by Julia Glass
McNally’s presence in the city kitchen was nearly comic. Against the polished beige surfaces, he looked like an outtake from a colorized western: his face too harshly red, his clothes clumsy in bulk and shape. They sat on stools at the center island, listening to Claudia go through her lists; Greenie could feel the vibration as McNally swung his short legs back and forth, leaking nervous energy. Every so often, he’d catch himself reaching up to pick his teeth, force his hand back into his lap. Looking meek and claustrophobic, he deferred to Claudia as “ma’am,” waiting a full beat before answering any of her questions or making comments. Greenie realized that any necessary amendments to Claudia’s plans would have to come from her.
Claudia had changed her mind about the ribs. She had decided on filet mignon, the beef to come from the affianced ranches, to be grilled out in the open. She went to the window and pointed to a place where she believed the grills could be placed so that the cooking smoke would be blocked from the reception area behind the mansion. Greenie had no idea what direction the wind, if any, was likely to come from. She looked pointedly at McNally—surely he had an indigenous sense for such matters—but he was gazing at Claudia (or her back) with undisguised sorrow.
Like Mary Bliss, McNally was not happy to see his boss getting married. Greenie should have figured this out the minute he arrived in her kitchen; never mind that, like Greenie, he had seen it coming. Ironically, now that their earlier prediction had proven true, they were powerless to predict anything further. When it came to Ray’s wedding, McNally would follow Greenie’s orders, but he would take no initiative. He was too fearful of losing his job.
Greenie joined Claudia at the window. She liked this woman, but at the moment she felt piercingly alone, as if her life were an open prairie, bright with sun but far too wide and empty. She felt as if someone had handed her an edict informing her, with cosmic authority, that she was entirely, absolutely, unforgivably in charge. Of weddings, of hearts, of fates, if only a few. A small-time monarch, that’s what she felt like as she stood in the smallest of kingdoms, a kitchen, peering at the world beyond its walls. Be very, very careful what you wish for, said the edict.
AUGUST PASSED IN A SCORCHING BLUR, a rippled vision like a desert mirage. Ray was out of town for two weeks, and Greenie would gladly have gone to New York, borne its mean urban heat to be with George, but Alan said he’d rather wait, as they had agreed, till George was well settled in first grade. Alan would stay with them in the city for a few days, so George could be with his parents together, and then Alan would go to San Francisco. His sister was planning to adopt a baby, had he told her that?
They exchanged their news, concisely and politely, by e-mail. Though Greenie phoned New York twice a day, Alan now gave the phone straight to George. Or George himself would answer. “It’s me!” he’d shout against the mouthpiece, sounding more exasperated than eager. George was going to “camp” at his old nursery school. The little campers played in the classrooms and up on the roof, where an awning sheltered a wading pool, a fleet of tricycles, and a flower garden planted in bathtubs. Dutifully, Alan had described the particulars in June, going through the motions of including Greenie in the decision of how George would spend his summer.
They went on field trips, George told her. They had been to the Union Square farmers’ market and the nearby museum with the toy soldiers, but they had also been to Coney Island and to the merry-go-round in Central Park. When Greenie commented on how far from his school these places were, he informed her cheerfully, “We have special T-shirts with the camp name, for if we get lost on the subway.” Greenie tried not to envision such a mishap.
For the first time in months, Charlie ventured farther away than Albuquerque. He went to California, to meet with lawyers who worked for the Sierra Club. He would be gone for several days. Greenie spent her free time wandering the sunstruck town. Shoulder to shoulder with summer tourists, she browsed through galleries filled with colorful blankets and baskets. She sat quietly one afternoon in the Santuario de Guadalupe, inhaling the scents of resin and incense, trying to understand the story told in the church’s cameo paintings. Had a cloakful of roses become a radiant image of the Virgin, was that it? Greenie felt tears begin to gather. This happened so easily now, at both ends of the emotional spectrum.
She did not drive anywhere except to the mansion, and there was little reason at all to do that. Mary Bliss, who had gone home to Nashville to look for another job, urged Greenie to take a week off and leave the city.
