Disgusting. What did I tell Olivia the other day? I said, The central problem of romantic love is to get bonding energy without bartering the self. But that’s not true. That’s only the beginning. The problem is to learn to love without bonding. Bond with the universe, with lightning and thunder and rain and flowers and oxygen-giving trees. Keep love clear of bonding crap and it might work. I’m bartering this very minute. Where is he? What did he find to do that was so goddamn important he wasn’t here after I drove all the way over here?
She picked up an old straw hat sitting on a chair and put it on and walked out into the yard. Small hot drops of rain fell on her hands and arms, the sky was black now. A long network of lightning filled the air to the south. She walked to a bed of purple iris and picked two of them, then picked a third one and went into the house. She went into the kitchen, found a vase, put the flowers in it, and began to meditate upon her every act. Every act must be in the spirit of Zen, she decided. Every moment is Zen. Let the earth be beautiful. Let me go in there and make up that bed and get ready for my lover.
Who is probably standing beside his desk letting some little pubescent coed tell him her troubles. Her folks are getting a divorce, her mother has cancer, she doesn’t know what to do for the summer, she lost her textbook.
What defense do I have against that? I can’t act like I need him. I don’t need him to solve my problems. I just need him to come on home and fuck me in the rain.
She went into his bedroom and made up the unmade bed and threw his dirty clothes into a pile on the closet floor and dusted off a table. Rain was pouring straight down from the sky now and Georgia was getting into a fabulous mood. She reached up under her skirt and took off her underpants and threw them on the pile with his clothes. She walked back out onto the porch and stood by the door. He drove up in his car. She smiled and waved and the frantic look left his face and he parked the car and came running toward her.
“She made you do it?” she was saying later. “Go over that again.”
“I had the operation because she wanted me to.” He moved away, not much, just an inch or so, just an almost imperceptible little defense.
Don’t fuck up this afternoon, Georgia told herself. Don’t start a single sentence with “you did” or “she did” or “you should” or any of that stuff. Say “I am,” and “I want,” and “I need,” and “I love.” That’s it. Stick with that. I am a goddamn little needful bird in the goddamn endless nest saying I need, I need, I need. Oh, to hell with that.
“You got cut because she wanted it? Well, maybe you wanted to also, Zach. Maybe it wasn’t just for her.”
“No, I didn’t want to, but I didn’t want her to leave. I don’t like to be left, Georgia. I think you know that. I think that’s why you do it.”
“Maybe so. If so, I’m sorry. Are you sorry that you did it, got cut, I mean? Well, don’t answer that. Come here, get close to me. I want to plaster my arm to yours. I needed to be near you and here I am. I drove eighty miles an hour to get here. And what I want now is to hold you as close to me as I can for as long as I can stand it, considering the fact that I’m starving.”
“I could cook you some fettuccine.”
“I’d adore fettuccine.” She put her lips very close to his neck. She breathed in the smell and life of him. For almost three minutes they were almost happy. Then the phone started ringing. It was one of the twins, saying they had had an accident in Hope, Arkansas, and would Zach talk to the police and tell them what to do with the car.
Chapter 32
YOUR mind has been very far away,” Little Sun said. He and Olivia were sitting in the wooden yard chairs facing the barn. Day was dying in the west, huge fabulous clouds moved across the horizon, orange and red and pink and mauve and purple and gold and every shade of gray and white and blue. Dust from Mount Pinatubo was moving across the surface of the earth, breaking sunlight into colors for the human eye. A hummingbird moved its beak in and out of the lilies, drawn by the infrared patterns of the petals, the maps of love, the Landsat photographs of the hummingbird eye. A garden tiger moth spread its wings and landed beside a fallen oak leaf. Summer was fully come to Oklahoma. Each new season was vital and charged with meaning for Little Sun now. Five more summers, he would say to himself. Maybe seven summers, then fields where the ancestors sit in counsel with the elk and deer. Who knows where we walk when this time on earth is over. Poor Crow, she knows when I think of death and spoils the biscuits and will not lay her body against me in the dark. I must not think of this anymore. I have work to do and I must go tomorrow to see the lawyers again. All this money is going to start being in the bank and I must guard my children from it. I will not have my sons ruined by this money or my daughters either. Mary Lily is happy getting up each morning to go to her new job. When she finds out about this money, she will want to go on vacations to Kansas City and will get fatter eating candy.
The moth fanned its wings. The hummingbird moved on to other flowers. Little Sun reached across the wooden loveseat and put his hand on his granddaughter’s arm. “Is love the cause of your troubled face?” he asked.
“Do I have a troubled face?”
“You have not smiled in many days. Who is this doctor you are driving so far to see?”
“Probably a mirage. Oh, Granddaddy, I don’t know what to do. I want to stay here with all of you and I want to stay with Bobby and maybe marry him someday. But I don’t want to give up my family in North Carolina either. I like them and I like all the money that they have. Is that so bad? I can’t help liking it. But I can’t introduce Bobby to my dad. His father just got arrested for running drugs in a stolen plane. I know you read it in the paper. I know you know about it, don’t you?”
