The Whole World Over

by Julia Glass

  “You are not leaving without giving me your number,” says Walter. He hands McNally a pen and a turquoise cocktail napkin. “He’s coming out after Thanksgiving,” Walter tells Greenie. “He’s in major trouble if he doesn’t.”

  “Like what, you’d send me a dead rat?”

  “I would send you subscriptions to several magazines no one would want to see arrive at the governor’s ranch, least of all you.”

  “Hard to refuse, in that case.” McNally writes on the napkin and hands it over. Awkwardly, he shakes Walter’s hand. “Did a fine job, Walt.”

  “Yes, I did,” says Walter, “and I enjoyed every minute. Thank you.”

  McNally turns to Greenie. She makes it easy for him by hugging him lightly, kissing him on a cheek. “The cooler!” she says, and heads for the kitchen.

  ALL HER SENSELESS SUPERSTITIONS ought to have prepared her. Ray came down for breakfast an hour early. Greenie was so absorbed in rolling out pastry that at first she saw nothing unusual in his arrival. When he said her name and then just stared at her, she told him he looked like he’d seen a ghost. “Something’s going on in New York,” he said. He told her about the planes; he also told her he knew her family would be safe.

  “You know? How do you know?”

  “My sixth sense.” He tapped his forehead, the gesture he always made when bragging about his intuition, and Greenie was suddenly enraged.

  “This is no joking matter!” she shouted.

  “Call right now,” he said. He put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed hard. “You need anything, you go talk to Mary Bliss. She expects it. I have no time to stop, but I wanted to tell you myself. I’ll be downtown all day, I’m guessing. All day and all night.” Greenie heard phones ringing throughout the house, every phone except the one in her office.

  “You’ll be A-okay, you will,” said Ray. “And drop all that.” He gestured at the pastry. Before leaving, he waved, as if they were parting at a train station.

  The apartment phone was busy. She punched the one, speed-dial to Alan, over and over, until she was driven nearly mad. It shouldn’t be busy; their phone in New York had call-waiting. She rifled through her desk to find Alan’s cell phone number, which she had rarely ever called. No answer, no voice mail. She opened her e-mail and typed, Are you all right? What’s happening? I can’t get through on the phone. Answer now, PLEASE. Next, she wrote to Charlie, who had left for Albuquerque at five that morning. She told him that she was going out of her mind trying to reach home. She told him to call her as soon as he could. TAKE CARE OF YOURSELF, she typed, as if the pressure of her fingers on the keyboard could strengthen her words.

  She turned on the radio; after ten minutes of nearly unbearable listening—how could any of this be true?—she went to see Mary Bliss.

  “I can’t get through to my family,” she said.

  “I know, honey. None of us can get through to anyone there.”

  “Ray? Not Ray?”

  “Ray’s gone downtown. I’m keepin’ this ship afloat, such as it is.”

  “I have to get home to my son,” said Greenie.

  Mary Bliss nodded. “If you can wait fifteen minutes, George’ll take you.”

  “To the airport?”

  “Oh no, honey. There won’t be planes for some time. Rental cars’re all gone, too. I’ve managed to hijack a schoolbus for a group of CEOs we’ve got stranded out at Los Alamos. Honey, the world’s gone cattywumpus.”

  “Then where would he take me?”

  “We’ll see, but I would say all the way there, if need be.”

  Greenie pointed out that she had a car of her own; she could drive herself. Mary Bliss said that Ray had expected she’d try that foolish stunt. Paternalistic as ever, he would not permit her to go by herself. She could return whenever planes got back in the sky. They couldn’t keep planes on the ground forever. “You know Ray. He runs the show,” said Mary Bliss, her tone quietly ironic, as if Ray would decide when the planes should come and go. After Mary Bliss had returned from Nashville and given notice, Ray had offered her a raise she couldn’t refuse. According to Tall, Ray had even offered to buy her a horse.

  In the half hour before Tall picked her up, Greenie thought of nothing but her own George, wishing for nothing at all but his safety. His and only his, no matter what it costs: the prayer of all mothers, even those without a god.

