The Whole World Over (43 page)

NO CHRISTMAS DAY HAD EVER FELT SO EPICALLY LONG
. To catch
their flight, she'd had to get herself and George ready to leave Santa Fe
by four in the morning. Tall George had picked them up in the fading
dark and driven them to Albuquerque, but while Small went back to
sleep, Greenie had stayed awake and talked with grown-up George. She
had never spent time alone with her son's name-mate and occasional
playmate, though she had learned secondhand that he grew up in Harlem,
was a Yankees fan, and liked to Rollerblade.

"How'd you end up working for Ray?" she asked.

Predictably, he laughed. "Long story short? I was stuck on this girl
who says, Hey, let's hitch to L.A.! Like we're in some Robert Redford
movie." He laughed. "Like who's gonna pick up a couple of black
teenagers, man. Clueless, man. But somehow we end up here. We get a
ride for two whole days in the back of a pickup with this Indian dude.
We make it here and I figure, hey, don't push our luck. I get a job delivering
groceries, which gets me driving a truck, which gets me driving an
airport cab, which gets me driving a limo at night for extra money,
which gets me, well sort of, to this place."

" 'Well sort of'?" said Greenie. "Sounds like a logical progression
to me."

"Yeah, well, on the surface like." Tall shook his head. "But see, Ray
puts the eye on someone and, wham, before you know it, you in his
collection.
"
He caught Greenie's eye in the rearview mirror. "Know what
I'm sayin'?"

"Yes, I suppose I do."

"Guvna sees, Guvna wants. Guvna, man, he
conquers.
Not in a bad
way, I'm not saying that. But it goes, like, deeper than you'd think. Big
Daddy stuff. He hired
me,
see, because he saw me hangin' out on my
blades with a crowd near the Plaza. What he saw, why me, who knows?
He needs a driver, so I get tapped by some dude who works for a law
firm near where I hang out. He knows my name, he knows it all. A
weird thing. Weird but good. Stroke. Of. Luck." With each of those
three words he tapped the steering wheel with his right hand. She
noticed that he wore a wide silver band on his pinkie.

"So you know how he found me then," she said.

"Something about your singing's what I heard."

"My singing!" Greenie laughed loudly, and Small George stirred
against her. She stroked his hair.

"Yeah, and some ballbustin' cake."

"The cake, yes. But what did you hear about singing?"

"Mary B. says you start the day with goofy singing. Well, she
can
spin
a tale, that girl."

Greenie leaned forward. "George, is it just me, or is it obvious to
everyone that Mary Bliss is mad for Ray?"

"That girl," he said again. "She be in for a serious bruising. Not like
he's led her on. She ought to
know.
"

The car slowed, curving away from the highway, toward the airport.
At the curb, Tall took their suitcase from the trunk. For the first time,
Greenie looked at his face and saw that he was younger than she would
have guessed, twenty-five at most. What sort of a life would he be leading
now if Ray had not pulled him off the street? Or would he have been
in school, on his way to becoming a teacher or a lawyer? What did it
mean that Ray seemed to choose people rather than let them come to
him, plucked them like fruit, ripe or not, from a vine? When Greenie
reached into her purse, Tall George looked wounded. "I ain't no Red
Cap," he said, but he gave her a forgiving smile. He turned to his small,
sleepy friend and held out his hands. "What do I need, my man Small?"

Greenie saw her son smile and shake off his crankiness, then go
through the ritual of slapping hands and gyrating bodies.

"Bon voyage," said Tall. "Know what that means?"

Small shook his head.

"Means come back soon, amigo." He winked at Greenie.

Small George giggled. "Okay, amigo."

Hours later—though days later was how it felt—after a slow crawl
through the Holland Tunnel; after the joyful reunions of George with
Treehorn and then with his seemingly immortal goldfish; after the opening
of presents; after the eating of stuffed Cornish game hens and vegetable
salads that Alan had insisted on buying from a gourmet market
and that she had found blessedly delicious; after second helpings of a
pear-almond tart sent by Tina in a Ms. Duquette pastry box that brought
tears to Greenie's eyes; after George had inspected every decoration on
the tree and every nook of his old home and then, in a moment when
neither of his parents were looking, fallen asleep on the floor under the
coffee table, nestled against his dog; after Alan had tenderly changed
him into pajamas and tucked him, utterly unwaking, into his bed, which
now looked so tiny; after phone calls from Alan's mother and Walter
and Consuelo had been left for the machine to answer—after all this,
Greenie and Alan collapsed side by side, alone together for the first time
in four months, on the couch they had bought together just before their
marriage.

