The Whole World Over

by Julia Glass

  Alan, of all people, ought to have known what to say—that plenty of men could take or leave kids, that Marion was still incredibly sexy, that sensible people knew cancer wasn’t a stigma—but the more she told him, the less he felt he could safely tell her.

  Marion reached across the table. She put her hands over his and held them firmly. “That was three years ago, and I’m absolutely fine with it now.” She sat back. She turned to look at the band and the gangly teenagers dancing in the confetti of light from the strobe.

  “Joya will kick herself she wasn’t here,” said Alan.

  “Oh, never mind Joya now. I like this, having you all to myself. When I call you little brother, I’m only half joking. It’s like you were my brother, too.”

  Marion insisted they share an ice cream sundae, and then she asked him to dance. It was a rare slow tune, and he held her reverently close, feeling through their twin shirts her flat, nearly concave chest. He was clumsy, stepping on her feet more than once. “Good thing I’m driving,” she said when the song was over.

  Once they were both in the car, the doors closed, Marion sat still for a long moment. She was looking down at the keys in her lap with a secretive smile, then she looked at Alan. “I’m not at my parents’ house. My old room is full of boxes. I’m at the Red Coach Inn.”

  “That sounds nice,” he said quietly, and that was all he said for the next few hours.

  At three in the morning, he told her (for God knew what ridiculous, self-serving reason) about Greenie wanting a baby, about how he was far less than sure, about wondering whether they’d split up, about trying to work it out in his head as if he could be his own therapist. Marion listened for a while and then said quietly, “Just about every couple I know have been through this; it’s normal.” Because they were in the dark, with the curtains drawn against the bright light of the highway out front, he couldn’t tell if she meant to express sympathy or scold him for treating her like a big sister while behaving in a most unbrotherly manner. So he shut up, and he went back to what they had set out to do.

  They got dressed when the clock told them it was five. Marion pulled open the curtain. It was almost but not quite dawn. The air looked sweet and palpable and white, like milk. He came up behind her and kissed her neck. He was terrified, but he didn’t know if it was because he wanted to see her again as soon as possible or never lay eyes on her from that day on, forget her very existence.

  In the high school parking lot, his mother’s red car stood entirely alone, absurdly bright in the mist—as obscene, thought Alan, as the lies he would have to concoct. He looked helplessly at Marion. Before he could speak, she said, “Listen,” in a strong, startling voice. “I have one thing to say to you, little brother. Go back and have that baby.” She reached across him and opened the door. She kissed him and nudged him with a fist.

  “Thank you,” he had said. (Thank you!)

  George’s birth washed clean so many things, as Alan had heard (and read) that the arrival of a child, especially a first child, will do. In all the high-wire busyness, his guilt over Marion seemed to shrivel and then disintegrate; or so he thought. Greenie proved to be five times more energetic than Alan had ever imagined a person could be—and poor Greenie, he remembered thinking sometime that first month; perhaps proved was the telling word. Because when he’d agreed at last, out of numb desperation and self-loathing as much as anything else, she’d exclaimed a hundred joyful promises of all that she would be, take care of, provide for, no matter what. When her determination broke down after George’s first cold—an ailment whose symptoms were normal yet, in his tiny person, ferocious—Alan had watched her fight back the despair and tears born of dirt-dark exhaustion.

  “Please go ahead and fall apart. I know I’m going to,” he had said, and both of them had cried together along with George, a collective frustration so loud that in no time it silenced the baby, who stared at his parents with an expression in which curiosity overruled alarm.

  If George did not wholly redefine their routines, he gave a new substance to the mortar of their lives. He changed the nature of his parents’ simplest social exchanges: with the grocer and the token seller in the subway, with teenage boys on skateboards in the street (“Cute baby, man!”), with all the other parents they already knew. Welcome, all those parents seemed to say. Step across the threshold. Sorry the place is so messy, but you’ll be glad you came.

