“Let’s see. Is there someone around here who tells me I don’t network enough?”
“Networking refers to useful connections, Greenie. Like, do you see me handing my card out to couples fighting on the subway?”
“Well maybe you should. Maybe that would open things up a little.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Sorry. That was insulting. But look—I mean, who knows? Maybe we should consider something like this. Maybe a move wouldn’t be the worst thing. We’re always talking about how we can never make enough money here to give George the life he should have, give ourselves that life!”
“I know I’ve said that. You’re right. But we have a good life. And this—come on, Greenie, this is not an option.” He sighed. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to sound so critical.”
Yes you do, she thought. She hadn’t meant to tell him she was considering this job in any serious way—she wasn’t (was she?)—but now she’d dug in her heels. “Tell me why we couldn’t do it. Just hypothetically.”
“Forget the clients I do have, and forget that we have a decent place to live and good friends and your successful business—”
“Which you’ve told me isn’t successful enough.”
“Greenie, that’s not what I’ve said. I’ve said it could be more successful. Your business is your business. I don’t mean to—”
Greenie felt her heart accelerate with indignation. “What is the matter with you! What makes you so completely, predictably negative!”
Alan was clearly stunned by her sudden rage—though that’s how her rage, which was rare, would emerge, surprising even Greenie. He veered back in his chair, as if she’d struck him. Greenie leaned forward, her forearms pinning down an overturned section of the paper. Paralyzed briefly by frustration and fury, sorrow at both, she could not help reading the upside-down but all-too-familiar slogan between her elbows. It was one of those self-congratulatory ads the Times ran in space that must not have sold to purveyors of yet another bloated car or party-colored laptop.
She stood up and pointed at the words. “Expect the World!” she shouted. She laughed briefly but loudly. “Expect the world. That was me when we got married. Okay, so I was an idiot, a typically blind romantic idiot, right? So I learned my lessons like any new bride, and I didn’t marry the wrong guy, did I, Dr. Glazier? But now, now it’s like, expect a world of doom and gloom, expect a world of no praise, no support—no emotional support—a world of but this or no not that.Expect to have everything I feel hopeful about just pushed right into the mud. Expect a hole in the ground. That’s what it feels like, that’s me now. Am I deluded? Am I wrong? Tell me! Please!”
The sharp sound of barking drew Greenie’s attention beyond the window by the table, into the garden behind a brownstone that belonged to a neighbor they had seen for years but never met. The neighbor’s small dog clamored at the sliding glass door. Unable to meet Alan’s gaze of wounded surprise, Greenie focused on the dog, a terrier of some sort, watched him jump at the glass, each of his yips a briefly visible outburst of air.
“You are very angry.” Alan’s voice was quiet and solemn.
Duh, she thought, the rude little expletive that George had recently picked up and Greenie was trying to expunge from his proud, precious repertoire of slang. Can we talk about that? also crossed her mind, the next thing she’d have heard from Alan if he had been her therapist, not her husband. She wished the dog would shut up.
“Oh Greenie, why are we always fighting?” He sounded sad, even penitent.
“You’re the shrink. You tell me.” She turned back to look at him. He was bent over his lap, looking between his legs at the floor. Instead of his face, she saw the cowlick of dark brown, barely graying hair that George, riding aloft on his father’s shoulders one day last week, had pressed with a finger. “Look!” he’d said, giggling. “Daddy’s hair is the color for dirt!” Alan had muttered absentmindedly, “That’s me. Mr. Dirt.”
Outside, the glass door slid open for the terrier, slid shut behind him. It looked like a magic act, as if the door had opened by itself, for the owner was obscured behind a reflection of brick walls and barren trees. In the exaggerated silence, Greenie felt forced to speak. “Is this really news to you?”
Alan looked up. “Yes and no. I didn’t know you were this angry.”
“Well, now you do,” said Greenie. And now I do.
Alan looked at his watch and gave her a pleading look. “I’m so sorry, this is very bad timing, but I’m afraid I have a phone session now.”
“Maybe that’s what we need—a prearranged session.”
“Greenie, don’t be sarcastic. That’s not like you.”
