by Julia Glass
Greenie could still remember the expression on Tina’s face when she’d entered the kitchen the first day she came to apprentice: a look of covetous awe, which had stirred in Greenie a corresponding possessiveness. “I’ve made this place to suit no one but me,” she had said, “so I hope you like it, too.” How easily she seemed to be giving it up—for a comforting amount of money, with a modest share of profits and the right to take back her name in the future, all this was true—yet she felt a sense of foreboding. She had been so certain, back then, of what “suited” her. What in the world would suit her now?
After Walter had closed the door behind Tina and Gordie, he spun around dramatically and said, “Before we break out the champagne—even though I should be scolding you for sealing the deal on your expatriate status out there in the wagon-train boonies—I have a confession to make. That was him.”
Greenie smiled; Walter’s theatrics were irresistible. “Who was who?”
“Gordie. It’s him. The guy I’ve been telling you about, the one I’ve been seeing. The one whose name I wouldn’t tell you because I wasn’t really sure what was what. So, what did you think?”
“Oh my,” she said. “Well, cute. That’s for sure. Nice. Smart. And he must be crazy about you, because even I know that lawyers charge a hell of a lot more than two hundred dollars just to shake your hand.” She kissed Walter on the cheek. “So when’s the date?”
“For heaven’s sake, we’re not hetero college sweethearts looking to register at Bergdorf, lay in the layette and all that.”
“And I’m not lining up to be your bridesmaid, Walter. But am I the last to know?” Greenie sat down again. Hugo, who had long since cleared the table, was back in the kitchen; preparations for lunch sounded like a percussive free-for-all. If she’d had more energy, she might have offered to help, just to spy on Hugo for inspiration. Ray would have loved Eggs Hugo, a layering of brown bread, rare beef, roast peppers, and hollandaise sauce.
“No, no, it’s still kind of secret,” said Walter. “But we’ve been seeing each other a lot. We spent Christmas Day at my place, just us. Scott’s back in California for the week—a break I definitely needed from playing surrogate dad to the grunge poet laureate of Bank Street. So I fumigated the place and decorated up the wazoo, half Martha, half Bauhaus, and it was…” Walter sat down across from her. “Romantic. Simple as that.”
Greenie was pleased to see Walter blushing. She put a hand on one of his. “Walter, that’s fantastic. What’s to keep secret?”
Walter reminded her about the lawyer’s ex-partner, who lived in the neighborhood and was still getting over the breakup. “Thirteen years they were together. In my world that’s a monument, that’s Rushmore. So I’d be cruel to trumpet this thing from the rooftops. Though boy would I ever love to do just that! A whole brass band. The Boston Pops.”
“He treats you well? He knows how lucky he is?”
“Sometimes I think we are so compatible that we don’t even need to speak of the future. At this point.” Abruptly, Walter sat up and stared straight at Greenie. “Oh my stars. The future! You! You and the hometown Romeo!”
“Oh Walter. No. That is the furthest thing from my mind.”
“What do you mean, no? No what? No, don’t go there? No, he’s a psycho? No, mind my own beeswax?”
“No future. Not that kind. It’s just a dormant crush. I don’t know what I was saying when I told you I’d fallen in love. It’s just…” If she’d been petty, Greenie could have told Walter about Alan’s shocking news, but she feared that Walter might gloat, remind her that he’d always suspected there was something undeserving, some fundamental fault in the man. Not unlike George, Walter often saw the world in primary colors.
“It was just a passing thing,” she said, understanding now just how big a lie this was. “I’m not sure I told you, because I’ve been so knocked out the past two months—all those turkeys and stuffings and cookies and pies—but Alan’s getting his act together. It’s taken him more time than I would have liked, but he’s definitely moving out with us soon.”
“Well,” said Walter. “if I were him—though, lordy, am I ever not—I’d get my Freudian derriere on that plane and pronto!”
“Yes, me too,” said Greenie, and she left it at that.
