his dishes to the sink. "Sorry. That was low."

"You do not know me that well," said Ray. "You think I'm a western
chauvinist gas-guzzling stripper-craving horny old phony cowpoke blowhard.
You do."

Greenie couldn't help laughing.

"You do not take me seriously because you'd never vote for me if I
didn't keep you employed. You 'like' me, you find me funny and generous
and charming, right? You might even concede I have a decent if misused
brain in my head. But a high-paid cavalier dilettante, that's me."

Greenie looked directly at Ray for the first time since he had alluded
to Charlie. She did not believe he was seriously angry, but he had never
spoken so aggressively to her.

"Well today," he said, "here's what I think of you. I think you are a
never-tested righteous-thinking petunia-garden liberal with a conscience
like a Barcalounger. You got talent and smarts, you got kindness, you're
a good mom, but that ain't everything. It just ain't."

She could not have spoken if Ray had poked her in the chest with one
of his antique cavalry sabers.

"Oenslager, he's not a bad man, I'm not saying that," Ray said. "I
suppose that's part of the lure. That he's not your typical bad-boy rebellion.
And no, before you get all feminist-righteous on me, I do not
intend to say a word to him. I know my church from my state."

"So tell me what you do intend," said Greenie, speaking softly to
steady her voice.

"I'm just putting you on notice," he said. "Notice, I mean to say, that
you need to think mighty hard about what you are doing with your
wonderful life. Excuse the cheap Gary Cooper reference."

"Jimmy Stewart."

"Right. Jimmy Stewart."

They stared each other down from across the kitchen.

"Notice taken," she said.

"Fair," he said. "My conscience goes forward clean as a plate licked
by a hungry coonhound. Yours is your business. It is." He stood, slapped
his stack of newspapers, then gathered them up. "You know—and I am
not sayin' this describes you, but there are a mighty lot of folk around
these days who just don't think they have to make choices. Your Water
Boy's got a point when he gets to ranting about resorts and fountains
and lawns and the got-to-have-it-all greed in these parts. But it's easy to
be smug when you come from where the
all
is taken for granted. You
should give that a good thought or two. My advice, welcome or not."

Ray squinted at Greenie again, as if she were fading before his eyes,
and then he startled her by dropping his newspapers back on the counter,
crossing the room, and clamping his large callused hands on the sides of
her head. He kissed her so fast, hard, on one cheek, that by the time she
gasped, he had already pulled away.

"That's not harassment, by the way, Ms. Duquette. That's a half
apology. Half. Are we straight?"

Greenie said, "Hardly straight, but I get your point."

"I got to tell you, Greenie, I had my eye on your paramour for Mary
Bliss. She needs a good guy bad. You already got one." He held up his
hands. "Okay, end of tirade. Lunch looks stupendous. And would you
fax McNally the recipe for that dude-ranch meat loaf you made last
night? His version tastes like it's held together with mink oil."

Left alone, Greenie stared out a window, waiting for something to
pass through her empty view: anything to distract from her shame.
When nothing, not even a cloud, would oblige, she turned and put the
pans of bread in the oven. As she closed the door, the phone rang.

Darling
was the first word out of Charlie's mouth, a word of such
old-fashioned tenderness that it made Greenie ache with happiness. Her
mother had called her
darling
—but what a different, far less intimate
endearment it had been, for her mother had called everyone darling,
from her husband to the girls who passed hors d'oeuvres at her parties.
"Darling," when Charlie said it, felt like a whirlpool of rapture. Whenever
Greenie answered the phone, he would say just that word, and
Greenie would say "You," which was her way of expressing that he was
now the world to her, that he was the one for whom she was always
waiting, that he was the high cliff on which she was happy to stand and
from which she had come to realize she might, at any moment, jump.
Jump with open eyes and outspread arms.
Anything,
she might have
been saying,
everything, anything, all.

Greenie and Alan had married each other in a secular ceremony, their
words egalitarian, rational, and modern, but privately, she'd always had
a soft spot for the antique Episcopal vows, most of all that ravishing
phrase
with all that I am and all that I have.
In that moment your beloved
was gravity itself, pulling you in, holding the wide world together,
everything held on the surface of a spinning sphere. "Burn the bridges,
damn the torpedoes, just take me; take everything!" you were saying. "If
it isn't yours, it couldn't possibly matter."

