The Whole World Over (50 page)

Saga checked her watch. It was four o'clock. She was on Horatio
Street, not far from the bookshop. It would be open for another three
hours, but Saga did not feel like seeing Fenno, whose kindness would
encourage her to confess all the rage and panic she felt. Lately, she was
surprised at how much she found herself telling Fenno in the pockets of
time when they were alone together.

Not that he hadn't told her a lot about his own life. The evening
she had gone up to his apartment for dinner, he had shown her photographs
of his family in Europe—they looked like a happy clan: happily
married, happily overrun by children, happily overworked in their privileged
jobs—and Saga had seen, or guessed, one of the things that made
her want so badly to be with Fenno. Inside himself, just like her, he was
basically alone. People surrounded him, and people loved him, but he
had accepted in their midst the role of the Lonely One.

This was something she could only guess. Fenno had spoken with
great affection about his Scottish home and his relatives, and then he'd
asked about Saga's family. So she had told him about Uncle Marsden
and her cousins—she could speak about them lovingly, too, if she was
fair—and she'd told him about her accident, how her dad died of cancer
right before it, her mother of a stroke just a couple years after. It turned
out that Fenno's parents and hers had died of almost exactly the same
causes, though his mother was the one who went first, with the cancer.
They had a lot to empathize about, a lot more in common than Saga
might have hoped.

It was while he cooked the curried shrimp, at the stove, that he told
her he was gay. "Not that I've ever been a success at making a good
match," he'd said while his back was to her, while the shrimp sizzled in
the pan with the garlic. He'd pretended to find this funny.

"But you fall in love," Saga heard herself say, "don't you?"

He had turned around for a minute, looking surprised. (Why did she
have to be so blunt?) He didn't tell her it wasn't her business, though.
He cooked for a minute or so without answering, and then he said
softly, "Of course I do."

She had not gone so far as to ask if he was in love with anyone right
then.

Fenno was more her friend now than he had been before her embarrassing,
gushing confession in the store that day. But still, she wanted to
think in private about all the things Michael had told her. If she were to
stop by the bookshop now, Fenno would see that she was unhappy, and
he would ask why, and she would tell.

When she found a phone booth on Hudson, she called Stan.

"Come out and help me bathe some kittens," he said without any
small talk. "All hell is breaking loose."

With his griping and his bossing around, Stan would leave her no
time for self-pity. The animals, he might say—homeless, discarded,
starved, bitten, diseased—now
they
had problems.

Saga could still taste the garlic from lunch as she walked from the
subway. She hoped Stan wouldn't smell her breath and make some nasty
comment. But when she turned onto his block, she knew there'd be little
time for idle comments. Sonya's van was in the driveway, and the house
was like a big jukebox, broadcasting the sound of ten dogs barking.

"Jesus, Story Girl, get yourself in here. I've got a howler on my
hands."

Once Stan let her in, Saga could discern the sound of one dog howling
its heart out, that baying-at-the-moon persistence, which had worked
up every other dog and even a couple of the cats. Stan explained that
Sonya was going to take the loudmouth to her place for the night, after
she dropped off another dog she had to take back to its owner; in the
meantime she had begun helping him with a flea bath. Saga could hear,
through all the ruckus, the pitiful bleating of kittens.

The bathroom on the first floor was given over to caring for the animals.
The shelves in the medicine chest and the back of the toilet were
crowded with flea and tick shampoos, gauze pads, tubes of ointment,
vials of eyedrops, and pills from the charitable vet. Hanging on a rack,
along with towels, were leashes, harnesses, collars, and a muzzle. A tattered
poster of the cartoon dog Snowy faced the toilet.

"Hey," said Sonya when Saga looked into the bathroom. "Don't slip
on the floor. These guys are ninjas." She'd taken off her shirt. Saga tried
not to stare at Sonya's black spiderweb bra and the snake tattoos coiling
around her arms.

"Hi," said Saga. "Can I help?"

Stan pushed past her and reached out to Sonya, who handed him a
kitten bundled in a washcloth. He didn't seem to notice or care that
Sonya was shirtless. Stan held the kitten up to his face and spoke to it
sweetly, stroking its wet little head. He sat on the toilet and gave it a
gentle rubdown. "Get me that plastic laundry basket by the back door,"
he told Saga.

The howler had taken a break, but now he was at it again.

"Christ!" Stan exclaimed. "It's a good thing my neighbors are too
psychotic to get the cops' attention!"

Saga finally asked, "Do you want me to take over for Sonya?"

