Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “You want me to make it?” Crystal Anne was saying. “I can make tea. I know how. Come on in, Momma. Don’t look like that. Please don’t cry. I don’t want you to cry.”

  “Why’d you do it?” Doctor Freund asked. “I don’t mean that as it sounds. See if you can retrace the steps.”

  “I’m still stoned.”

  “I know that.”

  “Do you want me to stay here?” Jessie was sitting beside him on the couch. Her hand was on his hand. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t even breathing hard. She was just being Jessie, beautiful, pained, accepting, aware. She had lived with an alcoholic all her life. Now, at this moment, in this office, she was beginning to entertain a vague, dim, scary hope that things would change, that progress would be made, that they were going to talk about this without rage. “I’m afraid he’ll die,” she added. “That’s all I think about. I think he’ll die and leave K.T. and me alone. That K.T. won’t have a father and I won’t have him and it will all be wasted, all the love I have for him and all this wonderful brain and body and everything will be wasted and gone.”

  “Do you want to stay?” the doctor asked. “Then stay. None of this is a secret. It’s a problem we’re going to solve. How much did you smoke, King?”

  “A couple of hits in the park. Then a joint when I got home. It will last a couple of more hours. It’s Colombian.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Like I’m stoned but I can still think. I’m hungry and I really like that pink blouse. I’m a sucker for pink, aren’t I, Jessie?”

  “Your scores on the Stanford-Binet were in the ninety-ninth percentile, King. You can do anything you want to in the world. Do you know that? Do you understand what that means?”

  “Yeah. It was wasted on me, wasn’t it? Well, maybe K.T. got some of it. Maybe he’ll use it for something.”

  “It isn’t going to be wasted, King. I won’t let it be.”

  “Me either.” Jessie picked up the hand she was holding and put it to her lips. “Okay. I’m okay now. I’m going to leave you alone. I’ll be in the waiting room.” She looked into King’s eyes. Even stoned they held and held and held. Even stoned he was stronger than most men are sober. But Jessie Hand was strong too. So they looked at each other with sadness and hope and strength and fear and neither of them blinked. “I love you,” Jessie said. “I won’t forget this afternoon and that you came down here. This means something to me, King. More than you will ever know.” She let go of his hand and turned to Doctor Freund. “I won’t give up on the marriage I have made. I will never give up on it as long as I live. I’m not like people in my family. I don’t get a new person to love every day. So go on and do what you all do.”

  She walked out into the waiting room and sat down upon the sofa. She had almost weaned K.T. but not quite, and her breasts were beginning to fill with milk. She went into the small dark bathroom and opened her blouse and expelled the milk into the sink. It was so vulgar. It was the most vulgar thing she had ever done in her life and she barely even noticed she was doing it.

  Sometime later that night, much later, after she had thanked Traceleen and Crystal and listened to Crystal Anne play Für Elise on the piano and fed K.T. and made love to King and stayed by him until he slept, after all of that, Jessie got up and found a piece of paper and wrote a letter to her sister.

  Dearest Olivia,

  The worst thing that could have happened in the world just happened and we lived through it. Well, the worst thing would be a nuclear war, but the worst thing that could happen to me. On top of that I thought I was pregnant again but I wasn’t. Thank goodness that didn’t happen too. King got stoned and it was because I was mean to him. Except it wasn’t me that did it. It was him that did it. You and I will always be having people around us that drink or take dope or do something too much. Because of Dad. I really think some days I’m starting to believe that. In therapy they make me talk about it over and over. She does, this psychiatrist that I go to, and also I talk to our marriage counselor and King’s psychiatrist, Dr. Freund. Years ago, Aunt Anna tried to tell me all this stuff. I remember one time at a funeral in Charlotte, when one of our cousins died in a car wreck, that afternoon Aunt Anna took me off in a car. It was Grandmomma’s car and we were sitting in a car wash and water was pouring on the windows and Aunt Anna said no one in our family could drink. That our genes wouldn’t mix with alcohol. The same way we all move around all the time and can’t sit still and talk too much and always straighten things up. It’s just energy. My psychiatrist says mine has been hidden under a barrel though and I want to find a way to let it out. Be more like I used to be, when I was about eleven or twelve and used to dance and play the piano all the time. I want to be full of the world like you are. I don’t know what’s happened to me in the last few years.