ENTROPY, ATROPHY, FECUNDITY
—what was that word for
nature run organically amok? Whatever the social equivalent, this
was the insidious force that threatened Walter's life, or his peace of
mind, as the snow shrank away and the buds on the trees began their
suggestive swelling.

First and foremost, there was Gordie's reticence, which Walter could
no longer see as a sign of sensitivity. It was more like a sign of stagnation.
Back in January—high fireplace season—Walter had decided that
he felt flush enough to close the restaurant for one night in order to
throw a dinner party for his friends . . . and for Gordie's.

"Sounds terrific, but what's the occasion?" Gordie asked.

"You don't have to have an occasion to throw a party," said Walter.
"But if you want one, well, why not let the occasion be . . . us?"

"That's a very sweet idea, Walter."

Walter waited. He wasn't hearing,
Yes, absolutely! Why not on
Valentine's Day?
"I think I sense a looming
but,
" he said.

"Well, no, but—"

"There it is! The
but
! 'Now here comes the zeppelin.' That's what
Granna used to say whenever we started to make excuses."

Gordie laughed. "My mom wasn't so original. We got the old saw
about saving our buts for the billygoat. We'd drive her nuts with
bleating."

Gordie loved Walter's stories about his grandmother. Walter, in turn,
enjoyed stories about Gordie's big, bursting-at-the-seams Catholic family.
He had already nurtured fantasies about flying with Gordie out to
Montana, where most of his siblings still lived. They sounded like a civilized,
educated, miraculously unjaded clan, so it didn't seem unrealistic
that Walter might one day be a welcome guest at Unsworth family weddings,
christenings, perhaps even Christmas parties. Walter might take
up skiing again.

"So? What do you think?" He hated to press, but he had no choice.

"Well," said Gordie slowly, "the only thing is that my friends, for so
long, were . . . well, they became Stephen's friends as well."

"Of course they did," said Walter.

"So it still feels awkward to . . ."

Walter realized that Gordie, once again, was hoping he would finish
the thought, lending it legitimacy. "To . . . ?"

"To invite them to a big, formal affair where I'm not with Stephen
and I'm not, well, I'm not alone."

"I note your choice of the word
affair,
" Walter said tartly. "And so,
does this mean your friends, after all this time, think you
are
alone?
Think, perhaps, that you're suffering in solitude, as you seem to feel you
deserve? Gordie, my love, life goes on! Has no one ever slung that cliché
in your face? Because you need to hear it loud and clear!"

Gordie laughed nervously. "Walter, you have a very concise way of
hitting the painful nail right on its head."

"Gordie, how old are we now? Old enough to have seen a lot of
sewage ooze under the bridge, are we not? If anyone knows about seizing
the moment, it's people like us. For Stephen, that meant having a
kid—and you know what? Good for him, I say. So what does it mean
for you and me? Not waffling around the bush, I bet you'd agree with
me, right?"

They'd been having a midnight dinner at Gordie's apartment, as they
did two or three times a week; facing each other across the table wasn't
the best situation for talk like this, Walter knew, because they became
accidentally adversarial. "I don't know about you," he went on, "but I
need a very soft place to rest my overworked anatomy." He picked up
the wine bottle and took it to the living room.

Gordie followed with their glasses. "You're completely right, Walter,
and maybe it's time you called my sorry bluff." He sat down not on the
couch beside Walter but on the armchair across the coffee table, only
replicating their positions over dinner.

"Okay then, buster, I'm calling it now."

Gordie did not smile. He refilled their glasses. "Walter, I have to confess
something. Lately I've been feeling like I might . . ."

Walter held his breath.

". . . I might be falling into a kind of depression. I mean, I'm working
as well as ever, business is good—practically too good—and I have a
great time with you, but it's like I, like I didn't end it with Stephen the
way I should have; like I did it so fast I left a big piece of my soul in that
life, and I can't figure out how to go back and retrieve it."

Walter worked to conceal his relief. This was no fun, but it was
progress. As gently as he could, he said, "You're not telling me you want
to go back to Stephen, are you?"

