Starcarbon

by Ellen Gilchrist

  “Then why don’t you go?”

  “Maybe I will,” she answered and felt like sunlight had just come out from behind the clouds. “Maybe I’ll do just that.” She paused, looked at his old brown shoes propped so neatly on the desk. “Then just keep on going, drive to the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone National Park and see the geysers. Find a mountain town and get a job in a café and be a part of life. Chapel Hill isn’t part of life. It’s like some expensive camp. You know what else?” She turned to him. “I figured this out in Charlotte. It isn’t the rich people who go to places, who have fun. It’s the people who work there who have a good time. Bobby and I could work anywhere. We don’t need an education.”

  “Wait a minute.” Doctor Coder had been with her all the way until she started that. “Education’s okay. I’ll admit there’s a lot to be said for practical knowledge, but books have their place. English and history and science and math.”

  “That’s what Georgia says. This doctor who’s a friend of mine. She teaches anthropology but she says it’s just a pseudoscience. She said most of what they teach in school is crap. Somebody’s opinion or their ax to grind.” Olivia sat up. She looked at her watch. An hour was almost over and she felt like she had only begun to talk. “I don’t want to leave,” she said. “I never want to leave here.”

  “I’m going to see you Thursday,” he answered. “Thursday afternoon. By then, who knows what will have happened in the world.” He smiled at her, the kindest, most open smile Olivia had ever seen in her life. It reminded her of something, then she remembered. Anna. Her aunt Anna had looked at her like that, as if she knew all the way into Olivia’s heart and knew the deepest secrets of her mind. Where did people learn such things? Olivia returned the doctor’s look and his heart turned over at the intelligence and searching and goodness of her face. A truth-teller, he told himself. An intuitive. Yes, this one will be worth teaching. This one will want the truth enough to find it.

  The next afternoon, as soon as their classes were over, Bobby and Olivia piled into the pickup and took off for Beaver Lake. They drove out past Eureka Springs to where great granite bluffs overlook the lake and make a series of steps down into the water. They set up camp with the tent and ate submarine sandwiches they had bought at a store and made love in the tent and then put on bathing suits and got into the soft dammed-up river water and began to swim. They swam out four hundred yards into the lake and turned and were resting on their backs, letting the current rock them.

  “I think I’m studying the wrong thing,” Olivia said. “I think I ought to go to medical school. Georgia says she thinks I have a scientific mind. Well, that’s because she likes anyone who doesn’t believe in God. She says God is the silliest idea in the world. You know what she said? She said, imagine a creator who would hold the creation responsible for itself. Like my dad. He created me, didn’t he? Him and Mom. So whatever I am, they made me this way.” She was dog paddling, watching Bobby, trying to decide if he was smart enough for her to love, when he said something that surprised her. “I think about God a lot, but not a God like that. Like the mountains in Montana and the way skies seem so beautiful to us. Only people know how beautiful things are. I study the beauty of the world, not to know what it means, but because it’s there for us. I wish I had more to offer you, baby, but I don’t, just as I am, as the old hymn goes. Well, look, you want to start back now? I might want to dive off the overhangs.” He smiled at her then and turned in the water and began to swim, slowly at first, waiting for her to catch up, and then, suddenly, he took off and swam very fast back to the shore and climbed up on the steps and began to climb.

  A rocky path curved up the bluff to where three wide outcrops overlooked the water. It was a place where young men from Eureka played chicken. The first step was about fifty feet above the water, the second about a hundred, and the third, which was almost to the top of the bluff, two hundred and fifty feet or more. Olivia had seen plenty of boys dive from the first step and once had watched Bobby dive from the second step, but she had never seen anyone dive from the third step (although there was a story that a boy high on psychedelic mushrooms had jumped from there and landed on the rocks and broken half the bones in his body).

  Bobby passed the first overhang and kept on climbing. Olivia was out of the water now. He’s going to the top, she told herself. I have forgotten who he is. All these weeks I’ve been fucking him and bossing him around and treating him like shit and I forgot who he is. His dad can go to jail and he can be broke and live in a trailer and it doesn’t matter. He’s a hero. He was a hero when I met him and he’ll always be one. He’s going to the top and when he gets there, he’s going to dive. Nothing’s going to stop him so I might as well just watch. Besides, he won’t die jumping off that cliff. If he did, it doesn’t matter to him like it does to people who are always on the second team.

