by Julia Glass
She stood and greeted Walter with pleasure, taking his wet coat and draping it over a radiator. “Off with your coat, and I vill make hot chocolate.” She started toward the stove but then turned to pick up her husband’s picture. She kissed it quickly, smiled at Walter, and set the photo on a bookshelf against the wall, safe from spills and careless reachings.
“I talk to your grandfather about many things,” said Granna as she stirred the pan of milk. “It may be I say more to him since he is dead than when he was alive.”
“Was he a big talker?” Walter was the one who felt embarrassed.
“Oh no. More a big reader. But he liked to read out loud. He read me a little bit of everysing. A little bit newspaper, a little bit history, a little bit Bible. English and German both. I miss all the little bits.” She concentrated on stirring the milk as it heated, then filling a cup. The spoon sounded so musical, so soothing and civilized, against her shapely porcelain cups.
When she set the cup on its saucer in front of Walter, she said, “He needed a listener for his reading, I think. I was a listening wife. It’s a good thing, a listening wife. Listening husband, that is good too.” She tapped Walter’s hand with one finger and gave him an encouraging smile.
He thanked her for the chocolate, wishing he knew the right thing to say. Years later, he was ashamed that he’d never offered to read to Granna himself. What an insensitive lout he had been! A little bit Shakespeare. A little bit National Geographic. A little bit Sherlock Holmes. Or perhaps that wasn’t what she’d have liked; maybe the reading-aloud was a part of the marital intimacy she’d had with her husband. Maybe it had been like an ongoing courtship.
But these were thoughts Walter had much later, after Granna died. That day in the kitchen, all he thought of was loneliness: spending a life without finding one person he could talk to in solitary kinship again and again, face-to-face or, if the worst should happen, at least through a picture frame. How will I ever find that one person if I can never marry? he thought. What if no one ever needed Walter—needed him to read or to listen?
THE CONVERSATION AT THE PARTY was dense and eccentric, the talk of friends who no longer need the ordinary everyday topics. The rich food led them to talk about the diets of vultures, parrots, and Aztec kings; parrots and kings led them to argue about the future of zoos and the future of elections. In smaller groups, they rhapsodized about Shakespeare’s sonnets, laughed at Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political ambitions, marveled at how C. S. Lewis had found God, and listened to the soap-opera villain recount in detail how the entire crew of the Endeavor managed to survive shipwreck in conditions that made the weather that night look like July in Ibiza.
And then, long after Walter had forgotten they should already be there, the door blew open and in sauntered Scott, Morticia, and another teenage couple. A gust of wind entered with them. In the arresting chill, as the dinner guests turned away from their meal, Walter realized that his friends might see the newcomers as crashers, as a band of Clockwork Orange hoodlums. He stood and said, “For those of you who haven’t met him already, allow me to introduce my nephew, Scott, and his…entourage.” The word henchpeople had come to mind.
“Welcome!” someone called out. “Get the hell in here and close that door!”
“Do any of the lot of you wear watches?” whispered Walter as he pressed the sodden group toward the coatroom.
“Uncle Walt, we had to check out Central Park in this totally awesome blizzard. It is so unreal up there!”
“Get your overclothes off before you flood the place with all that unreality,” said Walter, though his main intention was to move them out of sight for a moment or two. “Boots, young fellow,” he said to the male companion. “Those boots will go no farther than this. If your socks are wet, I’ve probably got a spare pair in my office.”
“Thanks, Grandma,” said Scott with a sly smile. “Hey, cool shirt. Is that like some kind of batik, or did your pen explode?”
Walter looked down; he’d forgotten about the tissue paper disaster. “It’s yours after tonight. But don’t try that bait-and-switch on me.” As the other three peeled off their parkas and droopy sweaters, Walter whispered to Scott, “This is really beyond rude, I have to tell you.”
“Sorry, man, but don’t you ever get like a kid when it snows?”
Walter sighed. “Well, you have a point. Just go into the kitchen and ask Hugo for plates. Serve yourselves. Your table’s back there.” He pointed. “Hello there, Sonya. And you would be…?”