  Alan’s practice grew along with his infant son, and sometimes he felt that the latter must be responsible for the former, that fatherhood must make him radiate a greater knowingness, if not an outright wisdom. This was just a hunch, but it gave him a sense of relief that he had, if only by groping in the dark, done the right thing.

  Life rolled smoothly along until the accident, not long after George turned two, in which Greenie’s parents died. For several months, Greenie vacillated between a testy depression and righteous anger. But her work did not suffer, and gradually, she found her optimistic center once again. We can weather anything, Alan thought smugly. Perhaps they would even have a second child—unlike so many of their city friends, who felt that life with one was both splendid and complicated enough. To his astonishment, the very thought of another baby—a baby, not just a child—filled him with nostalgic yearning.

  Alan had just shared these thoughts with Joya, during one of their catch-up calls, when she said, “Oh, speaking of babies! You’ll never guess who’s out here, too, whose name I saw on this list of lectures at Berkeley. I’m constantly thinking I’m going to sign up for stuff and get myself some enlightenment, learn about something completely new—such a ridiculous idea, but hope springs eternal! So I see this online posting for a lecture on volunteering in the cancer community and guess who’s giving it?”

  Alan was crossing the room, only half listening, because he was in charge of George while Greenie was out working. George had just disappeared into their bedroom carrying a crayon. “No, George! Only on the paper!” he hissed as he confiscated the crayon, sparing the closet door. George began to cry.

  “Marion! Remember Marion?” he heard Joya say as he carried his struggling son toward the kitchen, whispering, “How about a pretzel?”

  He dumped several pretzels into a dish and placed it on the seat of a chair.

  “You’ve got to remember Marion. I mean, you were like smitten with her when you were twelve. It was hilarious watching you try to conceal it.”

  “Of course,” said Alan. “I remember her.”

  “So I looked up her phone, and it wasn’t listed, but I actually went to the lecture and saw her after. It was so incredible—I think she’s too busy to hang out with, but we had coffee, and it was great to see her. Anyway, she’s done this totally modern thing, having a baby on her own—he’s like three now, she said—and moving out here and getting another degree, and she’s teaching, and she’s really involved in some food co-op and a church and—”

  “She adopted a baby?” said Alan. He was watching George crush pretzels intentionally into the fabric of the chair seat.

  “No, no—had it on her own! I saw a picture, and he looks like her dad, it’s sort of hysterical. That huge, serious forehead. She said she never got married or lived with anyone after the Peace Corps, and then she had cancer—and you can guess how many guys are mature enough to commit to a woman after that.”

  “But who’s the father?”

  “For God’s sake, Alan, you sound like one of our parents,” said Joya. “Who cares? I’m not sure she does.”

  “How is she?” he said quickly.

  “She looks great,” said Joya.

  George began chanting for more pretzels, and Alan used it as an excuse to get off the phone. Two nights later, when Greenie went out to work after George had fallen asleep, he called Joya back and told her about the reunion. At first, after telling Alan what a schmuck he was, she laughed at his vanity, at the ridiculous thought that the child could possibly be his.

  When she finally understood wh
at he was suggesting, she said, “Jesus, Alan, Marion would never use anybody like that. You are acting like an asshole.”

  “You don’t really know Marion. Not anymore. She’s been through a lot more than she’ll let on to anyone, I think. I wouldn’t blame her for putting her own interests ahead of anyone else’s.” Strange that he was defending her. He thought of the scars on her chest, of her stubborn desire to preserve them rather than hide or replace them.

  Joya was silent for a while. He waited. She sighed twice, first with exasperation, then with what sounded like pity.

  “Alan, I doubt I’ll see her again, unless we run into each other.”

  So she had sensed what he wanted to ask. Still, Alan waited; Joya was generous, but you had to let her offer the favor herself.