“These are hard times for everyone. But that is no excuse for being a bad man. For doing things against the law. So this is about money. You believe your father will know of this dishonesty of his father and throw you away for that?”
“Yes. I don’t even know if I want to go back there. I didn’t even have a boyfriend in North Carolina. They didn’t like me. I was nobody there. But they have so much money. Well, Dad doesn’t have it anymore but he still lives like he does. The rest of them really have it. It’s so beautiful and rich. Their houses are so beautiful. They just get anything they want. But they aren’t happy. You ought to see my cousins, Granddaddy. They don’t know what they want to do. They’re really nice but they just keep sucking off their parents and they never have a career or anything. Mooching, that’s what Spook calls it. I don’t want to be a mooch. I don’t know. Sometimes I wish I’d never written to Aunt Anna and started this. Then I’d just be happy being here.”
“When you have learned the Navajo language and graduated from college you will have a career. Then you will have your own paycheck like Mary Lily and it will make you happy. You won’t be taking money from your father then. How much money does it cost you to go to college in North Carolina?”
“A lot. And I didn’t even have a boyfriend or anything to make me happy. All that money he was paying and I was so unhappy I couldn’t sleep at night, much less learn anything. I don’t think I learned a thing last year except maybe some books I read that I liked. I could have read them by myself.” Olivia twisted the ring around her finger. “What’s wrong with being happy, that’s what I’d like to know. I want to get a good education, Granddaddy. I want to be able to take care of you when you get old. I might build you a bigger house. One that’s easy to live in and has a new kitchen.”
“We would like that.” Little Sun laughed, thinking of a conversation he had had with Crow that morning. “It is time to tell them,” she had insisted. “May Frost needs a new washing machine. I wish to give her one. She is driving the clothes to the washateria every morning. I want to call them to a meeting and tell them there will be money in the bank.”
“Not yet,” Little Sun said. “You must wait one more month.”
“I will buy her a washing machine.” Crow had gotten up a
nd was putting on her teddies. She would not look at him. “She has to take the baby in the car to the washateria. I want to go to Sears and get a new washing machine for her.”
“Then go do that.”
“Then Roper’s wife will say, Why did she get a washing machine for May Frost and not one for me?”
“See, it has already started, the trouble money brings.”
“I will buy her one. I will say I won the money at the races in Oklahoma City.”
“Now the money makes you lie to your children?” Crow would not answer that. She smoothed the teddy down across her hips, gave him a cold look, then slipped a housecoat over her body.
“I will go to Sears today and pick out the machine.”
A long pink cloud dissolved into a purple one, a streak of orange opened along the horizon, the purple became black. “Do you not love your father that you went so far to find?” Little Sun asked. “Is that not the truth of your worry, not this about money?”
“I love him. Of course I do. Only it’s hard to love him because he’s so nervous and everything always has to be his way. First he gets mad at us, then he gives us money. Well, not mad. I don’t know what it is. It’s like nothing ever pleases him. He always wants something else. He wants some life that isn’t true anymore. Aunt Anna told me that. You know what he really loves? When both of us are all dressed up and we go somewhere with him, like to church or over to his mother’s house. Or out to dinner where people see us. He never has time just to sit around and talk to us. Besides, his girlfriends are always there. Mostly it’s Margaret now, and she’s not so bad. She’s fat and she likes to have fun. She laughs at him.”
“Bring Bobby Tree out here to eat dinner with us tomorrow night. I will see how he will seem to your father. Tomorrow I will catch fish and Crow will fry them and make hush puppies and we will have vegetables from the garden. If his father is in trouble, we must be kind to him. If you love him he must be a good young man. I have no doubt of that. I think you are borrowing trouble with your frowning thoughts.”
“You know what he did yesterday?”
“Tell me.”
“He dove off the very top of the bluffs over Spider Creek. He just spread out his arms and dove right in. He has no fear of anything, like you are, like Dad. Dad isn’t afraid of anything. If he didn’t get drunk at night he’d be so wonderful. Bobby dove off that cliff to say he loved me. It made me drunk to watch him. I thought, I had forgotten who he is. He isn’t some criminal’s son. He’s Bobby Tree. Afterwards, it was like I was drunk. I was like someone I had forgotten how to be. I wasn’t afraid of anything either because he was brave. He isn’t a bad person. If anyone is bad, it’s me.” Olivia began to cry, weeping into her hands, and her grandfather held out his arms and she went to him and sat across his lap and wept her tears. “All I do is cry all the time,” she said. “Talk about a baby. I’m the biggest baby in the world.”
Crow came out on the porch and saw them and came tearing down the stairs and across the yard. “What’s the matter?” she demanded. “What’s going on? Why are you crying? What did you say to her?” She sat down beside them and began to rub Olivia’s arm. She pushed her hip against Little Sun, glad of an excuse to touch him after she had been cold to him all day.
“I am going into town tomorrow to buy a washing machine for May Frost,” she said. “You can come with me to Sears and help me pick it out.”
“A washing machine.” Olivia sat up. “How can you buy a washing machine? What will you pay for it with?”
