The Whole World Over (14 page)

Alan looked at the two men on the couch before him, both well kept,
well dressed, and in their late thirties. They lived in the neighborhood,
and before meeting them, Alan had noticed them more than once: in the
expensive wine store, in the video store, just walking down the street.
In public, they were talkative and affectionate. Now, getting to know
them, he marveled that they had been together longer than most straight
couples Alan and Greenie knew, longer even than Alan and Greenie.
And both men wore rings. When Greenie and Alan had been planning
their wedding, she had been disappointed when Alan told her he was
sorry but he just didn't feel comfortable wearing jewelry of any kind.
Why had he been so stubborn, so prissy about it?

Alan took a deep breath. "Gordie, like it or not, Skye stayed with
you, and she brought up something for Stephen that was probably going
to come out soon no matter what. The two of you are here because of
what we call a logjam. Ordinarily, I hate jargon, but I like this term.
This is as hard and real and turbulent as a river choked with logs, and
right now it seems impassable. What we have to do is break it up. I can't
predict which way the current will flow when we do it, but do it we
will." Or do it he hoped they would. This referral, which baffled him,
had come from a restaurant owner down the street who knew Alan only
as Greenie's husband. When Stephen had said, "Walter says you are the
best,
" Alan had to guess that the referral came out of pity, that Greenie
had told her client about Alan's financial woes.

"I'm going to be honest here," he said. "I've never tackled this problem
with two men—I mentioned that before—but perhaps the only
obvious difference is that neither of you has a biological clock to tick."
He saw Stephen open his mouth to protest. "But—but there's such a
thing as a stage-of-life clock, too, and if you want to be considered as
candidates to adopt—and despite the change in the times, Stephen, it
isn't going to be easy—I think you'd do best to start investigating your
options. Let me tell you, these days it's not even easy for straight couples."
He let them absorb this for a moment, and then he told them that
he wanted them to sit down together for at least an hour, unplug the
phone, and make those old-fashioned lists of pros and cons. They could
talk about the lists if they both wanted to—but only if they could do so
without fighting. If they began to argue, they had to promise to put the
lists away and change the subject. Either way, they were to bring them
to their next session with Alan.

AFTER SEEING GORDIE AND STEPHEN ON THEIR WAY
, Alan called
New Mexico to speak with George, something he had done so far nearly
every night. A sad silver lining of the literal distance between them was
the two-hour time difference; if George had been at home in New York,
Alan would have missed saying good night because of the late therapy
session.

"I have a new friend," George said right away when he came on the
phone.

Alan asked the new friend's name.

"He's Diego. Do you know what he has?"

"What does he have?" asked Alan, expecting to hear about toy
armies and guns, things that western Republican parents would have no
qualms about giving their little boys in ample quantity.

"A squirrel."

"A real squirrel?"

"
Yes,
Dad," said George, in a tone that prophesied his adolescence.

"Wow, a real squirrel. That's amazing. Is it a gray squirrel or a red
one—or do they have flying squirrels out there?"

"Dad, squirrels don't fly. It's brown. It comes on his roof and it eats
things Diego puts out the window. Diego can touch it and put the food
in his hand so it eats from his hand. It likes peanuts and string cheese.
Mom let me take some cookies she said got scale."

"Does it live in the house?"

"No, Daddy. It's a squirrel. It lives in a tree. There's lots of trees. The
house is into the woods. There's a barn with horses and three dogs. The
dogs live in the house. Daddy, can we get a dog when you come here?
Our house is in the city part here, so I know we can't get a pony, and we
don't have a tree like Diego's tree, or a roof like that, we don't really
have a roof because we're not in a house with a upstairs, so we can't get
a squirrel, but could we get a dog? Please?"

"Well, that's an idea. It's certainly an idea for us all to talk about."

"Is it a
good
idea?" asked George, sometimes too careful a listener.

"We'll see," said Alan. He smiled at his son's understanding of this
distinction, but he was furious at Greenie (how little it took, at such a
distance, with such provocation!). He wondered just how sharp a picture
she had painted of his moving out west. Still, he had to be happy
that George had offered conversation of any kind.

