The Whole World Over

by Julia Glass

  “A pet wave. Sounds like trouble.”

  “It is trouble, Dad. That’s the moral in the story.”

  “I haven’t seen that book. Is it from the library?”

  “No. It’s from Charlie.”

  “Oh,” said Alan. “Is Charlie a friend of yours from school?”

  “No, Charlie is Mommy’s friend, only he’s my friend, too.” In a rush, he said, “I have to go now, my feet are cold, good night.”

  “Charlie’s that guy from my hometown I told you about.” Greenie was back. “The water lawyer.”

  “A book about a pet wave from a water lawyer?”

  “Ha ha,” said Greenie.

  “It sounds like a very weird book,” said Alan, “but at least it’s a departure from horses.”

  “You know,” said Greenie, “there’s nothing wrong with George’s thing about horses. You should see his classmates. They’re obsessed with these weird Japanese trading cards or these put-together space warriors that all have futuristic weapons. I think it may be the age of obsession, that’s all.”

  “It’s fine. I didn’t mean we had to worry. George seems great.” He heard George clamoring for his mother once again, for his story. “Go,” he said. “Call me later.”

  But she didn’t, and he wasn’t surprised. Though his confession had, perversely, given him a certain relief, Alan was—not so perversely—afraid to bring up the subject of Marion’s child. He had faith that Marion would be in touch with him soon. Her upright husband had basically promised she would. (Whom could you trust if not a guy who cured cancer?) And she lived in Berkeley, the land of spiritual and sexual freedom, the land of counter-bourgeois truth-telling, did she not?

  He had decided that he would give her six months before he tried to speak with her again. He had told Greenie as much, and she had replied that this was absurd—if, in fact, he was the father. (Yes, she insisted, genes did make you a father; to hell with some New Age logic protesting otherwise.) But Greenie also understood that aggression would probably backfire. They had discussed all this in the first conversation they had on the phone after Christmas. The conversation had been almost alarmingly calm, even cool. Alan had reasoned that what made it easier than their late-night agonizings together in New York was a matter of proximity: how much less complicated not having to see (and react to) each other’s facial expressions, not having to worry about whether or when they should touch each other.

  STEPHEN WORE THE SMILE of someone with a happy secret. He took off his pale green jacket, doubled it with care, and laid it over an arm of the couch. He adjusted the pillows and lay down. “Guatemala!” he said, in a tone of surprise, just as his head came to rest. “So I have just found out that even single guys can adopt babies from Guatemala. Isn’t that fabulous news?”

  “That’s great,” said Alan.

  “And my friend Roberto’s been telling me all about the home-study. It’s really more paperwork than anything else, he says. You don’t have to be Erma Bombeck or even Mel Gibson to pass. He said I’d do fine; I can just be myself.”

  “Mel Gibson?”

  “You know: the arch-conservative dad with big bucks, religion, and a certifiably female Stepford spouse.”

  “Well, one out of four’s not bad.”

  Stephen laughed. Since he had started doing research on how to go about adopting a baby, he came to Alan’s office filled with energy and excitement, even joy. That joy was like a great iridescent bubble, Alan knew, gorgeous but delicate. Either it would deflate gradually, to a more realistic size, as Stephen did all the necessary work, or he would find that his passion for a child was only masking his heartbreak—in which case the bubble might burst.

  Alan felt uneasy. He had believed, in his gut, that Gordie would return to the relationship. He had no idea whether Stephen could have convinced Gordie to become a parent, but he had seen the two men as more than simply used to each other. They had seemed right for each other, good for each other, perhaps as much “in love” as two people together that long could be. Or was Alan projecting assumptions and wishes about his own marriage onto these men?

  Just the week before, Stephen had declared that he knew he was finally getting past Gordie. “Not over—that takes much longer,” he said. “But something remarkable happened yesterday. I saw him, on the other side of Sheridan Square, walking along with this big Swedish-looking guy. Not the restaurant guy, but cut from the very same mold. How well we always knew our weaknesses! Only mine were less pernicious, I like to think.”

