I Cannot Get You Close Enough (38 page)

“Yes, they goddamn would. Her clothes bill is about five grand a year. You ought to see her charge accounts. I can just see her agreeing to be a welfare mother. She thinks babies come with maids.”

“If I didn't help them, you would. Or Mother would or Daddy or Sheila's folks. There's no point in trying to starve them out. They have too many people they can go to.”

“It will go bad,” he said. “Ray said to stop it. Ray's a genius. A fucking genius. He's the goddamnedest smartest man I ever knew and he said to come up here and stop it.”

“No, he's not. He's just sharp. He's made hundreds of thousands of dollars aborting babies and then he pretends it's some sort of crusade. You are totally in his power, Daniel. Everyone knows you believe anything he says because you think he's smart and you're dumb. He's been doing numbers on you since the second grade. He could do numbers on you then. He made you take the blame for that fire we built.”

“You can say anything you like about him, Crystal, but he's still a genius. And he said to get Jessie to him pronto and I'm not giving up. You have the goddamn wedding if you want to but it doesn't mean I'm going to give up trying to stop this goddamn baby.”

“You hate families,” I told him. “I don't think anyone in your whole family knows how to love anyone. Anna hated all of you and Helen won't even see her own kids and now you want your daughter to kill your grandchild.”

He gave up then. He shook his head and gave me that ice-cold blue-eyed stare and wandered off. I guess he went off to get drunk. That's usually how Daniel solves his problems.

Anyway, I had stood my ground. I've lost so much the last few years. Lydia's and Manny's love and now Daniel's too. But I don't give a damn. I want that baby. I've been so unhappy, so cheated, and, suddenly, the thought of this child is like the sky has opened up and flooded me with joy. I will give it anything it wants, anything it needs. I couldn't do it for King or even Crystal Anne because by the time she was born I hated Manny and because I almost died and I guess that made me feel funny about her. But this time it will be different. This baby will be blessed. It will belong to me. Oh, thank you, God, if there is a God, I thank you for this one more chance.

DANIEL That afternoon I tried again with Jessie. I took her off in the car and we sat in the car by the ocean and I said, Honey, look at me. I know King's daddy. His daddy is the worst womanizer in the United States. His daddy would run around on the Queen of England.

“He didn't run around on Crystal. She left him because he drank too much.”

“About the time you're getting big he's going to start looking around at other women. He won't be there when you need him. He's a little half-baked kid. I can't believe you'd do this to me, Jessie. I can't believe you'd break my heart.”

“It's not your heart. It's my heart and it won't be that way. Just because his dad's that way. Just because that's the way you act. Daddy, you're the one who runs around on everyone, not King. You're the one.”

“Oh, baby, you're right.” Then I start crying like a goddamn baby. Just sobbing on the wheel. I feel like I've been crying for days and she just sits there cold as ice. Sheila all over and after a few minutes of that I don't care if she does ruin her life. I looked at her and she looked so much like her goddamn mother I almost didn't like her anymore.

“Well, I guess it's good I have a spare,” I said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“I mean I'll just educate Olivia and have her to be proud of while you're off somewhere with your dope addict.”

“I don't believe you said that to me. That's so manipulative. That's pitiful, Daddy.”

“So go on and have your wedding and your little half-ass teenage husband and your baby. It's okay, Jess, if there's nothing I can do, there's nothing I can do.”

But later, when we got home from the drive, I told her one more thing. “Ray's waiting,” I said. “He'll be waiting for three more months. If you change your mind, let me know.”

“I won't change it.”

“He's in the phone book. Ray Farnsworth. 888-8997. You call him any time, day or night. Or call me.”

