The Whole World Over (27 page)

When she saw the look of horror on Alan's face, she laughed. "Hey,
my prospects are good. I took the meanest motherfucker drugs they had
to offer, and I decided I'd think about reconstruction—love that term,
like hard hats are involved—I'd think about that part later. And when
later finally came, I didn't really care. I liked feeling so light, like gravity
didn't own me there. And I didn't want any more surgery either."

She'd still had nothing strong to drink, and Alan wondered how she
could tell him these details with so little inhibition, especially since they
practically had to shout to hear each other over the band. Hardly conducive
to intimate confessions. Yet her story made him feel safer than
he had in the parking lot when they arrived; after all, how could you
talk about things like tumors and chemotherapy and then fall illicitly
into bed?

"Marion . . . I don't know what to say," he said. "I am so sorry. And
all your beautiful hair . . ."

"Oh, little brother, losing my hair was the least of it, let me tell you.
Even losing my breasts. I found out, you know, that I have a pretty gorgeous
skull. Except that I have to work with people it might scare, I
might've kept that Amazon look. I might've commissioned a great tattoo
right across the back of my cranium. 'You lookin' at ME?' 'Keep on
truckin'.' Anything, really. I could've grown my hair back over it, but I'd
know it was still there, my own subliminal message." She laughed softly,
as if she were reminiscing about a sports event or a party. "No, the
worst came later, when the doctor broke the news to me that I'd almost
certainly be infertile because of the chemo. It was like he just up and
punched me in the gut. And when I asked him why he hadn't told me
this before, he said—and I quote—'It's my job to buy you as much life as
possible. I couldn't risk that you'd say no to the drugs.' Move over,
Nancy Reagan."

By then Alan had seen two patients with cancer, but they were men,
both reassuringly older than he was. "You can't have kids?"

"I can adopt, and you know, with the work I've done, that's very
plausible to me—but it doesn't make me great wife material, if you
know what I mean. So the irony is, the asshole might as well have told
me the chemo would make me an old maid. Not that I was counting on
being a wife, but it was down there on my list, somewhere between 'fulfilling
work' and 'organic garden.' "

Alan, of all people, ought to have known what to say—that plenty of
men could take or leave kids, that Marion was still incredibly sexy, that
sensible people knew cancer wasn't a stigma—but the more she told
him, the less he felt he could safely tell her.

Marion reached across the table. She put her hands over his and held
them firmly. "That was three years ago, and I'm absolutely fine with it
now." She sat back. She turned to look at the band and the gangly
teenagers dancing in the confetti of light from the strobe.

"Joya will kick herself she wasn't here," said Alan.

"Oh, never mind Joya now. I like this, having you all to myself. When
I call you little brother, I'm only half joking. It's like you were my
brother, too."

Marion insisted they share an ice cream sundae, and then she asked
him to dance. It was a rare slow tune, and he held her reverently close,
feeling through their twin shirts her flat, nearly concave chest. He was
clumsy, stepping on her feet more than once. "Good thing I'm driving,"
she said when the song was over.

Once they were both in the car, the doors closed, Marion sat still for a
long moment. She was looking down at the keys in her lap with a secretive
smile, then she looked at Alan. "I'm not at my parents' house. My
old room is full of boxes. I'm at the Red Coach Inn."

"That sounds nice," he said quietly, and that was all he said for the
next few hours.

At three in the morning, he told her (for God knew what ridiculous,
self-serving reason) about Greenie wanting a baby, about how he was
far less than sure, about wondering whether they'd split up, about trying
to work it out in his head as if he could be his own therapist. Marion
listened for a while and then said quietly, "Just about every couple I
know have been through this; it's normal." Because they were in the
dark, with the curtains drawn against the bright light of the highway
out front, he couldn't tell if she meant to express sympathy or scold him
for treating her like a big sister while behaving in a most unbrotherly
manner. So he shut up, and he went back to what they had set out to do.

