I Cannot Get You Close Enough (37 page)

“Okay, King,” he said, turning to him. “I won't forgive this.”

“Oh, Daniel,” Crystal said. “Come inside. Let's talk this over.” Daniel began to climb the stairs, ignoring Crystal, ignoring Jessie, going straight for King. “You promised me on your honor and now you've ruined my daughter's life,” he said. He kept on coming and I'll say this for King, he didn't move. He stood his ground. I guess we all knew Daniel wouldn't really hit him. We hoped he wouldn't anyway. I don't know. Maybe I wanted him to hit him. I'm sick of all the bullshit that goes on in families. Sick of it all. It would have been a relief to see a fight.

“You aren't having a baby at your age.” Daniel had turned to Jessie, who wasn't budging either, who was barely scared.

“We told her not to,” Olivia chimed in. “We told her to abort it.”

“Shut up, Olivia,” he said. “You stay out of this.” At which point Olivia and Andria kind of faded back. Back toward the little screened-in part of the porch. Daniel was by the door, with King in hitting distance. Manny was moving himself between them. Crystal was on the stairs. I had gone into the hall.

“Please come inside,” Crystal said. “We can sort this out.”

“You can't sort out a goddamn thing,” Daniel said. “I'm taking my little girl to the doctor. Go get your things, Jessie. You too, Olivia.”

“I won't do it, Daddy,” Jessie said. “I'm in love with him.”

“You will do it. You won't ruin your life over this goddamn little bastard.”

“I'll make this up to you,” King said. “I'll do whatever you want me to.”

“I want you to get out of my way.” Then Daniel grabbed Jessie by the arm and pulled her into the house and called for Olivia to follow. She hesitated, then whisked past Crystal and Manny, then passed me in the hall and followed her father and her sister up the stairs. WHO ARE WE, ALL OF US, US PEOPLE, US FAMILIES, US UTTERLY NUTS AND CRAZY PIECES OF PROTOPLASM? If you stop for one second and really think about what's going on. A bunch of people inventing themselves every second, making choices no animal or plant has ever made, deciding whether or not to reproduce, flying around in airplanes, being influenced by the dead. I give up. I was being influenced by Daniel being so good-looking and Manny was grabbing a chance to be Crystal's hero and Crystal was stealing Daniel's daughter to save her son and Andria was taking it all in. God help us if she ever does become a writer.

14

OLIVIA No one will ever know what went on in that goddamn flowered-wallpaper room with those trees outside the windows. I know and Jessie and Dad know and the wallpaper and bed and the iron bedstead painted white and all those chiffoniers or whatever you call those chests and things that are all over this house. “You know I love you, Jess,” Dad was saying. “I'm here to help you. I've helped lots of young girls in this kind of trouble. This is nothing new to me.” Jessie turned the tape player on right in the middle of him talking. It was this old tape of the Pointer Sisters singing
“I want a man with a slow hand
.” I thought Dad might hear the lyrics and go crazy but he was already crazy so what difference does it make? All summer Jessie's been acting like she was this sweet Southern girl that never gets in any trouble and is just this piece of ass for King or something like that. She has changed so much since I first met her. She used to be mean as shit. She hated me so much and she was so mean to me. Then after I went there to live she started being nice to me but she sure wasn't this little sweet girl saying Oh, King, and all that. I sort of liked it when she turned the tape on because I thought she might be turning back into herself. Dad was so mad. I never saw anybody get that mad. His face was red all the way up into his blond hair. He has this real light skin with freckles on it. He looks like that when he plays tennis a long time, only this time he is standing by the bed hanging on to this fragile sort of twisted iron bedpost painted white and Jessie is sitting on the bed by the bedside table which is where the tape player was and I am standing over to the side by this chifforobe with a mirror on it. I can see them and I can see their reflections in the mirror too and he is going, like, No daughter of mine is going to ruin her life over a goddamn little dope addict that is about as ready to get married as a dog and I used to know his daddy and his daddy hasn't ever grown up and the chances of him growing up are about zero. Then Dad is crying. He is so tall and good-looking and it broke my heart. He is just sobbing and wiping his eyes and nose on this white handkerchief and I'm about to cry but Jessie just sits there listening to the tape and saying, Well, Dad, it isn't any of your business. You don't love me anyway, all you love is your girlfriends and I have to stay home by myself all the time. Then he goes, You have Olivia and you have Francine (the maid) and Grandmother and Granddaddy. Goddammit, honey, I've worked my ass off all my life to make a good life for you. Please don't have this baby. Ray (that's his friend who is a doctor and an abortionist) is standing by, all we have to do is fly down there and it will be over by noon tomorrow and you can see King all you want, you just can't be fool enough to have a baby at your age.