Then I got out of the car and gave up. I walked on into the house and fixed a drink and went out to sit in the yard under the trees. After a while Olivia came out with her black buddy and they sat around and talked about school and acted like nothing was going on. Then Traceleen called us in to dinner. She'd fixed some barbecue and we ate that and later I went into town and got drunk. I came home about three and climbed in bed and still thought about it. Well, the other one seems to be doing okay. She's surprised me, that's for sure. I figured she was the one that would be handing out pussy. Her mother was a piece for the books. I feel so bad about all that. Every time I look at the little girl I feel bad about it. I can hardly remember that summer out in San Francisco but I remember the fucking. Those blankets Summer had and that great dope. Olivia de Havilland, what a goddamn crazy name. Well, I didn't know about it and I wasn't there.

She stood up for me up there in that room. She's got some iron in her. These girls, these goddamn girls. No wonder my business is going to pot. I used to be able to run the place. Now it's Jessie this and Olivia that. What are they thinking? Who are they fucking? Jesus Christ, what do women want?

15

LYDIA “Helen's coming to the wedding,” I told Noel. “Make up your mind what you want to do about that.”

“I don't want to do anything. Just bring the letters when you come.”

“Well, she'll know they're here. They made all kinds of copies. I know damn well we don't have them all.”

“Oh, my. Well, what shall we do?”

“Let me send everything to you and tell Helen you'll write to her. Or sue her if she uses them. Tell her that.”

“No, I want you to deliver them to me.” (I could see her lying back against the pillows, in one of her incontestable fantasies. I was to deliver the papers to her room, that was that.)

“How did the young girls get involved?” she said. “Tell me again.”

“The half-Indian one started a cult and the half-African one lost interest. Crystal Anne told her daddy. Crystal had a fit. Then we collected all the stuff we could and took away the Ouija board.”

“The Ouija board?”

“They were trying to talk to her.”

“Well, try to keep it from Helen.”

“Helen's fucking this Irishman, Noel. Her sole interest in the papers is keeping him on the string.”

“Well, she can't have my letters. Hide them good and bring them to me.”

“I don't want to hide them anymore, Noel. I read them, by the way. I don't think you have anything to worry about.”

“What do you mean?”

“There's nothing damning in them. They aren't even that interesting. I doubt anyone would need them in a book.”

“You don't know what they mean. You don't understand. We had to write in shorthand. Because of Francis and because Charles was here with me.”

“Noel.”

“Yes.” Her voice was growing quiet. I had harmed her. I had taken away her letters.

“I'll bring them,” I said. “I'll hide them and I'll bring them to you.”

“Thank you, my darling. Thank you very much.”

So I capitulated. So what? If you take money you pay back thrall. Thrall is always waiting. Like those ice angels Andria wrote that song about. So I got the goddamn letters and locked them in my suitcase and got ready to help out with the wedding. The goddamn teenage bonding pageant. It was going to be a pageant. They only had three days but this vain bunch wasn't going to waste a minute getting everybody dressed.

I knew I would never sleep that night so I didn't even try. Who was it who said three o'clock in the morning is the real dark night of the soul? Around two I gave up on the novel I was reading and went downstairs and got a piece of cold chicken and went out to sit on the front steps. The moon was above the water, perfect and full and round. The giant pine trees on the lawn leaned their shadows toward me. I sat there in that fragrance, nibbling on the chicken and thinking about my womb, my abortions and my womb. My encounters with possible motherhood. If I had had those babies would the world be different? I would never have painted again, real creation does not put up with or wait on art, anyone who ever tried to write or paint around children knows that. It makes me sick to see the slop they write in women's magazines about having it all. You can have one or the other and that's that. Jessie Hand, as beautiful as a young girl could ever be, with an ear for music so divine and Godgiven. She hadn't played the piano five times all summer. A few times on the little organ in the mornings, sometimes the guitar. She was after bigger fish, babies and real drama and terrible flawed human love. The world would have to amuse itself. Having had no mother, she would now be one. Maybe it made sense and I was wrong to rail at Crystal.

I shook my head, picked the last piece of chicken off the bone, wrapped the scraps in a napkin, and laid my head down upon my knees. What good was it doing, all the knowledge McVey had given me, all the knowledge I had gained.

“Lydia.” It was Daniel.

“How long have you been here?”

“For a while. I didn't want to disturb you. You seemed so deep in thought.”

