I Cannot Get You Close Enough (13 page)

So Olivia's world expanded beyond Dr. Seuss and the
Compton's Pictured Encyclopedia
. Every Saturday morning she would ride a pony down the gravel road to Highway 62, tie him to the fencepost, and walk down the highway to the store. If there was plenty of money that week her aunt would give her fifty cents to buy candy at the store. She would go to the bookmobile first, climbing up into the little airless space between the books, staying all morning choosing the ones she wanted. Then she would present her card and check out four books and only then would she go to the store for her candy. Then, carrying the candy and the books in her backpack, she would hike back to the gravel road and climb on her pony and ride back to her house. “Here she comes with her books,” Mary Lily would say. “I wonder what she got this week.”

“See how she rides,” the grandfather would say. “She rides without stirrups like an Indian should.”

“She is not an Indian,” Crow said. “She is a cuckoo bird.”

4

“This is North Carolina,” Olivia said. “This is where my father is.” She was sitting on the floor, playing with a puzzle map of the United States. Mary Lily was sitting at the dining room table in a straight-backed chair. It was late in the afternoon and Mary Lily was tired. It was the year she worked at the canning factory. She had on her uniform shirt and a long black shapeless skirt. Her hair was pulled back in a bun. She had imitation jade earrings in her ears. Except for the earrings there was no adornment of Mary Lily anywhere. The work at the factory was loud and unpleasant. It was the worst job Mary Lily had ever had. When she was through for the day she came home to Olivia, to watch her do homework or read her things out of the newspaper or take her to yard sales. Mary Lily loved yard sales. She would scan the newspapers for yard sales as far away as Springdale, Arkansas, or Muskogee or Broken Arrow. Olivia would poke around among the used books while Mary Lily looked for pieces of clothing and toys and utensils for the kitchen. The puzzle map of the United States was one of Mary Lily's prize finds. She had bought it for twenty-five cents because it had a piece missing. Nebraska was missing, so Mary Lily had cut a small Nebraska from a map and glued it to a piece of cardboard.

“Where's Nebraska?” she said now. “You haven't lost it, have you?”

“How do you get to North Carolina?” Olivia said. “Could we go there in a car?”

“When you are sixteen years old we might go. Your father has another life now. He might not remember all these old things.”

“I am twelve years old. He will want to know where I am. I think he is thinking about me.”

“What would you say to him if you saw him?”

“I would show him my horse. I would take him to our baseball games. I bet he'd like to come to them.”

“I don't see Nebraska anywhere. I think you lost Nebraska.”

“No, I didn't. It's right here.” Olivia put North Carolina back into its slot below Virginia and searched in the box for Nebraska. “Here it is,” she said. She held up the blue Nebraska. “It's right here.”

Mary Lily reached down and touched her hair.

Girls' baseball games in Tahlequah were wild events. They played on a field by the swimming pool and parents came and cheered and yelled and whistled. Olivia was a great but erratic hitter. She would swing at anything and pitchers tried to walk her at crucial points in tight games. Once or twice she had even managed to hit pitchouts and drive runners in. She was also a fast runner. Once she had hit the ball she would sprint around the bases, never looking to see where the ball was. This was Olivia's Achilles' heel in baseball, however, and she had made some devastating outs by overrunning the bases. When she was up at bat the coach would tell the girls coaching at the bases to slow her down if necessary.

Mary Lily and her married sister, May, were very proud of Olivia's baseball prowess and never missed a game. May would bring her children and they would sit in the stands eating homemade fudge and yell and scream and cheer.

Still, the ball games often made Olivia sad. If she had made a good play or hit a home run she longed for a father to slap her on the back and say well done. She watched other girls going off with their fathers after games and thought, He didn't see that and I might never be able to do it again. “Cut it out of the paper,” she told Mary Lily, whenever there was a mention in the
Tahlequah Bugle
of the scores of the games. “Someone might want to see it someday.”