"We've got a system going here," said Sonya. She gave a second kitten
to Stan. The first was nestled in a towel lining the laundry basket.

Sonya turned to Saga. "Listen. Do me a favor. There's this dog in the
van out there, I think he probably needs a walk. He's a cream puff. Can
you do that for me? Take him around the block, and by the time you get
back, I can take the werewolf too. You got a crate for that monster?"
she said to Stan.

"He's not a monster," said Stan. "He's just being expressive. Probably
has a lot of legitimate gripes."

The "cream puff" sat in the passenger seat, his nose to the crack
Sonya had left above the window. When Saga opened the door and the
light went on inside the van, she laughed. "I know you," she said.
"You're . . ." She couldn't quite remember his name, but she knew this
dog from that restaurant near Fenno's store.

He licked her hand. "Hello, you," she said. He wore a wide leather
collar with metal studs; Saga twisted it around, to read his tags. Sure
enough, next to his rabies tag was a big silver heart engraved
The Bruce,
with the name of his owner (Walter, yes, the one who gave the party
the night of the storm) and a phone number. "Good to see you, The
Bruce!" she said. Though he showed no interest in escaping, she held
him by the collar with one hand and reached past him to take his leash
off the seat.

As she fumbled with the fastener on the leash, Saga realized that
something was stuck to the fingers of her left hand. Green chewing gum.
"Disgusting!" She stopped to fish for a tissue in her pocket. She came up
with an unfamiliar fine blue handkerchief. She stared at both the gum
and the handkerchief in confusion. She remembered now that Michael
had given her the handkerchief at lunch. But the gum, where had that
come from?

She looked down at The Bruce, who stood on the sidewalk, waiting
patiently. More of the gum stuck out from beneath his collar. With the
unpleasant wad of gum, once she managed to pull it free, came a folded
slip of paper, about the size of a fortune from a Chinese restaurant
cookie. It, too, must have been stuck on the underside of the collar.

Saga unfolded the slip of paper. In thin, spidery letters, it read,
Miss
Sea Urchin pines for your la la la luscious tongue. Lick her till she's a
razzmatazz rose, a big wet shiny rose. Tonight. Alice in Wonderland,
under the mushroom-roomba. Xxxxx you know exactly WHERE.

Quickly, Saga refolded the paper. Unsure what to do with it, she let it
fall to the floor of the van. She walked The Bruce around the block,
stopping whenever he wanted to stop, trying not to think about the message
under his collar. Had it been written by Sonya? Was it for . . . for
Walter
?

Sonya was waiting by the van. Crated in the back, a surprisingly small
dog, quite nondescript and harmless-looking, whined and scratched at
the bars.

"Hey, thanks a mil," Sonya said. She unsnapped the leash and helped
The Bruce up to the front seat.

"You're welcome," said Saga.

"Want a ride into the city?"

"No. I've got something I need to ask Stan," she said, a lie. She felt
herself blushing. Sonya drove off with a wave.

"Hey, Story Girl, come in and have a beer," said Stan when he opened
the door. He walked to the kitchen. "You could hear a pin drop now."

"I just need my knapsack," she said. Everything that day seemed off
balance, thought Saga. What made Stan so suddenly cheerful?

He saw her suspicion and laughed. "Hey, business, all business."

She blushed and accepted a Coke. It turned out that Stan meant business
about the business. He'd found out about an intensive seminar, less
than a week long, for people who wanted to establish a not-for-profit
group. The only problem was that the seminar was held in Washington,
D.C. He could easily take the vacation time, but who would look after
the animals?

"And then I figured, you and Sonya could do it together," he said,
looking pleased with himself.

"Me?" said Saga.

"With Sonya, yeah, sure. She'd be the brains, you'd be the brawn,
right?"

Saga said nothing.

He reached across the table and shook her arm gently. "Story Girl, I
am
kidding.
You could stay here, you know the routines. And Sonya's
got wheels. Hey, how 'bout I even change the sheets?" The first seminar
with an opening was six months away, so they'd have plenty of time
to plan.

SHE THREW HER JACKET
over the fence and climbed after. She worried
for a moment when her hem caught on the iron spears at the top, but
she managed to disentangle the skirt without tearing it, without losing
her balance either. When she landed on the other side, she looked up
quickly at the windows in the buildings across the street to make sure no
one was watching.