  It isn’t King’s fault. It started before he came into my life. It’s like a wet blanket fell on me from somewhere. Maybe when Momma came home and tried to take me away from Daddy, or maybe it was just coming home every night and never knowing if he was going to be drunk or not.

  I used to blame a lot of stuff on you but I won’t anymore. King said you wanted to come down and bring your boyfriend to meet us. Please come. I want you to. I can’t wait to see you. I want you to see how big K.T. is now.

  Listen, if you hadn’t called when you did, King might not have cared that he was stoned. I think it meant something that you called when you did. I think it was some sort of fate. I think you were listening and you got a message to call and help. I’m starting to believe things like that. We don’t know everything. We don’t know whether we can hear across great distance or not. We might be able to hear things that happened long ago or in the future. I know that’s a stupid thing to say. I ought to go back to school and learn some science so I won’t be subject to superstition. That’s what King’s psychiatrist said but mine said science is just another myth system and someday men will look back on what we are doing now and think it’s just a lot of superstitious ideas people had while they waited to find out the real truth.

  I have an assignment to look at the stars for thirty minutes every night. If you don’t have anything to do some night, about eight or nine o’clock, look up and think about me seeing the same thing, if the clouds ever go away on top of New Orleans.

  Love and kisses,

  Jessie

  Chapter 42

  IT was raining in Boston. Helen stirred around the apartment rearranging cut flowers, taking them from their vases, cutting the stems, giving them fresh water. While she worked she worried about the people that she loved.

  The pair she kept coming back to was Jessie and Olivia. Daniel’s going to dissolve without them, she decided. He never could stand to be alone. I shouldn’t have been so mean to him. It was terrible not to let him come up here, but I won’t watch him drink. I will not watch him kill himself. I will not do it. Then why do I feel so guilty? Why do I think about him all the time? Okay, I’ll call Jessie. I should feel guilty about my own girls, but I don’t. I’m mad at them. This is just displaced maternal stuff and I should stop it, but I can’t because it’s raining.

  She put the last yellow mum into a glass vase and set the vase upon a table by a cloisonné lamp and picked up the phone and called Jessie. “What’s going on?” she asked. “I’m worrying about you. Is everything okay? Is the baby fine? I know it’s early, but I had to talk to you.”

  “Oh, Aunt Helen, you’re like a mind reader. You always call when something happens.”

  “Something happened?”

  “I don’t know if it was bad or not. It turned out all right. King smoked marijuana. But then he went to his shrink and talked about it. He’s so smart, Aunt Helen. Even when he does something stupid, he can understand it. Anyway, thanks for calling me. It means so much to me that you think about me.” In the other room K.T. woke up and started crying.

  “Wait a minute. I have to go and get the baby. He just woke up. Stay there. Please don’t go away.�
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  Helen sat down in a blue chair and picked up the book Mike had been reading the night before. A tattered paperback that had arrived in Dublin in 1972. A Coney Island of the Mind by Lawrence Ferlinghetti.

  Jessie returned to the phone with K.T. in her arms. “I don’t know what I’d do if I didn’t have him,” she began. “Sometimes I think you’re the only one in the family that understands why I had him. I want so much for you to see him. Well, I know you’re busy there. And I think it’s terrible your kids are mad at you. They ought to stop being mean to you.”

  “I’m not busy, Jessie. I don’t know what to do with myself all day. We just have a small apartment. But I’m happy. I’m happier than I’ve ever been in my life, except perhaps when the children were small.”

  “Look, you want to come down here next weekend? Olivia’s coming. She’s bringing her boyfriend. She’s starting to be my really good friend, Aunt Helen. Like you wanted us to be. Like Aunt Anna begged us to.”

  “Don’t talk about Anna, honey. We have to stop talking and thinking about her. It isn’t good for us. It makes us weak.”