Now that Alan had told her his messy story—worse, confided in her that he’d had his fears about the other child for over a year—he had left her almost no choice but to forgive him. In one way she felt terrible for him, filled with pity; thank God a woman couldn’t find herself in such a plight. But who wouldn’t feel the urge to boot the man out, to let him twist in the wind, hoist himself on his own petard, stew in his bitter juices? All the angry euphemisms lined up in Greenie’s brain like cars before the Lincoln Tunnel at rush hour. Yes, she thought, Alan had better get his ass in gear, bite the bullet, fish or cut bait. Go west, young man, and pronto! Except that he wasn’t so young, and neither was she. Life is short, Ray liked to say, but here’s worse news: what remains of it gets shorter all the time. It does.
SHE RETURNED TO ZINC SKIES, a garden glazed with snow, a kitchen (her own) colonized by spiders, and her first e-mail from Charlie: happy new year. i missed you. too much. see you thursday with wb’s but call sooner. She e-mailed back, I missed you too. New York was bleak. Come to the kitchen on Thursday. Bring me another gift?
On Thursday, the sandwiches Greenie made were pork tenderloin with chipotle mustard, the soup a purée of beets and pears with Beaujolais wine and dill. For dessert, she made lemon wafers, rosewater marshmallows, and Amazon cake powdered with cocoa. Ray said, eyeing her preparations that morning, “Fancy-schmancy. That soup looks like something we’d serve to folks from the White House.”
Greenie said simply, “Thank you.”
Four hours later, she heard the Water Boys enter the dining room—their voices, as usual, more raucous than those of any other group. Not long after, she heard their soup spoons clattering too often and too emphatically. As courses were served and plates were cleared, she stayed away from the kitchen door.
When Maria went out to refill coffee cups, Greenie retreated to her office. She stood by the window, looking at the mountains, waiting. Almost immediately, she heard Charlie’s footsteps, and then his hand came down on the sill beside her. When he pulled it away, there was the skipping stone from Circe.
“I wish I could have you back,” he said. “I never quite had you, I know that, but all the same, I wish I could have you back. I guess that’s obvious by now. I feel like I had you first, or I could have. I feel like it’s just not fair.”
She turned around. “Don’t talk about it in terms of having. Or fairness. You sound like George.” She was appalled to find herself scolding him; perhaps it was her last, feeble attempt at resistance.
“I’m sorry.” He looked sad, but irritated as well. He crossed his arms.
“Don’t be,” she said, and quickly, because she knew just how long it took for Maria to refill the Water Boys’ coffee cups, Greenie uncrossed his arms and put them around her back. She kissed him forcefully, without a hint of regret, because she wanted him to make no mistake about her intentions, and she stepped away. Gently, she laid a hand against his mouth and pointed toward the kitchen, showing him out. “Later,” she said.
What she saw on his face, before he left, was shock more than anything else, but that night he was in her bed till four in the morning.
She assumed that she had forgotten his body, but she hadn’t. His hips were wider, the veins in his legs and hands more pronounced, and there were various scars he might or might not have had since childhood, but the hair, nearly everywhere, was still a rosy blond, his nipples perfectly oval, his fingernails bluish along the crescent cuticles. How strange the recognition felt. The one thing she knew she had never forgotten was the squareness of his joints. As the two of them had bungled through their first embrace, beside a stone wall in the Maine woods, he had cried out quietly when one knee struck a rock hidden by a
layer of twigs and leaves. Greenie had helped him hold the knee until the pain subsided. Briefly, they had laughed. She’d noticed then that his knees—and his elbows, too, when she had reached to cup them in her hands—seemed blunt and hard as stones themselves. This one memory she’d kept all along.
NOW SHE WOULD ARRIVE AT THE MANSION having slept very little, if at all, with swollen eyes and lips, with aching limbs and heart. She thought about Alan more than she had in their first months apart. As angry as she felt, her guilt was stronger. It did not really matter that she had found out about this Marion and her child—the child!—because only a self-righteous fool would equate Greenie’s infidelity with that one. No, this was not revenge.