An English teacher inadvertently led Olivia to find her father. The English teacher was young. It was her first year teaching high school and she was very eager and worked hard to find new things for the students to read. She was teaching Olivia's class out of an anthology that included a story by Olivia's aunt, Anna Hand. A story about a young girl whose mother was a drunk. The teacher was worried that the story might be too sophisticated for sophomores in high school but she was wrong. The students understood the story better than she did. There was hardly a boy or girl in the class whose life had not been touched by alcoholism.

Olivia read the story several times. Then she looked in the back to find the biography of the author. “Anna Hand,” the biography said. “Born in 1942, in Charlotte, North Carolina. The oldest of six children, Ms. Hand's stories often deal with the trials and tribulations of family life.”

The next day Olivia waited after class to talk to her teacher. “This lady has the same name as I do,” she said. “I would like to write to her. How do you write to a writer?”

“Let's see,” the teacher said. “There should be a copyright acknowledgment in the back. Oh, here it is. See, this is the name of her publisher. We can go to the library and find out the address and write her there. I'm so glad you want to write the author. That's wonderful. I used to do that sometimes.”

“She's kin to me,” Olivia said. “She has to be. She will know how to find my dad.”

5

As soon as she had the address of the publisher Olivia went to the public library and took out all of Anna Hand's books. She took them home and read them as fast as she could, skipping from one book to the other. Then she sat down and wrote the first of the letters that would lead to her becoming a liar and cheat. All she needed was a box of stationery, a pen, and a few blank report cards from Tahlequah High.

Dear Mrs. Hand,

I think I am your niece. If you have a brother named Daniel. My mother was named Summer Deer Wagoner and she was married to Daniel Hand in 1967 in California. I have their marriage certificate. I have read all your books they have in our library and I think they are wonderful. I am enclosing a photograph of myself. If you have a brother Daniel tell him I am writing to him too. Here is my address if you would like to write me back. Please write back to me.

Yours most sincerely,
Olivia D. H. Hand

P.S. It is hard for me to write this letter. I am afraid it might startle you like a snake in the grass. I am not a snake in the grass. I am a very nice girl. I am fifteen. I'm a cheerleader and I make straight A's. I think you would be proud to be related to me.

Dear Mr. Hand,

I hope this won't come as too big a surprise to you. I think you are my father. If you were married to Summer Deer Wagoner. If you are the Daniel Hand on the marriage certificate to my mother then you are my father. If so, I am dying to see you and know you.

My mother died when I was born and my grandfather said I could write to you when I was sixteen years old. I am fifteen and I can't wait any longer. I am enclosing a photograph of myself and a copy of my grades for the last six weeks so you can see I am not someone you would be ashamed to know. I don't want anything from you. I just want you to know I'm here and maybe sometime in the future let me see you.

Yours most truly,
Olivia De Havilland
Hand, age 15
Birth date, September
21, 1968

Dear Aunt Anna,

I can't believe you wrote back to me. I came home from school and the letter was propped up on the salt and pepper shakers waiting for me on the table. I almost fainted I was so excited. I can't believe you are my aunt. I told my English teacher today and she said she can't believe it either. Listen, I'll have to write to you again and tell you everything I am thinking about. But for now I want you to know that I got the letter and I love it so much.

I am sorry it is cold there and you are having a hard time living in the city. I think it would be hard for me too. I was in Kansas City once and I have been in Tulsa many times. It is not good to have that much noise morning, noon and night. Maybe you should go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and look at the paintings. I have this book about a girl who went there to live when she ran away from home. They didn't find her for months. To tell the truth everything I know about New York I know from books. I bet it's not as bad as you think. You ought to see Tahlequah. Talk about dead. You could die of boredom here in the winter. But it's always beautiful here the rest of the year.

I'll write more later.

Love,
Your Niece, Olivia

Dear Father,

I cannot tell you how much it meant to me to hear from you. If there is any way you could come here to see me sometime it would mean a great deal to me. Here are my newest grades. Glad you liked the other ones.

