Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “We hate her too.”

  “That’s why we have to kill her. Listen, Taylor, if we got rid of her Dad and Mom might get married again.”

  “No, they won’t. Mom wouldn’t do that. She says he’s a workaholic. She doesn’t like that. He won’t ever have any fun.”

  “He has fun with us.”

  “When Georgia isn’t here.”

  “Well, that’s why.”

  “Okay. We’ll do something. But not wreck the MG. There’re other things. We could scare her to death.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t know yet. Let me think about it.” Taylor handed the beer to Tucker. They only drank two beers in the daytime. One at ten o’clock and one at four o’clock. They had figured out that Zach didn’t miss two, or, if he did, he overlooked two. He would raise a stink about three. But two he could tolerate. The twins were out on the back porch on the swing watching a blue jay fly around acting crazy. They had torn down his nest that morning after they found it in an apple tree. Taylor had wanted to shoot him with the 410, but Tucker talked him out of it. “Just watch him,” Tucker said. “I love to watch them when they can’t find the nest. I hate blue jays. I wish we had Momma’s cat over here. Let’s bring her the next time we come.”

  “Okay,” Taylor answered. “We will. I’d love to bring her and see what she’d do up here.”

  Chapter 50

  BUT what is love anyway?” Georgia asked. She and Olivia had finished their walk and were resting now beside a waterfall. The sun was past the horizon. The sky above the woods was celestial. Along the tops of the trees the clouds were pink and purple and azure, pale yellow and deep pure blue and amber and green and mauve and every subtle shade of white and gray. The sunset had been so spectacular that several times Georgia had thrown up her arms in abject worship.

  “I don’t know what love is,” Olivia answered. “Maybe it’s just sex. That’s when you want to say it. Right after you come or if you’re horny. Doctor Coder pointed that out to me.”

  “It can change your heartbeat.” Georgia smiled at the seriousness of the girl. “It can cure disease. We know that. We know people get sick when someone they love dies.”

  “There’s this woman in Eureka Springs that has this painting of the Virgin Mary. People touch it when they’re sick and they get well. She painted it twenty years ago and she’s taken it all over the world to get people to put love in it. She took it to Russia and all these peasants started worshiping it. There was this thing on television about it. I haven’t seen it but Bobby has. He said it gave him a really spooky feeling.”

  “Maybe it’s a catalyst.”

  “Doctor Coder says the joy of loving someone is in loving them, not in being loved. So a good way to get loved is to need love. He says I have to tell Bobby that I need him or let him know. I don’t know. Then he turns around the next day and says I have to keep ‘a proper distance,’ he says that over and over. Are you still in love with Zach?”

  “Not as much as I was. It’s so bitter to have to back off from it, but the twins drive me nuts. I’m just not capable of loving them. I swear to God, I think they hate me.”

  “You could love them. Just try harder.”

  “I’m trying as hard as I can.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t have their dad’s car. It would make me mad if Margaret was driving Dad’s car.”

  “It’s a practical thing. He wanted my Isuzu to haul things in and the MG is better on the road. You’re right, though. Maybe it’s the car. I’m going back to Memphis in October. I haven’t told him yet. We could still see each other. He can come to Memphis on the weekends or maybe he could teach there if he ever got rid of Taylor and Tucker.”

  “You want him to get rid of his kids?”

  “Someday they’ll leave anyway.”

  “I think you better just find another boyfriend.”

  “Maybe I’ll have to.” They were silent, a long hard silence. “Okay, I’ll try to love them. One more time I’ll try as hard as I can, but they’re really bad, Olivia. It isn’t just my perception. They’re bad boys.”

  “Try it.” Olivia stood up. She felt very grand, giving advice to her older friend. “Well, I’ve got to be getting back. Bobby’s waiting for me.”

  They stood up. Water was falling over the high granite bluffs behind them. The colors were fading from the sky. They started back down the path to the car.

  When Georgia got home she called Zach and told him she was coming over the following night.

  “The boys are here,” he said.