The night wasn't as chilly as it might have been, but she was sorry
she did not have pants and a heavier jacket—or her sleeping roll. She
hadn't been drawn to this place, to sleep here, since the fall. What had
changed? It had to be the bookstore; this was the first thing that came
to mind. Despite Michael's bad news—which she had expected, so it
wasn't really news, not the part of it that mattered—she knew there was
plenty for which she could be thankful. (Though, really, when your
skull had survived collision with a tree, that would always be the case,
wouldn't it? In some ways, that was annoying, the way you knew you
should always feel grateful, even when you had good reason not to.)
Saga helped Fenno two or three times a week now, for which he paid
her fifteen dollars an hour. She had told Uncle Marsden about the
shop, that it was a place she liked, where she helped out a little, but
she hadn't told him about the money. She hadn't wanted him to have
more cause to agree with Michael, to feel that Saga might need him less
somehow.

Because she didn't need him less. At the same time, she found now
that she was finally furious with Uncle Marsden. How could he not
have warned her, at least, about what Michael intended to tell her at
that lunch? ("Save your appetite! I bet he'll take you somewhere
swanky," Uncle Marsden had told her at breakfast. And he had known
exactly why!) Was he such a coward that he had to hide behind his son?
All those times she'd seen him stand up to Michael's cranky bursts of
temper, had he been little more than a rooster showing off his tail?
When things really mattered, did he scuttle away to the henhouse?

Saga had never stayed in the open on a winter night—her risky
behavior had limits—but a certain amount of cold she could take, in
exchange for perfect solitude, a place where no one could find her. Especially
when she couldn't bear to go home. She buttoned the top button
and the cuffs of her blouse (the doctor had just observed how much better
she was at this very task). She put on the sweater she kept in her
knapsack and, over that, her jacket. She turned up the collar.

She wriggled back till she'd wedged herself between the two great
flowerpots that held the trees. She looked up at the sky. It was the usual
chocolate brown of city sky: no stars, alas no moon, just the occasional
winking plane. She was thirty-four years old; what would become of the
rest of her life? If she moved with Uncle Marsden to the Cute House, it
wouldn't be the same, not at all, as simply staying on at the big house.
That was the real problem. She would be telling the world that she was
helpless, which wasn't true. She wasn't helpless. She was directionless,
that's what she was. She lived the way dogs did, trusting in food, the
next day, the next sleep, taking small expeditions, short-term missions.
In truth, dogs were smart, resourceful, and strong if they had to go their
own way. They were dependent because it's what they knew and it was
easier, not because it was necessary. She closed her eyes.

Dear Marion,

Forgive me if I have to say this protracted silence has
become absurd. I understand and respect your need to consider
so many things, and I know that my own behavior, when we saw
each other last, must have seemed belligerent, confused, even
paternalis

Just as belligerent, confused, and paternalistic as this letter itself.
How about hostile? Did he neglect to mention hostile?

Dear Marion,

I was determined to let you decide when we should be in touch
again, but several months have passed now, and events in my life
have recently been so tumultuous that I feel a renewed urgency to
open up the lines between us. If that seems selfish, and I know it
must, then please

Oh God. He felt as if he were writing to a patient who had quit in a
huff, walked out the door in a peremptory snub (not that Alan would
ever have written to a patient who did that, and not that any patient
ever had; not quite).

Dear Marion,

I hope you won't consider this letter an intrusion on whatever
process you are going through. I can't help worrying that you
fear I would enlist a lawyer or make threats of some kind.
Believe me, I would never do such a thing. I know that I've
behaved badly enough already. Whatever decisions you are
thinking of making about Jacob, all I wish is that we, you and I,
could at least discuss them, or perhaps exchange e-mails if that

Why should she care what he wished? What if, after all, Jacob were
not "his" child? But somehow her silence, as time went on, only proved
to him that the opposite was true.

He still had two blank sheets of paper, but at this rate they, too,
would shortly lie crumpled at his feet. He'd grabbed the slim sheaf in his
printer, a last-minute notion as he raced around the apartment packing
clothes, rinsing dishes, trying to figure out what to do with Treehorn.
Fenno had answered the phone at the bookstore but told Alan he was
about to leave the country for a week, to attend a family christening. To
Alan's uneasy surprise, Fenno gave him a phone number for Saga, in
Connecticut. There had been an awkward confusion over her name;
Fenno apparently knew her as Emily. What else, Alan had wondered,
did Fenno know about her that Alan did not? (Why did he feel a
spark of
jealousy
over a woman who, by objective standards, seemed
vaguely pathetic?) After speaking to a man who sounded older and
rather imperious—Saga's father? surely not a husband—Alan had been
relieved to hear her voice. She would pick up his keys from Fenno's
assistant at the store. Treehorn would be fine.

