Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Of course not. It feels good, to tell the truth. Besides, you get full of milk and you need to get it out.”

  “I guess he’s sessile, isn’t he?”

  “What?”

  “I mean, he’s like a tree. He has to stay attached. I mean, he looks like that’s where he ought to be.”

  “I like him so much. I can’t believe I like anything this much. I want to be such a good mother to him. I don’t want to be like my mother was.”

  “Are you going back to school?”

  “Not until he’s a lot bigger. They don’t want you to leave them, Olivia. They don’t want to be taken care of by maids.”

  “I did okay, and I never saw my mother.”

  “Well.”

  “I mean, I know I can’t stay in love with anyone and all that, but at least I know it. So you’re going to a shrink?”

  “I love to go. I love her. She’s a woman. She’s teaching me so much. She’s teaching me to be happy.”

  “I quit seeing that woman they sent me to in Chapel Hill. She had an agenda for me. Well, it was nice in a way, but in the end I got mad at her. I had this accident on my bike and she said maybe I wanted to get hurt so I wouldn’t have to think about things that bother me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Sorority crap and stuff. I don’t want to talk about it. Well, look, I’ve got to get packed. I want to leave by one or two at the latest. Is there any coffee made?”

  “Dad wants to drive you part of the way.”

  “Well, I don’t want him to. I’m nineteen, Jessie. I don’t need people driving me places.”

  “He’s always that way. He used to drive me to camp every summer, even after I was a counselor. He doesn’t like people on the road.” Jessie moved the baby from her nipple. His eyes were closed and milk was running out of his mouth. Olivia stared down into his sleeping face. It was too much. It was too terrifying and too fabulous and too real. A real live baby made of flesh and blood. First Jessie and King were sneaking off to spend nights on the beach and then K.T. was in the world. That’s all it took. Some guy you loved and a beach and you were on the couch with a baby stuck to your tit.

  Daniel appeared in the doorway, dressed for the day. He looked down at his daughters sitting side by side on the sofa holding his grandson and thought he should run out on the street and give some money to someone. Ought to hand out hundred-dollar bills or fix someone a drink.

  “Sit down, Daddy,” Jessie said. “Sit on the chair and I’ll let you hold him.”

  “I’ll just watch. Don’t go moving him around so much in the morning. I don’t think it’s good to get him all stirred up.”

  “I want to leave this afternoon and drive as far as Little Rock,” Olivia said. “There’s not a single reason for you to go with me. You can stay here and be with Jessie and I’ll call you every four hours from the road. I’ll call from Jackson and I’ll call from Little Rock. You don’t need to go with me, Dad. I can drive up there alone.”

  “Let her go,” Jessie added. “She’ll be okay. She knows what she’s doing. Besides, you need to get to know K.T. He’s your gene-bearer, after all.”

  “What?” Daniel said. “What are you talking about? What are you saying now?”

  At one that afternoon Olivia climbed into the Mercedes and started driving to Oklahoma. She passed over the Bonnet Carré spillway, across the marshes and the lake and headed straight up into the state of Mississippi. It was the second day of June. The world was at peace, for the most part. Four hours earlier, the United States and the U.S.S.R. had settled their differences on a treaty to limit conventional weapons. In Angola, a new government was being formed. In Albania, the people were on the streets demanding freedom.

  Olivia heard some of this on the radio but it did not seem to have any bearing on her life. When the disc jockey came back on and began to play a love song, she listened more closely. “Oh, blame it on midnight,” the song was playing. “Shame, shame on the moon.”

  Twelve hours and I’ll be home, she was thinking. I’ll go to the river and take off my clothes and swim like a fish. I’ll go out to Baron Fork and get a horse and go riding. The new colts will be running around everywhere by now. I’ll sleep in my old bed. I’ll eat Grandmother’s corncakes. I’ll get that goddamn Chapel Hill out of my soul. Bobby might come home. If he finds out I’m there, I bet he’ll come. I don’t care how many Montana cowgirls he’s been fucking. He can’t forget what we had. If it got any better than that, nobody would ever get out of bed.