"No, I'm not. Definitely not. But I'm just not up for replacing him.
Yet. And I feel like that's what you're hoping."

That was exactly what Walter had been hoping, but what fool would
say so? "I haven't exactly suggested we merge closets, have I?"

"No, you haven't. But I have a feeling that if Scott weren't a part of
the picture—and listen, Walter, I am so impressed with what you've
done for that boy—well, if he weren't in the picture, I have a feeling you
would. Suggest we move in together."

Walter felt a great sinking. He was tired of calculations. "And you
also have a feeling that if I did, you would say no. Without much
ambivalence."

Abruptly, Gordie stood up, and for one blessed second it looked as if
he would come around the table and sit beside Walter, embrace him, tell
him he was mistaken there; but instead he covered his face with his long,
smooth, lovely, lawyerly hands and let out a muffled scream.

So, thought Walter, almost calmly, he is going to break my heart
again. He is going to do it because, once again, I've set myself up to
let
him do it.

"Walter, I'm sorry, so much of this is timing."

But Gordie had not gone on to tell Walter this was it, it was over, the
usual mortifying severance. No. He'd said that he needed not to feel
rushed, he wanted a little "break," and Walter—oh how desperate
could he
be
?—Walter had meekly agreed. For a month, it was decided,
they would settle back into their separate lives. And then (oh really, as
if
) they would "see."

Matters with Scott were, in a way, equally dicey. Walter tried to
remind himself of all the extenuating circumstances—Scott's age, his
trophy-hausfrau mother, his post-adolescent oblivion—but the bottom
line was that after a month or two of good behavior, Scott had rapidly
settled into predictable teenage slapdashery. Now that Walter was home
a good deal more often, the worst of Scott's traits became even more
conspicuous.

One night, Walter came in after midnight to an apartment that,
except for the slot of radiance under Scott's door, was dark. This was
fine—or would have been if Walter had not twisted his ankle on a foreign
object in what should have been a clear path to the light switch.
When he yelped, the laughter in Scott's room stopped for an instant,
then resumed at a lower pitch. After turning on the light, Walter identified
the offending object as a backpack plunked in the middle of the
floor. Morticia's, no doubt. He left it there. Pick it up, he mused, and
Cousin It might leap from the tie-dyed patch pocket.

There were CDs on the couch, beer bottles and Chinese take-out
containers on the coffee table. With delicate revulsion, Walter lifted a
greasy chopstick from the rug. In the kitchen, he found an empty sink,
but candy bar wrappers and a bottle of hot sauce had been left on the
counter. Two of Granna's samplers hung askew, as if there'd been a
commotion nearby. As he assessed the disarray, Walter heard scratching
on the inside of Scott's door. Without showing a face or saying a word,
someone opened the door just enough for the dog to squeeze his way
out. The door closed, and T.B. sauntered into the kitchen. Oddly, he
wasn't wearing his collar.

"Hello, boy. How's life in the den of hormones?" Walter, whose ankle
had recovered, kneeled down to hug The Bruce. "So what's up, you
pawn your collar for a box of Omaha steaks?" He stood and frowned
toward Scott's door. He threw the candy wrappers in the garbage and
put away the hot sauce.

In the morning, the beer bottles and take-out containers were still in
the living room, though the backpack had vanished. T.B. emerged from
Scott's room once again, this time wearing his collar. Scott emerged
wearing a begonia-pink T-shirt declaring,
I'D RATHER BE HERE NOW.

"Than where? Or, for that matter, than when?" said Walter, looking
up from the paper.

"Excuse me?" said Scott. "Like, top o' the morning to you, too,
dude."

"Your shirt, your slogan du jour. Last I looked, your preference was
to be in Manitoba. But I see you've changed your mind. Just what does
this
mean? Is it some kind of Zen message? No matter where you are,
things are always hunky-dory? Something like that?"

Walter wasn't sure whether Scott's smile betrayed approval
(Exactimento,
dude!)
or mockery
(You hopelessly left-brained fool!).

"Yeah, in a way." Scott shrugged oafishly and poured himself a cup
of coffee. "You're like, so totally literal, Uncle Walt."

"Knowing how to follow directions is something that comes in handy,
young man. Understanding and processing all the messages around you."