Other than the bond he had forged with his dearly predictable dog,
every close relationship in Alan's life seemed tattered or bruised. So
then, why not smash this one to smithereens? Perhaps Marion would
change her name and move to Las Vegas, consigning Alan to the oblivion
he probably deserved. Didn't bad omens, daunting ordeals, and personal
catastrophes come in threes?

He raised the plastic window shade, which he had closed soon after
takeoff. Already they were over the desert. Ah, talk about omens! When
he turned back, he saw the flight attendant making her way up the aisle.
She acknowledged Alan's wave with a Styrofoam smile.

"May I get you something, sir?"

"Do you by any chance have paper?"

"I think I saw a spare copy of
USA Today.
Will that do?"

"No, just paper. Blank paper."

Her smile looked like a patch sewn on her face.

He said, "To write on."

"I'm sorry, we don't have that," she said. "Could you write on a napkin?
Or . . ." She reached into the seat pocket next to him and, pleased
with her resourcefulness, presented him with the paper bag designed for
airsick passengers. "Would this do in a pinch?"

Alan shook his head. On impulse, he asked if he could still order a
drink.

"Why sure," she said. "That I can get you. What'll it be?"

"Vodka," he said. He never drank on planes. He never, out of habit,
did anything he was doing at this moment in his life.

The previous morning, barely two weeks after letting him know she
was in love with somebody else, Greenie had called with more bad
news. Whether it was worse news remained to be seen. George and his
friend Diego, wearing primitive animal masks, had opened Diego's window
after his parents fell asleep, climbed down over the roof where he
fed his tame squirrel, slipped under the rail fences that bordered the corrals
of the ranch where Diego's father worked, crept into the barn, and
unlatched the doors to the stalls of three horses, urging them out of the
barn, then out a back gate into the wider world, where they were lost,
confused, and possibly panicked, running not toward the mountains,
where the boys intended them to run, but toward the road—perhaps
because civilization, however dangerous it might be, was far more
familiar to them than wilderness of any kind.

Only then, on hearing this news, did Alan's fury at his wife begin
to blossom, spreading through him steadily, quietly, outward in all
directions, like the red stain from a glass of wine spilled on a white
tablecloth.

Alan gazed again at the parched, unpopulated land beneath him;
would that he could will his mind to be so blank, his emotions so neutral
in color, his temper so flat. When the attendant returned, he gave
her a handful of singles; she gave him the tiny bottle, a tiny napkin, and
a plastic cup filled with ice. Alan could actually smell the ice, how old it
was. It smelled like a closet. He twisted the tiny bottle cap and poured
out the crystalline liquid. His nose stung and his eyes watered slightly as
he raised the cup to his mouth. Through the gap behind the tray, he
fished in the seat pocket and pulled out the airline magazine.

"The Teton!" he cried out softly when he found the table of contents.
"Oh do let's read about the Teton." Among the smallest of blessings
he could count, both seats beside him were empty. He was free to
mutter (or laugh maniacally, or growl, or weep) without visible censure.

THE UNEXPECTED WARMTH STRUCK HIM FIRST
, then the sight of
Greenie. After pulling up to the curb and leaning across the passenger seat
to catch his attention, she opened her door to come around and greet him.

"Don't get out." He threw his bag on the backseat. "Where's George?"

Greenie stared at Alan. She sat there without driving, though he had
closed his door and fastened his belt.

"He's back at the house. He's with—"

"Your beloved Chuck?"

"Consuelo," she said quietly.

"Your fabulous, attentive nanny?"

"It's not her fault, Alan. It's completely my fault. I've been—"

"Let's go. Let's just get there." He would not look at her. He had seen
in one glance that Greenie's face was drawn and swollen from crying.

As she drove them through the airport catacombs, leaning forward to
see every sign, she said nothing. She'd switched off the radio when he
got in.

He looked out at the mountains flanking the city. Snow covered the
peaks, though the air around the car was hot. Alan opened his window.

"Sorry. The weather is a fluke," said Greenie.

"Sorry for the
weather
?"
Sorry.
How many times had she said that
inadequate word in the course of their recent conversations? Eat your
heart out, Erich Segal.

They had been driving for ten minutes when Greenie said, "Alan, we
can't make this whole trip in silence. You have every right to be very,
very angry at me, not to want to say a word to me ever again, but we
have to figure things out, and we can't look like this to George, especially
not now."