“I’m not. Being sarcastic. I mean, by the time we’re together, without George, without conflicting schedules, we’re…dead on our feet.” Or you are, she thought. “Look, I’m doing this thing because I agreed to. I’ll be over at the kitchen this evening, and I’ll try to be back by nine, and we can talk then, okay?”
“Okay,” said Alan. “Okay then.”
“Kiss George for me,” she said. “Tell him I’ll walk him to school in the morning and pick him up in the afternoon. I have to be at Governor McCrae’s—at the environmental fascist’s hotel—at seven tomorrow evening.”
“Okay,” said Alan. He stood, looking as if he might like to touch Greenie, but she turned away and carried her mug to the sink. She was ashamed of her outburst, but it had been necessary, hadn’t it? Alan retreated to his office, and Greenie left to shop. That night, when she came back at a quarter to ten, she found Alan asleep next to George in the bedroom. They were turned toward each other, both snoring, the boy’s head against the man’s chest. Oh Say Can You Say? was splayed open beneath her husband’s hip, several pages bent double. So much for the break of Dr. Seuss.
HAVING JUST FINISHED THE MAIN COURSE, his plate stark naked, Ray McCrae appeared to be talking loudly to himself, though in fact he was having an impassioned conversation on one of those telephonic earpieces. As Greenie cleared the dishes, he was facing his high-priced view and waving both arms about, as if he might persuade the trees spread out below him to burst into passionate song. “It’s a frigging weed! A weed, Archie! What gives? You know, look, I got no quarrels with the redwood huggers and the give-it-all-back-to-the-wolves city folk buttin’ their coastal noses into our business, that’s par for the democratic course, but Archie, there’s wildlife and then there’s…weeds! Even my cows won’t touch ’em!” As Greenie arranged the biscuits in a crescent flanking the cheese, there was a long silence, and then the governor let out a theatrically exasperated sigh. “Bundled up with welfare-to-work? Oh now that was demonic, pure sly-dog tactics. How’d we let that one slip past, Archie? Who snoozed through that one, huh? Just tell me who. You do.”
Greenie realized the conversation was over only when he turned around, looked straight at her, and said, “Do you have any idea what kind of devilish mayhem can break loose in a state full of cattle when a plain old weed—I mean the thing doesn’t even flower or smell nice—gets promoted from ‘threatened’ to ‘endangered’ in the EPA’s fancy-ass lexicon?”
“I can imagine,” she said as she set the cheese plate on the table and refilled his beer glass. (When she’d told him she knew next to nothing about wine, he’d made a dismissive gesture and said, “Wine’s for the likes of Ralph Nader, people who like stuff designed to get picky about.”)
“With all due respect, young woman, you cannot,” said the governor. “This is the stuff of my worst nightmares, stuff that can whup you upside the head when you’re happily trimming your toenails. Stuff you think of as footnotes, but don’t be fooled! You easterners picture New Mexico as a land of Pueblo Indians and fancy turquoise trinkets, like I run one big exotic Disney World pawnshop, a few exits off Route Sixty-six. But let me tell you: when the going gets tough, it’s the men with the cattle who open up their big fat rawhide wallets. If the Archduke Ferdinand’s assassination could set off World
War One, well, the canonization of a scruffy plant that some kind of owl needs to scour its gullet could boot me clear out of a job and a mansion. I kid you not. Troublemakers come through the backyard, that’s what my dad used to say.
“But speaking of gullets!” This one-sided conversation was his first acknowledgment of her presence since he’d sat down to the soup. Now, giving her his full, robust attention, he said, “Greenie, you are a sorceress. Those oysters Rockefeller and tuna ballyhoo I turned down at the fish place? Canned stew compared to this meal.”
“Thank you. I’m flattered.” You had to wonder if there was anything of substance behind this man’s relentless bluster, yet Greenie found that she was beginning to like both the man and the bluster. Despite her exhaustion, she was sorry that she would have to leave soon, probably never to see him again.
“Pull up a chair,” he said. “You have any dinner yourself?”
“I had a sandwich late this afternoon. I’m fine.”