The two tagalongs, Tyrone and Lisa, had firm enough handshakes, but one of them—or probably all four—smelled of marijuana. Later, Walter scolded himself. And really, what did he expect? The tykes from Mary Poppins?
By the time Walter sat down again, Alan Glazier was telling the others about his son, George, how he had suddenly become quite shy in his kindergarten. He was far ahead of his peers in his ability to read, but perhaps this had only served to isolate him socially.
“Well, what are you doing so far away from him, if I may ask? Don’t you suppose that has something to do with it?” asked one of Walter’s actor friends.
Alan laughed nervously. “I’ll be moving out there soon.”
“Yes, but what kind of consolation is ‘soon’ to a five-year-old?”
“I’m sure a five-year-old is far more complicated than either you or I can imagine,” Walter suggested. “We, after all, are not parents. As I am discovering in the most explicit fashion.” He looked ruefully toward the back table, where the teenagers were happily emptying a bottle of wine. “Crimonitely!” he exclaimed, to the open amusement of his friends. He excused himself and made a beeline for Scott.
“I can be closed for underage drinking, my dear nephew. I believe you know this,” he said. “This is not precisely my living room.” He picked up the bottle as they clutched their glasses possessively.
“Hey, it’s called Walter’s Place, right? So, why not? And by the way, I’m twenty-two,” said Sonya. T.B. lounged in her lap. She was scratching his jowls, and he was drooling in ecstasy.
Ignoring Morticia, Walter took Scott to the kitchen, where Hugo was carefully dissecting the pies. “Look, Scott. I thought that including you and your friends in my party would be something you could appreciate—by which I mean have a good time while minding your manners. I’m not even going to ask who’s stoned here, because I presume you all are—”
“You won’t call Dad,” said Scott, sounding plaintive.
“Of course not! Or not, I should say, if you start minding your p’s and q’s. This…this Sonya, I fear—”
“Uncle Walt, you introduced us.”
Walter wanted to scream. “I don’t know why I should expect to be treated like the cool dude you once believed I was, but the alternative is that you treat me like a big, fat, square-as-baloney parent, okay? Meaning…oh for crying out loud, Scott, meaning that if you don’t behave, I can ship you back to your real parents. Message loud and clear?”
“Deafening.” Scott had gone from fearful back to cocky. He leaned close to Walter and said, “Baloney’s round, man.”
“That’s all she wrote, my friend.” Walter turned away decisively and took a tray from Hugo. The chocolate and banana custards had been marbled in such a way that the wedges of pie resembled plump triangular bees. His chef gave him a wry smile. Hugo’s family story had always been murky to Walter, though he knew it involved a couple of grown children and a jilted wife or two.
Walter thrust the tray at Scott. “Practice your serving technique, Junior.”
Not long after their access to booze was cut off, the teenagers left. Walter’s last glimpse of them was of Scott and Morticia framed in the doorway, merged in a flagrant, convoluted total-body kiss.
The party lasted till one o’clock. The two dozen guests left as a group, perhaps hoping somehow to pool their warmth against the winter night. Walter hugged them all gratefully before sending them out the door. The snow had stopped, but the wind persisted
, and they wrapped their collars up around their cheeks, pulled knit hats down over eyebrows, wincing and bracing themselves. Already, Walter’s memory of specific conversations was fragmentary but bright: the stained-glass-window effect of all the best parties.
Walter had just collapsed on the velvet couch, assuming that he and Ben were now alone, when the door to the men’s room opened.
“I’m not sure I’ve ever been the last guest left standing.” McLeod blushed faintly.
“It’s a compliment,” said Walter. “I thank you.”
“Please, don’t get up.” McLeod looked around. “One doesn’t appreciate the small touches when a restaurant’s filled—as yours so often is.” He examined an antique rectangular platter that hung on the wall; it had been glazed with the image of several spotted rabbits running through grass. The detail was lovely, though Walter couldn’t help thinking that these helpless, adorable creatures, in the artist’s eye, were about to be pounced upon by a vicious pack of hounds.