  A hawk left its nest and hovered above the path where Bobby climbed. Bobby climbed more slowly now, as the path was steeper. Small birch trees grew here and there beside the path and scraggly juniper bushes. At one point Olivia lost sight of him as he climbed. He had passed the first overhang and kept on going. He walked out onto the second ledge and threw a stone into the water and turned and smiled at her. Then he went back onto the path and kept on climbing. The hawk circled the bluff. A bank of clouds like a huge glacier was moving slowly across the eastern sky. Bobby disappeared again and reappeared on the third ledge. He threw a second rock into the water and watched it sink. Then he threw another further out and waited until the ripples from it split the surface. Then he turned and looked in Olivia’s direction and saluted her with outstretched arms. He turned back to the ledge. He walked out to the edge of it and dove. His body arched out into the trajectory of the third rock and entered the flat brown water. He surfaced thirty feet from the point of entry and turned and began to swim slowly back to where Olivia was standing.

  They spent the night in the tent. First they built a fire and cooked hot dogs and ate them and then they got into the truck and drove into Eureka to go to the Blues Festival in the park. “Knife in the Water” was playing, a Muddy Waters imitator from Fayetteville, and they listened to that for a while, then wandered around the crowd talking to people they knew and flashing Olivia’s ring. “Bobby dove off the third step at Spider Creek,” Olivia told a couple of girls she knew. “Can you believe him?”

  “You’re lucky,” one girl replied. “I bet he’s the only boy in the Ozarks who wants to get married. All the boys are acting like horse’s asses. I’m about to quit going out with them.”

  “Yeah,” the second girl said. “Me too.”

  The next morning they woke at dawn and packed up their gear and drove eighty miles an hour back to Tahlequah. They got to the trailer at eight to find that Sharrene had packed up and gone, taking half the furniture in the house and all the kitchen utensils and pots and pans. She had even taken the kitchen phone. The note she had forgotten to give Bobby was on the table with another one beside it. “I’m at my folks in Oklahoma City. Keep in touch. Give me a call if you need me. Love, Sharrene. I took the phone because I got it for him. I hope that is okay.”

  They stood on either side of the kitchen table and smirked. It was too embarrassing to laugh at, too stupid and greedy to be regretted.

  “We don’t have to stay here,” Olivia said. “When summer’s over we could leave all this behind. We could get into your truck and start driving. I told the shrink I wished we could go to Colorado or Montana and leave everyone behind and start all over again. Just the two of us, and you know what he said?”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said we could if we could get hold of certain things inside ourselves.”

  “Like what?”

  “Knowing we are part of everything. All the clouds and everything there is. Like you diving off that cliff. Like knowing there isn’t anything to be afraid of. I’m always so afraid I won’t have any money. It’s all I think about. As much money as Dad g
ives me, and I don’t even spend it. I’m afraid it will run out.”

  “I’m going to be making three hundred a week working for Jay. I’m not broke, Olivia. I’ve got nine thousand some odd dollars. Well, I owe a little bit more for your ring.” He looked at her hand. She was wearing it. She had put it on when they left for the lake and except when they were in the water she’d been wearing it all the time.

  “Well, right now we’ve got to do something about this house. Let’s walk around and see what all is left and make the living room look good and one of the bedrooms. We can get some pans out at Grandmomma’s. She’ll give you enough stuff to cook on. Come on, let’s get started.”

  “We have to go to class first. We can do this when we get back.” He came around her side of the table and pulled her into his arms and began to kiss her very softly and sweetly on the mouth. “The good thing is we’ve got a house to live in. I think I’ll just go burn that trailer.”

  “Would you do that?” She giggled. “Let’s blow it up. Let’s blow it all to hell.”

  When she got home that afternoon her father had been calling. “Your dad’s been trying to get you,” Little Sun said. “You must call him. He hasn’t heard from you and he’s worried.”

  “What did he say? Is everything all right?”

  “He just wants to know how you are. He sounds like a nice man, Little Flower. A lonely man. He said that he is lonely with you gone.”

  “What did you tell him?”