“I was thinking of Jessie. I'm as disturbed over this as you are, Daniel.”

“You couldn't be. I don't know, Lydia. I just lie there in bed and wish she'd lose it.”

“Well, nothing physical will happen to her. No one dies in childbirth anymore. You won't lose her.”

“I've already lost. Jesus. King Mallison, Junior. I've been out whoring with his dad.”

“It might turn out all right.”

“It isn't what I planned for her, Lydia, and to have her so far away. I'll be there alone with Olivia. I guess I ought to thank my stars I have a spare. I have Anna to thank for that.”

“Daniel, do you mind if I ask you something?”

“No, go ahead.”

“Why don't you ever want to fuck me? I'm really curious. I can't believe you don't want to fuck me. Don't you want to?”

“Not with my girls here.” He sat down beside me, very close. Our legs were touching. “You're an exciting woman, Lydia. It isn't that. My God, it's all so complicated, isn't it?”

“No. It would be simple if we'd let it be. I think every man wants to fuck every attractive woman he meets and women want to fuck most of the men. I have gotten insanely jealous of a man while looking over his shoulder at his best friend. Our tribal customs do not fit our needs, not at the level where you and I operate. King will never be faithful to Jessie. You know that, don't you? There has never been a man in that family who was faithful to his wife.”

“Don't tell me that.”

“You ought to tell Jessie.”

“I told her. I told her everything a man can say. I can't force her to have an abortion. I can't even find her goddamn mother. She was supposed to be in some place in Provence, but they went off on a motor trip.”

“What do you want with Sheila?”

“To get her to talk to her. It's not too late. Even after they get married it might not be too late. How long can they do it?”

“I had one at nine weeks. That was pretty bad. I regret that one. That's the one I hate.”

“The one what?”

“The one of four abortions. Five if you count a canoe trip down rapids. Okay, five for sure. And here you see me, aren't I the very model of happiness? Do you want her to end up like me?”

“I don't want her to end up like any of us, like anyone I know.” He stretched his arms out over his knees and knotted his hands into fists and began to cry. I comforted him the best I could but he only wanted a very small part of what I had to offer. What are we supposed to do, all of us Homo sapiens. Homo dopes. I didn't have to tell him about those nasty homunculi and their demise. I didn't have to paint myself as the murderer of fetuses. So why did I do it? You know why. Because he was near to me and vulnerable and if I let him get too close I might really fall in love. I don't do that anymore. I don't care how good it feels at first. The aftermath is death and more than death, a hole I don't want to have to crawl out of again.

So the summer moved toward its end. Anna once wrote, “Why must we consume each other? Wouldn't it be enough to know that we were loved? Or do we only love to prove our loneliness and must each time drive away what we desire?”

“No,” another character, a physician, answered, “for we come from the womb and only one touch will heal us. We are born jealous and terrified, hungry and greedy. How many mothers can meet such needs? One in ten thousand, perhaps, and her progeny lead happy lives. The rest of us plod along the best we can and pass the sadness on.”

“And fury?”

“Yes. Sadness's child.”

Helen arrived the next day. She brought the decorations for the wedding cake and a gold bracelet Crystal ordered from Shreve's to give Jessie and a number of other things. The bracelet must have cost two thousand dollars, the first of many bribes. I don't understand how Crystal can be so crazy and so dangerous. She has lived her life in this terrible family dynamic and now will initiate Jessie into it, like a vampire bat. I came to see it as inevitable, finally, but when Helen showed up with that bracelet it drove me nuts. I'll have to see McVey four times a week when I get back to get over this.

Mike Carmichael didn't come with Helen. He was coming on a later plane. So I had a chance to get her off alone. As soon as she got settled, I asked her to go with me to walk upon the beach. I didn't mince words. I was too irritated to be polite. I dove right in.

“Helen, some of Anna's papers were here in a trunk. Letters to Noel. I have sealed them up in a box to take to New Orleans when I go back. Noel said if you won't bother her about it, she'll write to you and talk about them.”