“You should publish a cookbook,” said McLeod as he pulled on his coat. He looked reluctant to leave, but Walter did not invite him to linger. Walter wanted to have a brandy with Ben and recollect the evening in the solitude he had to accept as his fate yet again.
“A cookbook? What, you mean by Hugo?” Walter laughed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean he isn’t outrageously talented, but we’re more of the upscale-diner mind-set. None of this Mad Mario showmanship—orange clogs and Bermuda shorts fit for Babar, sweetbreads garnished with squash blossoms stuffed with cheese from the milk of Angora goats who live in the Pyrenees. Litchi sorbet veined with coconut milk and honey from Crete.” Walter shivered. “Spare me.”
“I know what you mean,” said McLeod, “but lately I’ve noticed that’s the sort of recipe book we’re selling—what you call the diner mind-set. People want to cook closer to home. If they want Escoffier, they go out. I had a customer the other day who said she wanted a book with recipes for deviled eggs and Welsh rabbit. I hadn’t a clue what she meant.”
“Ah, right up our alley,” said Walter. “But I’m no idiot. If I coaxed Hugo into a book, I’d lose him to some Idaho ski lodge where they charge twenty bucks for s’mores.”
“S’mores?” McLeod wrapped a long dark scarf around his throat.
“Oh my dear, how long have you lived in this country? You are a babe in the culinary woods till you’ve had s’mores.”
“Do you serve them?”
Walter laughed again. “You know, that’s not a bad idea. Seems I’m obliged now to make them for you, my friend. But not in the dead of winter.”
“Springtime then.”
“You supply the campfire, we will oblige,” said Walter.
McLeod nodded and smiled, but still he did not leave. “May I ask you, Walter, what in the world is ‘crimonitely’? An obscure sort of mineral or antique motorcar?”
At first Walter thought he was serious, and then they fell to laughing almost at the same instant.
“I haven’t laughed so much in ages as I did this evening,” said McLeod. “Thank you.”
“Me neither,” said Walter.
“Thank you for inviting Emily too. She needs a wider world.”
Walter yawned. He was curious about the puppy woman but had not a pebble of energy left. “You are welcome,” he said, and struggled to his feet, apologizing that he had to boot his last guest out into the snowdrifts.
After closing the door behind McLeod, Walter looked around, realizing that he’d forgotten about T.B. The dog was nowhere to be seen. Ben, who came out from the kitchen, saw his panic and said, “Cousin Brucie left with the potheads.”
Walter groaned and returned to the couch. “Without his coat.” He asked Ben to bring him the brandy he’d been craving, and the two of them sat down together and joked about s’mores. The party had been a success. People had gone home happy and sated: with food, with lively silly talk, with the kind of companionship that, however brief, replenished the inner streams as they yearned toward the sea. “Heavens to Betsy,” said Walter to Ben, who was putting another log on the nearest fire. “I think I just caught myself thinking in Roy Orbison. I am getting old.”
FIFTEEN
“VIETNAM IS THE NEXT FRONTIER. I’m sort of ashamed to say so, but the thought of going over there all by myself is just terrifying.”
“Nothing terrifies you, Joy. Nothing I’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, put me in a roomful of angry teamsters and I am a fish in water,” she said. “Correction. I’m a hammerhead in water. But this is…this would be like parachuting into the Arctic Circle wearing a bikini.”
“You’ll do fine,” said Alan. “You do everything fine.”
“Yeah? How about find a nice guy and settle down? Even a not-so-nice guy and settle down.”
“Maybe settling down isn’t really for you, Joy.”
Alan recognized the silence of exasperation. His heart quickened; he wanted so desperately to have Joya completely back on his side, the sister whose provocative loyalty he must learn to stop taking for granted.
“Alan, you’ve seen how I live. I am settled down. I’m settled down alone.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Oh, for God’s sake stop walking on tacks. You’re reminding me too much of Mom.” She paused. “Oh God. How is Mom?”
“She likes her physical therapist, but she’s as pessimistic as ever. She acts like my going out west will be the end of her life. She’s started talking about where she wants her ashes spread, how cremation will spare us unnecessary expense, how dying sooner than later will save us money.”
