I Cannot Get You Close Enough (17 page)

“Well, go ahead then. Do it if you want to. I'll come out and help.”

That conversation had been a week ago. Now Olivia stood by the fence watching the two-year-old and thinking over all her lies. Well, maybe she could break him. Maybe she'd get killed and it would save her the trouble of going to jail, or wherever they were going to send her when they found out about the grades.

If I could figure out the math it would be all right, she decided. But I can't try harder than I already am. What else could I do? I could kill myself. Or I could get a lawyer and make them keep me. They can't just kick me out. It would be too embarrassing for them. I could go on and tell Dad the truth but I can't. He's too nervous. I can't tell him anything.

She climbed down from the fence and walked toward the two-year-old, watching him as she walked, feeling in her pocket for the sugar he had come to expect.

“Come on, Sugar,” she said out loud. “Come and get your sugar, Sugar.” He raised his head and looked at her, shook his neck, opened his nostrils. He could smell it. He trotted toward her. “You beauty,” she said. “You gorgeous boy. Come to de Havilland Hand, your master.” She crooned to him, hiding the sugar behind her back. Then held it out for him to eat.

“I'm here now,” she told him. “I might as well enjoy it while I can.” It was true. She was there, right where she had dreamed of being. Being petted and indulged, going to the finest school in town where the girls talked continually of things she didn't understand and people and places she had never known. In this world there was more of everything than anyone could use, more clothes, more houses, more money, more horses than anyone could ride. She was here and everyone liked her and was amused by her and at any moment it could end.

She pulled the colt's neck toward her own, rubbing his backbone so he would be accustomed to weight when she moved her body onto his. I really will break him, she decided. The black boys will help me. It will make up for never getting laid. Jesus, there's no one here to do it with. I wouldn't do it with any of these dumb boys for any amount of money. There's always King. He might not always be in love with Jessie. They might break up. He likes me too. I've seen him look at me.

“Olivia.” It was Jessie, calling from the fence. “What are you doing? Dad wants us to go to town with him. Come on in. Dad's waiting for you.”

Olivia allowed the horse to go. Turned her back to him and faced her sister, stuck her hands in her pockets and waited.

“Don't turn your back on him,” Jessie called, scrambling over the fence. “He's wild as anything. Olivia, come on. You might get hurt.” Jessie was hurrying toward her, long blond hair blowing in the wind. “They kept me there until five o'clock. I'm so dumb. I'll never figure out algebra as long as I live. I don't care anyway. Get out of here, Sugar.” She clapped her hands in the air to spook him and continued walking toward Olivia. “Mrs. Guest loves you. All she can talk about is you. She said I ought to let you go to school for both of us, since you like it so much. Well, Dad's waiting on us. He wants to go to town to see something at the bank. Some art show one of his girlfriends did. I don't know which one.” Olivia watched her sister. What a baby, she was thinking. What babies they are, every one of them. “I'm coming,” she said. “I'm going to break this colt in the summer. As soon as I can.”

“You can't do it this summer. We're going to Switzerland to live on the lake. Don't you remember? You said you'd go. You're going, aren't you? I'm not going if you don't.”

“Switzerland,” Olivia said. “Oh, sure, Switzerland. I'd forgotten about that.”

They walked across the pasture to the house their great-grandfather had built when the place was a working farm. This land belonged to the Cherokee before it belonged to the Hands, Olivia was thinking. White people stole North Carolina from the Cherokee, then sent them off to die. They can't throw me away. I have more right to be here than they do.

Daniel stood in the doorway watching them. His child by Sheila he had fought so hard to keep, and this strange powerful girl he had left in the womb of Summer Deer so long ago in California. He had them both now, one by the defection of her mother through death and the other by her mother's stupidity and evil. They were his, his reasons to get up every morning and go out and face the assholes of the world. “Come on,” he said. “We've got to get to town. Come on in and wash your faces and hands and don't start changing clothes because we have to go.”

They climbed into the Mitsubishi and headed into town. It was Daniel's hunting truck and was filled with guns and shells and orange vests and camping paraphernalia.

“Where are we going?” Olivia asked.