“Sit, girl!” he said. “That’s an order from a card-carrying chauvinist who just may be your future boss.” He stood, pulled up another chair, held it out till she sat down, and went to the kitchen. He came back with a plate bearing two slices of lamb and a sliver of polenta, the only food remaining from the previous courses. “Is it me or is it your dainty eastern portions?” he said when he set the plate down before her.
“A little of both.”
“I do like leftovers. Have to dock you half a star for that.” Abruptly, he called out, “Mary Bliss! Hold off the calls a half hour, would you? And bring us another glass from the bar.
“If you work for me, especially in my kitchen, you got to like me at least a little. Vice-a versa I’m already sure of,” he said as he filled the second glass with beer. She accepted it, even though she was one of those Ralph Nader folk, a lover of wine. “Not that we’ll sit down for meals together, not much. But you’ll see what I mean. And of course, I need to say, you won’t be playing waitress. There’s plenty of staff for the fetch-and-carry. Nice people, too.”
Before she could ask if he was offering her the job outright, he asked about George, her George; and if the bachelor was bored by the subject of four-year-old ways and means, then the politician trumped that boredom with what appeared to be genuine curiosity.
After hearing about George’s talent for reading, he said, “When I was little, my favorite books were just about anything to do with the sea. Pirate books, to be sure, and that Jules Verne book Fifty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea—Captain Nemo and the giant squid. But even books on seashells, sea birds, sailors’ knots, books about sea battles—Spanish Armada, you name it. I was just dyin’ to get a glimpse of the sea.”
“I grew up taking the sea for granted,” said Greenie. “I can’t imagine living too far from the ocean.”
When he gave her a scolding look, she realized what she’d implied.
“We may not have the sea out west, but we have ourselves a glorious ocean of sky, Ms. Duquette.” He drank the last of his beer. “So, as you may have guessed, I joined the navy. Just before Vietnam, as both my fans and foes like to point out. You can look at it any way you want—bravery, cowardice, dumb luck—but I joined up without a whit of politics in mind. Needed to get away from home, like any normal guy, and wanted to see the sea. What’s that Gene Kelly song?”
“‘We Saw the Sea.’ I think the singer’s Fred Astaire,” said Greenie, though she knew for certain he was. She sang the chorus, her voice quavering only a little.
“The woman cooks…and knows her old movies, too. She does!”
“Her sappy old movies,” said Greenie. “Or the music. But you were saying…about the navy.”
“Yes. I landed in the Mediterranean. A little later, a lot less luck, I’d have drawn the China Sea instead.” He licked a bit of cheese off a thumbnail. “But now—but now, dessert! What I’ve been hankering for all day. Bring it on, Ms. Duquette.”
Greenie carried in the cakes, both at once, on a tray with a foxhunting scene she had found in the bar. The sherbet was in a paper carton nestled in a bowl of ice.
“My God in heaven, girl,” he said when she put the tray down on the table before him. Addictive or simply relentless, the man’s enthusiasm never seemed to quit. She was reminded, fondly, of George.
The governor did not converse much this time as he ate; he might have been contemplating the flavors she’d assembled or brooding about the accursed weed. Greenie excused herself to sort things out in the kitchen. Mary Bliss had insisted she leave the dishes for the hotel staff, so Greenie rinsed out only the items she had brought with her.
When she returned to the living room, Ray McCrae was standing at the window, looking at the citified forest below. The branches of the trees were gloved in glistening ice, so deceptively beautiful. From her childhood, Greenie could remember the sound of limbs cracking off in the middle of a winter night, the ice too much for the trees to bear; in the frigid, hollow darkness, the echoes carried like gunshots.
Something fell from the sky yet again; up here, at this privileged altitude, the something was snow, but farther down, at street level, it was probably sleet. Oh what would it be like, she yearned, to escape this city, this dreary precipitation, these slippery sidewalks—escape the anxieties of how to get along with an angry husband, how to afford a home where her son would have a real room, how to get this son into a school that wasn’t motley, crowded, and overrun with irate, pushy parents? Such anxieties—the kind that linger—had only recently begun to afflict her. For most of her life until now—even for her first year or two as a mother, at least until her parents were killed—Greenie had been someone whom other people admired for the ease with which she made decisions, the way she faced the world straight on, with little confusion or doubt.