Unlike a lot of children his age, George had no attraction to the phone.
One time, while Alan waited to speak with his son, he had heard Greenie
whispering fiercely, coercively, "It's
Daddy.
Daddy wants to talk to you.
Daddy misses you!" Another time, George came on the phone and said,
at lightning speed, "HiDaddyhiDaddyhiDaddy, Irodeinastretchtoday,
That'sallIhavetosay, goodbyehere'sMommy!" Alan hadn't spoken a
single word to his son, and George had refused to return to the phone
after handing it back to his mother. She'd explained that the governor's
chauffeur took George for a ride in a limousine and let him push all
the buttons in back. Greenie said, "He told me there are stars in the
roof you can turn on and off, and terrible me, I didn't believe him.
But George—I mean George the chauffeur, that's his name, too—said
that George, our George, was right. Can you imagine that? Stars on
demand?"

Alan had despised what he took in her voice to be an air of superiority,
for being there to experience George's simple joy in person. ("Our"
George? Oh thanks for sharing!) But Alan was too smart to let on. And
perhaps his son's callow haste meant only that he felt secure, that he
wasn't worried, that he was having a good time where he was—and
wasn't that what Alan should wish for? The lesser of two anxieties?

Tonight Consuelo, the babysitter, was the one to begin and end Alan's
call. ("Mr. Alan," she called him when she answered the phone, or
"George's Daddy," as if he were some lord-of-the-manor and not this
discarded, remote appendage to the family, like a far-flung cousin.) Consuelo
told him that Greenie wasn't there, which meant she was at the
Governor's Mansion, in that other man's kitchen, cooking up a feast. If
she had been in New York, she might be off at her own kitchen, cooking
for others as well, so Alan's jealousy was misplaced. But he would have
liked to ask exactly what George (not the damned chauffeur) thought
this separation meant, how he envisioned the future.

OH, THE IRONIES OF "TREATING" COUPLES
with threatened unions
when your own was fractured. What sort of list would
he
make, Alan
wondered as he ate his plate of prawns in garlic sauce later that night.
(Now that he was living by himself, Alan made a point of never eating
takeout right from the disposable cartons; this would be akin to drinking
alone . . . though
that,
alas, was something he did do now, more
often than in the past.)

So then:

Pros and cons of living without Greenie
(about living without George,
there were only cons, or that's how it looked right now):

Pros:

• Leave toilet seat up (the bed was another story; that he made, thus far
  at least).
  
• Be silent whenever you like, for as long as you like.
  
• Watch sports without the burden of covert disapproval or irritation
  (though baseball, his favorite sport by far, had yet to gear up and give
  him the kind of solace that nothing else could).
  
• Take showers the length of TV sitcoms.
  
• Leave bath mat on floor and shower curtain pushed back.
  
• Order take-out sushi (his alternate dinner) without a warning on tapeworm
  as regular and redundant as those recordings in taxis that told
  you to "bat-buckle up."
  
• Read sections of the Sunday
  Times
  in whatever order he liked and
  throw out those he hated before he even brought the paper in the door.
  
• Snore without being poked, awakened, and told to turn on his side as
  if he were a piece of rotisserie chicken.
  

Cons:

• No apricot scones or devil's food cake on demand; no loaves of French
  bread in the freezer.
  
• No one to do most of the shopping, all the laundry, and some of the
  cleaning up.
  
• No one to sit close against while watching a movie.
  
• No one to enfold in bed or, of course, make love to (even when it felt
  like a task—vacuuming, say, or pairing socks—giving satisfaction but
  leaving you unmoved).
  

Alan stopped here, mainly because he had finished his food and it
was time for the news. Normally, he wouldn't watch the news because
Greenie hated the intrusive angst at a time when you were supposed
to be winding down toward sleep. "If something's happened in the
world that matters so much you can't wait till the morning paper, it's
probably something you can't do anything about," she reasoned,
though he thought her reasoning faulty.