  “How does it do that?”

  “Because life is here to be lived. This morning is to be lived and used for wonderful and great things. What are you doing besides taking care of K.T.? Are you playing the piano? Are you singing? Don’t forget your music.”

  “I will when I have time. I met a piano teacher at a party the other night. His sister owns a bookstore here. When I get time I’m going to take from him. I’m pretty rusty now.”

  “Don’t get rusty. Creativity is the key to happiness. Mike says that all the time. Of course, a baby is the greatest creative thing. I guess. I don’t know what I believe about that anymore. You should see Mike when he thinks of something he needs to write. It’s the strangest thing, like a spell comes over him and he gets terribly apologetic, then he disappears into his room. Watching him is like watching the sky, clouds and light play across his face like a two-year-old. I’m so much in love with him, Jessie. I guess it’s you and me. We’re the two real crazies in this family, the love crazies.”

  “Well, Olivia is too. I wish you’d come and meet her boyfriend. I guess you’re the closest thing either of us has to a mother now.”

  They were quiet.

  “Listen,” Helen said at last. “If there is any way I can, I’ll come down while she’s there. It might only be for a day and a night. I can’t stand to leave Mike for very long. But I’ll try. Don’t expect me. If I can come, I will. I guess Crystal would always have room for me if I showed up at the last minute, wouldn’t she?”

  “Sure she would. They have seven bedrooms in that house.”

  Jessie had hardly hung up from talking to Helen when Olivia called. “I just wrote to you,” Jessie said, “and Aunt Helen is calling us. Well, she already called me. She’s got us on her mind.”

  “Is everything okay?”

  “About King, you mean?”

  “Well, about that. And if it’s okay for us to come down there. You’re sure you want us to?”

  “I’m sure. Thanks for calling yesterday. If you hadn’t called . . . well, King was stoned and he told us and he went to the doctor while he was still stoned. I don’t know, Olivia.” Jessie started crying again. “I don’t know. Life’s so hard to do. I don’t know where to start. I just know I have to take care of K.T. He’s the most important thing in the world to me.”

  “Don’t cry. It isn’t right to be unhappy. People are supposed to be strong and brave, to be fortified, flexible, like stalks of wheat, like wildflowers in a field, but civilization has ruined us all, made us weak. Listen, my granddad used to go off on these hikes. Walks, he called them. He’d go off without anything but some dried meat and a knife maybe and he’d go far off up into the woods, in late November or even January, and he would stay until there was a storm with lightning that came so close to him he felt it when it hit. If it took a month he would stay that long. People are so strong, Jessie, and we don’t even know it. We are very, very strong and we think we’re weak. Like I know you’re strong but I forget I am. This whole country is a bunch of crybabies babying themselves morning, night and noon. We don’t even know how to build a house anymore or get water for ourselves. Please don’t cry.”

  “You’re right. What do I have to cry about? I have everything I need and I have a wonderful husband and he’s trying to stop doing all that stuff. You never saw anyone try as hard as he is trying. When are you coming? I want to see you.”

  “If he doesn’t quit, leave him. I mean that. We’re coming next weekend as soon as we finish school on Friday and we’ll drive straight down. Oh, Jessie, listen, it will mean so much to me to see you. I want us to be real sisters, sisters for life.”

  “We can be.” There was a long silence.

  “How’s Dad?” Olivia said at last.

  “I don’t know. He’s mad at me. Tell me again about these hikes your grandfather takes. Where does he go?”

  “Out along the Illinois River. Then up to the bluffs on the lake. He walks for days until he gets somewhere he feels is the place to make a stand. Then he builds a camp and stays until lightning strikes nearby. Luckily, lightning happens all the time in this part of the country. Some people think it’s a magnetic field. Anyway, we have thunderstorms pretty often so he doesn’t have to wait forever. Then he says he can see clearly again and he comes home. I told you about the oil they found, didn’t I?”

  “King told me. I’m glad.”

  “Well, he isn’t glad. He says it’s going to ruin us all. He says it will kill our strength and sap us. He’s going around acting like the world is coming to an end just because we’ll have some money.”