  She said, “No, Alan. This is your problem. I can’t help you with this one. I can’t.” She sighed, this time with pure impatience. “Oh Alan. I’m so—I can’t talk to you right now, I’m sorry. I can’t even think about poor Greenie. I’ll call you in a few days, but…I’m sorry,” she said, and she hung up. Two days later, she left him a message during the day. Just an address, nothing more. It took him three months to write, and all he could say to Marion was that he’d heard she was out there, he wondered how she was—her health, her life, her “dubious achievements.” He did not tell her about George or say that he had heard about her child. It was a cowardly, dishonest letter that did not deserve a reply. It did not get one.

  BEFORE ALAN WENT OUT THAT EVENING, he checked on Saga’s peony plant, as if it might have been stolen or taken flight. He opened the window and reached out to feel the soil in the pot. It was damp. He closed the window and just stood there awhile, staring at the plant, as if there were something else he could do for its welfare. He noticed that the tip of each stalk had opened into a feathering of tiny leaves, olive stained with crimson.

  He had told Saga, before she left, that he’d like to have another look at the puppies; he couldn’t think of any other way to make sure he’d see her again. She had given him the phone number of the guy named Stan who hadn’t shown up that first day. Couldn’t Saga take Alan to see the puppies? No, she’d said, but if he adopted one of them, she would be sure to check in. She should call or drop by anytime, he told her awkwardly. She thanked him but laughed, as if their continuing to know each other was patently absurd. In a way, it was, but Alan couldn’t help worrying about her. He still knew nothing about where she lived or how she made her way in the world. She could be a wealthy eccentric, for all he knew; it really wasn’t his business.

  The air was soft and beguiling, and outside Walter’s Place, four couples waited on the sidewalk for the few outdoor tables, all occupied. Alan had hoped to eat outside, but he did not want to wait alone. He was not in the mood to converse with strangers, and he had brought nothing to read. When he stepped inside, Walter was right there.

  “Husband of my runaway confectioner, hello!” He shook Alan’s hand with vigor.

  Where did all this ready wit come from? Alan thought bitterly. “Greenie says hi,” he said, just to say anything.

  “I spoke with the traitress herself just a few days ago. I told her that Tina is a princess, but nevertheless I am suffering, I am wasting away.” Walter clasped a menu against his heart. He led Alan by the arm toward a hearthside table, a prime spot in winter. “The special tonight—and this one’s really special—is Hugo’s brandade Cape Cod,” Walter confided. “There’s just one left; shall I nab it for you?”

  “Fine,” said Alan. “Sounds great.” He had no idea what he had just ordered, but he did not want an extended conversation with Walter. He wanted a meal that he didn’t have to cook and that was meant to be eaten with a knife and fork. He wanted to ignore his jealousy, stop wondering what Greenie would talk about to Walter now that she was so far away.

  Gazing aimlessly about, he was stunned to see Gordie seated at the back end of the bar, eating alone—or waiting for someone to return. Alan tried to look away, but Gordie had spotted him, too. The other man waved, smiling, as if everything were normal, as if he’d be seeing Alan, side by side with Stephen as planned, just a few days hence. Or would he? Alan gave in and waved back. Gordie returned to reading a magazine and eating his meal.

  Alan saw the diners around him now as he often saw any gathering of people: a collection of invisibly layered lives, like a display of minerals he remembered from the Museum of Natural History, the one he’d known during his childhood rather than George’s. You’d go into a dim booth where a glass case held a homely assemblage of plain old rocks. But when you punched a button, a light would click on, transforming the rocks into primitive jewels, pocked and striated in glowing shades of green, purple, red, and blue. Halfway through his training at the institute, Alan had been struck by the memory of this transformation. That’s it, he’d thought, that’s what my work will be like: revealing all this hidden color and light.

  Across the room, the waves of laughter, the general gaiety of spring, he stared for a moment at Gordie, who was still reading his magazine. Right then, to Alan, Gordie appeared as dark and dense and gritty as any other person there. Alan thought of George, for whom the world was still mostly aglow, so eminently knowable, even waiting and eager to be known, and except that Walter was now approaching—grinning, flourishing a large white plate—Alan might have wept.