  Tall showed up not in the sedan he used to transport the governor but in a compact car that looked and smelled new. “A spare,” he joked quietly. He had the radio on, and for most of that day, until they stopped for the night in Oklahoma City, the two of them said very little. Many times, Greenie used Tall George’s phone to try New York. When they stopped at a drive-through for burgers, he took the phone away and told her he’d let her call again in another two hours. “They be smart, they’re fine and outta there. Me, I’d be at a friend’s. Safety in numbers, you know?”

  For the first time since leaving Santa Fe, she thought of Charlie. “Oh God!” she cried out. She also remembered, the trite alongside the momentous, the pastry she’d rolled out that morning, the eggs she had left in a bowl to warm for custard.

  “What, they got no friends?” said Tall.

  Greenie shook her head. “I forgot something. I’ll cope with it later.”

  “Need to stop at a drugstore; like that?”

  “It’s nothing.” She would call Charlie, to explain her departure, the first minute she could be alone. All that mattered now was to drive, drive, drive. Her body was so charged with adrenaline that if she could have reached George just as fast by running all the way on her own two feet, she’d have done that instead.

  Greenie was aware that she and Tall made an odd couple when they entered each new diner and motel: dark with light, hip with sedate, grace with guilt. Mile after mile, they listened to news on the car radio, changing stations only when the static overcame the voices, as if their lives depended on it. At the start of each day, they read newspapers; at the end, they went to separate rooms and slept.

  Greenie spoke to Charlie each night of her journey, from Oklahoma City, Saint Louis, Pittsburgh, and, on Friday night, from the apartment on Bank Street, where she stayed alone before driving to Maine. She had expected, even wanted, Alan and George to be gone already, but still she was disappointed.

  Charlie had returned to Santa Fe from Albuquerque as soon as he heard the news. By the time he got there, Greenie had left. When she spoke to him late that Tuesday afternoon, she had not yet spoken with Alan or George, and she was frantic. Charlie tried to calm her down.

  “Do you want me to try them, too, from here?” he asked.

  “No!” she said. “Why could you reach them if I couldn’t? And what would you say to Alan? God, no.”

  “Something like this suspends everything else. He’d know you wanted to know they were safe. I could speak with George.”

  “I don’t want to hurt Alan more than I have.” Charlie said nothing to that. “It’s you I love,” she said. In some form, she said so every time they spoke along her journey. Yet the farther away she traveled, the more desperate it felt to tell him how much she missed him, as if there were only so much distance their attachment could take, as if there were a literal breaking point to the emotional line connecting them.

  It was hard to talk about anything other than the drama unfolding in the world at large, events they could do nothing about. Charlie was right: something like this suspended everything else. Even the two of them were suspended.

  When she called him from New York, she said, “Well, I’m here. And they’re not. It’s strange. It’s strange how calm everyone seems. There’s this ghastly hole in the sky, yet all these people are walking around with strollers and briefcases and bags of groceries. People are renting videos and ordering Chinese food. It’s all normal, but they are gone.”

  “Charlie, you asked them to leave.” He sounded weary.

  “I know that. I’m glad I did.” She asked him about his day.<
br />
  “I think we might win.”

  “Don’t sound so happy, Charlie.” She tried to laugh.

  “Well, you’re not here. And it’s just one step. There are always more challenges, more appeals. It’s chess. We take one piece, but they take another.”

  “I don’t know how you have the patience.”

  “I have some,” he said, “but it’s not endless.”

  She told him again that she loved him.

  “I know that,” he said. “But I wonder if you’ll come back.”

  “I’ve said I would, Charlie! How could I not come back?”

  “To me, I mean.”

  “I know what you mean!” Why was this conversation suddenly like conversations she’d had with Alan when she had been in Santa Fe and he, Alan, had been where she was now? She saw herself in a passage of dueling mirrors.

  “Ssshhh,” said Charlie. “I didn’t mean to upset you. You just need to get to George. It’s the right thing to do, I completely agree.”

  “But maybe I was being hysterical, making them go to Maine.”

  “It made sense,” said Charlie. “You feared for their safety. I would have done the same thing. I’m not even sure I like the idea of you in New York. Are you staying the night there?”