  “Maybe he’s right. Think what King might be if he had been born somewhere in the country, where there wasn’t any dope.”

  “There’s dope everywhere. Half the marijuana in the country is grown up here, at least it used to be before Nancy Reagan sprayed it.”

  “I guess that’s true. There isn’t any safe place except the one you make.” K.T. was screaming now. “Listen, Olivia, I have to go. I have to feed him and everything and I want to send your letter. I don’t want you to know everything it says before you get it. Aunt Helen’s going to call you. Don’t tell her anything is wrong. Tell her everything’s okay. Anyway, I can’t wait to see you next weekend. Don’t worry about clothes. We aren’t going anywhere to get dressed up. We’ll just go hear music and stay around here or maybe go across the lake. We don’t need to dress up. Love you.”

  “Love you too. Go take care of him.”

  Olivia hung up the phone and looked around the room. “Only a fool doesn’t heed her own advice,” she said out loud, and opened a closet and found her hiking boots and put them on. Then she took a jacket out of a closet and went into the kitchen and found an old pocket knife and a compass and put them in her pocket and left a note on the table. “I have gone to find lightning. Don’t worry about me. If Bobby calls, tell him I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  She left the house and struck out past the barn into the pasture with the cows. A couple of heifers began to follow her as she walked. The meadow was a foot high with wildflowers and grasses. The sun beat down. To the west a line of cirrus clouds were hurrying along the horizon, pushed by darker clouds a hundred miles away.

  Olivia walked and thought, walked and thought. Once she surprised a jackrabbit and watched him run away up a rise covered with black-eyed Susans and Jack-in-the-pulpit and wild iris.

  In an hour she had reached the back of Little Sun’s property, where the rolling meadow became a wood. At the edge of the wood was an old cistern left from a time when Little Sun and Crow had lived back there. Nothing was left of the house but a stone chimney and part of a wall.

  The cistern was built on top of a natural spring. It was a hole ten feet wide and twelve feet deep, lined with stones and concrete blocks. Little Sun had built it so there would be water even in times of drought. The cistern was covered
with sheets of tin held down by two-by-fours. Olivia climbed up on the two-by-fours and looked down through an opening in the tin. She looked a long time at her reflection in the still dark water.

  Imagine Granddaddy doing all of that, she thought. Making this and planting the orchard and building the house. All the time he was waiting for Crow to be sixteen so he could marry her. Then he brought her here and they started having babies. It sounds awful. But it wasn’t awful. They had this fireplace and they built fires in the daytime even. Crow told me they always had a fire, every morning of their life.

  Olivia stood in the bright hot July sun looking at the remains of her grandfather’s handiwork. She tried to imagine Little Sun and Crow arriving here after their wedding. Crow would have been wearing the white deerskin dress. And they went into the house and did it. Olivia shivered thinking of it, and walked over to the ruined chimney and stood where she thought the bedroom might have been and imagined her grandfather lowering his body down on top of her grandmother and she thought of that passion and that love which still went on between them.

  No one can love anymore, she decided. Bobby and I would never have that in a million years. All the psychiatrists in the world cannot make us love each other like that because they can’t make us need each other. If we were alone in a place like this and all we had to make us safe was ourselves and loving each other. If he made the fire for me, and I cooked for him, and we went out together and went hunting for our food or planted apple trees for our children to have apples, then we might be okay. Not happy, you can’t seek happiness. Even I know that and I’m only a little wet-behind-the-ears fucked-up little girl. Well, I’ll find out who I am. I’ll find out if I have the stuff that fixed that spring and built that house and made that chimney.

  She turned and saw a pair of redbirds flying crazily around an apple tree. Oh, God, I guess they’ve got a nest. Birds are so crazy. Their feathers are made of the same stuff as fingernails, keratin, that’s what it’s called. Well, I learned something in biology, I guess I’m not a total loss. And their bones are almost hollow. Just structure, that’s what it is, the structure makes them light enough to fly. That’s what I need for my life, a structure so light that I can fly.