She was startled when the governor spoke. She could see his face only as mirrored in the window. “Out where I live, the elements don’t spare us, Ms. Duquette, but they’re not so underhanded. Snow is snow. Rain’s rain. And boy oh howdy, is heat ever heat. I’d call it a man’s meteorology—off the record, because that would be sexist, right?” Turning around, he smiled at her in a different way. It was a prolonged, complicitous look, as if they had a secret to share. He held out his right hand. “Greenie, you’ve made me a happy man tonight. Mary Bliss will call tomorrow. I have a feeling you might be hard to pry loose from this place, but we have our ways. We do.”
He walked her to the door and took her coat from the closet. “George is out front with the car; he’ll drive you home.”
Greenie thanked him, and she thanked Mary Bliss, and then she was alone in the hallway, and then in the elevator with its lion-footed bench and gilt-framed mirror (in which she avoided her own eyes), and then in the lobby, where a solitary bellboy snoozed on his feet by a luggage trolley. Across a prairie of carpet printed with red acanthus leaves, she could see the polished revolving door that led to Fifth Avenue and, beyond it, a black town car. Perversely, or just because she felt too tired to make small talk with a stranger (she hadn’t been raised with hired help and did not know how to ignore anyone politely), she turned left, toward the side door that led to the cross street.
The dreary precipitation had ceased, and the air was milder than she had expected. She fastened her coat beneath her chin, pulled up the hood, and started downtown on foot. Though it was late—nearly one, she was stunned to learn when she looked at her watch—there were several people out on the avenue, many alone, many talking on cell phones. Greenie disliked these phones, which she saw as security objects for people who were afraid to be alone with their thoughts, afraid of real independence. You’d walk along the street and hear isolated snatches of gratuitous chat: “I’m heading down Perry now, and I’ll be in the subway in five minutes, though I have to buy tokens….” At the grocery store, in the produce aisle: “Yeah, the broccoli looks kinda yellow today, so I don’t know…asparagus? Only wait, it’s pretty overpriced, so how about artichokes? Yeah, not too bad, they’re s
ort of in season, aren’t they?” As if such decisions could no longer be made in private, at a visceral layer of the brain, while you dreamed, deeper down, about far more complex, significant matters. When she’d told Alan her theory, he agreed: “Internal conversations are the hardest ones; they include the voices we wish we could drown out rather than discipline.”
The thoughts she was left alone with now were thoughts of Alan.
When they met, Alan and Greenie were starting out in their respective fields, both happily exhausted by all there was to learn and both—as they figured out while lying ecstatically awake in bed one night a month or so after they’d fallen in love—setting out to ease the world’s pain, on a modest scale and in very different ways.
Flirtatiously, they teased each other about it.
“Ordinary unhappiness,” said Greenie, remembering something she had once read in a magazine about the goals of psychotherapy. “I think German chocolate cake aims higher than that. And it costs a whole lot less.”
“It does,” he answered, “but it promises no progressive improvement, no way to internalize the remedy it offers.”
“Digestion doesn’t count, I guess.”
“Doesn’t digestion result in externalization?”
Through the silliness, they had felt the forging of an altruistic collusion, a shared conviction that what they did when they got up every morning made the world a brighter place to live, one hour of talking, one piece of cake at a time. And then, though Greenie had to expend every ounce of her patience to persuade Alan past his customary agonizing, along came George. For a time, he deepened their collusion.
But then, gradually, over the past two years, Alan seemed to undergo a kind of souring—not on fatherhood but on something indefinable that Greenie could think of only as his way or his direction. It was as if he’d been strolling a wide thoroughfare that had subtly begun to narrow, until one day he realized it was little more than a dirt track threatening to fade into the brush, into brambles and swamp. In such a predicament, Greenie would have bushwhacked it wide again, swung her machete this way and that, and if it slowed her passage, well that’s the way it would be for a while. Alan, in tough times, turned inward—not in defeat but rather, as a tortoise might, securing himself in a safe, dark place until the storm had passed. Greenie’s prodding at his shell was ineffectual and foolish, but she couldn’t seem to help it.