On the day before Charlie’s return, she stood gazing at a red couch in the window of a stylish furniture store on Marcy, wondering how you could recognize a certain kind of beauty as Italian, when she noticed, in the window’s reflection, that a woman had stopped across the street and was staring in her direction. When Greenie turned around, the woman started to hurry away.
“Wait!” Greenie called after Diego’s mother.
Theresa allowed her to catch up. Her expression was aggressively neutral.
“I don’t know what to say,” said Greenie. “I’ve been meaning to call you, but I haven’t, I’m sorry. I guess you know George went back to New York.”
Theresa nodded.
“He misses Diego, you know. He adores Diego.” She had nearly said “adored” or “still adores,” as if the affection had to be a thing of the past.
Theresa nodded again. She was a broad woman, but she was pretty, with a youthful, coppery Mayan face and lovely dark eyes. The expression in those lovely eyes, aimed steadily at Greenie, might have been contemptuous or simply aloof. Greenie tried not to look away.
“I didn’t handle that evening well at all,” she said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Theresa said quietly. “It’s in the past. Diego is not allowed near the horses now, and we do not talk about it. He is gone away for the summer. He works for my sister at her house in Albuquerque. He comes back when it is time for school.”
“Is he…is everything okay with his father?”
Theresa shook her head, not to say that things weren’t okay but to brush off the question. “I have more children than Diego. Diego is a part of the family, and if he is doing his chores and his schoolwork, this is all we ask now. I did not think the friendship a good one. That was the trouble.” She spoke fiercely, inflicting the wound she had intended.
“George is a good boy. He did love Diego,” Greenie said.
“He was too curious, this was the trouble. A nice boy, but too many questions. Too many questions lead to trouble. When you are a mother longer, you will understand this.”
In the silence of her own embarrassment, Greenie thought of Diego’s placid nature. Was this the intangibly peculiar thing about Diego, that he rarely asked questions? Had he been taught not to ask questions? She felt herself scowling at Diego’s mother. It could have ended far worse, she was tempted to say. Be grateful we got off as well as we did. But the conversation was finished.
“Take care,” said Greenie as Theresa started on her way. She could not be sure, because the woman’s back was turned, but she thought Theresa might have laughed.
Greenie turned the corner and leaned against a shaded wall. Its rough, cool surface calmed her. From there, she walked into the nearest shop. A woman beamed at her from behind a luminous jewelry case: the familiar confectionary array of turquoise in its many hues; corals in orange, scarlet, even purple; lapis lazuli, malachite, obsidian.
“Shopping for a gift?” said the woman. “Everything for men is half off today.”
Greenie saw a row of silver bracelets, some sleek and slim, others broad and braided; men’s bracelets. “Yes,” she said when the woman asked if Greenie would like a closer look.
She left the store with a box that contained, on a wafer of cotton, a clipped oval of silver, narrow but inlaid with a long straight channel of old green turquoise. Charlie’s proposal had hung over both of them, like a pine bough weighted with snow, for nearly a month. Why hadn’t she accepted? What was she wai
ting for—everything to turn out just right, everyone to love her, the charming, gregarious, talented Greenie Duquette, all over again as if she had never done anything wrong? That was the root of her superstition: the fear that whatever pain she inflicted must earn her pain, and much more of it, in return. But the world, as Small George already knew, was never just.