  “I know. I want to see them. I have something to tell you.”

  “What is that?”

  “I’ll tell you tomorrow. But first, let’s take them out to dinner. Somewhere nice. Wash their faces.”

  “I miss you.”

  “I miss you too. Tomorrow night then. I’ll be there by six. I want to trade cars while I’m there. So clean mine up. I mean, take things out of it.”

  “Okay. Fine. I’m not using it now anyway. I’ve been driving the old truck.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. For the bumper stickers. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to push that button.”

  “Tomorrow night.”

  “Good, I’ll see you then.” She’s going to leave me, he decided. Women always do. Well, at least she’s going to be nice to the boys before she goes. She hurts them so much ignoring them that way. I hate her for being so ignoble to them. I hate women, to tell the truth. I hate the things they do to me. He walked across the room and picked up a bag of Doritos and ate a few. He opened the refrigerator and stood staring inside it. He was thinking about Georgia, but when the boys came in behind him they thought he was counting the beers.

  “Oh, hello,” Zach said. “Georgia wants to take you out to dinner tomorrow night. Is that all right? Would you like to do that?”

  An hour later the twins were alone in the bedroom.

  “Okay,” Taylor said. “We fix the car. We fix the brakes so they fail.”

  “What if she kills some innocent person?”

  “She won’t. And she never wears a seat belt. She deserves it.”

  “Maybe it will just scare her.”

  “It’s going to kill her, Tucker. Get that straight.” Taylor finished off the beer and rolled off the bed. “Get dressed. He’s going downtown to copy some stuff. While he’s gone I’ll show you on the Isuzu. You have to take the wheels off and work on the lining. It’s all in that old Volkswagen book, but I know how to do it anyway.” Tucker believed him. Taylor was a mechanical genius. Everyone knew that.

  “Then what can we do?”

  “Tonight?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let’s go over to the cheerleader camp and pick up girls. Remember all those girls we met last year?”

  “Okay. Yeah, that’s a good idea. There he goes.” The boys listened as Zach pulled out of the driveway in the old pickup truck. Then they walked out into the side yard and looked at the Isuzu. They rolled it into the garage and Taylor jacked it up and took off a wheel and showed Tucker what they were going to do. He pried up a piece of the lining to show Tucker how easy it would be to do.

  “Put the wheel back on,” Tucker kept saying. “He might come back.”

  “He won’t come back. Did you see that pile he had to copy? He’ll be over there for hours.”

  They replaced the wheel on the Isuzu and hammered the wheel cover back on and then they went into the house and began to eat potato chips and pretzels. There was a message from Georgia on the answering machine. “See you tomorrow night. I don’t know why I called back. Just wanted to hear your voice, I guess. Call me if you come back before eleven.”

  “You want to erase it?” Taylor asked.

  “No, we did that enough. Don’t do anything suspicious.”

  Georgia was in a great mood driving to Fayetteville the next afternoon. She had sat in zazen for an hour concentrating on learning to love the twins. She fixed them in her mind and
surrounded them with love, she smothered them with love, the more they hated her, the more she loved them. She would love them so hard it would make up for their having had the worst mother in the world, it would make up for the trauma of being two, it would make up for whatever needed to be made up for. She, Georgia Jones, Medical Doctor, could do it. She could do it with her will, her fantastic unbeatable will. Number seven in my goddamn class, she remembered. Numero siete. So I’ve had some setbacks since then. So what? It’s an imperfect world. Where did I get that? Olivia. She has invaded my consciousness this summer, darling little hopeful child. God, I hope she gets what she wants.

  Georgia drove bravely on, passing every car on the road, top down, no seat belt, tape player blaring out with the Rolling Stones, then Louis Armstrong singing “Cabaret.” “Start by admitting from cradle to tomb, isn’t that long a stay, come to the cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret.”

  It’s too short a stay to spend my time hating a pair of teenage boys. I love Tucker. I love Taylor. I do, I do, I do.