  She told him that she would set the alarm for four in the morning. She needed a shower and sleep. She might not be able to call him for a few days. Would he mind?

  “Whatever you need,” he said, “I’m fine with it. I have work to do. Lots of it. So don’t worry about me. You wouldn’t see much of me anyway if you were here. I’ll be off pretty early tomorrow.”

  Greenie climbed into her old bed, between sheets that smelled of the husband she had already left.

  WHEN SHE REACHED THE BOATYARD, it was raining. She parked the car—which she had rented in Pittsburgh, almost physically forcing Tall to turn around—and ran to the office above the dock. Inside was a boy she’d never seen before; at one time, she’d have known the faces, if not the names, of everyone working here, but she had not been to Circe in three years. The boy would take her to the island; he mentioned that he’d taken her husband’s “party” the day before. “They looked to be pretty well stocked,” he said, trying to sound like the adult he almost was. “Like they were planning to stay through Christmas! You need the wheelbarrow, too?”

  “No,” she said, indicating her small bag. The clothes she’d packed, days ago in haste and shock, would not be warm enough for the island in this weather. She’d have to hope there were clothes she could borrow in the cabin.

  The motor launch wore a smart blue awning, with see-through plastic flaps along the sides. Greenie chose to stand in the open air at the stern, in part to distance herself from the boy—she had no energy for small talk, least of all island small talk—but mostly so she could turn her face to the elements. She needed a little ruthlessness.

  Motoring slowly along (the boy must be new), they took the strait between Mare’s Rock and Collared Cove. The boy sped up slightly as they passed String of Pearls. Someone had built onto the guesthouse the only way you could—vertically—so that now it resembled a watchtower. A sailboat nearly as large as the island itself was moored off its tiny dock.

  A gust of wind sent rain down the neck of Greenie’s jacket. She gasped at the sharp cold as it funneled between her breasts.

  Rain—rain everywhere, agitating the trees on the islands, pelting and coarsening the wide gray waters of the bay—took her back to Charlie. Water: Charlie. Charlie: Water. How could she survive if rain and open water—so abundant in her part of the world, though so scarce in his—made her think of Charlie? Tumbling streams, melting snow, dripping eaves. NO LIFE WITHOUT WATER, read a sticker on the fender of Charlie’s bike.

  Her island (her mother’s island) grew in detail, its idiosyncratic rocks and trees, none changed; the mouse-colored houses still huddled together like three shy girls at the edge of a dance floor. There should have been fog, but despite the domineering, monotonous gray of everything in sight, even the farthest horizons were crisp.

  The important thing about rain, remembered Greenie, was its wetness. The greenness of grass, the whiteness of snow, the fact that shoes must contain your feet: according to Margaret Wise Brown, the important things were always the obvious things. George had never loved Good Night, Moon; he preferred The Important Book. Greenie found the pictures hauntingly frumpy, but the litany of what made each thing “important” gave a sweet illusion of comfort.

  What was the important thing about a mother? Was it that she loves you no matter what? Was it that, like the sky, she is always there? (Could you count on anything as much as you could count on the sky?)

  No. The important thing about a mother is that she shows you love—not just gives you love but shows it: shows how it’s done. She shows you love like a museum exhibit, laid out in good light and calm surroundings. She shows it to you, thought Greenie, like a tray of pastries, every one so perfect that you are at a loss to choose. But that’s fine, because any one you choose will be exactly what you need. You cannot lose. Nothing is stale or runny, too sweet or too yeasty. That’s how it should be. Should be.

  Greenie’s face was dripping with rain, her hair nearly soaked to the scalp. She felt water beneath the waistband of her jeans and inside her sneakers. As the boy turned the boat’s shoulder toward the dock beneath Circe, she was reminded of the way she’d seen Ray’s cowboys rein their horses away from the edge of a herd: close but never too close. And as the boy lowered the throttle and cut the motor, allowing the boat to drift the last several feet on its own momentum, it occurred to Greenie that she could not remember anyone other than her father at the helm when she came to this place for the first time each year. He’d always docked the boat like a predatory bird coming in for a sideways landing, compensating for wind shear yet showing not an ounce of timidity. Always, this approach had enhanced her excitement about the time ahead. Yet now that this boy from the marina had brought the boat to a standstill with such perfect aim and timing, she saw that her father’s way had been little more than stylish, like a pointless curlicued flourish at the end of a signature.