  “Merely walking along with someone doesn’t—”

  “Oh please. I know what Gordie looks like when he’s…I know the look he’s got when—” Stephen stopped short. “You know, I’ve been dreading that kind of coincidence for months. Seeing him with someone else. I was sure I’d drop dead if that happened, dissolve in a puddle like the witch from Oz.

  “The amazing thing was that I could see him with that big hunk and think, mostly, Poor Gordie. I wasn’t pissed off and sad and jealous; I just felt like he must be going through this…I don’t know, he must really be flailing about. I was more…embarrassed for him. I thought, Oh this is so foolish, Gordie, you’re smarter than this, there’s no there there, honey! I could even hear myself sort of talking him down, the way we always used to whenever we…”

  Stephen let out a brief sob of laughter. “You know where I was headed? I was taking Skye to that movie about Iris Murdoch, and we were in such a rush that not till I was watching the movie did I really realize that I had seen him, seen him with another man, just like that. So I’m processing it, thank God in the dark, and of course, what movie is this? Not some action thriller, not some skin flick, someplace I can lose myself, but a sensitive, weepy, romantic film where this devoted crusty old guy takes care of his dear lifelong partner, and there are flashbacks to how they met and how madly they fell in love and all the compromises they made and…”

  Alan heard another sob. He waited for Stephen to collect himself.

  “Well!” A deep breath. “I always assumed we’d end up like that, old and devoted, with lots of friends but in the end relying on ourselves. For a long time, you know, before we were sure we’d made it through, that we were going to escape with our health as so many people did not; well, for a long time I also envisioned exactly that—one of us nursing the other right to the bitter end.”

  Both Stephen and Alan were still for a few minutes, one thinking, one waiting. Stephen’s arms lay folded on his chest, which rose and fell slowly as he breathed. “But you know what?” he said, almost inaudibly at first. “When I got out on the street with Skye, I felt like I did the last time I was tested. Free. Purged of something.” He craned his neck to make eye contact with Alan. “Really.”

  Stephen had then declared that he did not want to talk about Gordie anymore—not for a long time.

  So now, for the third meeting in a row, they spoke about the practicalities of adoption. If Alan had not been Stephen’s therapist, he would have put Stephen in touch with Joya. Only a few nights before, Alan had had a dream in which he entered his office to see, hanging over the couch, an enormous, intricately rendered map of the world. I never knew my geography, he thought as he approached it, excited to find this surprise on his wall. Right away, he saw that several countries were covered with a texture that looked from a distance like a cartographer’s marking for mountainous terrain but that proved, up close, to comprise hundreds of upturned cherubic faces, all rendered photographically. They were the faces of orphan babies scanning the sky. He knew this without question just as he woke up, to his alarm clock. Well, he thought as he rose from his bed, wasn’t it obvious what they were looking for? Planes full of American adults who were wealthy and loving yet driven by a specific loneliness and the longing to cure that loneliness: cure it with the faces and bodies and arms of those very babies.

  ALAN HAD AGREED TO HELP SAGA, every few weeks, distribute leaflets for her animal-welfare group—notices from owners who’d lost t
heir pets or, conversely, pleas on behalf of pets who needed owners. Alan told Saga he’d be happy to place the notices on neighborhood bulletin boards and bus shelters while walking Treehorn, so long as he did not have to traffic with the surly Stan, who (talk about the rigors of adoption!) had peered rudely around Alan’s apartment, grilled him mercilessly, and made him sign about two dozen forms before allowing him to take the puppy home.

  Why were so many people who devoted themselves so passionately to animals so odd, even misanthropic? Saga herself—whose own saga he had never been able to elicit, at least not by indirect means—often seemed vaguely autistic. He had watched her at Walter’s dinner party (where she appeared to be the “date” of Fenno McLeod, though everyone knew McLeod was gay), and though she had joined in the conversation often enough, sometimes her face had looked blank or intent, as if she were not a native English speaker. She had slipped away before dessert, claiming that she had to catch “the last train out.”

