Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  On her father’s side she is descended from powerful, wary, tenacious, long-lived, blue-eyed blond people who learned to hunt during the long winters of the last ice age. It was an ancestor of Olivia’s who drew her hand on the cave wall at Lascaux. Another died in the company of Bonny Prince Charlie.

  These are not good genes for sitting around a dormitory room waiting for an SAE pledge to call you on the phone. Still, that is what Olivia is doing as she studies for her last exam of the semester and writes her final paper. The paper is a three-thousand-word essay on Malthus, which her math teacher has assigned to the class as a political act.

  “If we had listened to Malthus to begin with we wouldn’t be in the trouble we’re in now,” Olivia is writing. “If we had done what he told us to do there would be a lot less people on the earth and maybe there would be some way to feed them. Personally, that would be bad for me because neither one of my parents would have been born and neither would I. My dad is the fourth of six children and my mom was third of seven. They sure didn’t mean to have me, but they were stoned. My half sister, Jessie, was an accident too. So it looks like the population deal is a lost cause. I know this is not the popular argument, but you said to write what we think. I’m sorry people are starving in the world, but a lot of the countries with the worst problems don’t even speak English. They couldn’t understand Malthus if you read it to them. They think the only riches they have are their children. If they don’t have children, no one will take care of them when they are old. They want male children because they can work harder and don’t have more babies to cause more trouble. It’s a tangled skein.

  “Here’s the real problem. You can’t stop animals from breeding and you can’t stop people from having sexual intercourse and if you think young people are going to remember to use rubbers all the time, you’re wrong. The only answer is Abortion On Demand. There should be an abortion clinic in every junior high and anyone who gets pregnant can either have the kid or not. But the right-wing idiots just keep lining up to cause trouble at abortion clinics and try to tell other people how to live their lives. No one can tell another person what to do with their body . . .” Olivia paused, chewed on the pencil eraser for a while, stared at her poster of Madonna. It was the famous poster of Madonna with her hand on her crotch which had been used for the West Coast advertising campaign of Truth or Dare.

  Olivia sighed and scrunched back down over her yellow legal pad. She always wrote first drafts by hand because her aunt Anna had told her that was the thing to do. “It is impossible to understand this problem completely. Would I give up being born to save the world from overpopulation? No. The answer is no. For all we know CHILDREN DEMAND TO BE BORN. They come into the world demanding everything and crying for whatever they want. They might be hot little fires of possibility, spinning around and passing through the earth like neutrinos. Billions of neutrinos pass through every inch of space every second and we don’t even feel them. They might be saying, Make babies, make babies, make babies.”

  Olivia sat back, read over what she had written, then dove back in. “On a personal level, right now I am nineteen years old and have my life before me. I say to myself, why would anyone give up their life to have a child? How could anyone do that if they had a choice? Still, my half sister, Jessie, did it. She had everything she wanted and instead now she has a baby and a husband who won’t come home at night. Why should he? He’s only twenty years old. He doesn’t want to work all day and sit around all night watching television and taking care of a baby. She got pregnant last summer and we all begged her to have an abortion but she wouldn’t do it. So the baby’s here and they are very unhappy and about to get a divorce any day now. Then where will that kid be? My mother died having me, so I have a jaundiced view. I took her life to get here. I might have been one of those red-hot particles passing through her brain that night in San Francisco, saying Have me, have me. So she did and I had to live almost sixteen years without a mother or a father. Well, I had a good life. My grandparents raised me in Tahlequah, Oklahoma. I am part of the Cherokee Nation, the Cherokee tribe. I can ride any horse you put in front of me and I can shoot and I can run and I can swim. I had a very rich life there and a rich one in Charlotte when I found my dad. I haven’t got anything to complain about. I will say one thing for Tahlequah. I didn’t have to lock my car or keep my dogs penned up. In Tahlequah dogs go anywhere they like as long as they’ve had their shots.

  “I was free in Tahlequah. I wasn’t always worrying about whether I was good enough or what someone thought of me. And at least I got laid when I was there, which is more than I can say for this place.”