“To the bank to see Doreen's paintings. She's got a show and I promised her I'd bring you.”

“Doreen's the one with the long hair?” “Yes.”

“She's a buyer for Montaldo's,” Jessie put in. “That's where she gets all those clothes.”

“We're going to the lake first,” Daniel said. “I want to show you something.”

“It's the turkeys,” Jessie said. “He always shows us the turkeys.”

“Well, you need to look at something besides yourself.” Daniel shifted into low gear and began to drive across a field toward the scrub woods on the back of the property. He had been cultivating wild turkeys for six years now and the flocks were everywhere. He drove slowly down across the pasture and stopped and got out to open the gate. Olivia jumped down from the other side to close it for him. She climbed back in and they drove farther down into the scrub and stopped beside a lake surrounded by cottonwood trees. A beautiful still lake fed by springs that joined an aquifer that led all the way to the mountains. No one had ever cultivated this part of the property or used it for a thing until Daniel decided to raise turkeys on it. Not to eat and not even to hunt really but because he was growing older and was tired of flying around the world getting drunk with people he barely knew and spending money he had to fuck with assholes to replace.

“Here,” he said, and pulled two pair of army surplus binoculars out of a knapsack. “Get these adjusted so you'll be ready when we see them. They're used to the truck. But don't talk. They spook if they hear voices.” He handed a pair of binoculars to each girl and waited while they adjusted the lens.

“What time is Doreen's show?” Jessie asked. “We'll be late.”

“Hush up, honey,” he said. “I'm taking care of that.” He began to drive the truck across a narrow dam in the middle of the lake. The truck was so wide and the dam so narrow that the wheels were almost in the water on both sides as they inched their way across. They arrived on the other side and Daniel put the truck into low gear and pulled up a hill and came to a stop beneath a cottonwood. “Look there,” he said. “There they are.” He reached up and turned Olivia's glasses in the direction of the turkeys. There were about thirty of them, fat and beautifully colored, their amazingly small heads bobbing back and forth on their stringy necks. They were eating seeds, moving as a wave across a narrow stretch of field to the east of the lake.

“That's the fescue,” Daniel said. “They love it.”

Olivia watched them move, two and three as one, a family, she thought, they are a family, as I dreamed we would be. Behind the binoculars she felt her eyes fill with tears. Tears began to fall down her face onto her blouse and vest and hands. Terrible motherless, fatherless tears. “Oh, please,” Jessie said. “Don't cry. There's no reason to cry.”

“It's just so beautiful,” Olivia said. “Everything is so beautiful here.”

The next morning Daniel called his sister Helen and told her about the crying incident and asked what he should do. “She started crying for no reason,” he said. “We were looking at the turkeys. I took them out to see the turkeys. There wasn't a thing to cry about.”

“Did you drive across that low water dam?”

“Of course. What's that got to do with a little girl bursting into tears while she's looking at a flock of turkeys.”

“Because it's dangerous and you shouldn't have driven over there with those girls in the truck. I've driven with you, Daniel, remember that. It might have scared her and she was too embarrassed to say so.”

“Look, Helen, she wasn't crying about driving across the dam. She's the bravest kid I ever saw in my life. She rides the horses bareback.”

“Well, we need to get her into therapy. She's had too many shocks too fast, Daniel. Anna dying and Daddy driving them home. Coming here to live. It's very traumatic to change schools in the middle of the year. I don't think Lynley's recovered yet from when we did that to him. I told you not to do that. How's she doing in school?”

“She's doing fine. They're having some trouble getting her records from that place in Oklahoma. Aside from that they're all crazy about her.”

“I'll come over this afternoon and see about it, talk to her. Will you be at home?”

“Sure. Come after five. We'll be there.”

“I'll see you then.”

“Thanks, Sister.” Daniel hung up the phone and began to straighten the pencils and miniature tractors on his desk. Good, Helen would come over. Helen would sort it out. Women crying. He shook his head, lined five pencils up in a row and took a miniature DC-8 and pushed them into a neat stack and carried them over and set them up beside a desk calendar his mother had given him for Christmas. Then he called his salesmen in and went to work.

