The Whole World Over (48 page)

Stephen had then declared that he did not want to talk about Gordie
anymore—not for a long time.

So now, for the third meeting in a row, they spoke about the practicalities
of adoption. If Alan had not been Stephen's therapist, he would
have put Stephen in touch with Joya. Only a few nights before, Alan had
had a dream in which he entered his office to see, hanging over the
couch, an enormous, intricately rendered map of the world.
I never
knew my geography,
he thought as he approached it, excited to find this
surprise on his wall. Right away, he saw that several countries were covered
with a texture that looked from a distance like a cartographer's
marking for mountainous terrain but that proved, up close, to comprise
hundreds of upturned cherubic faces, all rendered photographically.
They were the faces of orphan babies scanning the sky. He knew this
without question just as he woke up, to his alarm clock. Well, he
thought as he rose from his bed, wasn't it obvious what they were looking
for? Planes full of American adults who were wealthy and loving yet
driven by a specific loneliness and the longing to cure that loneliness:
cure it with the faces and bodies and arms of those very babies.

ALAN HAD AGREED TO HELP SAGA
, every few weeks, distribute
leaflets for her animal-welfare group—notices from owners who'd lost
their pets or, conversely, pleas on behalf of pets who needed owners.
Alan told Saga he'd be happy to place the notices on neighborhood bulletin
boards and bus shelters while walking Treehorn, so long as he did
not have to traffic with the surly Stan, who (talk about the rigors of
adoption!) had peered rudely around Alan's apartment, grilled him mercilessly,
and made him sign about two dozen forms before allowing him
to take the puppy home.

Why were so many people who devoted themselves so passionately
to animals so odd, even misanthropic? Saga herself—whose own saga
he had never been able to elicit, at least not by indirect means—often
seemed vaguely autistic. He had watched her at Walter's dinner party
(where she appeared to be the "date" of Fenno McLeod, though everyone
knew McLeod was gay), and though she had joined in the conversation
often enough, sometimes her face had looked blank or intent, as if
she were not a native English speaker. She had slipped away before
dessert, claiming that she had to catch "the last train out."

Her largely incurious attitude toward other people was something
Alan now realized he might have seen in that boy Diego—another animal
lover—and he hoped that George, through his devoted association,
would not take on the same demeanor. The boy had appeared at times
to be disconnected from the flow of human interaction around him,
even from his friendship with George.

Alan was mulling this over, heading into the newly fashionable Meatpacking
District with Treehorn, trying not to entangle the leash with a
roll of masking tape as he posted neon-yellow flyers about an abandoned
litter of Airedales
(We are cute and healthy but homeless!),
when
he saw Jerry, his old therapist and mentor, step out of a boutique on
Gansevoort Street. They saw and recognized each other at the very same
moment.

"Yo!" said Jerry. In the year and a half since Alan had last seen him,
he had rejuvenated his hair color and grown a trim mustache. He carried
a shiny silver bag frothing with pink tissue paper. "Man, look at you."

Alan wondered what Jerry was seeing. "Well, yes, and you. You're
thriving, that's obvious."

"In most ways; in the important ways, I guess." Jerry leaned down
and extended the back of his hand to Treehorn. "Wow, a dog! Hi there,
lucky dog of Alan." Treehorn licked the hand. "How's Greenie? How's
your son—George? How are those heavenly
pastries
? Is she giving
Martha a run for her money?"

"We're all just fine," said Alan. "Fine."

"Are you still down here in the same place?"

"More or less."

Jerry tilted an eyebrow. "What's the less part?"

"I just mean that we're ready for somewhere else. We're working
on it."

Jerry nodded. "My rent's about to shoot through the roof. I'm actually
down here myself doing the rounds with a broker. Condos are
sprouting up like mad"—he gestured at a tower rising above the warehouses,
conspicuous and scornful—"and this is the only way to keep
Daphne from dragging me off to Pelham. The bad news I have to give
her is the price per square foot. The good news . . ." He swung the elegant
shopping bag aloft; it caught a flash of setting sun. And then he
asked, as Alan had known he would, "How
are
you, Alan? I left you a
message last fall—you get it?"

Alan saw Jerry trying to read, discreetly, one of the flyers with the
photo of the Airedale pups. Feeling bad about his earlier evasiveness, he
said, "I'm sorry. I wish I could say I was too busy to call back, but the
truth is, I don't have as many patients as I'd like. I'm hoping it's a temporary
lull."

"Maybe," said Jerry. "But too many people are turning to pills." He
sighed. "Could you see yourself teaching? Doing something institutional?"

Sure. Like committing myself.
"I suppose I ought to consider that."