“I want it,” she says. “I want to have it.”

Then he's crying some more and wiping his eyes and blowing his nose. By then I'm crying too. Only I'm crying because he loves her so much. If he loved me that much I'd never get married. I'd stay there and take care of him. I wouldn't even go to college. He hasn't even asked me yet if I heard from Harvard. Which I did. But don't go into that. Who needs those goddamn snobs. This guy Andria met goes there and she says he hasn't got it. She says he doesn't even turn her on.

So Dad says, Don't make up your mind right now. You can think it over and she says, It's over, nothing can change my mind. We are going to get married. Crystal said we could.

So she sort of sinks back into the pillows and reaches over and rewinds the tape but she has turned it down some more. I can barely hear it now. There is half a Hershey bar on the chifforobe and I eat that. I'm thinking, This is just like you read about when someone makes you cry, you grab some candy or something.

“Oh, honey, please listen to me,” he says.

“Dad, you can't keep talking to me. I'm sorry I did it after I promised not to but people are human and they can't help it and you go out with everybody and sleep at their apartments, just because you come home at night we know you sleep with them, don't we, Olivia?”

“I don't care,” I go. Then Dad sits on the bed with her and tells her this stuff his friend Ray said about how hard it will be on her body and she will lose her gorgeous figure and all this bullshit but she won't budge. I finish off the candy bar.

Then he gives up on her and goes on downstairs to talk to King some more. All this time he hasn't even asked me about college or barely said hello to me. Well, I'm not the bastard at the family reunion. I am the child of his first marriage and the child of his wife and I am myself and that's something and I can do whatever I want in the world like Aunt Anna told me I could. If only she was here. I think I might have to go home for a while and get back into that. Ride my own horse and see Bobby and see Grandmother and Granddaddy and Aunt Mary Lily. I'm about sick of being up here in Maine.

“You have to help me, Olivia,” Jessie says after Dad leaves the room. She has turned the music up now.
“I want a lover with a slow hand. I want a lover with an easy touch.”
It gets me thinking about Bobby and what we used to do in the house on the river, especially when it would rain.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask. “I'm not going to say it's a good idea. It sucks to have a baby. I think you're nuts.”

Then she starts crying and I don't even care. I just leave the room and go on downstairs to watch Dad talk to King. I'm thinking I wouldn't mind if he beat him up. That's the kind of mood I'm in.

DANIEL Olivia followed us up there and I was glad she came. At least she's tough enough to live. I don't know if Jessie's tough enough anymore. I used to think she was. I used to think she was tough as shit, tough as Sheila, tough as me, but now I don't know. Ever since she started in with boys, it's been one goddamn thing after the other. She quit playing music, that broke my heart, then she met this goddamn little son-of-a-bitch, then all of this. I got up there as fast as I could. I got into a squall line over Virginia so I went out over the coast and flew at eighteen thousand feet all the way to the Jersey coast. I didn't give a damn if I bought it or not. How much can a man do? I haven't been this mad since some of the stuff Sheila used to pull when we were married.

So I took Jessie upstairs and sat her down on the bed and I said, Goddamn, honey, I'm not letting you ruin your life.

It's my life, she says. It's my own life. I said, Honey, Ray is waiting for us in his office. He's right there. We'll fly to Boston in my plane and go right on down on a commercial jet or we'll fly all the way. How're you feeling?

