I Cannot Get You Close Enough (16 page)

She wriggled deeper down into the covers, thinking of sitting across his lap on the chair, doing it. That was great, she decided, that was the greatest of all. Well, I'm getting up. Goddamn, I'm starving.

She got out of bed, pulled on a flannel bathrobe and a pair of socks, and padded into the kitchen to find something to eat. She stuck two pieces of bread into the toaster and began to cut an orange. The phone was ringing. That's him, she decided. He probably woke up horny too.”

It was a woman's voice on the phone, a voice Olivia had never heard. “Olivia,” the voice said. “Is that you?”

“It's me. Who's this?”

“I'm your Aunt Anna. The one you've been writing to. I want to come and see you tomorrow. I can't wait another day. Will that be all right? Could someone meet me in Tulsa? Is Tulsa near there?”

“Oh, yes,” Olivia said. “We'll come. I can't believe it's you.”

“I should have come months ago. I made a reservation on a plane for tomorrow. Is your grandmother there? Is there someone I should talk to? Oh, my darling child, I'm dying to meet you.”

“Oh, God. Wait a minute. I don't believe this. You're coming here?”

“As fast as I can get there if you'll let me. There isn't anything to worry about. We'll love each other. I don't care who you are, what you look like. I am coming there so we can know each other. If you'll let me.”

“Of course I will. We can come to Tulsa. We go up there all the time. We can come whenever you want us to.”

“Tomorrow afternoon. Look, is there someone else I need to talk to? Is your aunt there? I guess I ought to ask her, don't you think so?” The voice was so sweet, so kind, so gentle. There was nothing to fear from it and Olivia wasn't fearful. The voice was right. There was nothing to fear.

Then Mary Lily got on the phone and took down the details and later that day Olivia drove into town and bought a dress to wear to meet the plane, a thin white cotton dress with lavender and green flowers.

“It costs too much,” Mary Lily said. “You don't need that dress to meet her.”

“Yes I do. And I want you to get dressed up too. We have to make a good impression.”

“I don't have anything to wear but my own clothes.”

“You've got that gray suit you had for when the archbishop came.”

“I don't know if it still fits me.”

“Please wear it. Please do this for me.” Olivia moved in close. Put her hands on her aunt's face. That had never failed to get her her way and it did not fail now. Mary Lily found her gray suit and Olivia shook it out and inspected it and the next morning, after neither of them had had a bit of sleep, they got dressed and drove to Tulsa and waited for the plane.

Then Olivia's father's sister Anna got off the plane and took Olivia in her arms and hugged Mary Lily and began to talk very fast, being so charming, so vastly, endlessly charming, that even Mary Lily began to soften up and unbend. Every time Mary Lily would stiffen up and get scared, Olivia's Aunt Anna would pour on the charm. The charm she exuded was real. She was terribly glad to be there. She was charmed and excited and thrilled to be in Tulsa, Oklahoma, claiming her niece.

“I want to know everything,” she said. “I want to know everything I've missed.”

“There's not much to know,” Olivia said. “I wrote you all about myself.”

“I should have come months ago. I should have come the day I got a letter.”

Then the three of them got into Mary Lily's old Pontiac and started driving back to Tahlequah. They were sitting together in the front seat. Every now and then Anna's hand would reach for Olivia's hand and touch it. She's here, Olivia thought. My famous aunt. But she's old, a lot older than I thought she would be. She's as old as Kayo. I wonder how old she is. I better not ask.

“I can't believe I'm here,” Anna said. “I can't believe it took me so long to come.”

“Is my dad coming? Is he coming too?”

“I don't know, honey. If he doesn't I'll take you there. Will you go with me to Charlotte?” Mary Lily speeded up at that, began to drive the Pontiac at breakneck speed down the two-lane highway leading from Tulsa to the Indian nation.

The next day Olivia stayed home from school and took Anna driving around the country. She took her to downtown Tahlequah to see the Indian museum and out to the replica of the Indian village and to the Methodist camp on the river and drove her around the outskirts of Baron Ford Ranch. “They're going to have a polo team,” she said. “This friend of mine is going to be on it. I guess he'll be the star.”