They got dressed when the clock told them it was five. Marion pulled
open the curtain. It was almost but not quite dawn. The air looked
sweet and palpable and white, like milk. He came up behind her and
kissed her neck. He was terrified, but he didn't know if it was because he
wanted to see her again as soon as possible or never lay eyes on her from
that day on, forget her very existence.

In the high school parking lot, his mother's red car stood entirely
alone, absurdly bright in the mist—as obscene, thought Alan, as the lies
he would have to concoct. He looked helplessly at Marion. Before he
could speak, she said, "Listen," in a strong, startling voice. "I have one
thing to say to you, little brother. Go back and have that baby." She
reached across him and opened the door. She kissed him and nudged
him with a fist.

"Thank you," he had said. (Thank you!)

George's birth washed clean so many things, as Alan had heard (and
read) that the arrival of a child, especially a first child, will do. In all the
high-wire busyness, his guilt over Marion seemed to shrivel and then
disintegrate; or so he thought. Greenie proved to be five times more
energetic than Alan had ever imagined a person could be—and poor
Greenie, he remembered thinking sometime that first month; perhaps
proved
was the telling word. Because when he'd agreed at last, out of
numb desperation and self-loathing as much as anything else, she'd
exclaimed a hundred joyful promises of all that she would be, take care
of, provide for, no matter what. When her determination broke down
after George's first cold—an ailment whose symptoms were normal yet,
in his tiny person, ferocious—Alan had watched her fight back the
despair and tears born of dirt-dark exhaustion.

"Please go ahead and fall apart. I know I'm going to," he had said,
and both of them had cried together along with George, a collective
frustration so loud that in no time it silenced the baby, who stared at his
parents with an expression in which curiosity overruled alarm.

If George did not wholly redefine their routines, he gave a new substance
to the mortar of their lives. He changed the nature of his parents'
simplest social exchanges: with the grocer and the token seller in the
subway, with teenage boys on skateboards in the street ("Cute baby,
man!"), with all the other parents they already knew.
Welcome,
all those
parents seemed to say.
Step across the threshold. Sorry the place is so
messy, but you'll be glad you came.

Alan's practice grew along with his infant son, and sometimes he felt
that the latter must be responsible for the former, that fatherhood must
make him radiate a greater knowingness, if not an outright wisdom.
This was just a hunch, but it gave him a sense of relief that he had, if
only by groping in the dark, done the right thing.

Life rolled smoothly along until the accident, not long after George
turned two, in which Greenie's parents died. For several months,
Greenie vacillated between a testy depression and righteous anger. But
her work did not suffer, and gradually, she found her optimistic center
once again. We can weather anything, Alan thought smugly. Perhaps
they would even have a second child—unlike so many of their city
friends, who felt that life with one was both splendid and complicated
enough. To his astonishment, the very thought of another baby—a baby,
not just a child—filled him with nostalgic yearning.

Alan had just shared these thoughts with Joya, during one of their
catch-up calls, when she said, "Oh, speaking of babies! You'll never
guess who's out here, too, whose name I saw on this list of lectures at
Berkeley. I'm constantly thinking I'm going to sign up for stuff and get
myself some enlightenment, learn about something completely new—
such a ridiculous idea, but hope springs eternal! So I see this online posting
for a lecture on volunteering in the cancer community and guess
who's giving it?"

Alan was crossing the room, only half listening, because he was in
charge of George while Greenie was out working. George had just disappeared
into their bedroom carrying a crayon. "No, George! Only on
the paper!" he hissed as he confiscated the crayon, sparing the closet
door. George began to cry.

"Marion! Remember Marion?" he heard Joya say as he carried his
struggling son toward the kitchen, whispering, "How about a pretzel?"

He dumped several pretzels into a dish and placed it on the seat of a
chair.

"You've got to remember Marion. I mean, you were like smitten with
her when you were twelve. It was hilarious watching you try to conceal
it."

"Of course," said Alan. "I remember her."