  Her largely incurious attitude toward other people was something Alan now realized he might have seen in that boy Diego—another animal lover—and he hoped that George, through his devoted association, would not take on the same demeanor. The boy had appeared at times to be disconnected from the flow of human interaction around him, even from his friendship with George.

  Alan was mulling this over, heading into the newly fashionable Meatpacking District with Treehorn, trying not to entangle the leash with a roll of masking tape as he posted neon-yellow flyers about an abandoned litter of Airedales (We are cute and healthy but homeless!), when he saw Jerry, his old therapist and mentor, step out of a boutique on Gansevoort Street. They saw and recognized each other at the very same moment.

  “Yo!” said Jerry. In the year and a half since Alan had last seen him, he had rejuvenated his hair color and grown a trim mustache. He carried a shiny silver bag frothing with pink tissue paper. “Man, look at you.”

  Alan wondered what Jerry was seeing. “Well, yes, and you. You’re thriving, that’s obvious.”

  “In most ways; in the important ways, I guess.” Jerry leaned down and extended the back of his hand to Treehorn. “Wow, a dog! Hi there, lucky dog of Alan.” Treehorn licked the hand. “How’s Greenie? How’s your son—George? How are those heavenly pastries? Is she giving Martha a run for her money?”

  “We’re all just fine,” said Alan. “Fine.”

  “Are you still down here in the same place?”

  “More or less.”

  Jerry tilted an eyebrow. “What’s the less part?”

  “I just mean that we’re ready for somewhere else. We’re working on it.”

  Jerry nodded. “My rent’s about to shoot through the roof. I’m actually down here myself doing the rounds with a broker. Condos are sprouting up like mad”—he gestured at a tower rising above the warehouses, conspicuous and scornful—“and this is the only way to keep Daphne from dragging me off to Pelham. The bad news I have to give her is the price per square foot. The good news…” He swung the elegant shopping bag aloft; it caught a flash of setting sun. And then he asked, as Alan had known he would, “How are you, Alan? I left you a message last fall—you get it?”

  Alan saw Jerry trying to read, discreetly, one of the flyers with the photo of the Airedale pups. Feeling bad about his earlier evasiveness, he said, “I’m sorry. I wish I could say I was too busy to call back, but the truth is, I don’t have as many patients as I’d like. I’m hoping it’s a temporary lull.”

  “Maybe,” said Jerry. “But too many people are turning to pills.” He sighed. “Could you see yourself teaching? Doing something institutional?”

  Sure. Like committing myself. “I suppose I ought to consider that.”

  “I’m in on a few public health projects,” said Jerry. “We’re in one of those cycles when the city actually attends to its conscience, when the powers that be include social workers. How’s that for political paradox?”

  Alan laughed politely.

  “Call me if you’re interested. Right now there’s room at the top.”

  “I appreciate the offer,” said Alan. Treehorn pulled on the leash, eager to walk along the last remaining block where bisected cows, not handbags and cashmere sweaters, were still the prime commodity on display.

  Jerry swung his silver bag again, as if to draw attention to his prosperity. (What possessed Alan to project such pettiness onto a man who’d never been anything but good to him?) “Let’s get together,” he said, and Alan could see that he meant it. Before Alan could reply, however, Jerry had spotted the rare vacant taxi and waved it down over Alan’s shoulder. “You know where to find me!”

  Alan dumped the last few flyers in a garbage can and aimed for the river, into the sharp wind of early March yet also toward a bright rosy sky, the shine and scent of the water, sensations to which he and Treehorn looked forward nearly every afternoon.

  It was close to ten o’clock when Greenie called. Realizing that he had only a month left in which to pack, Alan had just sealed his first box of books, psychotherapy texts that he had not opened in ten years yet could not discard because they had become talismans of his profession. He was about to tell her this news (You see, I’m serious, I’m really finally doing it!) when she said, urgently, “Alan, you’re going to despise me for what I have to tell you, and I won’t blame you at all if you do.”