"I'm in on a few public health projects," said Jerry. "We're in one
of those cycles when the city actually attends to its conscience, when
the powers that be include social workers. How's that for political
paradox?"

Alan laughed politely.

"Call me if you're interested. Right now there's room at the top."

"I appreciate the offer," said Alan. Treehorn pulled on the leash,
eager to walk along the last remaining block where bisected cows, not
handbags and cashmere sweaters, were still the prime commodity on
display.

Jerry swung his silver bag again, as if to draw attention to his prosperity.
(What possessed Alan to project such pettiness onto a man who'd
never been anything but good to him?) "Let's get together," he said, and
Alan could see that he meant it. Before Alan could reply, however, Jerry
had spotted the rare vacant taxi and waved it down over Alan's shoulder.
"You know where to find me!"

Alan dumped the last few flyers in a garbage can and aimed for the
river, into the sharp wind of early March yet also toward a bright rosy
sky, the shine and scent of the water, sensations to which he and Treehorn
looked forward nearly every afternoon.

It was close to ten o'clock when Greenie called. Realizing that he had
only a month left in which to pack, Alan had just sealed his first box of
books, psychotherapy texts that he had not opened in ten years yet
could not discard because they had become talismans of his profession.
He was about to tell her this news
(You see, I'm serious, I'm really
finally doing it!)
when she said, urgently, "Alan, you're going to despise
me for what I have to tell you, and I won't blame you at all if you do."

For twelve minutes, she did not allow him to interrupt her. He
became aware of the time as minutes because he was sitting on the
couch, directly across from a ship's clock that Greenie's father had given
Alan for his thirtieth birthday. The minute hand moved not smoothly,
imperceptibly, but in discrete, isolated clicks. As he tried to concentrate
on Greenie's self-deprecating yet fiercely calm confession, stray thoughts
worked their minor sabotage. The ship's clock posed a thorny question:
Would Greenie have dared to leave him if her parents were still
alive? The cardboard box at his feet, one that formerly held bottles of
gin, seemed to sigh with relief: Oh now I won't
have
to pack. And when
Treehorn, seeing Alan immobile, wormed her way onto the couch beside
him, he felt a wave of consolation: At least I'll still have
you.

As Greenie spoke precisely yet defensively about this guy from her
past, this guy she now knew she had probably "always loved," this guy
she needed to "know about, one way or the other, or I'd never be able
to live with myself," Alan realized that—as she had told him months
ago—this probably
was
someone he'd met; more accurately, even
absurdly, whose congratulations he had accepted as he stood in the formal
reception line that Greenie's mother had treated like a ritual of life-or-death
importance.

"Can I say something now?" he said at the end of her soliloquy.

"Yes. But please don't try and convince me to change my mind."

Perhaps Alan was an idiot not to have expected exactly this; some
might say he'd been asking for it. Yet he was also convinced that he and
Greenie had been joined far too long to be divided by a single conversation,
no matter what Greenie believed. "You know that I still love you,"
he said. "You know that I am packing up, intending to join you in less
than a month. You know how long we've been together, no matter how
many years ago you knew this other guy."

"I know all that," she said. "I'm sorry."

Alan thought carefully. He knew better than to ask how long she'd
been sleeping with the man. "Let me come out next week, for a few
days."

"No, Alan, not now. Not right now. Please."

You can't stop me,
he wanted to say. "You're implying later would be
better? How much later?"

"I can't keep you away, I know that," she said, as if reading his mind.
"And I can't ask you favors anymore, but then, I don't owe you any
either."

Alan knew what she meant, but he would not mention Marion. If
that's what this was about, there was nothing he could do.

Her voiced softened when she said, "Alan, is it too late for you to
keep the apartment?"

Why answer this coldhearted question? Or why not lie outright just
to stab her in the heart? "No," he said coldly. "They were planning to
renovate."

"I never thought I would do anything like this to anyone," she said,
her voice so subdued that Alan could hardly hear her. "Least of all
to you."

Cheating and lying and wounding,
he might have said,
are hardly
childhood aspirations.
How did they manage to sneak up on you the
way they did, the motives of real live bumbling grown-ups that justified
such acts?

He must make you very happy.
Also unsaid.

"Alan? Alan, are you still there?"

"I don't feel as if I am, Greenie. I don't know what to say except that
I won't let you end our marriage like this. I just won't."

"You have to let me go."

"I don't have to do anything." He wanted to tell her that, if he chose
to, he could arrive on her doorstep anyway, with all their belongings.
Did he suddenly love her more, want her more, because this Charlie
wanted her too?

"Alan, when was the last time we were together without fighting?"