  Chapter 16

  TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma. June 1, 1991. Wild geese flying in formation above the limestone cliffs. Small farms and small neat pastures and grazing cattle. Stockades with horses, winding creeks. Woods with maple, spruce, oak, locust, and scraggly pines. Limestone formations. Tiny huts built into the sides of hills by masons from Ireland.

  High wooded bluffs. Upon their ridges eagles nest in tall wind-sculpted trees. Everywhere the songs of birds: robins, orioles, sparrows, chickadees, crows, blue jays, bluebirds, larks. The long sad notes of the mourning doves.

  Brown houses with scraggly pines, gangly colts born in the spring, winding two-lane asphalt roads, stones, barbed-wire fences. June 1991. The Tahlequah Little Theater is playing The Crucible by Arthur Miller.

  On Muskogee Avenue the store windows are filled with manikins wearing fake Indian clothes. T-shirts printed with bastardized Indian designs. Jeans and braided belts and cheap leather boots. Sexy underwear in red and black and gold.

  Town Branch runs through the town. It rises in limestone and ends in pasture. Northeastern Oklahoma State University looks down upon the town. Its music department is talked of in the area.

  On Muskogee Avenue the town’s movers and shakers have gathered for their morning coffee at The Shak. They will pool information, gossip and surmise, wait for the day to deliver its surprises.

  A block down the street is the Cherokee Museum. Between two and four on any weekday you will find Eagle Kingfisher holding forth on Cherokee history. He is telling someone now about the Five Civilized Tribes.

  “Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Some of us have lived to tell the story. I have no resentment toward any man. Once we tamed the horse and dog. Once we knew the secrets of the sacred fire. Once we worshiped the light as it lies upon the water. Someone must tell the old stories. If you hear them, you must tell your children, you must seal them in your heart.”

  Doctor Georgia Jones, M.D., Ph.D., is driving to Tahlequah, approaching from the east. She is on her way to spend the summer teaching anthropology at Northeastern. There is a package of rice cakes on the seat beside her. She is drinking coffee from a plastic cup, eating the rice cakes, and composing a letter to her lover. He is the first man in years she has allowed herself to love. This is a very scary deal for a forty-six-year-old control freak.

  Dear Zach, To think that the possibility of such tenderness exists and we don’t use it all the time, throw it away, squander it.

  I’m sorry I ran off like this, but I had to. This is the reaction. The catharsis. Sure, you made love to me yesterday afternoon. Sure, when the heat was on, when you knew you had fucked up, you came through and made me come. About time. After all the blow jobs I’ve given you when you couldn’t get it up. Is it my fault they had the Gulf War? Did I discover nuclear fusion? The last straw was when you started faking orgasms while being fellated. So I’m getting away for the summer and hoping you will get your act together and come to your senses and have a life. So I can share it. I’ve done all I can do. The ball is in your court.

  After you left me yesterday afternoon, and that’s typical, that you would leave right after the best sex we’ve ever had, to GO BACK TO YOUR WORK. Which is what, Zach? Sitting all day in front of a computer screen talking to other people who think we’re doomed? Anyway, after you left, I slept a long time and when I woke up I decided not to go after all.

  Then I started thinking. At the rate we’ve been
going I figure I’m getting one orgasm for every six thousand dollars you borrow from me to give to your causes. That’s pretty high. Not as much as Donald Trump is paying for his pussy, but too high for a woman with a good-looking body. You’ve got to admit I have a gorgeous body.

  Well, I signed a contract with Northeastern and I need to get away so I’m going. I may go back to practicing medicine in the fall. Meanwhile I am going to stop worrying about you and take care of myself. I am going to rent a house, get it comfortably furnished, teach, meditate, give up coffee, and write you a lot of letters which I may or may not mail. Love, Georgia.

  I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals . . .”