  For twelve minutes, she did not allow him to interrupt her. He became aware of the time as minutes because he was sitting on the couch, directly across from a ship’s clock that Greenie’s father had given Alan for his thirtieth birthday. The minute hand moved not smoothly, imperceptibly, but in discrete, isolated clicks. As he tried to concentrate on Greenie’s self-deprecating yet fiercely calm confession, stray thoughts worked their minor sabotage. The ship’s clock posed a thorny question: Would Greenie have dared to leave him if her parents were still alive? The cardboard box at his feet, one that formerly held bottles of gin, seemed to sigh with relief: Oh now I won’t have to pack. And when Treehorn, seeing Alan immobile, wormed her way onto the couch beside him, he felt a wave of consolation: At least I’ll still have you.

  As Greenie spoke precisely yet defensively about this guy from her past, this guy she now knew she had probably “always loved,” this guy she needed to “know about, one way or the other, or I’d never be able to live with myself,” Alan realized that—as she had told him months ago—this probably was someone he’d met; more accurately, even absurdly, whose congratulations he had accepted as he stood in the formal reception line that Greenie’s mother had treated like a ritual of life-or-death importance.

  “Can I say something now?” he said at the end of her soliloquy.

  “Yes. But please don’t try and convince me to change my mind.”

  Perhaps Alan was an idiot not to have expected exactly this; some might say he’d been asking for it. Yet he was also convinced that he and Greenie had been joined far too long to be divided by a single conversation, no matter what Greenie believed. “You know that I still love you,” he said. “You know that I am packing up, intending to join you in less than a month. You know how long we’ve been together, no matter how many years ago you knew this other guy.”

  “I know all that,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  Alan thought carefully. He knew better than to ask how long she’d been sleeping with the man. “Let me come out next week, for a few days.”

  “No, Alan, not now. Not right now. Please.”

  You can’t stop me, he wanted to say. “You’re implying later would be better? How much later?”

  “I can’t keep you away, I know that,” she said, as if reading his mind.

  “And I can’t ask you favors anymore, but then, I don’t owe you any either.”

  Alan knew what she meant, but he would not mention Marion. If that’s what this was about, there was nothing he could do.

  Her voiced softened when she said, “Alan, is it too late for you to keep the apartment?”

&nbs
p; Why answer this coldhearted question? Or why not lie outright just to stab her in the heart? “No,” he said coldly. “They were planning to renovate.”

  “I never thought I would do anything like this to anyone,” she said, her voice so subdued that Alan could hardly hear her. “Least of all to you.”

  Cheating and lying and wounding, he might have said, are hardly childhood aspirations. How did they manage to sneak up on you the way they did, the motives of real live bumbling grown-ups that justified such acts?

  He must make you very happy. Also unsaid.

  “Alan? Alan, are you still there?”

  “I don’t feel as if I am, Greenie. I don’t know what to say except that I won’t let you end our marriage like this. I just won’t.”

  “You have to let me go.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.” He wanted to tell her that, if he chose to, he could arrive on her doorstep anyway, with all their belongings. Did he suddenly love her more, want her more, because this Charlie wanted her too?

  “Alan, when was the last time we were together without fighting?”

  “Come on, Greenie, what married couple doesn’t fight? Fighting is never the real issue.”

  “That’s not true,” she said.

  He sighed. “You’re right. But only about that.” He felt his resolve begin to falter. “We have to stop talking for now. But we have to keep talking.”

  She agreed, or she pretended to. She said she would call back in a few days, when she wasn’t working and George was asleep or at school. A week went by in which Alan cocooned himself in routine. Every time he spoke with George, the boy was with Consuelo. Alan questioned his own judgment—his desire to feel that George, like him, was filled with sorrow—but he sensed a new distance or apathy in George. He seldom asked about Treehorn, and when Alan asked him what friends he’d played with or what he had done that day, he offered not a single detail. In the midst of weary silences, Consuelo could be heard urging George on in a poorly disguised whisper. (“Tell your daddy about the donkey that came to your school, the way you rode him!”)