  “I told him nothing. I told him you had been at school all the time. He said to call when you came in. No matter what time it was.” Little Sun stood in the kitchen by the table he had made and painted blue. He was still very tall for an old man, very straight, with only a small stoop to his back. His face had changed in the time Olivia had been gone. Had become thinner, younger looking somehow. The skin stretched tight across the jaw and cheekbones, and become translucent. But the eyes had remained the same. The same brown eyes that met your own and held them. He never had to tell a lie to anyone, Olivia thought. Like Doctor Coder is trying to teach me. Do not lie in thought, word, or deed. Don’t let anyone make you want something enough to lie for it. Well, he had his government checks. He could quit anything he was doing if he didn’t like it. I want Bobby and me to have a life like that. But then I’d have to give up Charlotte, because all anyone does in Charlotte is think some kind of lie all day.

  “I ought to call him and tell him to stop drinking. Then he wouldn’t be so lonely.” Olivia smiled into her grandfather’s eyes. “What if I called and told him that?”

  “Maybe you could find a way to say it that would not wound him.”

  “He needs wounding. He needs to see what he does to people. Well, I’ll call him. Let me get the phone.” She walked over to the wall by the table and took down the phone and dialed the number. In a minute Daniel answered. “I’m sorry I didn’t call you,” Olivia said. “I’ve been busy with school. It’s hard to go every day and I’m going to this psychiatrist. Are you sure you can afford it? It’s costing six dollars’ worth of gasoline to drive over there and back. I don’t think I ought to spend this much money. Is it okay?”

  “Don’t worry about that, honey. There’s plenty of money for what you need. But your grandmother’s having a fit because she hasn’t seen you except for that day. Why don’t you fly up here for the Fourth of July. Everyone’s coming home. Helen’s coming from Boston and Louise is going to be here. We can get you a plane ticket. How about it?”

  “I don’t know.” Olivia turned and looked at her grandfather, who was wearing his please-be-kind look. “Okay. I’ll come. Aunt Louise will be there? I haven’t seen her in so long. How about Jessie? Will she come and bring K.T.?”

  “I invited them. I hope they’ll be here. Well, let me hang up and call the airlines. I’ll call you back. Will you be home now?”

  “I guess so. Sure. I’ll be here. I love you, Dad. I’ve been missing you.” Olivia sighed. That wasn’t a lie. She did miss him. She had missed him all her life. Her beautiful tall wonderful father. Her divine golden father. The end of the rainbow. The pot of gold she had gone to seek. Memory is a dance. The face of her grandfather smiling at her for being kind. The voice of her long-lost father, whose voice she had finally heard one day when she was sixteen years old on this very phone. The room six feet away where her mother had died giving birth to her. The light dying in the west and the purple glow upon the table and the shadows of the leaves, the death mask Little Sun’s face was becoming. Death waiting for them all, everywhere, and, in the meantime, everyone all scattered out. “Oh, Dad, I want so much. I want to be there with you and also here. I want to see Aunt Helen and I want to show this place to you. You’ve never even been here. I was born here. A few feet from this phone. You should come and see it sometime.” Olivia was going to cry. It was going to happen. There would be no preventing it. Tears began to run down her face. Only yesterday she had been at the lake with Bobby, young and alive and free. Now she was back into all this mess.

  Little Sun took the phone from her hand. “I’ll call the airline, then I’ll call you back,” Daniel said.

  “She is crying,” Little Sun said. “I think she misses you very much.”

  Olivia ran into the bathroom and washed her face and got mad at herself. You pussy, she scolded her reflection in the mirror. You goddamn pussy. I thought you were going to be strong. Where’s strong? I don’t see any strong.

  She put on powder and lipstick and combed her hair and went back into the kitchen and ate vanilla wafers until Daniel called again. “Two-thirty on Wednesday afternoon,” he said. “You can go back on Sunday. Is that okay? Can you get to the plane in Tulsa by two-thirty?”

  “Yes, listen, Dad. Tell Jessie to come, will you? I want to hold K.T. I’m dying to hold him in my arms.”

  “You tell her. Call her up tonight and get her to come. Hell, I deserve a look at my children once every couple of months.”

  “How’s your business doing?”

  “It’s rough, sugar, but we’ll make it. I may try to sell it as soon as things smooth out in the economy. Well, I’ll mail you the ticket tomorrow then. What else is going on?”

  “Not much. I went swimming at the lake yesterday. If you came you could go. I bet you’d like it. It’s a huge lake made from the White River. I bet you’d love it.”

  “I’ll come someday. Well, study hard. I’ll send the ticket tomorrow.”