“She’s been playing the horses.” Little Sun laughed. “Your grandmother has become a gambler.”
Later, after the sun was all the way down and they were in bed, Little Sun and Crow took up their argument again, although softer now, as they were in each other’s arms. “In two weeks we will tell them, not a month,” Crow said. Little Sun was stroking her back. She had been a fool for that for sixty years and she was a fool for it now. “Two weeks,” she repeated. “And tomorrow I’m getting that washing machine. May Frost has to put the baby in the car every morning and drive to the washateria. Our pasture full of oil and May Frost has to pack up the baby and drive to town to wash the clothes.”
“Where do they use so many clothes to be washed every day? Perhaps she likes going into town to see her friends.”
“What difference is it whether it’s two weeks from now or a month from now? If Roper quits his job, he quits his job. He doesn’t like being a mechanic for the Ford Motor Place. He doesn’t like having grease on his hands. He is breathing bad air in that little garage. JoDean said he was coughing in the night from breathing all the things they fix cars with.”
“He is coughing from the cigarettes he smokes.” Little Sun moved his hands down Crow’s stomach and found her soft vagina and sighed as his fingers slipped into the small wet heaven he had loved so many years. He touched her very softly, as if she was a small weak thing that might break. He had held her hand while she delivered May Frost and Summer Deer and Creek. He had never been able to imagine that her body could become such a heavy animal. She was always fifteen years old to Little Sun, skinny and nervous and trembling beneath his hands. He sighed again. Maybe she was right. Two weeks or a month. This change was coming over them and he was powerless to stop it. “He smokes because he is unhappy with the Ford Motor Company,” Crow went on. “You think he will stay in town and drink beer but he might go out into the country and fish instead. Who are you to keep the money from our children? We don’t know everything. We are getting old.” She turned closer into his arms, then moved over on her back and let him touch her. A squirrel dropped a walnut on the roof above their head. Somewhere in the same tree the garden tiger moth found the leaf she wanted and began to lay a neat line of eggs along a vein. A waxing moon came out from behind a cloud and poured its borrowed sunlight upon Tahlequah. The Cherokee Nation lay bathed in silver.
Chapter 33
EARLY the next afternoon, Olivia was in the crowded waiting room of the Planned Parenthood Clinic in Broken Arrow filling out the patient questionnaire. She had driven over as soon as her classes were out for the day, giving up her chance to help pick out the new washing machine for May Frost. She smiled to herself, thinking of Crow with her new idea.
“Does anyone in your family have cancer?” the questionnaire asked. Olivia thought it over and decided to leave out her aunt Anna since they might not give her the pills. She circled no.
She finished the other questions, then opened her Navajo grammar book and tried to study it. It was so boring, the examples were like something out of a children’s book. Where is your house? How do you get to the library? Do you like to go to the mountains?
She closed the grammar and looked around the room. A pregnant girl sat in a chair, looking remorseful. A young woman with a child tried to amuse him with a stuffed toy. Two pimply-looking teenage girls gossiped behind a magazine. Maybe I should put on my ring, Olivia decided, and slipped it out of her purse and put it on her finger. She had met Bobby at noon and told him where she was going and asked him to come out that night to dinner. “How are things going with your dad?” she asked.
“I think he’ll go to jail, maybe for five years, maybe more.” Bobby straightened his shoulders and looked down at her. “I wish we didn’t have to talk about it. There’s nothing I can do, is there? What time do you want me to come out there?”
“Around six o’clock.” She put her hand on his arm, sorry she had asked it, feeling spiteful and mean. I’d rather have a pit viper for a girlfriend than me, she thought. I’m supposed to love this guy. I knew better than to bring that up. “Granddaddy wants to see you. He’s going to catch some fish.”
“I’ll be there, baby.” Bobby smiled, forgiving her. “I can’t wait to eat Little Sun’s fish. I’m honored he’d want to see me. Hell, I might even shine my boots.”
“He wouldn’t know the difference.” Olivia laughed. “But Grandmother and Mary Lily will.”
Thirty minutes l
ater she emerged from the clinic with a package of birth control pills in her bag and began to drive to Tulsa. I’m getting to where I live in doctors’ offices, she decided. I’m turning into some kind of hypochondriac.
Doctor Coder opened the door to his office and Olivia walked in and went to the couch and lay down upon it. “I got these birth control pills, but I’m afraid to take them,” she began. “Why should I put chemicals into my body just so Bobby can fuck me? We can use a rubber or I can get some jelly or we’ll do something. I don’t need to take hormones that might give me cancer. And I don’t want to marry him either. I’m taking off this ring. What does it mean, wearing a ring like a noose around your neck, like a harness or a bit. I’m not a horse. No one’s going to ride me or hobble me or breed with me. I wouldn’t have a baby for all the tea in China. I haven’t talked to Jessie for a while. I can’t tell her about Bobby because she’ll tell Dad. I don’t know what to do, Doctor Coder. I’m not getting a thing done in school. I cut a class this afternoon to go get those pills. All I’m doing is driving around the country seeing doctors.”
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