NINETEEN
SCOTT AND SONYA NO LONGER WENT OUT on the town every night. Now they had taken to hunkering down in the apartment, a hipster version of the old married couple, eating takeout at midnight while listening to incomprehensibly jarring music on Scott’s CD player and then, until two or three in the morning, composing songs of their own. Walter, in turn, had taken to wearing earplugs when he went to bed, though he hated blocking such a vital alert system before entering the defenseless land of nod. For more than a week now, they had been working on a song called “Purple Tarmac Blues,” which pondered (abrasively) the many colors and textures of asphalt and the likeness of love to tar itself, how it would ultimately trap you like the poor creatures fatally mired at La Brea. Behold the dinosaurs of passion, the fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-futile fuh-fuh-fuh-fuh-FOSSILS of love! was one line Walter kept hearing loud and clear, even with his door closed and the air conditioner turned up full blast, because it seemed to be the song’s wailing climax. Their hour-long efforts to find a rhyme for violet (apparently the color of upper-class suburban macadam—which they rhymed with Mill Valley madam and, if Walter’s ears could be trusted, smokin’ señoras lemme at ’em) finally drove Walter out in search of a club, the sort of outing that had lost its luster ever since the fizzling, yet again, of his relationship with Gordie. Walter understood now that when Gordie had proposed a “separation,” he’d known there would never be a reunion. Yes indeedy, if love was tar, then Walter had been royally tarred and feathered. Still, however cowardly Gordie might be, at least he was discreet.
Now Walter walked the streets of the Village—blessedly balmy, as they had been for most of August—and reassessed his determination to be just as magnanimous and tolerant to Scott as Granna had been to him. Writing songs, however bad (though who was Walter to judge modern music?), was an art. Scott might not be talented, but he was not dealing drugs. Walter delighted in continuing to flummox his brother by keeping the boy out of trouble; what were a few lost hours of sleep next to proving that you were superior to the older brother who had left you in the lurch when you needed him the most?
Werner, Tipi, and the suddenly buxom fifteen-year-old Candace had come east for a visit over the Fourth of July. They took a suite at the Plaza, on a high floor with a view of more than one fireworks display. Almost shamefully, Walter was impressed, for he had always made it a policy to escape New York on this particular holiday; how loathsome, he’d always maintained, that real estate should render the celebration of populist power such an elitist occasion. (Candy Kinderman, cell phone addict, seemed unimpressed, disappearing into the master suite to talk to her friends back home.)
Walter had arranged to take time off so that he could squire everyone to the Ellis Island Museum, the Guggenheim, and a classical guitar concert at the Winter Garden. For meals, he’d planned on oysters at Blue Ribbon, sushi at Tomoe, and classic Italian at Da Umberto. (Scott suggested an evening at the Knitting Factory, which Walter answered with an are-you-out-of-your-mind smirk.) How silly not to have guessed that Werner had made plans of his own: a Mets game, drinks at a revolving bar, dinner at Windows on the World (which Walter skipped; what overpriced déclassé fodder), a chartered boat from South Street Seaport (okay, this was fun), shopping at Barneys and at the weary, sclerotic galleries remaining in SoHo. Werner had also finagled five insanely expensive tickets to The Producers (how wickedly Walter wished that they could have gone to Naked Boys Singing or Hedwig and the Angry Inch).
For the week of his parents’ visit, Scott seemed to have the surprisingly canny instinct to minimize the presence of Sonya. Thanks to a suspiciously coincidental meeting, she did show up once, just in time to join them for the private cruise. Candace spent most of the cruise yakking on her phone, and Werner and Tipi were too busy playing with their new digital camera, taking pictures of the skyline from the water, to pay much attention to their son’s punksterette pal. Walter realized that, to Scott’s parents, this year away from the life they wanted him to lead was just an insignificant hiatus, like a stop on the highway to grab a burger, use the rest room, and fill up on gas.
Walter had counted on making a visit to his apartment as inconvenient as possible—though he needn’t have bothered—and instructed Scott on compliance with the plan. “If your dad sees how we are living, the close quarters, he is sure to call the vice squad.” Scott uttered a predictable “Copa, dude.” Walter’s real reason for hiding the apartment, however, was pride. If Werner saw how modestly he lived, it would reinforce the elder brother’s superior standing.
The only gap in Werner’s choreography was the final night of the visit. “You surprise us with a favorite restaurant of yours. Except, of course”—chuckle, chuckle—“for your place, which we know and love.”
So, on that blessedly final night, as they sat in Union Square Café, Werner poured out a bottle of champagne (overruling the waiter’s efforts to do so) and raised his glass. “To Stanford,” he said, directing a leonine smile at his son.
