The Whole World Over

by Julia Glass

  One autumn day she pulled into the parking lot of her beauty parlor and had a stroke. The woman who parked next to her saw Granna slumped over the steering wheel. On the seat beside her lay one of her bulky purses, a pair of her stubby shiny pumps in need of new heels, a bag of daffodil bulbs, and a Whitman’s Sampler, which she always bought when she knew that Walter would be coming to visit. Awkwardly, a police officer gave Walter a plastic bag containing these things when he arrived to claim Granna’s body.

  “Way to go, Granna,” he whispered tearfully when he saw her at the funeral home. He knew that the only thing she’d have done differently would have been to go to the hairdresser first, to look her best for Karl, the local undertaker. Walter planted the daffodil bulbs on her grave and, before he turned the house over to a real-estate agent, stood in his room on the third floor and had the satisfaction of seeing his old mountain for the last time in all its October glory.

  WALTER’S FAVORITE PHOTOGRAPH OF GRANNA sat on his front hall table with a number of other family pictures. Granna stood in her garden, in front of a hedge of white peonies. She looked uncomfortable, standing stiffly, arms at her side, but she had a big proud smile for Walter, who had insisted she pose for the picture the day he graduated from high school. He told her that if she could insist on pictures of him in his silly cap and gown, she must submit as well. She was wearing a tweedy ivory dress, a shade too warm for June, with the gloves she wore to church. On her head sat a pie-shaped blue straw hat; she’d set her purse in the grass because she couldn’t figure out how to hold it while posing.

  One morning Walter saw Scott examining the pictures as he devoured a bagel. As usual, the boy could not sit still while eating. Walter thought of Granna telling Scott’s father that only beasts ate while standing, but he kept this to himself.

  “I like this one of you and Dad,” said Scott, smiling.

  The picture in question showed the brothers, before their parents had died, sitting together in a bumper car at an amusement park. They had matching crew cuts and matching plaid camp shirts. Werner was making horns behind Walter’s head with a victory sign.

  “Ah, we were young, were we not?” Walter said. Then he saw Scott pick up Granna. “Does your dad tell you stories about her?” he asked.

  Scott put the picture down and wiped cream cheese from his upper lip. He sucked briefly on his finger. “Not much.”

  “Really!” said Walter. “Well, she practically raised us. Me, she raised entirely. I consider her my true mother.”

  Scott looked at Walter with an odd, almost embarrassed expression.

  “What?” said Walter.

  Scott shrugged. “Dad says she was like totally mean to your parents, especially your father.”

  “Mean?” Walter gasped. “She gave him about twenty thousand leagues of rope.” He thought for a moment. “Scott, your father did tell you our dad was a drunk, that he killed our mother along with himself in that car wreck? I don’t see how either of us could ever forgive him for that.”

  Scott, for all his effortless youth, seemed to understand that he was walking along the edge of an invisible ravine. He sat down on the couch. “Well…he told me how your dad had like post-traumatic war stress and stuff. Like how ’Nam wrecked his life and there wasn’t much help in those days. And like how your grandmother didn’t get it. How she was so cold and drove him so hard. Dad says he wouldn’t have drunk so much if she…” Seeing Walter’s expression, he giggled nervously. “Yow. Pretty heavy stuff, I guess.”

  “Heavy stuff indeed,” said Walter with disgust. “Sorry. I’m not angry at you, but your father has it all wrong. Or part wrong. All Granna did—besides put a roof over our heads—was try to help your grandfather get back on his feet. Which if he had managed to do might have meant that he could have known you. Never mind us.”

  “You and Dad are like pretty different guys,” Scott said. “So I guess you’d see things different ways. Like me and Candace. She is just totally Valleyed out.”

  “Scott, your father and I lead very different lives, but this…this bit of history, I believe, is not up for dispute.”

  “You guys’ve never talked about this stuff?” said Scott.

  “Your father isn’t one for serious talks.” Walter tried not to sound bitter.

  “Yo. Five on that.” He put down his hand after he realized Walter did not plan to reciprocate the gesture. “It’s like golf, tennis, the Dow Jones, and how I’m fucking up my future are his favorite topics when I’m around. In that order.”