  When we leave, she thought, I will sell my share in the house. To be reminded of Charlie and her father all at once was simply too much.

  She looked up. There, right away, almost too soon after all her yearning, was George: in the rain, leaping from rock to rock, with Treehorn just behind him. Treehorn’s short legs did not serve her well on this terrain. She’d scramble down a wet slope only to find herself stranded in a crevice, then crouch and leap, stiff and cautious, to the next rise—then do it all over again.

  “Mommy!” George cried joyfully. Alan appeared just behind him, calling Treehorn, trying to show her the path whose twists and turns George had refused to follow.

  The boy from the marina helped Greenie out of the boat, and she tipped him. George arrived on the dock at the same moment, making a song of her name. Alan waited behind George, at the foot of the notched gangway, perhaps for some kind of signal, but she didn’t have one to give him. After holding and rocking George until he wriggled free, Greenie leaned down to greet Treehorn. She still did not know what to say to Alan, other than the simplest thing, an echo to his careful “Hello.” He picked up her bag. “We’re so relieved to see you,” he said. “Saga’s good at building fires, I’ve discovered. A good thing, or we’d have frozen solid last night. I was the world’s worst Boy Scout.”

  I remember, she might have said, because that had always been one of his self-effacing refrains.

  “Icicles!” said George, tugging at Greenie’s sodden jacket as they crossed the gray rock that led to the lawn. “We’d’ve been turned into icy icicles. That’s what would have happened, you know.”

  There had been precious little time—or precious little space in her mind—to picture what it would be like returning to Circe for the first time in so long. It was certainly not like those Hollywood movies where the heroine ste
ps through shafts of dusty sun, sweeps aside draperies of cobweb, unveils the furnishings to find them (while eerie music plays) exactly as she had left them. Greenie could not run her fingers over cushions last plumped by her mother, did not find in the sink a ghostly wineglass bearing still the impression of Olivia’s lipstick, a spoon still encrusted with oyster bisque.

  Greenie’s cousins had—quite reasonably and with no disrespect to her mother—freely changed things around. New curtains, in a faux-Hawaiian print, hung from the window by the stove. The picnic table at which they’d eaten all their meals had been replaced with a bona fide dining table and ladderback chairs, probably from L.L. Bean. A shag rug, blue polka dots on white in the shape of a boomerang, now occupied the floorspace in front of the woodstove. As Greenie took in this comic touch—was it hideous or hip?—Alan said, “My first thought was, where’s the matching lava lamp?”

  Greenie looked him in the eye for the first time, and she couldn’t help smiling. “I’m trying to imagine what my mother would say.”

  Alan returned her smile. In the old days, he would have ventured to guess Olivia’s remark, and he would have nailed it precisely, making Greenie laugh.

  She took a towel from a rack by the sink and dried her hair.

  “Hello. Hello.” Through the back door, shaking out an umbrella, came the friend Alan had mentioned, the one he’d told Greenie he was bringing along to the island. He had described her as a woman whose life was in serious crisis. (And what am I? Greenie had thought selfishly.) George had come on the phone and described her as Treehorn’s godmother, leading him to ask, “Do I have a godmother, Mommy? Why don’t I? Does God have a mother?” According to Alan, Ford was no longer proselytizing, but George’s world had grown wider all on its own, demanding further questions alluding to the supernatural. Greenie had her work cut out there.

  Alan had warned Greenie that, physically, Saga was a “lopsided” woman, that she’d had an accident years ago. She did not look so peculiar to Greenie. She had a crooked smile, and she walked with a subtle lope, but these quirks seemed nothing more than colorful to Greenie. Saga’s age was hard to guess; was she twenty-eight or forty? With her intense blue eyes, she was taking a cat’s measure of Greenie. (How much had Alan told her?)