  The world is a feast. A fabulous, rich treasure. Okay, eat a rice cake, look out the window, it’s summer and you’re autonomous and you’re free.

  Georgia stuck a tape of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony into the tape player. Autonomy, she decided. That’s a lot of bullshit. There’s no autonomy anywhere in nature. Nowhere in the physical universe, in animate or inanimate matter, not one case of autonomy exists. Everything is connected to everything else. God, I am so sick of being lonely and alone.

  She drove into town and went directly to a real estate office. Two hours later she was moving into a partially furnished house near the campus. By five that afternoon she was at the Wal-Mart buying supplies. Dearest Zach, she composed as she drove home from the store. There is still light in the sky. Your favorite time of day, your favorite time of year. Tahlequah is pretty sad and dead. There seems to be a little theater of sorts. Signs of culture include T-shirts in store windows with imitation Indian designs. Lots of sad-looking fat people.

  I’ll take Northern Europeans, thank you. I know, you hate that about me, but I don’t give a damn. I come from the culture that built Chartres Cathedral and gave us Milton and Shakespeare. I still think that’s better than eating dogs and making war on your neighbors every spring. Okay, we did that too, but at least it was to conquer territory.

  The human race has taken so many dead ends. Cannibalism, Victorianism, communism, the present-day refusal to take AIDS seriously. At any moment the virus can mutate to live in the presence of oxygen and then it’s over.

  Why do you think I quit practicing? I couldn’t protect an entire operating field and do my work correctly. I wasn’t thinking about risking my life for a bunch of dope addicts. Who needs it?

  Of course the end was the child torn up by the bull mastiff. The owner of the dog was in the waiting room with the parents. They’re friends.

  Excuse me, I’m not perfect. I miss you. The best thing for both of us is to quit seeing each other for a while. You’re going to have to choose between me and Armageddon. The good thing about me is that I’m here, now. Armageddon might not happen for five, ten, maybe fifteen years. Love, Georgia.

  Chapter 17

  GEORGIA’S morning. This is a feast? Gets up at six. Makes coffee. Writes letters. Drinks coffee and eats two rice cakes. Takes two teaspoons of C Aspa Scorb dissolved in orange juice. Does yoga. Lifts five-pound weights. Cleans face. Puts on Chanel Refining Mask. Sits in meditation while mask hardens. Gets up. Cleans face. Applies Chanel Super-Moisturizing Mask. Sits in meditation while skin absorbs sheep estrogen. Achieves union with universal consciousness for fourteen seconds. Starts thinking about Zach. Wishes to tell Zach about universal consciousness. Manages to stop thinking about Zach. Wishes for resumption of communion with universal consciousness. Thinks about going back to Memphis to practice medicine. Sees child dying of dog bite wounds. Gets up. Washes off mask. Gets dressed, decides to go downtown and find somewhere to eat breakfast. Starts out door. Goes back in. Calls Zach.

  “Where are you?”

  “In Tahlequah. Where I told you I would be.”

  “You couldn’t have been hired that fast. You must have known you were going to do this for months.”

  “Well, I was. These people are crazy about me.”

  “How much are they paying you?”

  “I don’t see how that’s any of your business.”

  “What did you call me for, Georgia? What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Nothing will come of nothing.”

  “Don’t do that, please.”

  “All right.”

  “What?”

  “I said, okay, whatever you want. Look, Georgia, why don’t you drive over here on Friday night and let’s talk this over.”

  “It’s Tuesday morning, for God’s sake.”

  “Well.”

  “You want to wait until Friday night to talk about this?”

  “You’re the one who left.”

  “This really hurts me, Zach. This is killing me.”

  “It hurts me too. What do you think it does to me?”

  The line was quiet. For almost a minute no one spoke.

  “Okay,” Georgia said at last. “I’ll come over Friday. If your kids won’t be there. Will they be there? Can I stay at your house with you?”

  “They won’t be here. Yes, you can stay with me. I want you to stay with me.”