Love,
Olivia

Dear Aunt Anna,

I'm sorry it won't work out for me to come up there and visit you but I think you are right. It will be better if you come here and see me and see what my life is like. It might give you something to write about. We have a museum with the history of our people in it. Of course, it is only half my history. I guess you could call me a halfbreed, couldn't you? Well, it turned out all right for Cher, didn't it? So I guess it can turn out all right for me. Especially with you writing to me.

I love you,
Your Niece, Olivia

Dear Aunt Anna,

It's sooooo boring on a Sunday afternoon in Tahlequah. It's boring all the time but especially on Sunday. We went to Kansas City on a bus to see the art museum. There was a show there from Washington, D.C. I was thinking of you constantly while I was there. I kept thinking I bet she would like this or that. There was a picture called
The Girl in the Red Hat
. I kept thinking this means more than just that. It was about something you could never forget once you saw the expression on the girl's face. She is waiting for something, I told myself. Something is going to happen.

We are going to study the pictures in class next week and talk about them. We didn't get home until twelve last night and Aunt Mary Lily had to come down to the school to get me. I didn't get to sleep until two. I guess going to the city Friday and Saturday makes Sunday especially bad for me.

Have you talked to Dad lately? I have written to him twice but he only wrote me back once. I guess he's pretty busy this time of year with his business and everything. I guess Christmas is about to come to New York City, isn't it? Don't take that for a hint to mean I want a present. You have already given me the greatest present of my life by writing to me. Your loving (not so bored now) niece.

Olivia

Dear Father,

Of course I understand why you can't come now. I bet it's really hard running a business in this day and age. Don't worry about me. I am doing fine as you can see from my grade report. I guess you could say I am a book worm. Well, I guess that runs in the Hand family. Anyway, I love having you write to me and I'll be here when you get time to come and see me.

Your loving daughter,
Olivia

P.S. Here is my new school picture. It's pretty silly. I always end up clowning around when they take them. Could you send me one of you if you have one and if you have time?

Those were the letters that were mailed. There were other letters that were not mailed, letters Olivia knew better than to mail but could not throw away. She kept them in the bottom of her cedar chest, underneath the hand-loomed blankets that had come down to her from her mother.

Dear Father,

My friend, Bobby Tree, and his father took me deer hunting yesterday. I wonder if you hunt deer there. I had a rifle of my own to take with me. A Winchester that belonged to my uncle when he was my age. He was my uncle that was killed on a motorcycle. I am a good shot and can hit five bottles in a row when my grandfather sets them up on a post for me.

I got the first deer. I guess you can't imagine me killing a deer, especially without a license. We don't pay much attention to licenses here. It's our land, all the land we have left after you kept North Carolina. I guess you know the whole state of North Carolina belonged to the Cherokee nation until they were sent out on the Trail of Tears. Half of them died on that. The ones that lived are here. Well, back to the hunt, I was in a blind with Bobby. It was a bad blind because his father had taken the best one. They really wanted the deer. They wanted it to eat. You don't know anything about that if you are rich and live in a city. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with that. Look, I was drinking beer with them last night and I'm in a pretty strange mood for me today.

The deer I shot was an old buck with beautiful antlers. They are going to clean the antlers for me and Grandfather will mount them for my room. I am putting off what happened when we cut into the deer. It felt like it wasn't dead yet, the stomach and blood got all over our hands and the entrails, the intestines, spilled out. I didn't care. It was no different than killing a bird or anything you need to eat. It is a kinder death than getting old as the hills like my grandfather and barely able to hear and no one pays any attention to you anymore. Father, I would like to be there with you when you get old and help you if you need it but if you keep treating me like this then you will be alone when you are old and I won't know you.

The deer lay on the colored leaves, green and red and orange and yellow, all wet on the forest floor, and silver clouds moved across the sky and the sun could not be seen. It was very still and no birds sang. They had flown from death. The deer I killed lay on the forest floor and we cut it open and mutilated it. I was Cherokee then and no kin to you and I thought of you and hated you. I hated Aunt Anna too for writing to me and getting my hopes up but never coming to see me. She said one time she would send me a ticket to New York City to visit her but she broke her promise. She said she was sick. She said she would make up for it by coming here but she hasn't done it.