"So I looked up her phone, and it wasn't listed, but I actually went to
the lecture and saw her after. It was so incredible—I think she's too busy
to hang out with, but we had coffee, and it was great to see her. Anyway,
she's done this totally modern thing, having a baby on her own—he's
like three now, she said—and moving out here and getting another
degree, and she's teaching, and she's really involved in some food co-op
and a church and—"

"She adopted a baby?" said Alan. He was watching George crush
pretzels intentionally into the fabric of the chair seat.

"No, no—had it on her own! I saw a picture, and he looks like her
dad, it's sort of hysterical. That huge, serious forehead. She said she
never got married or lived with anyone after the Peace Corps, and then
she had cancer—and you can guess how many guys are mature enough
to commit to a woman after that."

"But who's the father?"

"For God's sake, Alan, you sound like one of our parents," said Joya.
"Who cares? I'm not sure she does."

"How is she?" he said quickly.

"She looks great," said Joya.

George began chanting for more pretzels, and Alan used it as an
excuse to get off the phone. Two nights later, when Greenie went out to
work after George had fallen asleep, he called Joya back and told her
about the reunion. At first, after telling Alan what a schmuck he was,
she laughed at his vanity, at the ridiculous thought that the child could
possibly be his.

When she finally understood what he was suggesting, she said,
"Jesus, Alan, Marion would never use anybody like that. You are acting
like an asshole."

"You don't really know Marion. Not anymore. She's been through a
lot more than she'll let on to anyone, I think. I wouldn't blame her for
putting her own interests ahead of anyone else's." Strange that he was
defending her. He thought of the scars on her chest, of her stubborn
desire to preserve them rather than hide or replace them.

Joya was silent for a while. He waited. She sighed twice, first with
exasperation, then with what sounded like pity.

"Alan, I doubt I'll see her again, unless we run into each other."

So she had sensed what he wanted to ask. Still, Alan waited; Joya was
generous, but you had to let her offer the favor herself.

She said, "No, Alan. This is your problem. I can't help you with this
one. I can't." She sighed, this time with pure impatience. "Oh
Alan.
I'm
so—I can't talk to you right now, I'm sorry. I can't even think about
poor Greenie. I'll call you in a few days, but . . . I'm sorry," she said, and
she hung up. Two days later, she left him a message during the day. Just
an address, nothing more. It took him three months to write, and all he
could say to Marion was that he'd heard she was out there, he wondered
how she was—her health, her life, her "dubious achievements."
He did not tell her about George or say that he had heard about her
child. It was a cowardly, dishonest letter that did not deserve a reply. It
did not get one.

BEFORE ALAN WENT OUT THAT EVENING
, he checked on Saga's
peony plant, as if it might have been stolen or taken flight. He opened
the window and reached out to feel the soil in the pot. It was damp. He
closed the window and just stood there awhile, staring at the plant, as if
there were something else he could do for its welfare. He noticed that
the tip of each stalk had opened into a feathering of tiny leaves, olive
stained with crimson.

He had told Saga, before she left, that he'd like to have another look
at the puppies; he couldn't think of any other way to make sure he'd see
her again. She had given him the phone number of the guy named Stan
who hadn't shown up that first day. Couldn't Saga take Alan to see the
puppies? No, she'd said, but if he adopted one of them, she would be
sure to check in. She should call or drop by anytime, he told her awkwardly.
She thanked him but laughed, as if their continuing to know
each other was patently absurd. In a way, it was, but Alan couldn't help
worrying about her. He still knew nothing about where she lived or how
she made her way in the world. She could be a wealthy eccentric, for all
he knew; it really wasn't his business.

The air was soft and beguiling, and outside Walter's Place, four couples
waited on the sidewalk for the few outdoor tables, all occupied.
Alan had hoped to eat outside, but he did not want to wait alone. He
was not in the mood to converse with strangers, and he had brought
nothing to read. When he stepped inside, Walter was right there.

"Husband of my runaway confectioner, hello!" He shook Alan's
hand with vigor.

Where did all this ready wit come from? Alan thought bitterly.
"Greenie says hi," he said, just to say anything.