  “Okay. I’ll come Friday then. As soon as I can get away. It might be six or seven before I get there.”

  “I’ll be waiting.”

  “I might send you a letter. I’ve been writing letters to you. If you get one, read it very carefully.”

  “Oh, oh.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing. I mean, yes, of course I will.”

  “I love you, Zach. That much is true.”

  “Good. I want you to. I love you too.”

  They hung up and Georgia went out and got into her car and drove downtown looking for a place to eat breakfast. The Shak, it said on an old-fashioned-looking restaurant in the middle of Muskogee Avenue. “Where Tahlequah Meets and Eats.”

  Chapter 18

  OLIVIA turned off the highway onto the gravel road that led to her grandfather’s house. It is always strange to return to a place where you have lived as a child, strange and compelling and sensate. Every leaf on every tree is the progeny of leaf and bole and tree that fed Olivia oxygen when she was one and two and three and seven and ten and twelve and fifteen. When she rode this way on her first bike, or on her spotted pony. When she drove Mary Lily’s old Pontiac up and down, the year she learned to drive. It was a mile from the highway to the house, an unbroken stretch of maple and locust and elm and oak and cedar and pine and wild dogwoods.

  How could I leave this? Olivia wondered. Where in the world have I been? She speeded up, leaving a trail of dust in the gravel, and turned by the mailbox and parked in the yard.

  There it was, her home, the small house nestled beneath maple trees, the barn, the corral, empty now except for one old mare leaning against a post batting its eyes against the flies. Olivia got out of the car and went running toward the house. Crow and Little Sun and Mary Lily were on the steps before she reached the house. They had been watching for her out the windows. Lines from a poem came to her. “The piled grief scrambling like guilt to leave us. At the sight of you looking well, and besides, our questions, our news.”

  “I’m so sorry I was gone,” she said. “I missed you so much. Where are the animals?” She hugged them fiercely, and everyone began to cry. Aunt Mary Lily wept stingy old-maid tears and Crow wept laughing grandmother tears and Little Sun wept manly unashamed tears and Olivia wept until she choked. Then she turned to the corral and the old mare standing by the gate.

  “Bess,” she screamed. “It’s me. Olivia. I’m home. Oh, Bess, don’t you know me?” The mare lifted its head and whinnied, and Olivia ran to the corral and climbed the fence and kissed the horse on its nose.

  “That cat Desdemona’s in the house,” Mary Lily said. “And your dog too. They stay in the house half the time
and Bobby Tree called last week. I told him you were coming home.”

  “What?” Olivia said. “What did you just say?” She climbed back down from the gate. “What did you say about Bobby?”

  “I made you a cake,” Crow put in. “There’s a chicken cooked and peas and potatoes and snap beans in the pot. Come inside and let me feed you.”

  “He just was looking for you. He called up from Montana.” Mary Lily turned and started toward the house.

  Then they went into the kitchen and Olivia had baked chicken and boiled new potatoes from the garden and fresh peas and carrots and biscuits warmed in a new microwave. “What did he say when he called?” she asked Mary Lily several times. “What all did he say?”

  “He just wanted to know where you were,” Mary Lily answered. “He didn’t say much of anything.”

  “I can’t believe you got a microwave. I just don’t believe it.”

  After Olivia had eaten every bite she could eat and drank three glasses of iced tea, they all went out to the yard and sat on wooden yard chairs and talked about the future and the past, about dogs they had had and horses they had owned and how Wilma Mankiller was a great chief and how many tribes had come to the powwow in Tulsa and how many reporters were there and how many stupid questions they were always asking Little Sun when he wore his ceremonial dress. “Veterans of all the wars came,” he told her. “They wore combat uniforms and carried rifles. They danced the Navajo victory dance. It was powerful medicine, and it was put on the television and broadcast everywhere, but I do not think they know what they were watching. It was a celebration of victory. The reporters think it was against the wars.” He laughed and let his eyes rest on his granddaughter. He had not allowed himself to know how much he missed her.