“Is he your boyfriend?”

“No. I don't want any boyfriends. I just want to go to college and get out of here. Do you think my dad is coming down and meet me? Or not?”

“He'll come. He's just afraid, Olivia. Men aren't as brave as women are. Haven't you noticed that?”

“The men I know are brave. The ones I know aren't afraid to see their own kids.”

“He'll come,” Anna said. “And when he does I hope he'll beg you to forgive him.”

“I don't want him to beg me for anything. I'm not mad at him. I'm just tired of waiting.” They were standing beside a creekbed near the ranch. Olivia bent over and picked up a flat smooth rock. She held it out in the palm of her hand. Anna watched her in a kind of wonder. Everything she did seemed charged with meaning, purpose, intent. She was a strange girl, half child, half woman, half mystery, half light. Water and light, Anna knew. Starcarbon, that's all we are. Olivia broke the spell. She sailed the rock out across the creekbed and scared a crow up from its perch on a tree.

The waiting wasn't over either. It was February before Daniel invited Olivia to visit North Carolina. It was an awkward, unsettling meeting and Olivia was relieved when it was over. Then, as soon as she was home, she began to dream of going to North Carolina to live. She wrote to Anna of her plans and called her several times to talk for hours in hushed hopeful terms. Anna was her support in her dealings with the Hands. Then, in November, without saying goodbye to anyone, in secret and with great haste, Anna took her own life. Knowing it would harm other people and Olivia among them, she died as she had lived, alone and in her own way, without giving a damn who liked it or what happened next.

When she learned of Anna's death, Olivia got on a plane and flew to Charlotte and stayed several weeks. In their grief the Hands grabbed hold of her and thought they loved her. Whether they needed her or not, now they would not let her go. When she returned to Tahlequah it had been decided she would come to Charlotte and go to school with Jessie.

It was a terrible decision, a stupid destructive thing to do. To take her away from a place which had nurtured and protected her and transplant her to a world that would never really accept her and which she would never understand or be able to love.

Still, there was no stopping her once the Hands told her she could come. She was tired of Tahlequah. She wanted some excitement and she wanted to be rich.

There was one problem. Now a transcript of her grades would be sent to Charlotte.

9

“I have to fix those grades,” Olivia told Bobby, as soon as it was settled that she was going to Charlotte to live. “I have to do it before they send my records. Will you help me?”

“What do we have to do?”

“We have to change the computer.”

“Goddamn, Olivia. We could go to jail for that.”

“For changing some grades on a high-school computer? There's nothing to it. Anyone could break into Tahlequah High. They don't even have a guard at night.”

“Why don't you just tell them the truth?”

“Are you kidding? Well, if you won't help I'll do it myself.”

“I didn't say I wouldn't help. Why can't you do it when your aunt goes in to work? You told me once you were going to do that.”

“She won't let me. She doesn't want me to leave here.”

“Neither do I. That's another thing. Why should I help you leave me?”

“Well, will you? Will you or not?”

“Okay, I will.”

 

The following night they went over to the high school and jimmied a window and climbed in and Bobby held the flashlight while Olivia keyed into the computer and changed her grades. At first she made all the grades into A's, then she thought better of it and changed a few math grades to B's. When she had figured out a transcript that satisfied most of the lies she had told the Hands, she turned off the computer and she and Bobby locked the window behind them and went out through the gym door.

“Piece of cake,” she said, when they were back in the car. “I won't forget you did this, Bobby. When you want a favor you can come to me.”

“Next time ask me something hard,” he said. “Like what I'm supposed to do with this thing in my trousers.”

“I know what to do with that,” she said. “But you better have a rubber.”

Then it was time for her to leave. On a Saturday in the early morning Bobby came to tell her goodbye. It was so early mist was still on the ground. Silver half-frozen water closed in around the house, covered the swing beneath the oak, muffled every sound. Olivia stood in the doorway looking out on the mist and waiting. When Bobby drove up she ran down the stairs and got into the car and gave him a crazy jerky kiss.