  EIGHT

  WHEN ALAN CALLED, IT WAS OFTEN BEFORE Greenie came home from work. He would talk to George, and she would call him back when she returned, if it wasn’t too late in New York. Rarely was Alan the one to call back.

  That night, she came in early enough to read to George but late enough that she had missed his father’s call. The ceiling fan spun on its wobbly axis above their heads as Greenie read a book she had brought from the library called Mordant’s Wish, about a mole who wishes for a friend and the whimsical way his wish comes true. It involved a bug that lived in a bowl of antique buttons, a pool of melted ice cream shaped like a hat, and a girl who read a secret message in a shopping list she picked up off the street. It was a book about how a chain of seemingly trivial actions and free associations could change somebody’s life. (Or was it about how wishes came true in the oddest of ways?)

  “I loved that story,” she said when she closed the book. “Did you?”

  “It was okay,” said George. “I like stories with dragons better. I like when scary things happen. Actually.” He enjoyed this new word and tried to use it whenever he could.

  “I’ll look for that kind next time,” said Greenie. She turned off the lamp and lay down next to George. She would rest for a minute under the cool stroking of air from the fan. The occasional breezes from the open window smelled lovely for the first time in weeks. They smelled of pine trees—but of green boughs and needles, not of burning sap. The fires had been contained.

  The phone in the living room woke her, and she stumbled out into the light. As she picked up, she saw Other Charlie’s business card on the table beside her address book. It had been sitting there now for a week. They’d promised to call each other, but so far they hadn’t.

  “Greenie?”

  “Oh Alan. Hi.” She sat down. “I fell asleep beside George.” She looked at the clock; it was nine-thirty.

  “I’m sorry. I know you get up early.”

  “No, I…” She was going to say that she needed to take a cool bath and make some lists, but details like this now felt awkward to relate to a husband so far away for so long. “I’m looking forward to your visit,” she said.

  “Yes,” he answered simply.

  “I am. I want you to like it here.”

  Alan sighed. “I’m sure I will.”

  “I wasn’t trying to make you say that. I know it’s complicated.”

  “To state the obvious.” But then he said, “I miss you both.”

  “We miss you all the time,” she answered, but strangely, the affection in his voice—the sentiment she was always longing to hear—made her nervou
s. She glanced down and saw Other Charlie’s card again. “Did I tell you that I’ve run into a childhood friend here? At work, at the mansion.”

  “Oh?” said Alan. “No.”

  He did not sound curious to hear more, but Greenie went on. “Charlie Oenslager. Do you remember him from when we got married, that party my mother gave the week before?”

  He told her that he didn’t. She was about to describe Other Charlie when Alan said, “Listen. I called because I have something important to tell you.”

  Greenie felt her mind come to attention, as if pulling away from her will. Did he sound solemn? Joyful? Spiteful? “Yes?”

  “I’m getting a dog.”

  Briefly, Greenie laughed.

  “I thought I should tell you. Before I tell George.”

  “A dog? You’re getting a dog? Just like that? I mean, without…”

  “Without consulting you?” Now Alan laughed. “For starters, maybe I’m lonely. Maybe I’m not used to coming home to an empty house. Unless you count Sunny. Poor Sunny. Sometimes I wish he weren’t such a survivor.”

  “Alan, how did you suddenly decide to get a dog?”

  “I’m getting her from a woman I met.”

  Very deliberately, Greenie could tell, he let the silence persist. He was trained, she’d always thought, to use silence the way the Old Masters used white. The surface of a pearl, the shaft of light from a window, the glint on a chalice or a dagger.

  She gave in. “A woman you met.”

  “On the street. She was carrying a box of puppies. It’s a long story. I suppose it was an act of charity—the puppy, I mean.”

  “To the woman or the dog?” said Greenie, unable to hide her irritation.

  “Good question.”

  “It’s late, Alan. I think we’re both tired. I think we should talk tomorrow.”