"Come on, Greenie, what married couple doesn't fight? Fighting is
never the real issue."

"That's not true," she said.

He sighed. "You're right. But only about that." He felt his resolve
begin to falter. "We have to stop talking for now. But we have to keep
talking."

She agreed, or she pretended to. She said she would call back in a few
days, when she wasn't working and George was asleep or at school. A
week went by in which Alan cocooned himself in routine. Every time he
spoke with George, the boy was with Consuelo. Alan questioned his
own judgment—his desire to feel that George, like him, was filled with
sorrow—but he sensed a new distance or apathy in George. He seldom
asked about Treehorn, and when Alan asked him what friends he'd
played with or what he had done that day, he offered not a single detail.
In the midst of weary silences, Consuelo could be heard urging George
on in a poorly disguised whisper. ("Tell your daddy about the donkey
that came to your school, the way you rode him!")

Then Alan came home one night to a message from Greenie that
sounded fearful and obligatory: how bad she felt; how she was "checking
in"; how she hoped he was talking with friends. . . . He erased it and
did not call back. He drank half a bottle of Scotch and worked himself
into a silent rage—not at Greenie but at Ray McCrae. It was a good
thing he had no way to reach the man. He would have made a lout of
himself.

Some might have thought it strange, or repressed, that Alan did not
feel immediately angry at Greenie. He simply canceled the mover he had
reserved. He shoved the one box he had packed into a corner. Whenever
he left the apartment, he took circuitous routes to avoid his own street.
He did not want to run into Walter or Fenno McLeod or anyone else
who might inquire about Greenie. It struck him, in a rush of bitter
shame, that Walter might
know.

He called Jerry. He said nothing about Greenie but listened as Jerry
described his good works for the city. He began to think about Marion
again; he had to make her look at him as something other than a threat.

Something would give, he thought. Something had to give. There
was a physics to emotion as well as to matter. This was the one thing
Alan knew.

"
I THINK THIS PLACE IS RUN BY THE MOB
," he whispered
across the table, an obvious bid for her trust. "But the soufflés are
out of this world."

Saga watched Michael unfold his napkin and smooth it across his lap.
She did the same. "It's very pretty," she said. "I haven't been to many
restaurants other than Uncle Marsden's favorites."

Michael made a face of friendly disbelief. "You don't really still call
my dad 'uncle,' do you?"

"Of course I do. You still call him Dad."

"Touché." He beckoned to a waiter. The waiters wore tuxedos and
carried their noses high, like hounds sniffing the wind. "Glass of wine?"

Saga shook her head.

"She'll have a Pellegrino," Michael told the waiter with confidence.
"And what reds do you have by the glass?" After describing a number
of wines to Michael, the waiter told them about food specials—and
warned them to order their soufflés now or it would be too late. Fancy
restaurants were exhausting, thought Saga. She did not enjoy having to
focus on the waiter, on his lofty nose, to pretend they were having a real
conversation, so instead she looked around at the breathtaking cavern
of a room in which they were seated. The ceiling was surely over two
stories high; hanging from it were fans that wobbled as they turned,
making her even more nervous than she already was. Thank goodness
there was no fan over their table, nothing that threatened to fall on her
head.

"You've got to have a soufflé," said Michael. "The special sounds
great, but they're all stupendous. You can't go wrong." He pointed at
her menu.

Saga looked down, for an instant unable to decode the choices
before her.

"Does madame like citrus flavors?" said the waiter, pretending to be
helpful (now, she decided, he looked like an angry bull terrier). "The
Grand Marnier is quite superb. It's made with a touch of tangerine."

"Yes, that one sounds fine," said Saga; anything to make him go. The
combined scrutiny of Michael and the waiter was too much to bear.

She followed Michael's suggestions for an appetizer and a main
course, even though she was nowhere near that hungry.

"Dad says you're getting into the city a lot these days. I'm glad to
hear that," said Michael. "He says you're working for the ASPCA."

"No," said Saga. "It's a smaller group. We don't have that kind of
money or so many people." She didn't want to say the name, for fear
of Michael's reaction. "True Protectors" had come to sound silly even
to Saga.

"From what I hear, they should be paying you."

"No, it's strictly volunteer. Not even the guy who runs it gets paid. He
does it in addition to a full-time job." She felt a surge of admiration for
Stan.

"Ah." Michael buttered a roll. Saga wished he would get it over with;
she knew exactly why he had asked her out for this expensive lunch.
"Would you give me a tour of the headquarters sometime?" he said. "If
it's anywhere downtown, I could meet you there at lunch one day.
Maybe my firm could make a donation. They'd match anything from
me if it's a five-oh-one C three."