  Olivia marked out the last three lines. Then she put down the pencil and took a drink of her Diet Pepsi. She had a habit of getting carried away when she wrote papers. She forgot she wasn’t writing a letter. To whom? she wondered now. My dead mother? Aunt Anna, who swore she’d never desert me? The universe? My own lonely soul? My sister, Jessie? Bobby Gilbert Tree?

  She got up from the chair and went over to the bed and lay down upon it and hugged a pillow fiercely to her breast. Bond, bond, bond, the neutrinos were saying to her. The world is terrible and dangerous. Find a place of safety, poor little motherless child.

  She closed her eyes and remembered Bobby lying beside her in the big king-size bed in the guest house at Baron Fork. His sweet hands upon her back and butt and legs. His mouth on her mouth, on her cheeks, on her breast. Oh, baby, baby, he always said, come to me. Say you’ll never leave me. Say you’ll never go away.

  He didn’t have a mother either, Olivia thought. He didn’t have a thing but me and I deserted him. I walked off and didn’t give a damn if he lived or died. And now what do I have? A mess of porridge. That’s what I traded love for. A mess of goddamn porridge and this goddamn snotty school. She sighed and bit her lip. She reached her arms above her head and stretched and stretched and stretched. Somewhere, bright spring sunlight lay upon the grass and trees and water. She was beside the river with Bobby, folded into his arms. I love you, baby, he was saying. You make me so hard. You always make my dick so goddamn hard.

  Olivia stood up. She shook her head, finished off the Diet Pepsi. Then she went outside and found her bike and unlocked it and tied the lock around her waist and started riding. I’ll do five miles and then I’ll eat some lunch and then I’ll study for the exam, she told herself. One more day and I’ll get in the car and go on home. As soon as I get to Charlotte, I’m leaving for Tahlequah. I’ve been gone too long. If Dad won’t let me, I’ll go anyway. Well, he has to let me. I’ll go by New Orleans and see Jessie and the baby.

  But what is Tahlequah if Bobby isn’t there? She was pedaling more slowly now, moving past a row of Bradford pear trees in new summer foliage. Past the carefully manicured lawns of stately Georgian houses. The smell of late spring flowers perfumed the air. Tulips and tulip trees, azaleas and roses, daisies everywhere.

  Well, Bobby’s in Montana. He’s never coming back. He’s up there with that Macalpin guy, that writer who raises cutting horses. That’s okay. I’m not looking for Bobby anyway. I called him in March and he never called me back. To hell with him. He’s probably screwing everything that walks out there. Besides, what would I do with Bobby? I’m in a different world now. I’m not going to live in a trailer with a rodeo hack. He never even finished high school. He never even got an education.

  Chapter 5

  CHARLOTTE, North Carolina. The morning air is full of the sounds of birds. Robins and jays and orioles. Sparrows and larks and chickadees and woodpeckers and mourning doves. Daniel DeBardeleben Hand loves birds. Once, when he was a child, he had been an avid bird-watcher for several months. He had plastered the wall above his bed with drawings and reproductions of every bird in the Northern Hemisphere.

  This morning, however, in the ninth month of his forty-seventh year, Daniel was too distracted to listen to the songs that woke him. He had a tractor business that was about to go into bankruptcy, he was suing his olde
r brother over a piece of real estate they jointly owned, his daughter Jessie was married to a boy he didn’t trust and was nursing a two-month-old child he had never seen. His daughter Olivia was supposed to be on her way home from college but she hadn’t even returned his phone calls to let him know when she was arriving. Also, as usual, he had a hangover.

  He got out of bed and began to wander around the seven-hundred-thousand-dollar house he had built when he was a millionaire. He stopped by a bathroom and found a bottle of aspirin and took three of them. He found a bottle of vitamins and swallowed several of them and began to rearrange a row of perfume bottles Jessie and Olivia had abandoned. The names were like siren calls. As he read them he saw his daughters dancing through the house, talking and laughing, getting dressed, making phone calls, flying in and out of doors with their friends, asking for money, dropping jackets and sweaters and shoes behind them.

