A Dangerous Age (24 page)

“I
HAD NOT KNOWN
how hard it is to sleep in this house all alone,” she told them in the morning, “until I slept all those hours without moving because you were here with me.”

“S
O WHAT DO YOU
think that all means?” Kathleen Whitman asked. It was two mornings later. Olivia had met Kathleen at the track beside the hospital at six in the morning, and they were finishing their fourteenth lap on the quarter-mile track.

“That I’m going to start believing in ghosts, obviously. Only they are not like ghosts. They are very lifelike and they don’t stay long. I know they are figments of my imagination. I know that. I keep thinking Aunt Anna will appear next, wearing her wet garments, although they’ll be perfectly preserved, I guess, the way they are in
The Tempest
. It is comforting to me, Kathleen. Really comforting. I guess I think it means they aren’t really dead.”

“We don’t know anything except the small fraction of reality our five senses allow us to know. Well, we have stretched that out to the Hubble Space Telescope, and our microscopes get better and better and we can see inside cells and inside your womb. If I wanted to, I could do an amnio and tell you so much about that baby boy it would scare us both. I could take your DNA and his DNA and tell you if he’d have a bad temper.”

“Except I already know who he is, better than your instruments could ever tell me. I know this baby like I know myself, Kathleen. I always have, ever since the day Bobby went to the drugstore and got the kit and told me I had to pee. He said, ‘You have to urinate—I mean, pee.’ I thought that was hilarious.”

“You never cry over him?” They had slowed down their pace. Now they almost stopped, and Olivia looked at her friend.

“I cried in my sleep one night because I wanted to fuck him, and he told me we couldn’t do it anymore.”

“I wish you’d see a psychiatrist for a while. Your insurance would pay for six or seven visits. I might get them to stretch it out for more. Would you do it if I arrange it? It can’t hurt, and it might help.”

“I don’t know, Kathleen. I’m a Cherokee Indian. We have people we can talk to.”

“But not in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where you live. Look, I have to stop now. I have to make rounds.” They had come to the place where they left the track each morning. “I can’t meet you tomorrow. I have surgery. But Friday I’ll be here. Let me find you a psychiatrist. I don’t want you talking to the dead and crying in your sleep. We’ve got a baby to get into the world. I want you wide awake, not off in some dreamworld.”

“All right. I’ll do it, then. Call me.”

“I will. Good-bye.”

O
LIVIA GOT INTO
her car and drove to the office and changed clothes in the ladies’ room and then sat down at her computer and started trying to write a column that was due at four that afternoon.

“The names of the lost,” it began. It ended, “How many deaths does it take till we know that too many people have died?”

“I
T’S THE BEST
thing you’ve written all summer,” Big Jim Walters said when he read it. “It’s simple, clear. We’ll get a lot of mail on this.”

“You want to edit it?”

“No. It’s just right. I’m jealous. I wish I’d written it.”

R
OBERT
D
ANIEL
S
EQUOYAH
T
REE
was born at six in the afternoon on August 25. Olivia was at the hospital track with her obstetrician when her water broke, which they both thought was some hilarious, foreseen joke. Kathleen helped her across the street to the emergency entrance to the hospital and met her thirty minutes later in a labor room. Machines were hooked up to her womb and her arms. Machines monitored every process in her body. “‘All watched over / by machines of loving grace,’” Olivia told anyone who would listen. “Richard Brautigan, San Francisco, 1967. My mother was probably in the audience when he read the poem out loud. I have her autographed copy of the book at my house. Well, I’m getting giddy. What in the hell are you giving me?”

“Nothing,” the young nurse answered. “Dr. Whitman hasn’t given you anything yet. You’re only dilated six centimeters. It will probably be hours before you deliver.”