11

Back at Tahlequah High School a ninth-grade music-appreciation teacher named Mrs. Walker was pondering a problem. She had taught Olivia music appreciation and had directed her in the chorus of a play. Like everyone else at Tahlequah High, Mrs. Walker had been delighted when she heard the girl was going to North Carolina to live with her father. The problem Mrs. Walker was pondering had to do with a piece of paper she had noticed on the new secretary's desk. It was a copy of Olivia's transcript. Mrs. Walker had glanced at it out of curiosity and noticed that Olivia was credited with an A in music appreciation. Mrs. Walker almost never gave A's. She was very stingy with A's as she had received her degree from Indiana University and had very high standards where Music was concerned. She was certain she had not given Olivia an A.

There were A's in almost everything. There were not many straight-A students at Tahlequah High. The only straight-A student Mrs. Walker could think of was a Jewish boy whose father was a lawyer. Mrs. Walker walked around thinking about the transcript for several days. She was not a person to rush into things. Finally, she sought out the freshman-sophomore mathematics teacher during a break and asked him some questions.

“Do you remember Olivia Hand when she was here? The girl who went to North Carolina at the beginning of the term?”

“Sure. Nice kid.”

“Was she a good student for you?”

“Good enough. Average. I don't know if she learned anything. I don't think I teach ninety percent of them a damn thing they will remember.”

“She didn't make A's?”

“Oh, God, no. She barely passed.”

“Well, thank you.”

“Why do you ask?”

“Nothing. No reason. I was just thinking about her the other day. She was in that production of
The Music Man
we did. Did you see it?”

“I'm afraid not. We don't go out at night much. I'm sorry.”

“No reason to be.” Mrs. Walker put her tray on the revolving dumbwaiter, shook her head. Her aunt works in the office, she remembered. Oh, I hate to get involved with this. I hate to start something like this. It might not be true.

The transcript was lying on the secretary's desk because the school in Charlotte had written to Tahlequah High asking for a copy. “We think there might be some mistake in the mathematics grades,” the letter had said. “Could we also have any test scores for Olivia? We want to make certain that we have her in the right class. Thanks so much for taking the time to do this.”

The principal handed the letter to his new secretary to take care of. The letter annoyed him. The letter was exactly the sort of thing he expected to get from a fancy private school in North Carolina. Arch, apologetic, asking him to waste his time on some bullshit detail. Why didn't they give the little girl a test themselves if they wanted to know which mathematics class she belonged in? They had plenty of money and time and extra office help. Not to mention the implied assumption that being from Tahlequah High she was deficient in basic skills no matter how good her grades had been. “Take care of this when you get time,” he told the secretary. “It's low priority.”

“What?”

“Put it on the bottom of a pile.”

“Oh. Okay.”

So the letter from North Carolina lay on the bottom of a stack of unanswered mail and the transcript sat on the desk beside some stationery order blanks. The secretary filed her nails and talked to her sister on the phone about the sister's recurrent bouts of cystitis. It was spring and the golf courses had just dried off from the winter snows. The principal had been a champion college golfer and he wasn't interested in unanswered mail. He was out at the Tahlequah Country Club every afternoon playing golf with the pro and getting ready for a tour he planned to make in June.

If Mrs. Walker hadn't walked by and noticed Olivia's transcript, it might have lain on the desk for years.

12

The students at Saint Andrew's Episcopal School were filing out into the parking lot and climbing into their cars. They were getting ready to enjoy their only real freedom of the day. All the way home from school to their houses no one would be trying to civilize them or watching them to see if they were drinking or taking dope or getting pregnant. All they had to do for the next hour was get into their cars and turn on their radios and talk to one another. It was freedom, or, at least, it felt like freedom. It could pass for freedom. They climbed into their cars and threw their books and satchels on the floor and began to drive out of the parking lot, waving and calling to each other in the most heartfelt and democratic camaraderie of the day. There's Larkin Sykes in her daddy's BMW, they were thinking. Look at old Travis in that Jeep, that's cool. I wish I had something to drive besides this beat-up Honda. I wish they'd let me have the Buick. I wish I could win a lottery.