“How you doing?” he asked.

“I'm okay. Let's get out of here.”

“Where you want to go?”

“I don't care. Go to the lake. I wouldn't mind going to the lake.”

They drove across the Arkansas line to Lake Wedington and sat in the car and watched the mist settle onto the water and kept on watching until it lifted.

“Well, I guess this is it,” Bobby said.

“Yeah. I guess so. I'll be coming back to see everyone.” She sat with her hands on her legs, desiring him, but fighting it. I guess I'd get knocked up, she decided. That would be about my luck. I'd be knocked up in North Carolina where I don't know how to get an abortion.

A wind was blowing the leaves of the oaks, the scarce yellow leaves of the walnuts. A few leaves had blown onto the surface of the lake and floated there.

“You won't come back,” he said.

“Yes, I will.” The wind was picking up, blowing the fog and the leaves across the water.

“I'll write to you.”

“Good. I want you to.” He reached for her but she wouldn't let him kiss her. It was over. She was leaving now. Leaving the woods and the lake and Bobby and the smell of saddles and Camel cigarettes. It will be real clean where I am going, she thought. The cars will be clean and smell like Aunt Anna and her perfume. I'm going to get me some of that perfume. I guess you have to go to New York City to get it.

“We're going to Switzerland in the summer,” she said, unfolding her hands, spreading them out on her knees. “They all go there all the time. To Europe and Paris and Switzerland.”

“Ray Faubus went with his band,” Bobby said. “He said the food was terrible. He said he couldn't get anything to eat he liked.” He paused. “Well, I guess you'll be in better places than Ray was.” He pulled out a pack of cigarettes, rolled down the window, lit one. The wind was really blowing now, bending the branches. Bobby started the motor and drove back to town.

10

The first month she was in Charlotte Olivia was too busy to think about Tahlequah. Her mind raced through the days, cataloging people, trying to find out who to be. At the private school where she was enrolled she pretended to be a brainy eccentric who couldn't settle down. At home she pretended to be a loving sister to Jessie, an awestruck grandchild to her grandparents, an interested listener to her aunts and uncles and cousins and their friends. For a couple of weeks it was a pretty convincing performance and almost convinced Olivia herself. Then the blackbirds in her head started singing. Bullshit, bullshit, they came singing. What is all this bullshit? What are these people talking about? Who do they think they are? I can't stand these boring bullshit dinners. I wish they would stop asking me how I feel. I wish Dad would let us go somewhere at night. I wish they had a polo team.

Bobby had written her that Mr. Shibuta, the owner, had come back to Baron Ford to live and was building a new barn for his polo ponies. He had hired the whole Tahlequah football team to come out to the place and learn to play polo against him so he could practice. A rival team was starting over in Arkansas and everyone in Tahlequah was looking forward to the summer when the teams could play against each other. “I guess I'll be the star,” Bobby wrote. “It's easy as shit if you know how to barrel race. All you got to do is swing a club at a ball and not fall off. What a deal. He's giving me a raise just to fool around with him while he practices. We might go down to New Orleans this summer and play some teams down there. Well, I miss you, baby. I sure could use some loving.”

By the time a month had gone by Olivia had taken to spending as much time as she could in the country, at the Hands' country place. At least out in the country she could think. At least out there no one was around to ask her how she was feeling all the time. At least out there she didn't have to think about how lost she was in all her science classes and in math.

Olivia stood by a tall black fence, watching her father's horses. There were mares with colts in a pasture. In another were yearlings and a two-year-old her father had said was her own. “He was born on Shakespeare's birthday,” Daniel said. “You should like that since you are our scholar. Born down in the woods. You can have him. He's all yours.”

“Can I break him?” Olivia had asked.

“Sure, if you want to. No, on second thought, of course you can't break a horse. It's too dangerous. We'll get someone to do it.”

“I know how. There's nothing to it. It just takes time.”