Tipi smiled more timidly, while Candace gulped down her glass, concentrating on the luxury of booze condoned by her parents. She was wearing a pink cashmere sweater, which Walter thought much too tight for her age, and had painted her nails the very same color.
“Yeah, long may it wave,” toasted Scott. “Yale and Harvard too. Masters of the universe, unite! You got nothing to lose but your scalps!” He laughed carelessly.
Werner ignored the jest. “Rourke tells me admissions has a spot for you in September.”
Oh this will be more delicious than the meal, thought Walter.
“Whoa, Dad. That’s like dropping the boom.”
“That’s telling the facts, son. You’ve had a great year with your uncle.” He nodded reverently at Walter. “For which your mom and I are endlessly grateful. You needed to get a fresh perspective, and I’m sure it will serve you well.”
“Yeah, but like, I’m practically off the waiting list for this amazing workshop and really finding my voice. I’d never, like, even considered the blues as a plausible art form till now.”
Werner’s confident smile bore just the hint of a threat. “You’ll be singing more than the blues without a solid education.”
Across the room, Walter watched the host seat Julianne Moore and her scruffy-adorable boy-man, along with that tall blond actress who’d clearly been born with a harelip (Laura Linney? Diane something?). He whispered in his niece’s ear and pointed. She looked both tipsy and awestruck.
“Dad, I can always get a college education. I can’t always seize the moment of inspiration. I feel like it’s totally now or never with my music.”
Walter watched never flash across his brother’s face.
Tipi blinked, doelike, at Scott. “Honey, they have plenty of music at Stanford. It’s not the army.”
“Even the army has music,” said Candace. “Do you know how much the government spends on military bands? Like more than they do on public education.” As she spoke, her eyes scanned the room for other celebrities.
“Nobody said anything about the army, for God’s sake,” said Werner. “Let’s not exaggerate here. Your mother is right. I’m sure they have bands and orchestras and things like that. Some colleges even have their own…cabarets. Radio stations. You could be a deejay on weekends.”
“Perhaps you could have a minor in music,” said Tipi. Werner flashed her a let-me-handle-this scowl.
Scott was stacking his silverware, looking down and slowly shaking his head. Suddenly, he pinned his gaze on Walter, a piercing plea across the table.
Walter cleared his throat. “Werner, Scott is learning the ropes in a sophisticated, potentially quite lucrative
business. Where’s the harm in another six months or so? It’s not like he’s lounging around strumming the banjo and smoking weed. He’s not a Beatnik. You never know—he could grow up and be the next Danny Meyer.” He realized Werner had no idea who Danny Meyer was. “Or Colonel Sanders.”
“Very funny,” said Werner. He turned to Scott. “What aspects of the business have you learned thus far?”
Scott shrugged. “Like, lots of running-the-kitchen stuff, and like…”
Walter broke in. “He’s been helping me go over the books. He’s been learning about the division of labor in a professional kitchen, soup to nuts.” He smiled. “Or should I say stew to sorbet. Garde-manger. Booking reservations. Compliance with health regulations.”
“Like washing your hands after going to the bathroom?” said Candace, who’d poured herself the last of the champagne. “Duh.”
Werner was not distracted. “A very narrow range of skills.”
“Keeping the books is practical,” said Tipi.
Werner ignored her. “Of little use if he wakes up one day and wants to be a doctor. Which happens far more often than you’d guess. My dermatologist majored in philosophy, but at least he had that B.A. when he needed it.
“You are now nearly twenty years old,” he said to Scott, attempting to sound more conversational than autocratic. “When I was twenty, my parents were dead and I had no cushion to fall back on. I was on my own. You are a lucky young man.”
You had Granna, thought Walter. You were headed for Haight-Ashbury, all expenses paid. He clamped his lips together.
Yearningly, Candace followed Julianne Moore’s elegant trajectory toward the ladies’ room. Walter had also spotted Dame Edna, but none of his white-bread relations would have known—or wanted to know—who she was.
“So you’re, like, going to disown me or something if I don’t go to Stanford like right away? Wow, Dad. Wow.”
Surprisingly, Werner seemed to have no ready answer.