  “Don’t you worry about your future, you are doing fine,” said Walter, deciding to ignore the expletive. “And I am running late. After the paddywagon comes for T.B., why don’t you take the morning off. I’ll see you at noon.”

  From weight lifting to menu check, the morning went smoothly for Walter, but in the back of his mind he was seething at his brother. Was his take on the way they’d grown up really so different? They’d never spoken much about what went on in the years after August returned from the war—the majority of Walter’s childhood—and now the little chat with Scott had put a different, malevolent spin on Werner’s attitude toward everything in Granna’s house, his urge to heave it all out when she died. It had little to do, after all, with Werner’s glib taste or generic lack of sentimentality.

  Just before noon, Walter went out front to nip the dead buds off the geraniums and petunias in the window box. It was hotter than Hades, with the terrace in its brief midday bath of full sun, and he did the job as quickly as he could. He used nail scissors; you did not greet guests with a molecule of dirt on your hands. He did have time, however, to notice the familiar van parked across the street and to see that in the front seat two people were making out with a teenage vengeance. The two people were Sonya and Scott.

  WALTER NOW UNDERSTOOD WHY SCOTT was so cheerful and worked so hard. He was having sex. Everyone in the world was having sex except for Walter. It was August, and lust was in the air—at least for those who had not fled the city. Maybe his problem was that he had too much dignity, that he rode too high a horse. So on a night when the heat had broken and the air felt crisp as a water cracker, after asking Scott to take the dog home, Walter left the restaurant and walked along beneath the lovely swishy murmur of the leaves until he reached the building where Gordie now lived. His name was right there, inside the foyer on the buzzer beside number seventeen.

  “Oh for crying out loud, just get it over with,” Walter muttered to himself, and then he rang, the briefest touch. In all likelihood, Gordie would be out of the city, like any self-respecting power queen. But still Walter stood there until, stunningly, Gordie’s voice crackled through the intercom: “Who is it?”

  “Oh my stars,” said Walter, a hand to his blushing face.

  “Walter, is that you?” said the intercom.

  “Oh who else,” he said, his lips nearly touching the steel box.

  “Well, come up then,” said Gordie. “I’m on five.”

  And I’m on fire, thought Walter when the buzzer released the lock on the door.

  TEN

  RAY HAD MADE TIME TO INVITE THEM to the mansion for dinner. Maria cooked the meal, her chicken with mole sauce and a vegetable rice casserole.

  To eat in the dining room where Greenie’s meals were served every day yet where she herself never ate, this was odd enough; but now Alan was present, as well as George, who sat high on a plump cushion borrowed from a couch, his short legs swinging and clumping against the chair legs. This was the first time Greenie had seen a child at this vast formal table. That it was George made her want to laugh every time she looked across at him. Mary Bliss sat next to George. She’d made him a paper cootie-catcher; quietly, they took turns telling each other’s fortunes. “You will fall in love with a hairy goblin,” Greenie heard George whisper loudly. “Ooh, I hope he loves me back!” Mary Bliss replied.

  “The food here is amazing,” said Alan, after complimenting Maria’s sauce. “In this city, I mean. When you co
me from New York, you forget that you don’t have the market cornered on good restaurants.”

  Ray said, “You do not. Although”—he looked at Greenie—“seems I had to go there to import my chef. My irreplaceable chef.”

  Mary Bliss looked up from choosing yet another fate. “I thought he’d gone off the deep end when he fixed on that notion. But sometimes he gets these devilish brilliant hunches.” She winked at her boss. Greenie knew what was going on here. Alan was about to be outflanked.

  “So now the question is,” said Ray, “how do we get you out here, Dr. Glazier?”

  “Alan,” said Alan. There was a nervous sheen on his forehead.

  “Same question, Alan,” said Ray.

  In the candlelight against the stylishly stippled salmon walls, Alan’s face looked as smooth and pink as a cameo. The shadow of a mounted cowboy, a bronze Remington on the sideboard, wavered gently behind him, as if the pony were loping home after a long, hard day on the range.

  “Right now,” said Alan, “I have a few patients I couldn’t abandon.”