At first, they looked not at each other but at the enveloping mayhem—
crumpled paper, empty boxes, a ransacked half-empty suitcase, a table
covered with leftover food and wine, candles melted to puddles of
wax—and laughed. Delicately, lips pulled back from her teeth, Treehorn
was nibbling at the wild rice strewn on the rug under George's place. She
looked up, regarding them with alarm and then curiosity.

Staring at the table, Alan groaned. "Flowers. I knew there was something
I forgot." When he started to get up, Greenie said, "Don't touch a
bit of it. Don't you dare. We'll deal with it all tomorrow."

For a moment, they turned their nervous attention to the tree. By mistake,
Alan had replaced some burned-out bulbs with blinkers. They
kept up a syncopated rhythm, casting onto the ceiling a mute display of
fireworks.

She knew she ought to thank him for working so hard on everything—
the tree, the meal, the presents—but Greenie wanted Alan to speak first.
And yet, as she looked around the room at the things she'd expected to
see and the things she'd forgotten about, she heard herself say, "Where's
my chair?"

"Your chair?"

"My big pink chair. The one I rescued from execution by garbage
truck."

"I moved it. To make room for the tree. It's in the bedroom."

"I didn't see it."

"I covered it," said Alan. "Okay, I covered it about two minutes after
you left. I can't stand the color. As you know."

Greenie nodded. "But not permanently."

Alan rolled his eyes. "No, Greenie, not permanently. With an old
bedspread of mine."

"That denim thing?" said Greenie. "Blue. What is it with men and
blue? Why is blue so boring, so safe?"

"Maybe because it's a color that isn't intrusive. Because the sky
is blue."

"Yes. And always there."
The important thing about the sky,
she
remembered from Margaret Wise Brown,
is that it is always there.
But
Alan, who hadn't read to George much at all in the past year, wouldn't
know the allusion. One of the unexpected difficulties of their separation
was that when Greenie made passing remarks about her everyday life,
often she would have to explain them to Alan. Because he
wasn't
always
there.

They still hadn't touched. Were they shy? Were they intimidated? Or
were they, deep down in the compressed molten core of their selves, still
angry, even justifiably angry?
Let go,
thought Greenie.

She turned to Alan, pulling her knees up and resting them against his
thigh. "Would you tell me about your visit to Joya? You never really
explained that. Did she have a breakdown of some kind? I worry about
her, you know."

"Joya's okay," Alan said firmly.

"Well, she
would
be okay, that's the kind of person she is. But last
time I talked to her, she was so . . . fed up. She was so depleted about this
baby thing. She said she wished she could have that part of her brain cut
out, whatever part holds that bourgeois cuckoo clock—that's what she
called it! Funny even when she's furious. She wishes she could love her
life as it is, with her—Alan!"

Alan had let out a great, full-throated sigh. He said, "I don't think
Joya is what we should be talking about, do you?"

Treehorn jumped up on the couch, on the other side of Alan, and laid
her long jaw on his opposite thigh. She gazed at Greenie as if to remind
her (the renegade wife) that Alan was the one who deserved an ally.

"Greenie, there's something I have to tell you right now that's terrible,
that's confusing, or it is to me, that's . . ."

"That's what? What is it?"

Alan stared at the tree. "I'm so afraid you'll leave me when I tell you."

Don't you feel I've left you already? Didn't you say that months ago?
Greenie thought. But she waited, listening, feeling the excess food, the
second slice of pie, sitting too high in her chest. "Just tell me. You're a
worrier, Alan. Things are rarely as bad as you think they'll be." She put
her hand on his leg. Treehorn shoved her nose against Greenie's hand.

"Okay," said Alan fiercely. "That time I went to my high school
reunion, way before George, when we were fighting all the time—at the
last minute you refused to go, do you remember that?—I ran into a girl
I'd known, Joya's best friend, and I—"

"You slept with her."