D
ANIEL
H
AND GOT
a telephone call an hour after Olivia was admitted to the hospital. He called his daughter Jessie and
she called their cousins, and people started getting on airplanes and flying toward Tulsa. No one stopped and wondered if they ought to go there. They just got on planes and started going. “Uncle Niall won’t have to have his reunion if stuff keeps happening with Olivia,” Winifred told Louise. “I guess we’ll just all keep meeting in Tulsa.”

T
HE BABY ARRIVED
at six o’clock that afternoon. At eight, Daniel’s plane arrived and was met by Philip Whitehorse. At ten the next morning, Louise and Jessie and Winifred arrived on flights from Washington, D.C., and New Orleans and Las Vegas. Tallulah Hand drove in from Nashville with a young landscape architect riding shotgun. He was six feet seven inches tall, had red hair, and was twenty-two years old. He was left-handed, had AB positive blood, and had quit Vanderbilt after two years to go into business for himself, doing yards in Nashville. His name was Manning Cash, and everyone kept saying to him, “One of our family names is Manning,” and he kept answering, “Tallulah told me that.”

Niall Hand arrived on an airplane at two the next afternoon and took a taxi to the hospital. He went to Olivia’s room and kissed her on the forehead and gave her some roses he had bought in the Atlanta Airport. Then he gave her a box holding a small gold cross that had been her grandmother’s.

“Go see the boy,” Olivia said. “He’s pretty cute. You’ll like him.”

Outside the nursery the rest of the visitors were clustered
around a window, looking in at a small baby boy lying on his back with his arms extended. He was wearing a white cap with small royal blue bears on it. He was asleep.

“Look at the way he’s sleeping,” Tallulah said. “He’s so laid back. Babies don’t sleep like that. They sleep all cuddled up.”

“Look at his black hair,” Winifred said. “Isn’t it pretty?”

“I can’t see his hair,” Niall said. “It’s covered up with that cap.”

“Can you believe everyone’s here?” Louise asked. “Isn’t this amazing?”

L
ATER, WHEN THE FAMILY
was settled in a hotel near the hospital, they met in Niall’s room to make plans for dinner.

“Tallulah’s grandmother’s sister married a Manning,” Niall explained to Manning Cash. “Even if he was a distant relative of yours, you wouldn’t be related to her.”

“I guess it got her interested in me, though,” Manning answered. He was sticking close to Daniel and Niall. The rest of the family were too many women for him, as he had been raised in a family of six boys.

“I was interested in putting in some tulip beds,” Tallulah said from across the room. “Besides, I always get interested in men who are redheaded and as tall as trees.”

“Well, so what do you do in North Carolina?” Manning asked Niall. “What kind of work do you do?”

“Right now I’m running the governor’s program for early
childhood development,” Niall said. “I got hooked into it because I went to school with the governor when we were young. It’s the biggest bureaucratic mess you’ve ever seen in your life. You can’t fire anyone, no matter how inept they are. It would put your life in jeopardy. I mean that. So I just keep plowing on and trying to make a difference, but it’s a headache inside a circus inside a nightmare.”

“He teaches kids to read and write and add and subtract and multiply and divide,” Daniel said. “He’s a saint. He thinks we can save the world. Do you think that, Manning?”

“I’m not sure if we can or not,” Manning answered, “but I think we have to try.”

“Susan’s coming.” Winifred came into the room. “Her plane gets in at eleven. I’m going to meet her. She’s going to stay until Sunday. I got her a room next to mine. But I’ll need a car.”

“We’ll go with you,” Tallulah said. “I haven’t seen Susan since she started being a surgeon. I want her to look at my knee.”

A
T THE HOSPITAL
the nurse had just brought the baby in for Olivia to feed.

“I want to keep him in my room,” Olivia said.

“Wait another day. The pediatrician wants you to stay here until Sunday night. We want to watch him another two days.”

“Why?”

“She’s always careful.”

“He’s eating,” Olivia said. “Look at this. He’s sucking it. Look at him suck.”