"Hey, I know my 'Walk' from my 'Don't Walk.' I know a third rail
when I see one. The life-or-death stuff, no sweat." Scott addressed his
confident views to the interior of the refrigerator, his back to Walter,
playing air guitar as he compared the merits of a half-empty container
of strawberry-kiwi yogurt with those of a tinfoil tray of old french fries.

"Scott, let's not refrigerate the entire West Village."

"Word!" Scott declared, then deftly grabbed both offerings and spun
full circle on one foot, slapping the door shut with the opposite knee.
"T-t-toong, t-t-toong, t-t-toong toong
toong,
" he chanted softly, a perfect
cymbal, as he bopped to the table and sat down. He pushed the fries
toward Walter. "Want some?"

"Ugh, no," said Walter. "But thanks, I suppose."

Scott proceeded to eat the cold fries, dipping them into the yogurt.

"That cannot be good."

Scott pointed to the slogan on his chest. "Be happy with what you
have and in the present moment, that's the message. This"—he gestured
at the food before him—"represents the here and now."

"And what," said Walter, "does that represent?" He gestured toward
the coffee table, the white boxes of petrified rice and jellified lo mein
noodles.

"Oh. Yeah. Sorry. I thought you'd be out for the night. On Tuesdays,
you usually . . . Hey. Sorry."

"Okay, Scott, but even if I hadn't come home, did we have the talk
about vermin? I really don't want mice in the here and now."

His mouth working away, Scott nodded. "Gotcha," he said, allowing
half of a masticated fry to escape. T.B. was there to retrieve it.

"So," said Walter, determined not to be the big bad uncle, "are you
having fun with . . . Sonya?"

"Yeah. She's cool." Scott stopped chewing and smiled slyly at Walter.
"You know, she knows you, like, can't stand her. She says it's okay.
Older men are threatened by her looks. They don't like her till they get
to know her."

Walter snorted. "Threatened by her looks?"

"Guys associate her look with death. It's like an unconscious,
archetypal thing. The dark-haired, light-skinned lady. It gives 'em the
creeps, but it's totally irrational. They're, like, kowtowing to the purely
symbolic."

"Ooh, that sounds dangerous," said Walter.

"I know it sounds bogus, and I sort of agree? But I also get what she
means. The succubus, the siren. She plays with it, kind of like a controlled
experiment of the self. It's even got me doing a little mythological
research. I might write a song about it. But, hey, is it true you can't stand
her?"

"Look, I'm going to have to plead the Fifth on this one. And you'd
better plead your way into the shower. Hugo's expecting you in fifteen
minutes."

Scott stuffed the last fistful of fries in his mouth and bolted for his
room, leaving Walter, once again, to pick up all the food containers.
Was this a battle worth fighting? Walter calmed and amused himself
by composing a letter to Dear Abby. He could sign it
Parent in loco.
"Word!" said Walter to no one, since even T.B. had deserted him for the
younger, cuter model.

WALTER INVITED THIRTY-NINE GUESTS
for the first Friday in March.
At first, he could not decide whether to seat them all together—in one
great quadrangle, Knights of Columbus style—or spread them around
the room in clusters of four and eight. He decided on the latter, in part
because he'd also decided that if Gordie wasn't a party to the party, why
not let Scott invite a few pals? But just to be safe, he'd let the punksters
entertain themselves. There were limits, thought Walter, to the power of
assimilation.

Hugo planned a five-course meal: smoked duck, oyster stew, roast
beef with mashed yams, a salad of apples with beets and blue cheese,
then chocolate banana cream pie. Rich, rich, and richer still. Ben made
pitchers of martinis and set aside thirty-five bottles of a tried-and-true
Napa cabernet, pure purple velvet, and an Oregonian pinot gris, grassy
and effervescent.

Of course, it
would
have to snow.

All morning, the sky had been a sturdy, ominous gray. Toward noon
the first flakes fell, their descent a sly, flirtatious meandering. But Walter
knew the ruse. He walked out the front door and shook his fist. "Gods!"
he shouted at the sky. "Do you never, never have mercy?"

"Mercy from heaven? Why, what a daft notion," Walter heard in
reply.

Bonny Prince Charlie, just down the sidewalk in front of his shop,
was also regarding the sky. "You're not worried about tonight."