"Look like what? His parents who are about to split up? Or did he
figure that out a long time ago, before we did? Maybe we're the childish
ones here. Maybe we're the delinquents, the guilty ones, the ones who've
let the animals loose. Whatever sins you want to claim, let me be the
first to claim stupidity."

Greenie cried silently. He could tell without looking at her, just from the
way she was breathing. "Stop crying," he said, willing his voice to sound
gentle. "Please stop crying." He opened the glove compartment and found
a paper napkin. When he handed it to Greenie, she apologized again.

He said, "Tell me again what happened. I want to get the story
straight."

"Okay." She blew her nose. She was driving fast, possibly too fast,
but Alan made no comment.

"George was overnight at Diego's. Consuelo drove him there because
I had a dinner party at the mansion. Consuelo told me—yesterday, after
everything happened—that he was very excited before he went. He told
her they were going to play a special game and he needed . . . black
clothes." More tears.

Alan wanted to put a hand on her shoulder, to stop her more than to
console her, but he didn't.

"So—I told you—the police phoned at two in the morning. They had
a call from someone driving on Bishop's Lodge Road who had to swerve
to avoid a horse. And then there was . . . By the time they got out there,
one horse had been hit." Her voice broke. "So now they'd had other
calls, and they went to the nearest ranch; they found the open stalls. It
took an hour for someone to mention how the boys were hanging
around that evening, so they went straight—"

"The horse," said Alan. "Tell me about the horse, the one that was
hit. Before we cope with everything else, I want to know what we're
dealing with, the liability."

"What is your problem!" shouted Greenie. " 'Everything else' just
happens to be your
son
! Don't you care how George is? What matters
more to you, George or some
horse,
some goddamn potential lawsuit?"

"I might ask you, Greenie, what matters more to
you,
George or
some goddamn . . . what should I call him, childhood sweetheart? This
guy you've been running around with, ignoring what anybody else
could see was an intense if not
bizarre
situation with this other child!"

"At least I haven't thrown any illegitimate children into the fray!"

"Good for you. And please be sure that if—
if
that's what I've done,
I've done it with great delight. I said to myself, Let's see, what's missing
from my life? I know! What I need is another child, with a different
mother, one who will vanish, have that baby in secret, and never speak
to me again. That's what I need!"

Greenie turned to glance at him for a moment, and she actually tried
to smile when he met her eyes. "I guess this is what they call clearing the
air," she said. "So, do we hate each other now? Is that where we are?"

Alan wished they were anywhere but in a speeding car. He wanted to
grab her, with longing as much as rage, to shake her. He understood
what it meant to want to
shake sense
into someone. "I can't speak for
you, Greenie, but it would take a great deal for me to hate you. Or a
great deal more than this, which I can't begin to imagine." He stared at
her. She kept her eyes on the road.

"The horse," she said slowly, "is going to be all right. The leg is badly
bruised but not broken. I've offered, through the police, to pay the vet
bill. I haven't spoken yet with anyone from the ranch. Mary Bliss said
it's not a good idea, not yet. Ray's vet, the one who takes care of his
horses, is going to double-check the X-rays, free of charge."

"What about Diego's parents? Are they taking no responsibility here?
Their son was the instigator, that has to be obvious even to them."

"Diego's father will be lucky to keep his job, Alan. The mother feels
terrible, I know she does, but her English isn't so terrific, and I think the
father won't let her tell anyone how sorry she is about all this."

Alan was aware of the cruel, even racist remarks ready to leap from
his mouth. As if to mock him, four dark-skinned men crowded in a
pickup truck, jostling one another, their radio blaring, passed Alan and
Greenie on the right. Through Alan's open window, the music hit him,
briefly, like a shock wave.

Greenie said quietly, "Isn't George the most important thing right
now?"

"Of course he is. When I see George, I want to have a fix on everything
that's going on
around
him so that I pay attention just to him."

"I think George is terrified."

"Greenie, he should be."

"Alan,
he's five.
"

"Yes. And for that, in some ways, we are lucky. And I intend to be as
reassuring to him as I can. But he needs to know how serious this is. It
doesn't matter if the horses were
unscathed,
if they returned happily to
their own stalls, tucked themselves in, and turned off the lights. We need
to figure out how a kid so smart could do something so reckless. He's
not so young he could really believe those horses wouldn't be in danger,
set free near those roads. Unless . . ."