Alan started to speak, but Greenie interrupted again; she had no
patience for a confession of something so stale.
Now
was the problem:
right this very
minute.
"That was how many years ago? That was ages
ago. God, why are you telling me now? Alan, I don't need to know
this." She turned to look at him. "Or is this because you're seeing Jerry
again? I hope you're seeing Jerry again. If Jerry thought you ought to
come clean with me—"

"Greenie, I'm not seeing Jerry. There's more than just this."

"You mean other women? Other reunions?" Greenie could no longer
look at her husband's face, which seemed to grow darker, more miserable,
by the minute. Everywhere else she looked, clutter abounded:
a toppled pile of picture books (Alan had given them both so many
books!), a tousled knot of ribbon and tissue paper, a sweater, a card, a
plaid scarf, a box of chocolates . . . "God, Alan, are you having an
affair? Some would say I deserve that, don't I?" She laughed.

"Greenie!" he shouted. She jerked away from him, stunned. Treehorn
dropped to the floor, looking up at Alan in fear. He reached a hand
down to pet her. "Shh, it's okay, girl." To Greenie, he said, "Listen to
me, please! Stop thinking so damn fast, galloping ahead of me like you
always do."

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

"I am not having an affair. There is no one—lamentably, maybe—no
one but you. There was
one
woman,
one
night, it was stupid, it was
petty. I'll be mortified to the end of time. But it's more complicated.
There are complications."

"Complications?" She thought of cancer and AIDS.
The wife died
from complications of infidelity.

"I might be the father—accidentally, Greenie—the father of another
child."

Greenie remembered telling Alan that she was pregnant. She'd said it
the way so many adoring wives do:
I have some incredible news for you.
You're going to be a father.
Perversely, she felt for an instant as if she
were hearing good news, as if somehow he might be telling her that now
he
was pregnant, that this other child was their next child. Just as perversely,
she smiled. "But Alan," she said, and then she drew in her
breath, as if to take back the affection with which she had spoken his
name.

Alan began to cry. Greenie stared at him. At first he just kept repeating
how sorry he was, and then a torrent of words came out of her
normally nontorrential husband, her husband who spoke in carefully
chosen, intelligent phrases, even when expressing profound emotions.
He was saying, over and over in a litany of careless repetition, that he
had no idea what to say, he had been a terrible coward not to tell her
before, he had not seen this woman in all those years till he went to San
Francisco, he had only wanted to know for sure, he needed just to
know,
he had no intention of leaving Greenie and George, he loved George—
"and you,
you,
" he added too hastily—more than anything on earth. He
wanted them together more than ever, he hoped she could forgive him,
maybe not now, maybe not for a while; he would sleep in his office or go
to a hotel that very night if she needed to be alone, he would—

"Did you meet the child?" she asked sharply. She wanted him to stop
talking, to stop blubbering. He stopped. He wiped his face. She had
never seen his face like this: so strangely, unkindly softened; streaked
with red, his eyes swollen. "No," he said. "But I tried to. Just to see
him."

"What would you have done?"

"I don't know. It was just a . . . need. I wanted an answer from . . . the
mother. I wanted to know. That's all."

"What do you mean, 'That's all'? Like, if you'd seen the child, met
the child . . ." Greenie gasped. "Is it a boy? Another boy?"

Alan nodded. "He's a little older than George."

More than once, George had asked Greenie if he could have a big
brother. She had told him that maybe one day he could have a little
brother, but never a big brother. "You would always be the oldest," she
said. "You would always be the first. If Daddy and I ever have other
babies, and we might or we might not, you will always be our very first
baby. Very first babies are very special. Forever and always, they came
before all the rest. No one can ever change that."

Now she said, "George has an older brother."

"Honestly, Greenie, I don't know. That's not how I think of it. That's
not the part that matters."

"No?" She didn't mean it sarcastically, though she could tell Alan
heard it that way. She focused on the facts, and the conversation took on
the sound of an interview. She found out that the woman was married to
a wealthy doctor, so at least child support might not be an issue (though
Greenie kept this thought to herself). She found out that Joya, out of
sheer anger, had claimed she told Greenie about the child, that this
explained Alan's message of love on the answering machine; he had been
desperate, not drunk. She found out that the boy was named Jacob.
Jacob's ladder. Jacob's pillow. Her mind—tired beyond the bounds of
sanity—looped about with the new names Greenie must fold into her
consciousness of family.