  They were waiting on the porch when she arrived. The boys in matching pink polo shirts and Zach in a white shirt and a pair of chinos. If I didn’t know better, I’d think this was a dream come true, Georgia decided, and turned off the motor and got out smiling. “Where do you want to go?” she asked. “This is my party. Where do you want to go, Taylor? You and Tucker choose. Anyplace in town.”

  “Anywhere?”

  “Yes.”

  “The Old Post Office too?”

  “That most of all. I love it. You want to go there?”

  “Do you?” Taylor looked at Tucker.

  “Sure.”

  “Okay. We do.” They moved to the side of the porch, moved closer together, tried to compute the new material. She was being so nice, she didn’t even look like a spy, which was what they had called her before they only called her She.

  “I’ve been missing you,” Zach put in. “I’m awfully glad you’re here. This is nice of you, Georgia. To want the boys to go.”

  “Okay. You want to take the MG?”

  “No, let’s go in the Isuzu.” They climbed into the Isuzu and Zach drove down Duncan Street. He came down the steep hill to the stoplight on the corner of Duncan and Center. Taylor and Tucker were strapped into the backseat. Georgia was riding shotgun. Taylor undid his seat belt and leaned over to pick up a quarter that was stuck under the floor mat.

  “What did you want to tell me?” Zach asked. “I’ve been wondering what it is.” Taylor leaned closer, trying to hear the conversation.

  “Oh, it can wait,” Georgia said. “It’s just something we need to talk about. Let’s go eat dinner. I found a waterfall the other day. Did I tell you about that? Up in the woods near Lake Tenkiller. Huge wide steps of granite right in the middle of the woods. Very, very nice. It’s runoff from a change in the dam. It wasn’t there a year ago. It made itself. A baby waterfall. Olivia and I found it. I told you about her scores on the Stanford-Binet, didn’t I?”

  Zach shifted into third gear and began to climb the hill toward Dickson Street.

  The brakes held until they were almost to the top. The piece of lining that Taylor had loosened with the tire jack was torn and weakened anyway, and now it disintegrated. Zach stepped on the brake and the car slid sideways into a ditch by the local NPR studio and fell slowly onto its side. Georgia fell against Zach’s shoulder. Taylor crashed into Tucker. Student radio announcers came pouring out of the building, one of them called 911, and from three blocks away a patrol car sped to the scene.

  “You did it,” Tucker was screaming. Taylor’s blood was falling on Tucker’s face. “You did it, you fucking asshole. You’ve killed us all, you crazy goddamn asshole. He did it, Dad. I didn’t do it. I didn’t even want to do it.”

  Two hours later Georgia and Zach and Tucker were released from the Emergency Room of Washington General Hospital but Taylor was being kept for a few days. He had a broken wrist and several broken ribs and a cut on the right shoulder.

  “This is what I do for a living, Tucker,” Georgia said. “I watch this go on every day. The dumb and stupid things people do to themselves by being stupid, uneducated, and careless.”

  “Let’s go get something to eat,” Zach said. “I’m starving. We’re going to talk to you, Tucker. And you’re going to come up with some answers.”

  The local taxi took them to Zach’s house to get the MG and they got into that and put on their seat belts and drove to a Chinese restaurant, where the waiters were just off the boat and the paintings were authentic. Georgia propped her bruised hand up on the table and determined to watch the rest of the evening without making any judgments. If I don’t live with them, it’s an interesting problem in human behavior, she decided. If I live with them, it’s my problem. Don’t forget this, Georgia. Never forget this night.

  “Taylor was messing with the brakes yesterday afternoon,” Tucker began. “He wanted to show me how the brakes worked and he took off the front tire and messed with it.”

  “Why did he do that?” Georgia kept her hand propped up on the table. She looked around it at the boy. “Why did he mess with the brake linings of the tires?”

  “I don’t know. To show me how they work. I don’t know why.”