  “Well, maybe they can be weaned onto someone else, so to speak,” said Ray. “Calves have a hard time of it, beller for their moms a night or two, but they manage—and they got to do it cold turkey. No phones, no e-mail, no nothing.”

  Alan forced a laugh. “Psychotherapy patients aren’t calves. Or turkeys.”

  “No indeed,” said Ray. “All the same, thought I’d give you these, and you can run with it.” He passed a small packet of business cards across the table. “Mental hospital directors and the like. People whose funding depends on me, if I may put it bluntly. Most of the time I do.” He grinned at Greenie. This was the side of Ray she liked least: the charm that was so conspicuously oiled.

  “I’ve given them all the heads-up,” said Mary Bliss.

  Alan flipped quickly through the cards. “I appreciate it. Thank you. I’ll…make a couple of calls.” Watching him closely, Greenie knew that he did not appreciate it much at all, that he found it demeaning. She tried to smile at him. To be sharing meals with her husband again was both wonderful and worrisome. This was their sixth day together here and still it seemed surreal. Their entire shared life had been framed by New York, its tensions and tall buildings, its crowded geometry, the shade and scents of its leafy, well-watered trees. Here, as they walked down the streets, the air tinted by red dust, the astonishing ocean of sky overhead (just as Ray had promised), she felt as if they were explorers on a voyage together, with no familiar landmarks to navigate by. As if Alan also felt the need for an anchor, he held her hand nearly everywhere they went, something he had not done much after they married.

  George said, “Ex-ca-yooz me, but I am full. Can I wear that mask on the wall there?”

  Greenie was about to tell him no—the mask was a Hopi artifact on loan from a museum—when Ray said, “It’s kind of big and heavy for you, Small, but let’s have a closer look.” He crossed the room and took the mask off the wall. He held it up with both hands so that he and the mask were face-to-face. “What the heck,” he said, turning it around and holding it against his face. Leaning toward George, he began dancing in place, as if he were standing on hot coals. The feathers affixed to the brow of the mask fluttered lightly; one of them drifted to the floor. George squealed.

  “Oops,” said Ray. “I could be in biiig trouble.”

  “You are in big trouble, mister,” said Mary Bliss.

  “Well, Mary Bliss, one of your jobs is to keep my secrets, am I right?” Ray hung the mask back on the wall, handling it now with exaggerated care.

  “That’s raaahhht.”

  Ray picked up the stray feather and tucked it into a bowl of glass fruit below the mask. Looking at George, he placed a finger to his lips.

  “Mr. McCrae, you are a goofus,” said George.

  “Back atcha,” said Ray.

  Alan looked beyond uncomfortable now. He looked disapproving. “George,” he said gently, “you should address him as Governor McCrae.”

  “Oh sheep manure. Too much of the world calls me that, and not with a whole lot of respect these days, I might add.”

  “Diego’s house has masks,” said George.

  “Like this one?” Greenie asked.

  “Sort of. But not yellow. And not feathers. They’re black, with big googly eyes. Actually, I used to suppose they were pretty scary.”

  “They sound like old masks. I hope you don’t handle them without permission.”

  “Diego’s allowed,” George said defensively. “So it’s okay for me, too.”

  “Just as long as his mom knows,” said Greenie.

  “Diego says they can make us invisible if we want.”

  “Maria, that mole was stupendous,” said Ray as she brought in a dessert of Greenie’s, a ginger cake with tangerine icing. “After this, how about you take that boy home to bed, Greenie, and I give your man a little tour. Mary Bliss, you work too many nights. Head out and have some fun, for God’s sake.”

  Both Alan and Mary Bliss looked, for an instant, disconsolate. It was Mary Bliss who wanted to be alone with her boss, Alan who would have preferred to flee. Greenie had begun to understand, though Mary Bliss had never fully confided in her, that she was smitten with Ray, that her dedication was the deepest of pleasures. More than a workaholic, she was a bossaholic.

  As for Alan, Greenie had no intention of rescuing him. She wanted there to be a chance, any chance, for Alan to understand why she liked this place, why she lived happily with the governor’s flamboyant, even pompous manner because it came with the largesse of his heart, why she felt safe here.