It took Ray just a week to guess. It was a Friday, and there was a bluster of snow in the pink morning air as she arrived. To her astonishment, Ray was already on his stool, reading his newspapers. According to his official schedule, circulated by Mary Bliss, the governor would have a short day in the capital, then head out to the ranch to check on the calves born that week. But an earlier morning for Ray had never before meant an earlier raid on the kitchen.
He’d helped himself to the remains of a vegetable terrine and a beef stroganoff.
“Ray, what are you doing here so early?”
“Too cold to run, and I am sick to death of the treadmill. I’ll ride off extra this weekend. Somehow ridin’ in the cold don’t freeze your butt so bad.”
“That’s because your butt is up against another living creature who is freezing its butt off,” said Greenie.
“Girl, don’t talk horses to me. Your son knows a hell of a lot more about horses than you do. Bet you did not know that in Mexico they call a Palomino an Isabella. Or that George Washington’s warhorse was an Arab named Magnolia. I sure as hell did not. Hey, Magnolia! Takes a mighty secure man to ride a horse into battle with a name like that; well, to ride a horse into battle at all. You watch out or I’ll send Small to the ranch to study up. Like Rumpelstiltskin. You would never see that boy again, no you would not.”
Greenie had brought together ingredients for cherry bread. It was a variation on Irish soda bread, baked in a cast-iron skillet with dried cherries and pepitas instead of raisins and caraway seeds. At lunch, she would serve it with a spinach gorgonzola salad (the dressing sweet, to appease Ray) and a veal roast studded, porcupine fashion, with long, thin slivers of garlic, ginger, and chili pepper. She’d heard everything Ray said, but her body was a fugue of memory: fingertips, kneecaps, soles of feet, palms of hands, eyebrows, the hairs at the very top of her spine, every part of her playing its own hectic tune.
When Ray had been quiet for several seconds, Greenie turned around. He was chewing his food, but he was also staring at her, squinting, unsmiling. “Nor would you see that boy—or so much of him—if Alan were to find out what kind of cookin’ you appear to be doing outside my kitchen.”
“Ray,” she said, a quiet warning. Just because there was no fooling Ray did not mean she owed him explanations. “I don’t want to talk about this.”
He laughed rudely. “Boy oh howdy you don’t. I’d bet the ranch you don’t.”
“Fine. You need to tell me you disapprove? Now you have.” She crossed the room to the sink. She ran water briefly into a large bowl. She put two towels in to soak, then squeezed them out and laid them across the bowls of dough. “So, would you fire me?”
“Oh please, let’s not get dramatic here, Greenie. I’m thinking about your son. I’m thinking about that husband of yours, who just needs the well-placed steel toe of a Lucchese boot to get his ass in gear. I’m not sure you tried that hard when he was out here last summer. Mystified me just a little, it did.”
“How would you know? Did you bug my bed? Does my daw-see-ay now include my pillow talk? My bathroom talk with George, my views on cavities and bath toys and drinking milk? And what would you know about marriage and monogamy and what it’s like to be the number one parent?”
“Who says I know nothing about monogamy?” said Ray.
Greenie carried his dishes to the sink. “Sorry. That was low.”
“You do not know me that well,” said Ray. “You think I’m a western chauvinist gas-guzzling stripper-craving horny old phony cowpoke blowhard. You do.”
Greenie couldn’t help laughing.
“You do not take me seriously because you’d never vote for me if I didn’t keep you employed. You ‘like’ me, you find me funny and generous and charming, right? You might even concede I have a decent if misused brain in my head. But a high-paid cavalier dilettante, that’s me.”
Greenie looked directly at Ray for the first time since he had alluded to Charlie. She did not believe he was seriously angry, but he had never spoken so aggressively to her.
“Well today,” he said, “here’s what I think of you. I think you are a never-tested righteous-thinking petunia-garden liberal with a conscience like a Barcalounger. You got talent and smarts, you got kindness, you’re a good mom, but that ain’t everything. It just ain’t.”
She could not have spoken if Ray had poked her in the chest with one of his antique cavalry sabers.
“Oenslager, he’s not a bad man, I’m not saying that,” Ray said. “I suppose that’s part of the lure. That he’s not your typical bad-boy rebellion. And no, before you get all feminist-righteous on me, I do not intend to say a word to him. I know my church from my state.”