  “Yes, you do.” Georgia picked up the menu. It would do no good to hate the children for protecting the only security they had ever known. And what is my security? she wondered, and searched her lover’s face and it was not there. She searched the tabletop and the blue porcelain pot of steaming tea. She raised her eyes to a wonderful painting that was the reason she came to the restaurant. A wonderful Chinese painting of ten people in a small boat on a stormy sea. They were dressed in many kinds of clothes. They leaned toward the bow of the boat, examining the waves which came up to the gunnels and threatened to capsize them. On their faces were expressions of mild interest.

  The Chinese waiters came and went, serving rice and tea and huge steaming platters of food. Her hand ached. It was not hurt badly but it was sprained and bruised. It will heal by October, she thought. When I go back to work.

  “What did you want to tell me?” Zach asked. “You said you had something to talk to me about.”

  “It can wait. Let’s eat. Tell us why he took the tire off the truck, Tucker. Did he want someone to get hurt?”

  “Oh, Georgia,” Zach said. “That’s going a bit too far.”

  “I’m going back to Memphis in the fall.” Georgia poured the tea and ignored Tucker, who was looking down at his lap. “I hope that won’t be the end of us loving each other. I have to go back to what I understand, Zach. I don’t understand families. I like them and I wish them well, but I don’t do them very well. I wasn’t a very good mother to my own children. I’m not on the family track. On the other hand, I am a very good physician. So I’m going back to work. You’re in the family dynamic whether you like it or not, however. We’ll see each other. It isn’t far to Memphis. An hour’s flight. I don’t want to lose you, to lose the love we have.” She raised her eyes and looked at him and waited. He didn’t even blink. He’s relieved, she decided. My God, he’s registering relief.

  “I wouldn’t want to lose you either,” he said. “I’m sure we can work something out.”

  “You’re going to live in Memphis?” Tucker said. “You’re not going to be here?”

  “I’m a medical doctor, Tucker. I do what that woman in the emergency room does. I got burned out on it but now it’s time to go back.”

  “Drink your soup,” Zach told his son. “We’ll talk about this later. Let’s get some food in our systems.”

  The waitress brought the rice and chicken and broccoli and shrimp chow mein. The passengers rode the waves. Zach and Tucker and Georgia picked up their chopsticks and began to eat.

  Georgia and Olivia were having breakfast. It was two days after the wreck, the fifteenth of August. The semester was almost over. Summer was wearing down. “I want to tell you what I learned this week,” Georgia was sayi
ng. “I want to tell you the wisest thing I know.”

  “Shoot.”

  “The great Zen master, Dogen Zengi, said relationships are with everything. Trees, rugs, mountains, rivers. The ones that give us difficulties are always with other people. They want to be themselves, but we want to meld them into ourselves so we’ll never lose them. This is doomed to failure. In every relationship there is some genuine love and some false love. The false love is caused by thinking the lover will perfect us, will make us complete. But people are always changing, so no two people can maintain a perfect fit. If you are in a close relationship you will suffer part of the time. We have to learn to live with that if we are to have relationships with other people. We have to learn patience. We have to learn how to wait.”

  “You lost me.”

  “I was telling you the new wisdom I know. What did you think I said?”

  “That you’re going to Memphis to practice medicine and leaving him in Fayetteville to be his children’s father.”

  “That isn’t what I said.”

  “It’s what you meant. Well, I don’t know what Bobby and I are going to do. For right now, we’re going to finish this semester and then we’re going to drive up to Montana and visit his friends up there. He wants to show me those mountains. Also, he has to get ready to ride in the Futurity in Fort Worth. He might be riding against me. Kayo wants me to ride his mare. I know we have to get an education but it’s driving us both crazy, sitting in classrooms listening to professors talk. Well, not you.”

  “You can miss a semester of school and it won’t matter. If you have a chance to ride a champion horse in a race, go do it.”

  “It isn’t a race, it’s where they show off the bloodlines. It’s a business.”

  “Do what you want to do. You’re going to have money from the oil. The only point of money is to buy freedom. Maybe there’ll be enough money for you to have a ranch of your own. How much will there be? Will you be rich?” Georgia giggled, raised her glass of Diet Coke.