A brief explosion of laughter escaped from Saga. She was glad she
had no food in her mouth. "Well, it's in Brooklyn, and it's kind of private.
It's in someone's house. It sort of
is
his house."

Michael frowned. "Is it regulated by any kind of agency?"

"Stan does a great job. You don't need any agency to figure that out.
You just need to know animals." She hoped she didn't sound annoyed.
She couldn't afford to irritate Michael, not any more than she knew she
already did.

He nodded, chewing. The waiter came with their twin servings of
snails in little pools of butter. The round dish, with its circle of round
compartments, reminded Saga of a watercolor tray, though in this case
there was no color (unless you counted the flurry of parsley).

"How's Denise?" she said. "How's she feeling?"

"Denise is so great, I am in awe," said Michael. "Four months to go
and she is already just enormous. I don't know how Mother Nature
does it!"

His phone rang just then, and to her amazement he took it out of his
pocket and turned it off. "A fine meal shouldn't be spoiled by interruptions,"
he said. "Eat up! They're really wonderful in a completely old-fashioned
way." Saga watched him press a piece of bread into one of
the butter pools. She picked up the tiny fork and forced herself to eat
two snails. She thought of Uncle Marsden and his contribution to the
advancement of salad.

Enough, she decided. She took a deep breath. "Michael, did you ask
me out so we could talk about the house?" She hated the high, uncertain
sound of her own voice, but Michael's face loosened with gratitude.

"Yes, I did, Saga. Did Dad say something? He said he wouldn't—
not because I didn't want him to, but because he . . . well, we've had
disagreements."

"Okay," said Saga. "He didn't need to say anything. I've heard you
talking. About the house closer to town." No expression, she thought.
Let me say these things with no expression.

"Saga, Dad's getting older."

"So are we all, Michael. Please, just let's tell the truth about all this."

Michael glanced out the window. Saga looked, too. Between two
buildings across the street, she had noticed a view of the Hudson River
when she sat down. She was startled to see that now, all of a sudden, the
river had been replaced with another building—a building that moved
from right to left. She gasped.

"What is it?" said Michael.

"The—" She saw the tail end of the cruise ship, then the river view
restored. "Oh."

Michael laughed nervously. "You okay?"

"I just remembered something, that's all."

The waiter took away their snail plates. "You didn't like that," said
Michael. "I'm sorry."

"I'm not relaxed here, Michael. You want to take away my home."

He did not smile or look away. "I want you to see this house, with me
and Dad, next weekend. It's really cute."

"Cute," said Saga. No expression. No expression!

"Okay," said Michael, drawing out the word. "You think I mean
tiny. You think I'm talking real-estate lingo. I'm not. Saga, that house
is just too big for the two of you. Have you noticed that mice and
bats have moved into the back attic, under the eaves? I think the local
wildlife believes the place is abandoned!"

Saga was aware of the creatures who shared the top floor with her,
though she had never seen them. She was fairly certain that in fact a
family of squirrels, not mice, had moved in. At night, she heard their
cavortings through the upstairs walls and found them comforting. Uncle
Marsden, with his poor hearing, was probably none the wiser.

"You can hire an exterminator if you think they're wrecking stuff,"
she said, though the thought that he might do this made her sad. She
knew she had to make—what was the word?

Accommodations.
(A long, long train, all its cars the same dark blue.)

Now two businessmen in glossy suits took the table beside them. One
placed a briefcase on the cushioned bench right next to her thigh. Saga
smelled an intense cologne. The scent was exotic but slightly sickening.

"I guess you and Denise want the house for yourselves. That's it,
right?"

"You make us sound so greedy."

"You're having these babies, which is great, and you need more
space. But why do you have to take your dad's house?"

"Because it's my house, too, Saga. And Pansy's and Frida's, but
they . . ." Michael closed his eyes briefly. "Saga, do you think Dad's
emeritus salary pays the taxes on that place in this day and age? The
heating bill? I'm afraid not."

Saga was glad to see the waiter this time. He set before her a plate
with a piece of pearl-colored fish, a cluster of tiny potatoes, and something
oily and green, all in a ring of rosy-colored sauce. It did smell
good, but she wondered how she would eat it. She stared for a moment
at her oddly shaped fork and remembered, painfully, the way it had felt
just after the accident to confront any array of tools, things she saw as
familiar but was not certain she knew how to use. She picked up the
fork. She'd had no idea Michael was helping pay for the house—if it
was even true. Well, it probably was.