“So tell me what you do intend,” said Greenie, speaking softly to steady her voice.
“I’m just putting you on notice,” he said. “Notice, I mean to say, that you need to think mighty hard about what you are doing with your wonderful life. Excuse the cheap Gary Cooper reference.”
“Jimmy Stewart.”
“Right. Jimmy Stewart.”
They stared each other down from across the kitchen.
“Notice taken,” she said.
“Fair,” he said. “My conscience goes forward clean as a plate licked by a hungry coonhound. Yours is your business. It is.” He stood, slapped his stack of newspapers, then gathered them up. “You know—and I am not sayin’ this describes you, but there are a mighty lot of folk around these days who just don’t think they have to make choices. Your Water Boy’s got a point when he gets to ranting about resorts and fountains and lawns and the got-to-have-it-all greed in these parts. But it’s easy to be smug when you come from where the all is taken for granted. You should give that a good thought or two. My advice, welcome or not.”
Ray squinted at Greenie again, as if she were fading before his eyes, and then he startled her by dropping his newspapers back on the counter, crossing the room, and clamping his large callused hands on the sides of her head. He kissed her so fast, hard, on one cheek, that by the time she gasped, he had already pulled away.
“That’s not harassment, by the way, Ms. Duquette. That’s a half apology. Half. Are we straight?”
Greenie said, “Hardly straight, but I get your point.”
“I got to tell you, Greenie, I had my eye on your paramour for Mary Bliss. She needs a good guy bad. You already got one.” He held up his hands. “Okay, end of tirade. Lunch looks stupendous. And would you fax McNally the recipe for that dude-ranch meat loaf you made last night? His version tastes like it’s held together with mink oil.”
Left alone, Greenie stared out a window, waiting for something to pass through her empty view: anything to distract from her shame. When nothing, not even a cloud, would oblige, she turned and put the pans of bread in the oven. As she closed the door, the phone rang.
Darling was the first word out of Charlie’s mouth, a word of such old-fashioned tenderness that it made Greenie ache with happiness. Her mother had called her darling—but what a different, far less intimate endearment it had been, for her mother had called everyone darling, from her husband to the girls who passed hors d’oeuvres at her parties. “Darling,” when Charlie said it, felt like a whirlpool of rapture. Whenever Greenie answered the phone, he would say just that word, and
Greenie would say “You,” which was her way of expressing that he was now the world to her, that he was the one for whom she was always waiting, that he was the high cliff on which she was happy to stand and from which she had come to realize she might, at any moment, jump. Jump with open eyes and outspread arms. Anything, she might have been saying, everything, anything, all.
Greenie and Alan had married each other in a secular ceremony, their words egalitarian, rational, and modern, but privately, she’d always had a soft spot for the antique Episcopal vows, most of all that ravishing phrase with all that I am and all that I have. In that moment your beloved was gravity itself, pulling you in, holding the wide world together, everything held on the surface of a spinning sphere. “Burn the bridges, damn the torpedoes, just take me; take everything!” you were saying. “If it isn’t yours, it couldn’t possibly matter.”
FOURTEEN
ENTROPY, ATROPHY, FECUNDITY—what was that word for nature run organically amok? Whatever the social equivalent, this was the insidious force that threatened Walter’s life, or his peace of mind, as the snow shrank away and the buds on the trees began their suggestive swelling.
First and foremost, there was Gordie’s reticence, which Walter could no longer see as a sign of sensitivity. It was more like a sign of stagnation. Back in January—high fireplace season—Walter had decided that he felt flush enough to close the restaurant for one night in order to throw a dinner party for his friends…and for Gordie’s.
“Sounds terrific, but what’s the occasion?” Gordie asked.
“You don’t have to have an occasion to throw a party,” said Walter. “But if you want one, well, why not let the occasion be…us?”
“That’s a very sweet idea, Walter.”
Walter waited. He wasn’t hearing, Yes, absolutely! Why not on Valentine’s Day? “I think I sense a looming but,” he said.
“Well, no, but—”