  “Is there time for a video?” George said. “Actually, I want Black Stallion.”

  “We’ll see,” said Greenie. George had seen the movie at Diego’s house. He had made Greenie check it out so often at the video store that she had finally bought it. There were sinister, even terrifying scenes, especially when the ship carrying the boy and the horse caught fire and sank (a scene that had crept into one of Greenie’s recent dreams, something she wouldn’t tell Alan).

  Ray took only two bites of dessert, but Greenie knew the cake was not to blame. Not since the Cerro Grande fires had she seen his appetite diminish the way it had in recent weeks. Nor had she seen him look at his reflection so often and with such obvious anxiety. It had become clear to her that Ray was falling in love (and not with Mary Bliss). But for McNally’s “high noon” speech, Greenie might not have noticed. Ray went to the ranch nearly every weekend now; much more often than before, he mentioned matters of animal husbandry in casual conversation. To Greenie, over breakfast one morning, he’d rhapsodized about the natural beauties of Colorado.

  GREENIE HAD GONE TO BED by the time Alan returned from the Governor’s Mansion. He came into the bedroom followed by Treehorn, who had waited for him beside the front door. When George had been disappointed that the dog wouldn’t sleep in his room, Greenie explained about dogs and their loyalty, how Treehorn would grow to love George as much as she loved Alan, maybe more.

  As Alan undressed, Treehorn sniffed loudly at his body. Greenie wondered why the dog seemed so intrigued by Alan; she laughed when he climbed into bed beside her. “You do not smoke cigars!”

  “That’s right. But I do not say no to that man,” said Alan. “I do not!” he bellowed in Ray’s cocksure tone. He stroked Treehorn until she lay down on the floor beside the bed. “The weird thing is, I found it completely impossible to hate him, even while having a tour of his stuffed elk busts and his Indian arrowheads dating back to the rape of the West. There was a whole wall of cavalry sabers in his dressing room. He admitted they weren’t too PC, but he didn’t want to offend the historical society, so he just moved them out of the living room.” Alan’s left hand rested, beneath Greenie’s nightgown, in the crook of her waist.

  “You didn’t bring up the fires, did you? Or tell him he’s an eco-fascist?”

  Alan looked into her eyes for a long moment, smiling. “You’ve been hovering
over George too long. We did not talk politics, Greenie. We talked you. Your talents and virtues. Your assets, as the governor called them.”

  “Did you volunteer any, or did they all come from my boss?”

  “I named plenty, believe me, Greenie. The first two I named were your breasts.” His hand moved up from her waist.

  “Be serious.”

  “I can’t be, not right this minute! I’ve been shacked up with a goldfish the past four months.”

  “Did you like him, even a little?”

  “Sunny?”

  “No, Alan. Ray. Just a minute here.” Greenie laughed. She held his wrists away from her chest.

  “Greenie, he’s a politician. Read: an emotional mannequin. I can see that he’s charming, and he sure as hell thinks you are the Bengal tiger’s pajamas. He told me how he starts off his day in your kitchen. ‘Like a guaranteed sunrise,’ he said, or something to that effect. If he gets voted out of office next term, he’s a shoo-in at Hallmark. So how can I hate the guy when he loves the woman I love? But have you caught a glimpse of this man as a person?”

  “Several glimpses,” she said. But had she? She knew details of his story, interesting details, and they had debated this or that political issue…but all of it could be a front. “What exactly do you mean by ‘a person’?”

  He answered without hesitation. “Someone acting or speaking without motive.”

  She thought this over. “But we always have motives, don’t we?”

  “No, I don’t believe that,” said Alan. “Falling in love, for instance—that’s not a sensible thing to do at all. Whatever the outcome, there’s always pain involved, always separation.” He kissed Greenie’s mouth. “We don’t need to have this conversation. Not now at least.”

  She let go of his wrists. She said quietly, “Sometimes, you know, I wonder if what we do need is another child.”

  Alan’s body, against hers, responded with a jolt of surprise. “Wow. Talk about something we shouldn’t be discussing now.”

  “Why not now? How old are we, Alan? Is there much more time, if any? Maybe this would make all the difference in the world.”