  Giorgio, he read, Spellbound, Roma, L’Air du Temps, Chanel 22. His hangover seemed to subside as he read. It was replaced by remorse. You’re a drunk, it came calling. A failure and a fool. You have lost it all, old pardner, lost the women and the children and the store. Summer was the lucky one. She died when she was young. I wish I’d died that night Hood Morris and I drove Daddy’s Cadillac into the river. We were immortal then. But now it’s only this. Goddammit, I know I ought to quit drinking. Goddammit, I know it better than anyone, but what the hell, if a man can’t even have a toddy in the evening, what’s the point? What reason is there to live? Goddammit, I’m sick and tired of a bunch of goddamn women telling me what to do. I gave my life to women and what good did it do me? Jessie’s down there in New Orleans with that goddamn King. Crystal’s son. La belle dame sans merci. The lady Crystal. She’s gone crazy taking everyone to psychiatrists. She had Manny call me and try to get me to have a meeting with this psychiatrist she’s got Jessie going to. “She made me call you,” he said. At least he had the decency to feel bad about it. “I’m trying one last time to live with her, Daniel,” he goes on. “Quit trying,” I told him. “I’ll fix you up with plenty of women.” “I love her,” he says, as if anyone needs to be told how pussy-whipped he is. “Let me get this straight,” I said. “Crystal made you call me up and tell me to come down to New Orleans to talk to some psychiatrist about the trouble her son has caused my daughter? That’s the deal? I should have killed the little son-of-a-bitch when he knocked her up, but she wouldn’t let me. How’s the baby doing? Is he okay?”

  “He’s fine,” Manny says. “He’s all Crystal thinks about. She goes over there every morning as soon as he gets up. She’s so happy, Daniel. It’s the first thing that’s made her happy since King stole those bikes. God, that seems like years ago. You ought to come down here and see the baby. You don’t have to go to the psychiatrist. That’s just one of Crystal’s ideas. How’s Olivia, by the way? When does she get home?”

  “She’s coming tonight. Goddamn, Manny, it’s lonely around here with the girls gone. I just knock around the house.”

  “You ought to get married, Daniel. What about Lydia? I thought the two of you had something going. What’s happening with that?”

  “She got on my ass about drinking. She got mad and went back to California. ‘Let me get you an airline ticket,’ I told her. ‘I’ll take you to the plane.’”

  “How’d Olivia do in school this year?”

  “She did great. I’m taking her to Switzerland next week. Maybe we’ll come by and see all of you before we leave. I want to see the boy.”

  “You don’t want to talk to this doctor then?”

  “Nope. I don’t.”

  “She’s a nice woman.”

  “I’m sure she is, Manny. I’m certain that she is.”

  Daniel turned his head to the side, inspected his profile, his fine thin hair. What’s left of my hair, he decided. Well, to hell with that. I can’t stop thinking about that phone call. Crystal’s son fucks over my daughter and ruins her life and I’m supposed to come and talk to the goddamn doctor. Well, to hell with that New Orleans crowd. I can’t do anything about it because Jessie loves the little son-of-a-bitch. I’m going to find Spook and get him to clean off the tennis court before Olivia gets home. To hell with Jessie if she can’t even find the time to bring the boy to see his grandfather. I’ve still got Olivia. She ought to be home by eight or nine. Maybe she didn’t get my messages. Crazy little old girl. She’s got her mother’s craziness. She’s got that thing Summer had, that cold fire in her belly. Anna had it too. Well, it was Anna who found Olivia and brought her to me. I might never have even known that she existed. After Summer left me, after she sneaked out of Momma’s house in the middle of the night and disappeared, she goes home and has a baby and dies like something that happened a hundred years ago and none of those people out there even write me a note. They said she told them not to. She was proud. You’d have thought she was some kind of a princess the way she acted. That’s what those three have in common. Anna, Summer, Olivia. Via, I guess we’re supposed to call her now. Well, Summer’s dead and so is Anna. We’ve all got to stop thinking about her. She had cancer and she killed herself and she probably had a right to. She didn’t have any kids, that’s what Helen keeps saying, when she wants to justify it. Well, Helen’s gone off and deserted hers so she’s got justifying to do. To hell with it. To hell with all of them.