In truth, there was only one con to living without Greenie: the
absence of Greenie. He did not miss having someone to talk with every
day; he missed having
Greenie
to talk with every day. She had claimed,
before leaving, that he did not talk to her anymore. Was this true? Or
had he so internalized Greenie that he did all the talking in his head?

And look at his pathetic list of pros. He did not agree with Greenie
that the separation wasn't a true break, but even so, he felt no urge
toward courtship or even frenzied coupling with strangers—oh, of
that
he was cured! After all, shouldn't the pros include the freedom to investigate,
once and for all, the truth about Marion's son? Or was he too
cowardly to find out, and what would that mean about everything else
he believed himself to be?

The anchorwoman, who wore a red suit that would have made anybody
look fat, started off with a rapid-fire list of later news items whose
promise was intended to hold you through the meatier though ultimately
less tantalizing stories. Something about Tom Cruise's love life,
something about a deadly bacteria carried by squirrels (Please, not in
New Mexico, Alan prayed), something about a breakthrough in curing
prostate cancer (which would be based on a retrospective study with
maybe seven subjects, but the newscasters wouldn't tell you this).

Alan had just switched off the TV when the phone rang.

"Okay, how many?" she said without a greeting.

"How many what?"

"Drinks. I am monitoring you. The tough-love thing."

"I had one beer with my Chinese food and one before. You can't eat
Chinese without beer. God, you're obnoxious."

"That has
always
been part of what makes me so good at everything I
do," his sister said gaily.

Back in his normal life, Joya had phoned Alan once every two weeks
or so (she didn't seem to mind that he was rarely the one to call), but
since Greenie's departure she "checked in" every three or four nights,
and while this hovering annoyed Alan, it also touched him. He knew
he should find a way to tell her so, but he couldn't. Almost always,
because of the time difference, Joya called too late for him to think
in any clear, energetic way—and energy was necessary to keep pace
with Joya.

Tonight, without much prelude, she told him that he was making a
mistake by not coming clean with Greenie. Too tired for debate, Alan
told her she was probably right.

"So will you call her? Write her a letter?" persisted Joya. "Of course,
you should have done it before she left. Maybe you should just fly out
over the weekend. Tell her in person. That's what you should do."

"Joy, I don't know if there's anything
to
tell, do I? And it's not like I
have a Learjet at my disposal."

Joya made a noise of contempt. "God, even my brother's a typical
caveguy asshole. Aren't you being a little dense for a shrink? What do
you mean, nothing to tell? Hello?"

"Your sympathy is much appreciated," he said. "You're not even
married, may I point out. You don't know what the stakes really are.
Honesty can do more harm than good."

"Oh, 'may you point out' indeed. Thanks, yeah, that's right, caveguy.
Don't think you can hide behind that Jeremy Irons diction. Though
clearly, what right-thinking woman needs marriage if all she really
wants is kids? Which, as time goes on and I get to know the ways of
testosterone on a more intimate basis—and boy, do I
ever
—seems to be
the most sane approach."

"Should we hang up? I think we're both tired."

"Speak for yourself. I am about to go out on a
date,
speaking of my
pathetic spinsterhood. A fourth date."

"That's great," said Alan. "Did you mention him before? Someone
you met at work?"

"No. I was fixed up. That's why I didn't say anything. Generally these
things are doomed, but I am nothing if not desperate."

"So you like him." Joya was hard to take when she was lonely, and it
pained Alan, who had no remedy to offer. She was, in many ways, too
smart for her own good—or for the good of finding a man who wouldn't
flee. Out in San Francisco, she was a mediator in union disputes, and
though the art of compromise was supposedly her vocation, she hated
being wrong more than just about anything else in the world.

"Yeah, I like him. A lot. . . . A nice surprise," she added. "And he's
cute—I mean, I don't even have to
convince
myself—except for this
grotty little mustache, which I'm sure I can get rid of, no problem. And
he likes to dance, and his wife left him five years ago, and he's had it
with being skittish."