Emily Winslow: The Whole World

Gretchen pressed her lips together, then squeezed out the words: “I remember that. I wore a plain purple dress. No pattern. It was my favorite.”

Liv kicked my ankle. She’s the kind of person to always defend the right to speak one’s mind, except around Gretchen. She wanted to please her.

“There must be an unpatterned dress photo as well. We’ll let you know when we find it,” Nick said. I didn’t think there was one, really, but there could have been, I guess.

Gretchen’s breathing got hard and fast.

“I know the photograph,” she insisted. I shrank down and Gretchen stood over me, taller in that way that angry people appear to grow.

The silence stretched on until it was taut. At breaking point, Gretchen abruptly left the room.

Liv went after her. I busied myself neatening a stack of photos that was only slightly askew.

“She didn’t mean anything by it, Polly,” Nick said.

“I know,” I said curtly.

“It must be frustrating to have one’s only visual memories be so old,” he explained, as if I didn’t understand that.

“Everyone’s memories are vulnerable that way,” I said. “You don’t have to be blind to remember things wrong and get really freaked out about it.”

“I don’t think you’re being charitable, Polly,” he said.

My head snapped up, indignant. I hadn’t heard a tone like that since my fifth-grade teacher.

I opened my mouth to tell him off, but his ridiculous sternness cracked me up instead. I laughed at him. I opened my mouth and laughed out loud.

Now his head snapped up. He leaned back, surprised.

For a moment, I wasn’t sure what would happen. Would he stand up and leave?

“I’m sorry,” he said at last. “Sorry.” And he laughed too.

Gretchen’s house was full of souvenirs. Not postcards or plates or thimbles, but carved wooden sculptures and thick-daubed paintings. Maybe they were Harry’s, or maybe Gretchen got something out of touching them, feeling the brushstrokes. My first time among all those touchstones of adventure and achievement I’d felt intimidated, but they became familiar. There was an Asian ceramic dog by the front door. By my third visit I was ready to scratch his ears and bring him a biscuit.

Gretchen sat down with us the next time we went over.

“I want to apologize for my… possessiveness sometimes about the photographs. You’re being my eyes for me and it’s just… difficult sometimes to give up what I remember seeing. I want to thank you for all the work you’re putting into it. I knew the photos were in a state, but I didn’t realize how bad of one. I only thought: All I need is a pair of eyes.” She pushed her eyebrows together. I could tell how hard that was for her to say. “I’m sorry it’s turned out to be so difficult.”

Liv said, “They must be very special memories for you…”

Gretchen teared up. “It was magical, those youngest years. Not just seeing-though seeing was good, of course-but it was what I saw! Mother had such a way of creating moments. She lived a life then that was… exotic and exhilarating… hotels and airplanes… I tagged along. Did you see the picture? At the Prater? On the horse?”

There had been several photos on horses, but Nick knew the one she meant. “The white one?” he suggested.

“Yes! It was a carousel made of living horses. I’ve always remembered that, though I didn’t learn it was the Prater in Vienna until much later. I just remember the child’s view of things. I remember sitting on the back of a white horse, and it wasn’t carved or painted, it was real.” She sighed ecstatically.

A bird flew suddenly past her face, coming to cling to the edge of her cup. It was steel blue, and she swatted at it. Her husband, Harry, came softly behind it, coaxing it with clicks and twitters. It hopped onto his finger and he took it back upstairs.

I found one of the Whipple’s pretty compasses in Liv’s room. Not a historic one, one of the kid ones from the activity corner. It wasn’t expensive, but it wasn’t hers either.

She had it out on her desk like she wasn’t ashamed.

I didn’t say anything.

We had on our black academic “gowns” for dinner at one of Magdalene’s daily “formal halls”: a fancy meal, candles and everything, for cheap. You wait for the Fellows at the High Table to sit, and then the gong goes, and then the grace in Latin. I had to shush Liv sometimes to make her stop giggling. Then we would get to eat. There’s a set menu of multiple courses served by waiters. There’s wine.

We usually got tipsy at these things. This was one of those conversations. We hung out afterward, on the steps by the water in front of her building. Magdalene is one of the few colleges on the river. “Why does she care so much?” I said.

“Mmmm?” Liv asked.

“Gretchen,” I said. “Why does it matter so much to her that she had this posh childhood?”

“Do you really not get it?” Liv said this like I was stupid to have to ask. “Money’s important. What, are you so rich you don’t need to care?”

“I’m not rich.”

“Well, I was, once. My dad made four million dollars at a dot-com startup. That’s the truth. Then we lost it all when the stock tanked. Believe me, it matters.”

I gaped. “Where does four million dollars go?” I asked, trying to imagine a number that big, and how something that big could just disappear. You’d need something on the scale of a meteor and total climate change. That kind of money is at least as big as a dinosaur.

“It was the whole Silicon Valley bubble. My dad’s an engineer, and his company got bought by Racer. It was this huge deal. We moved up to Livermore, which is this mini wine country-no way near Napa or even Sonoma, but cute, and lots of new housing. We had a view of grapes through huge windows. There were Internet plugs in, like, every room. And we got it on a mortgage, not because we needed one, but because the rate on the mortgage cost us less than what we were making by keeping the money in stock. That was the thing to do. Everybody did it.

“Then, when NASDAQ crashed, we needed to sell but no one was in a position to buy. Our neighbors were trying to sell too. Half the houses hadn’t gotten curtains and blinds yet, and now no one could afford it. We could all see each other. You had to find a corner to get dressed in. And we could all see down into each other’s backyards, and half of them were still churned-up dirt. People couldn’t afford to do the landscaping.

“So we eventually sold, for less than we’d bought. Dad got another job. We moved into an apartment, an okay apartment. I mean, it wasn’t a house, but it was one of those nice places with cookies and newspapers in the pool house. So it was okay. But it wasn’t special. You remember the special. It felt good to live in a house like that. It felt like… it felt like you deserved it. I know that’s not true, but that’s how it felt. Just having it felt like you were the kind of person who was supposed to have it. That feeling is the kind of thing you hold on to.”

“Wow,” I said.

“Then my parents got divorced, and that sucked. I mean, that really sucked. So I remember not just the big house, and the Internet plugs, and that there had been this fountain, an actual fountain, in our yard. I remember that we were together there.”

I made a mental note to get friends tipsy more often.

She kept talking. “Holy crap, Nick is so hot. He never comes to these dinners. I saw him earlier today and asked if he was coming. He was busy or something.” I felt embarrassed, like I always did when she talked about Nick. She went on, “He was with his thesis supervisor. They were having this deep conversation. It just made me crack up, how serious they were. Richard-that’s his supervisor; he’s a Fellow here-is nice, but so weird. I heard that he’s been celibate,” she whispered that part, “between wives. Can you believe that? It’s been, like, ten years or something. He’s getting married again at the end of term.”