"Listen, Saga, you're my cousin, my flesh and blood! The last thing in
the world I'd ever want to do is throw you out, but I think you and Dad
have settled into a . . . I think you need each other in ways . . . I don't
want to pass judgment here, because I'm grateful he's had your company
the past few years. I think he'd have gone downhill much more
severely after Mom died if—"

"He hasn't gone downhill at all, if you ask me."

Michael raised his hands in defense. "You're right. He's amazing for
his age. I've heard he still gives a great lecture, too, and that he stays up
with the new science, even though he pretends to be a curmudgeon."

"Let's not change the subject," said Saga.

"I'm not. Let me tell you one of my biggest fears: that Dad will fall
down those treacherously crooked stairs to the basement or electrocute
himself rewiring a lamp or . . . well, the house itself is a bit of a peril, let's
forget about Dad's state of mind. Or body. Though you cannot ignore
the physical reality. Because once you get older, no matter how sharp
you are, all it takes is one misstep and next thing you're in the hospital
with a busted hip or ribs, then in the nursing home. People fall apart
fast at that age if they have an accident. They just don't have the
resilience . . ." Michael wasn't dense. He saw Saga's cold, hard stare and
knew he had begun to offend her.

He raised his knife and fork, glancing down briefly at his steak; this
discussion had not spoiled
his
appetite. Abruptly, he set them back
down and looked almost piercingly at Saga. "Please try not to see me as
the bad guy. How can I make you believe that I'm also concerned about
you
? Dad is old, Saga, but you're
young.
You shouldn't be swallowed
up by the demands of that huge house and a man who takes so much for
granted."

Saga stared out the window for a moment, then back at Michael.
"Tell me about the house."

Michael frowned. He looked down at his plate and ate a bit of meat.
He sighed loudly. "Okay then. So Saturday we are going to look at it.
We've got first refusal. Even if we don't want it, it's not likely to go on
the open market. It's a real gem." He continued to eat. Saga could
see that her coldness had unsettled him. She felt both ashamed and
triumphant.

"This is my idea," he said. "Denise wants to have the babies here, in
the city, with the doctor she knows, start this new life in the place we
know best. We figure we'd be looking to move out in October, November
at the latest."

No expression.
Saga felt the tears rise.
No expression!
"You've just
gone and decided without us," she said.

Michael finished chewing his mouthful of food. He looked sad but
impatient. "Dad knows all this. He's the one who's refused to tell you
about it. I have no guilt there."

"So he's agreed to this other house."

"Contingent on seeing it," said Michael.

Contingent:
mustard, ridged like bark, rough to the touch.

"What if he doesn't like it?" said Saga.

"I'm pretty sure he will. I'm pretty sure
you
will. It's got a beautiful
modern kitchen with everything built in."

How awful that sounded. She thought of the cabinets with their wavy
old glass, reflecting back and forth across Uncle Marsden's beautifully
modern kitchen. "And will you be paying the taxes there, too?"

One of the men at the neighboring table looked right at her. Her tone
now had plenty of expression.

"Oh Saga," said Michael, "I was so afraid it would get hostile like
this."

"I'm not hostile. I'm just . . ."

Michael waited.

"I'm just sad. That's all. Just incredibly sad." And murderously
angry.

Michael reached across the table and grasped her left hand with his
right. "I am trying to be honest with you. Which is more than some
members of my family have been. If Dad . . . if he really saw and
respected who you are, he'd make you get out more, meet other people.
When you were with David, you had a very full life, and you can have it
again. You weren't married, but it was obvious that once you . . ." Was
Michael clenching his teeth? He glanced at the ceiling, then said, "Ask
Dad to tell you more about your life before the accident."

"It's my life now that matters," said Saga. But how could she talk
back to Michael now that she knew he had been supporting her? It
made him almost noble; never mind all his snooty, unkind remarks in
the past. She
was
a charity case. His charity case.

"I hate it that I've made you cry," Michael whispered. "Please."

Please what? she wanted to say. Please disappear? Please act like
what's good for me is terrific for you? Please don't be so attached to a
home that's never really been yours in the first place? Please get a brain
transplant and go to law school, maybe in California? But answers like
those were not fair to
this
Michael.

If someone out on the sidewalk had peered through the grand window
beside their table, that person probably would have thought that
she and Michael were a couple in the middle of a breakup. They'd have
wondered, What is that dashing, well-dressed man doing with that
rough-around-the-edges woman who isn't dressed up enough for that
restaurant? Saga thought of David (for this she
could
blame Michael),
who by now quite probably had a wife. In Zimbabwe or even in Connecticut,
maybe the next town over. And that did it: now she could not
stop crying, though she cried as silently as she could.

"Oh dear God," said Michael. "I am sorry, Saga."