  It’s damn hard to believe Anna’s dead. Four years and I still can’t believe it. That she won’t be calling me up at seven in the morning to give me some advice I didn’t know I needed. Then she walks into the ocean in November. The doctor she was fucking believes she’s dead. I got drunk with him in New York last fall. He cried like a baby in the goddamn restaurant. I was crying too. Then we ended up in some Irish bar. God, that was some afternoon.

  So before she dies Anna goes out and finds Olivia and brings her to me. She looks enough like Anna to be her child, looks more like Anna than she does like Summer or like me.

  How many times have I gone over this? Summer leaves without telling me she’s pregnant. I knock up Sheila with Jessie. Dad gets me an annulment. Jessie is born and it’s a miracle. The minute I saw that little face I loved her and I guess I always will. I never could have believed she’d go off to New Orleans and leave me and not even come home to visit. Goddamn a lot of ungrateful children. What time is it anyway? Olivia ought to be leaving Chapel Hill about now. Looks like she would have called and told me when she was getting here. Goddamn everyone you love going off to college or getting married or dying on you. To hell with it. I’m going to find Spook and see if he still knows how to use a broom.

  Daniel strode down the hall and into the dining room. He stopped by the liquor cabinet and thought about pouring himself a toddy, then decided against it. Above the cabinet was a photograph of his grandfather dressed up for a fox hunt. In his grandfather’s hand was a silver mint julep cup. That was the life, he decided, furrowing his brow and staring up into the eyes of his granddaddy. Get up in the morning, feed the dogs, saddle a horse, ride the fields, come in at noon and eat lunch with the ladies. They were ladies, too, not a bunch of crazy women like a man has to contend with now. Goddamn, it’s because we’re so spread out. Nobody lives with anybody anymore. Goddammit, I grew up in a house with ten people living in it. Every morning when I woke up there were people all up and down the halls that were kin to me. Worked my ass off for thirty years and gave lots of loving to hundreds of women and what has it got me? Sleeping alone in this big old house without a goddamn soul in it when I wake up. If Spook hadn’t agreed to come in from the country and live with me, I wouldn’t have a soul within a mile. I got to get some more dogs, that’s the ticket. Goddamn girls made me leave the dogs out in the country. That’s one thing wrong. Every day of my life I woke up in a house with at least ten people sleeping in it, two or three more in the guest house, and a yard full of dogs, and look at me now. One black man in the guest house, and he wishes he was on the farm, and two little Springer spaniels that have seen better day
s.

  Daniel walked across the room and looked in the mirror over the china press. He looked somewhat better than he had looked in the bathroom. The aspirins were taking effect, his color was coming back. Still, what he saw was worse than what anyone else would have seen. An observer would have seen a tall graceful man with high cheekbones and delicate features and beautiful deep blue eyes. A man who looked like he would never do an unkind or brutal or deeply stupid thing. A gentleman wearing khaki slacks and Italian loafers and an alpaca sweater the color of his eyes.

  But what Daniel saw was loss. His balding head, sadness and loneliness and confusion. Failure, he said to his reflection. It’s crashing in, it’s falling down. I’ll be in the poor house any day now.

  He thought it was his fault. When he was eighteen years old, his father and older brother James had given him four million dollars to divide up their fortune for income tax purposes. They had put the money in his name and expected him to do what they told him to do with it. But they had not given him the discipline or self-esteem he needed to get a law degree and join them in the firm. He was so different from them they could not understand him. Neither of them could imagine being confused. They were both the eldest sons of powerful women and they got up in the morning and bossed people around and slept eight hours every night. If they were ever drunk or bad it was calculated and controlled. So when Daniel began to “carouse” and “lay out all night” and “be bad,” they laughed at him and called him a chip off the old block.