Joya sighed. “That’s our mom. She probably will die sooner when she finds out she’s going to have an Asian grandchild. If I go through with this. She still lives in about 1963. In her world, the Beatles are still a bunch of scruffy boys in a Liverpool garage.”
“You’ll go through with it,” said Alan. “And she’ll be thrilled.”
“Enough Mom talk,” said Joya. “Listen, speaking of moms, I have to go. Feely-mealy group of single mothers who want to adopt. My lawyer recommended it, so I go and grit my teeth. I’m glad you called.”
Alan had spoken to Joya only three times since his misbegotten trip to San Francisco, and neither of them had ever mentioned her false drunken assertion that she had betrayed him to Greenie. During their initial truce, back in January, she had listened quietly, never interrupting, as he told her about his confession. The only thing she said, after he finished his tale, was “Christmas Day? Wow, Alan, they say the holidays make people do irrational things, but you take the cake.”
Whatever sins he had committed, however much penance he had yet to fulfill, both women had forgiven him. He would not lose sight, he told himself, of just how lucky he was.
“Joya,” he said before she hung up, “what if I could go with you—to Vietnam, or wherever it is you have to go? We could be terrified together.”
AS IF TO PROVE THAT HONESTY was the best policy, that telling a difficult truth could be like opening all the windows of your house on the first day of spring (as he used to tell patients before it became too painful to hear himself say), Alan felt a new resolve. He had given his patients nearly two months’ notice and was guiding them through discussions of how they felt about his move. He had given each of them an appropriate referral for continuing therapy after he left.
The one patient Alan really did not want to leave behind—and it puzzled him—was Stephen. Stephen was healthy and rich and found his work exciting. Stephen had countless friends, two active still-married parents who loved him “anyway” (as he put it), two godchildren, and a dozen fellow board members on two separate not-for-profit arts organizations who revered his opinion. Stephen had fine looks, a semblance of youth, a resilient ego, and a decent sense of humor when he wasn’t pissed off at the world.
But people, as Alan had once reflected to Greenie, were not at all like recipes. You could have all the right ingredients, in all the right amounts, and still
there were no guarantees. Or perhaps they were like recipes, he pondered now, and the key to success was in finding the ingredients you had to remove, the components that turned all the others bitter, excessively salty, difficult to swallow; even too jarringly sweet. He had seen Greenie clarify butter, wash rice, devein shrimp, and meticulously snip the talons from artichoke leaves.
April first, he told Greenie—by which time his mother should be soundly on her feet again. He would be there, lock stock and barrel, or dog and baggage, on the first of April. Their earthly possessions—yes, even her big, obscenely pink chair—would follow. When he had made his declaration, early in February, she had uttered a small noise that clearly expressed surprise but sounded almost like a cry of pain, the reaction to very bad news.
She had exclaimed, “Oh, just a couple of months!”
Alan was amused. “‘Just’? Are you scolding me or teasing me? I know I’ve taken my time, but this is the way I had to do it. You know me.”
“Yes,” she said. “I do.”
“So I thought I’d tell George, if he’s there.”
“Not yet,” she said. “I mean, I don’t think you should tell him yet. You know how he is with too much anticipation. Two months is an eternity for him.”
“If you ask me, he’s extremely patient for his age.” As if in contradiction, George piped up in the background, demanding a story. It was later than Alan had thought. “Let me talk to him for just a minute,” he said.
“I’m in my pajamas.” George sounded out of breath. “Daddy, is Treehorn there?”
“Treehorn’s sleeping. Do you want me to wake her up?”
George hesitated. “No. She needs her sleep for running.”
“Just like you,” said Alan. “So tell me what story you’re reading with Mom tonight.”
“The one about the pet wave.”
“Pet what?”
“Wave, Daddy. It’s the boy who gets a wave at the beach and takes it home to keep, but it gets mad and turns into monsters and the cat gets really scared even though it likes the fish and then the dad has to take it back in a quilt. Like a big icicle. Then the boy is going to get a cloud for a pet. And that’s the end. Actually, you don’t get to see him bring the cloud home.”