  They hung up. Olivia had not told him not to drink and she hadn’t told him about Bobby. But I got taken by surprise by his wanting me to come for the Fourth of July, she told herself. That’s what happened. If I’d thought up calling him I’d have been the one to set the agenda.

  “Let’s go for a walk and watch it get dark,” Olivia said. “Come on, Granddaddy. Go for a walk with me.”

  Then the two of them went out into the yard and walked back across the pasture to where the old corn patch had been. Not talking about anything, just walking and not even touching. Just walking side by side as the sun took its light away and left the earth in darkness. By the time they got back to the house stars were everywhere. A moonless night, millions of stars shone down upon the house. They went inside to eat their dinner.

  Very late that afternoon, Georgia was sitting in zazen. She was doing a sutra called The Blue Flower Meditation. She was sitting on a prayer bench looking at a blue lily. She traced the stamen down into the stem.

  She settled down, tried to stop her mind from thinking. Slowly, her cheeks began to relax, her jaws went slack. Then, very slowly, she reached out her hand and began to open the petals, spreading them out, unfurling the flower.

  The possibilities, she decided. That’s what I’ve lost. The width and breadth of the world, the lavish vast unexplored regions, oceans and rivers and canyons and roads and mountains and towns and cities. “Where are the other places?” a philosopher once asked. “I have got my own self, but I have lost them.”

  Georgia stroked the flower wi
th her finger. Golden pollen fell across her hand. Shower of gold, she said to herself and went into her deepest impregnation fantasy. Against her will, in a harem, she was being impregnated three weeks after giving birth.

  She went into the bathroom and put on lipstick and powder and plugged in her heated rollers and went to the phone and called Zach. “So did you sleep with Dallas Anne?” she began. “If you did, just tell me and I won’t like you anymore.”

  “She didn’t stay here,” Zach answered. “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “Taylor said she stayed there. They hate me, Zach. Can’t you feel it? Don’t you even know that?”

  “They like you, Georgia. They don’t hate you. They’re fucked up. I’ll admit that, but it isn’t about you. They just haven’t grown up yet. They’re coming along.”

  “You didn’t fuck her?”

  “She didn’t stay here. I swear she didn’t. I can’t believe Taylor told you that. You must have misunderstood him.”

  “No. I know what he said.”

  “Then I’ll ask him about it. As soon as he gets back. They’ve gone to Fort Smith for the week.”

  “They’re gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then I’m coming over. Tomorrow afternoon. I’m horny, Zach, I want to fuck you. I’m tired of all this rigamarole. All I want to do is fuck you. I’m tired of our lives getting tangled up. I didn’t make your past. I didn’t have those twins. You didn’t fail to love me when I was two. To hell with it. Could we just go back to being in love? Do you remember how lonely and neurotic we both were when I met you? Well, I remember.”

  “When can you get here?”

  “By four. Come home early and be waiting for me.”

  “I will. I’m glad. I love you.”

  But of course he isn’t waiting for me, she decided. It was four-fifteen. She was standing on the porch watching it begin to rain. She had been at Zach’s house since three-thirty. She had been getting mad since two after four. She went back into the house and put a CD in the CD player. Heavy Weather, by Weather Report, a CD she had given him for Christmas. She went back out onto the wooden porch. The sky was growing darker, the wind picking up in the dense trees that filled the yard and lined the street. I hope it pours, she thought. I hope it floods the town. She sat down in the porch swing, began to gently swing. The wind blew her hair into her eyes, blew her scarf around her neck. She forgot her anger for a moment, caught up in the sight of a pair of five-year-olds across the street. They came out the door in their little cotton underpants and walked down their steps and out into their yard and turned their faces up to the falling raindrops. They began to giggle, touching hands and shoving each other. Then the boy began to run and the girl began to chase him. Their screams rent the sky, began a long sound that ended in thunder. Life held me green and dying though I sang in my chains like the sea, Georgia thought, slowing the swing with her sandals. Why can’t I be like that now? Why am I jealous of his children, his completely insane ex-wife? I wouldn’t talk to her if I met her at a party. Why would I be jealous of anyone like that? What’s wrong with me? I know what’s wrong with me. It’s the same reason I was jealous of Sybil or Aurora when we were young. If Momma or Daddy gave them a stick of gum, I got jealous. Oh, God, we’re hopeless, all of us. Birds in a nest, give me, give me, give me. I want, I want, I want, me too, me too, me too. Pitiful, pitiful, like me the most, like only me.