Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Oh, honey.” He stopped the car in his parents’ driveway and turned around. His brow was furrowed. He did not have the vaguest idea how to begin to cut through the terrible guilt Olivia produced in him. “I wish I’d known you were there. I sure do wish it hadn’t taken so long to find you.”

  “It’s okay. I guess it scared you to death when Aunt Anna told you about me, didn’t it? I guess you thought I’d come up here and get all your money or something, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know what I thought. I shouldn’t have made you wait. I thought about that a lot. Is that what you talk to that shrink about?”

  “No. He wants me to tell you about my boyfriend. He wants me to learn how to talk to you. He said it didn’t even matter if you learned how to talk back. As long as I was always telling the truth.”

  “What’s the truth, then?”

  “That I was really mad because you wouldn’t come to see me. That I think you don’t love me because of what I did that time to the school computer. That you think I’m some sort of criminal about to erupt.” She kept on looking him straight in the eye as she talked. She did not let him escape.

  “Oh, honey.” Daniel sighed a great huge sigh, but he returned her look. He didn’t chicken out of this thing that she had started. He didn’t back away. “If I think so it’s probably because I’m half a one myself. I’m in so much trouble with the IRS right now the only way I can sleep is reminding myself that the jails are full of armed robbers and maybe there’s no room for me. So you may be right. But I love you. You’re wrong about that. You’re my little girl and I’m damned glad to have you.” He reached out and laid his hand upon her arm and patted her as he would a pet. Very soft little pats with the fingers of his hand upon her forearm.

  “Okay,” Olivia said. “That’s enough for now. Let’s go inside and see Grandmother. She’s probably wondering what we’re doing out here.”

  “Don’t say anything about that IRS business to anyone. Just keep that under your hat.”

  “Who would I tell? I don’t have anyone I’d talk to about your business.”

  They got out of the car and went together into Daniel’s mother’s house to talk to the old Victorians who had caused a large part of the mess they were tentatively trying to clean up.

  “So who’s this boyfriend you were supposed to talk to me about?” It was the next morning. Daniel and Olivia were in the kitchen making breakfast. Spook was sitting on a bar stool listening. Daniel was having the conversation in front of Spook to give him his due. He had been right. It was a boy she had gone to see. Well, let him gloat. Let him say I told you so.

  “A boy I used to go with in high school. He’s from a terrible family but he’s a wonderful person. He was the Junior Reining Champion of Oklahoma and he was the best football player when I was a cheerleader. Every girl in Tahlequah wants him but he always liked me. I don’t know why, but he does. I thought he’d gone away. He came back because I was coming there. My aunt told me. He loved me a long time before he found out I was going to be rich.”

  “You going to be rich?” Spook laughed delightedly from his stool. “That’s good news.”

  “Her granddad struck oil. They’ve got oil in their pasture.”

  “You can lend us some,” Spook added. “So your dad will fix the fences before every horse and cow we’ve got is loose in the county.”

  “Shut up, Spook. Go on, honey. So what is this paragon’s name?”

  “His name’s Bobby. His mother’s dead and his dad isn’t worth talking about. I want him to go to Chapel Hill with me next year. He has enough money. He’s been working since he got out of high school and he saved a lot of money. Well, now I said it, and you don’t look like you’re having a fit, so Doctor Coder was right and you can talk about things if you have to.”

  “Are you wanting to marry this boy?”

  “No. I don’t think so. I don’t think I ever want to marry anyone. Well, I might want to live with someone someday. But not get married, not have babies.”

  “That’s the new way.” Spook nodded his head in approval. “That’s how they do it now. They don’t push them baby carriages. More power to them, that’s all I have to say.”

  “Well, don’t go living with someone. If you want to live with someone, marry them. I mean that, honey. I don’t want you living with some boy.” Daniel looked determined, began to butter toast. “Grandmother wants us for dinner tonight. Lynley and DeDe will be there and Winifred too. Then afterwards we’ll all walk over to the club to watch the fireworks. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure, that’s fine. That’s why I’m here.” Olivia sat down beside Spook and began to eat her scrambled eggs. She looked up at the black man and got tickled. He had a look on his face that said, Look here now, isn’t this the funniest thing you ever witnessed? That was always Spook’s manner in the early morning. It was only in the late afternoons that he got morose and decided the world was a terrible place and more trouble than it was worth.

  Chapter 36

  THE dinner party at the Hands’ was festive. Mrs. Hand, Senior, had decided to make it festive, by which she meant having two maids work all day making fried chicken and potato salad and biscuits and carrot sticks and three different desserts, then gathering all of the family she could find into one room and making them sit at a table and eat the fried chicken with a fork. Lynley and Winifred and Kenny and DeDe were there, the children of Helen Hand Abadie, and DeDe’s husband, Kevin, and their father, Spencer Abadie, and Spencer’s mother, Mrs. Delores Abadie, who was eighty-seven years old and still trying to make up for having been born in West Virginia, and Niall and Daniel and Olivia and James Hand, Junior, his family was at the beach, and Mr. Hand Senior’s niece, Mary Lyle, and her husband, Edward Hill, and several other cousins. The idea was that they would eat an early dinner, then walk up the hill to the Charlotte Driving Club and watch the fireworks and think patriotic thoughts.