The nurse leaned near to watch. She had orders from Dr. Whitman to stay in the room if Olivia was alone. “I don’t want her getting emotional,” Kathleen had said. “Her husband died in Iraq. I don’t want her to have a chance to start getting sad.”

The baby was sucking. He would suck on the teat until liquid filled his mouth, then let go of the teat while his mouth and tongue decided what to do with the liquid; then he rubbed his mouth around on Olivia’s breast until he found the teat again, then sucked it some more. After three or four such adventures, he closed his eyes and fell into a small sleep while his digestive organs started working.

The nurse and Olivia watched each moment of this adventure with great attention.

“He’s really good at it,” the nurse said. “It usually takes them a few days to figure it out.”

“Obsessive-compulsive, like everything we do,” Olivia said. “Like learning to play tennis. It frustrates and maddens you, but as soon as you leave the court, your mind starts thinking about it and wants to try some more.”

“Yeah, maybe. But this is about being hungry. That’s more important than playing tennis.”

“I get obsessed with things and forget to eat.”

“Yeah, but you’re not a baby.”

The baby opened his eyes and stared at the two women a moment, then started moving his mouth around on the breast again, looking for the teat.

“So could someone get me a newspaper?” Olivia asked. “I haven’t seen one in two days. I work for the
Tulsa World
. I really need to see a newspaper, if there’s one around here.”

A
T THE HOTEL
where Olivia’s family were staying, the cousins had all gathered in the hotel dining room to have breakfast and make plans.

“We can’t all leave at once,” Tallulah said. “I can stay a few days, maybe until next weekend. I know a man at the university who will hit with me. And Manning wants to see some landscaping project he read about. So I’ll be around awhile. How about the rest of you?”

“I have to leave tonight,” Jessie said. “I have to get home to my family. King wants me to come home.”

“I’m going in the morning,” Winifred said. “But I’ll come back in a few weeks. I told her I was coming back.”

“I’ll stay with Tallulah,” Louise said. “Carla Louise is happy as she can be with my mother-in-law. I’ll stay until Olivia’s home and we find an au pair or someone to help out.”

“I’m going with Daniel to Tahlequah tomorrow,” Niall said. “I might be able to hang around a few days after that.”

“I’m staying for a while,” Daniel said. “I think she needs me here even if I’m not doing anything to help.”

“Good for you, Daddy,” Jessie said. “That’s really good that you can see that.” She went to him and put her hands on his shoulders and patted him as she would a child.

Turn the hearts of the parents to the children or the children to the parents, Niall was thinking. I think that’s the New Testament, but it might be the old one. Anyway, it’s sure a good idea. Which is why I won’t say it doesn’t take a genius to know to stay around when the daughter you didn’t know you had until she was fifteen has a baby and her husband is only three months dead. Niall smiled and shook his head at the sight of his kinfolk gathered around a table trying to figure out how to help out in a tragedy, and doing a damn good crazy job of it too.

“I’ll stay with you,” he said to Daniel. “We might be of some use to someone. There’s no reason to go running off before we get her settled.”

“That little house she’s in could use a better roof,” Daniel answered. “And it’s got to have a fence around the yard if she’s going to stay there with the boy.”

“The yard’s a mess,” Tallulah put in. “I noticed that when I came here for the wedding. Manning and I will look at it if you want us to. You can’t just go putting up any kind of fence. There are fences now that add to a house’s value, and they make these swing-set forts that match the fences.”

“I’m going to the hospital,” Louise said. “I want to see the baby again.”

“I’ll give her the swing set if you arrange to put it up,” Jessie said. “King and Crystal and Manny want us to give her a really nice present for the baby. We love our swing set so much. They make such good ones now.”

C
ROW AND
L
ITTLE
S
UN
and Mary Lily were at the hospital. They had left Tahlequah at seven and were in Olivia’s room by nine. The lactation nurse left the room when they came in. Olivia was holding her sleeping son. “Do you want to hold him?” she asked her grandmother.