“I feel fine.” She sits on the bed looking me right in the eye just as mean as a snake. She's got her mother in her. Also, she reminds me of Anna when she looks like that, and Helen too. I never could figure out what to do with those goddamn women. I should have cold-cocked one of them years ago. This is what happens when you let a bunch of women run the world.

“You aren't having any baby when you're eighteen years old, that's that.”

“Yes, I am. That's that.” She turned the radio on.

“Turn off that goddamn radio. I'll kill the little son-of-a-bitch is what I'll do. I can't believe this happened to you, honey. Please listen to me just a minute.”

“It won't do any good. I want to have his baby. I love him. He's good, Dad. He's as good as he can be and he's going to take care of me. Crystal said they'd support us until we get out of school.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ, honey. Stop a minute.” Now she won't even listen to me and the other one is fiddling with things on the dresser.

Then I offered her everything in the world and she still wouldn't budge so I told them to stay right there in that room and I went downstairs and collected Manny and Crystal and King and took them down on the lawn to talk. That came to nothing, so I told Manny and Crystal to leave and I sat King down and tried to reason with him. “I ought to kill you,” I said, “but I'd rather try to reason with you.”

“I'll take care of her until I die,” he answered. “I'll always take care of her and love her. You can depend on me.”

“To do what? Goddammit, you don't even have an education or a job. You won't be able to support a wife for years, if you stay sober, which you goddamn well better do.”

“I love her. I love her more than life. I'll take care of her until I die. I'd die for her. I swear I will, Daniel. I swear to God.”

“Like you weren't going to fuck her, right? Like that oath you swore.”

“You can hit me if you need to. Hit me. I don't care.”

“I wouldn't waste my time,” I said. “I've got better things to do. I'm going and talk to your mother.”

So I took Crystal off and I said, Crystal, we've been friends for many years. You cannot do this to me. She's the light of my life. I have lived my life for that little girl. You have to get on my side in this, and she said, No, I want the baby, the baby will be perfect. Okay, I said, then I'll kill your smartass son. She said, You should have known better than to bring her up here. You can't stop them from fucking. They'll never want for anything. We'll take care of them. We'll give them anything they want.

I don't want a baby growing inside my little girl, I said. I don't want a goddamn baby. I want my little girl to finish growing up. I want her to have a decent life.

CRYSTAL He got me off alone finally. It's the price I have to pay for helping Jessie and King. All those years that he loved me and now it's over. I always thought, At least I have Daniel. Daniel's always there. Daniel will save me if I need him to.

“Crystal,” he said, “I have never thought you were as dumb as everyone thinks you are. I never even believed you were crazy.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I never thought you were dumb either. And I certainly never thought you were mean.”

“Am I being mean?”

“Yes. They love each other. They were made for each other. They are what we might have been. They'll be all right, Daniel. King isn't his daddy. He's a good boy. He was okay until he got into drugs. He was okay until I married Manny. He loves her. He will go on loving her. If you make them kill this baby, it will kill it all and then they'll be as lost as we are. No possum, no sop, no taters. Goddammit, you don't have a happy-enough life to give advice.”

“Neither do you.” He moved closer to me. He took my arm and pulled me so close to him and said, “You're killing my daughter, Crystal. You can't have her. You can't take her away from me. I won't let a goddamn baby grow inside my little girl.” Then he started crying. I think he's nuts, I think he's gone completely nuts.

I said, “Daniel, let's go back inside the house. Let's call a gynecologist besides Ray and you ask him if it's going to hurt Jessie to have a baby. Nothing happens to healthy pregnant women who have good care. She'll have everything she needs, everything she wants. Oh, Daniel, please calm down.”

“I already talked to Ray,” he says. “Ray says it sucks. He said it could warp her life, change her life. He's waiting to abort it and I'm going to talk her into it.”

“It isn't you or me or Ray. It's them, your daughter and my son. It's their life.”

“Without Manny's money it's not them. If you weren't offering to support them they'd change their minds.”

“No, they wouldn't.”