  “How are things with your grandparents?” Mrs. Hand asked Olivia. If Daniel was afraid of his half-Indian daughter, Mrs. Hand was terrified. She had calmed down about the girl while she was in Charlotte and Chapel Hill, but now that she was back in Oklahoma she was worried again.

  “They’re fine,” Olivia answered. “They found oil on their land. They’re going to be rich. My granddaddy is very worried about it. He thinks all my uncles will quit their jobs.”

  “That’s nice, Olivia. Well, that’s a real surprise.”

  “Good for him,” James Senior put in. “He’s right to be worried. I’d like to meet that man.”

  “Who does he have taking care of his affairs?” James Junior put in. “I hope he has a lawyer handling things.”

  “He used to be in the council of chiefs.” Olivia sat up very straight. “He knows more than most lawyers ever dream of knowing. He can read people’s minds if he wants to do it. He’s the strongest man his age you ever saw in all your life. He’s so strong. I don’t know how I stood being away from him that long. He taught me so much. He knows where the fox goes to hide, that’s a saying that we have.” I was supposed to watch, Olivia told herself. I wasn’t supposed to be critical of them. They can’t help how they are. They’re just that way. They’re afraid of everything.

  “We can go into supper now,” Mrs. Hand said. “I bet all you young people are starving.”

  Olivia got a plate and stood in line next to her cousins at the buffet. Lynley on one side and DeDe on the other. “So when’s your baby coming?” Olivia asked.

  “Too soon,” DeDe answered. “I know what to do with it while it’s still inside.”

  “Are we going to eat this chicken with a knife and fork?” Lynley laughed. He was always trying to impress Olivia. Trying to figure out what she wanted him to say. “I can’t stand it when Grandmother does that.”

  “It’s okay.” Olivia turned her most brilliant smile on him. “You have to let people be themselves. They can’t help it if they want to set the table three times a day. That’s t
he life they lead. I kind of like it.”

  “We always did it,” DeDe said. “Momma always set the table and made us eat very formally.”

  “Have you been up to see her yet?”

  “No.”

  “She doesn’t want us to,” Lynley added. “She doesn’t want anyone to come up there and bother her.”

  They filled their plates and sat at the table and said the blessing and ate the chicken and the potato salad and all the desserts. Then it was dark outside and they walked up the hill to the country club and lay around on blankets watching the fireworks go off. This is boring me to death, Olivia decided. If it was Bobby and me we’d be setting them off ourselves. We’d be blowing up every can in Green Country, and when it was over we’d go home and fuck.

  “Are you having a good time, sweetie?” It was Daniel coming to sit beside her on the blanket. “It’s so good to have you here. I wish you’d just stay. I wish you’d stay a few more days.”

  “I was thinking I ought to go back tomorrow,” she said. But she could not resist the tenderness and she settled down beside her daddy and was happy then. No matter how boring the country club was and the fireworks and her careful cousins, he was her own wonderful father and for this night at least she had him all to herself.

  “So why is this boy from a terrible family?” They were almost to the airport, taking Olivia to catch the plane back to Tahlequah. “Why is his family terrible?”

  “It isn’t terrible. Did I say that?”

  “I thought you did.”

  “His mother’s been gone since he was born. They don’t know where she went. They think she’s dead. His dad was a hero in Vietnam. He flew helicopters and was wounded. Bobby’s just had a lot of different things happen to him. Well, wait till you meet him. When you meet him you can make up your mind. I’m not going to marry him, Dad. I’m not like Jessie. I don’t want a house with flower gardens.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’m trying to find out.”

  “What can I do to help you?” Daniel stopped the car and turned off the motor and got out and came around to get her bag out of the backseat. He was thinking as hard as he could. And he was sorry she was leaving but, on the other hand, he wanted to go sit down in his den and pour himself a drink and not think about daughters. Daughters, what a thing for a man to have. Girls going off and having boyfriends and letting them do God knows what. “Let’s go on in the airport, honey. I don’t want you to leave but if you’re going to, let’s don’t go missing planes.”

  They walked together into the almost empty airport and checked the bag and walked down to the gate. Once or twice Olivia took hold of his arm. She had put on the other dress she had bought in Tulsa. This one was blue, with a white collar and a small white braided belt. She was trying to think of an answer to Daniel’s question.

  “Keep breathing,” she said at last.

  “What?”

  “That’s what you can do to help me. I love you, Dad. I’m glad I was here. I’ll be back at the end of summer. I’m not deserting you.”

  “I’ve been thinking about this book I used to read when I was a kid. It was called Wee Gillis. It was about a Scots boy who was orphaned and his mother’s folks were highlanders and his father’s folks were lowlanders and they both wanted him to live with them. So he’d spend half his time in the highlands and half in the lowlands. Finally he ended up living halfway between the two countries and spent his life playing the bagpipes. My granddaddy used to read that book to me.”

  “Oh, Dad, that’s wonderful. I wish I could read it. If you find it, will you send it to me?”

  The ticket agent announced the flight and Olivia kissed her father and turned and walked away and onto the airplane. What a world, she decided, and settled down into her seat. All I do is leave people that I love. Like I’m practicing for when I die. Well, that’s a morbid thought. She settled down into her seat and got out her Navajo grammar. She copied down some verbs, then copied a few sentences, then opened her notebook to a clean page and began to write a letter to her aunt Helen.

  Dear Aunt Helen,

  I hope everything is going all right in Boston. I just saw DeDe and Lynley and Winifred and Kenny. They said Stacy is going to be a model in L.A. Is that the truth? And DeDe looked great. You’d hardly know she was going to have a baby if you only looked at her face. They all looked great, to tell the truth. I thought you might want to know that, in case you’re worried about them. I really appreciate all the letters and postcards that you wrote me. I really liked the postcard from the museum. Mike’s right. It does look like you. You turn your head like that, when you think of something you forgot to say. If I come to see you, you can take me there and we’ll look at it together.

  Olivia chewed her pencil for a while, then went on.

  On another note, I met a woman I bet you’d like. She uses really wild language but she’s got so much life in her. She’s teaching me anthropology but she says it’s a joke. She says anyone who can read could pick it up. I don’t know why I’m writing you but I thought maybe you were lonely for your kids. They aren’t mad at you even if they act like they are. They just don’t know what’s going on and I guess DeDe has a lot of conflict about this baby she’s having. Give my love to Mike.

  I hope we see each other sometime soon.

  Your loving niece,

  Olivia.

  The stewardess came through the cabin serving drinks and Olivia folded up the letter and put it in her purse. It would be two weeks before she thought to mail it.

  Chapter 37

  HELEN is at a party in a married student’s apartment. She is sitting on an uncomfortable sofa biting her lip and thinking of answers to questions. It is five-thirty in the afternoon. The host of the party is a classics major who follows Mike around talking about the Etruscans. He has prepared all the food and is waiting on the guests. His wife is a second-year law student. She is standing in the dining area looking bored. She distrusts her husband’s liberal arts friends and think they secretly accuse her of being a philistine. She likes to foster this whenever possible by declaring that she voted for George Bush. She is smiling in Helen’s direction. She moves toward the sofa. She is hoping from the way Helen is dressed to have a conversation with a member of her social class. “So how does it feel to have a famous poet for a husband?” she asks.

  “He isn’t my husband,” Helen answers, putting down the plastic plate on which she has three strawberries and a piece of cake. “We’re the executors of my sister’s estate. We’re working on her papers.”

  “But you live together, don’t you?”

  “I guess you can call it that. I have a home in North Carolina. My children are there.”

  “How many children are there?”

  “Five.” Helen turned her face away. Took a deep breath. Don’t panic, she told herself. This is only a child, a girl DeDe’s age. She just wants to talk. It’s not an interview. Through the doors of the dining area she could see Mike in the kitchen surrounded by his students. “I have five children I haven’t seen in a long time and a grandchild on the way,” she said finally. “I will be a grandmother in a few days or hours and I shouldn’t even be here. I should be by the phone.”

  “Use ours,” the hostess said. “Call and see what’s going on.”

  “I tried to be a writer.” They were joined by a tall dark-skinned girl with stringy hair. She moved in and sat on the arm of the sofa. The hostess took the other arm. “But I gave it up. American publishing is so corrupt. My father’s an editor. He’s a whore if there ever was one. Did you see that book they did last year about the China thing? They churned that out in six weeks. It’s a religious tract for the far right. Print’s dead anyway.”

  “Print’s been dead.” A boy had joined them now. “It was all over by the seventeenth century anyway. Except for Faulkner, Joyce, and a handful of poets.”

  “Are you in the English Department?” It was all Helen could think of to
say to the boy, and if she stayed in this apartment she was going to have to make an effort to be nice to these ugly dull children.

  “He’s a deconstructionist,” the girl explained. “He thinks his work is to unmask frauds, which is of course the biggest fraud of all. His specialty is southern women writers.”

  “Come on, Margo,” he said. “That’s not fair. I’m really interested in your sister, Anna.” He turned his eyes on Helen. “She’s one of the three women I’m doing my thesis on. Gloria Naylor, Anna, and Robb Forman Dew. Robb’s a friend of my mother’s. Her grandfather was John Crowe Ransom. Had there been other writers in your family before Anna became one? How many miscarriages were there? Are you sure none of them were abortions? The way I read that story called ‘Grove of Yellow Dreams’ I think it must have been an abortion or else the threat of having to have one.”

  “Excuse me.” Helen stood up and brushed off the skirt of her dress. She handed the plate to the hostess. “I have to find Mike.” She moved around the coffee table and started toward the kitchen.

  “Where are your children living?” The boy had gotten up and was following her. “What do they all do?”

  “I’m not sure.” Helen turned to face him. “I went off and left them. I got tired of waiting for them to grow up.”

  “Like my mom.” He smiled. “She’s in Geneva with her lover. We haven’t seen her in months. So, do you live with Mike? Are you two married?”