I Cannot Get You Close Enough (29 page)

“I brought him down here to get him away from Rankin County,” she told me that day. She was in tears and King was downstairs pouting in his room. It was the first fall I worked for the Weisses and I think that has been the cause, kernel, and real beginning of all our problems with King. That one afternoon when he came home from school with that terrible expression on his face and said, “What is this Valencia? Why didn't I get in?” He was used to living in a world where he was the richest boy he knew. Now he was down here in New Orleans with a Jewish father being left out of the main club that people at Newman School have to belong to to be happy.

You can see why I want to protect Andria from a mixed marriage. “Look what happened with only an Episcopalian marrying a Jewish man,” I said later to Miss Lydia. We were arguing over whether Andria should go out with white boys. Miss Lydia was taking the liberal position. I was arguing the more practical side. Andria was listening while she stirred up some diet Jell-0 for her diet dessert.

“Well, it's not the churches that do it,” Lydia put in. “Or the color of the skin. It's the system. Marriage sucks, Traceleen. Marriage is hard to do. I read this article by Dr. Joyce Brothers and they asked her what the main things people wrote to her complaining about were. You know what she said?”

“No. What?”

“Wait a minute. I'm trying to remember exactly how it went. Okay. She said poor people wish they were rich, rich people wish they were famous, single people wish they were married, and married people wish they were dead.”

“That is one way of looking at it.”

“Well, you like your husband. You don't know how unusual that is.”

“He's my second, you know.”

“Mark is your second husband?”

“I had a young love once.”

“What happened to it?” She was all ears. Even Andria had stopped thinking about herself and was listening. They thought I was about to reveal a deep secret about myself, but I kept it in. “That's enough about me,” I said. “We were talking about how a person might be happy in the world.”

“They can't be,” Lydia said. “Pursuing happiness is doomed. All you can do is learn to live in the present and do your work and have friends.”

“I'm going to do my work,” Andria said. “I'm going to have a good job and a condo and a car.” She stood up and stretched her lovely long arms over her head and I couldn't help but think of African princesses with those necklaces around their necks.

Miss Lydia must have been reading my mind. “You look like a Watusi priestess planning the exodus,” Miss Lydia said, “or a revolution. I want you to come to Seattle and visit me sometime. Can she come, Traceleen?”

“I might come with her,” I said. I knew that surprised them. No one thinks of me as anyone who might like to travel.

Then Crystal Anne came in and said her momma had gotten a splinter in her hand taking down a storm window and we went to see about that.

 

But back to King the first year he lived in New Orleans. So we had the episode of him not getting into Valencia. Then we had this gorgeous boy in a rage on our hands. Then he quit the football team and then the baseball team and then he was into drugs and then he was stealing bicycles. It all happened so fast we could not keep up.

Now he was nineteen years old and about to go to college and back on the road he left that day he found out he wasn't in the club. We had our fingers crossed.

“You can't depend on Daniel's daughter to save him,” I heard Miss Lydia say. “Don't go handing your responsibility over to a child, Crystal.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Don't think you can let down your guard just because Daniel Hand shows up with this girl.”

“I don't see you accepting the responsibility for anything, Lydia. I don't see you in the role of my psychiatrist.” They were drinking whiskey sours in the kitchen by the brick fireplace. Miss Lydia had a real whiskey sour and Miss Crystal had a virgin one. It was late one afternoon and only the three of us were in the house. “Besides,” she went on, “that's how it happens. Men are civilized because women make them be. It's the way it goes.”

“But it's supposed to be their mothers,” Lydia went on. “Not maids and girls their own age.”

“What else can I do, Lydia? Can you think of one stone I've left unturned where my son is concerned? Well, can you? I paid twenty-two thousand dollars to that hospital out of my own money just last year. Twenty-two thousand dollars, Lydia. I guess you didn't know that, did you?” She got up and made another fake whiskey sour and began to pace around the kitchen.

“Okay,” Lydia kept saying. “I'm sorry. You used to be able to take criticism, Crystal. You used to listen when someone was trying to help.”

“I don't call that help,” Crystal answered. “I call that bullshit. You spend too much time with that psychiatrist, Lydia, and not enough time in the real world.”

“Okay,” Lydia kept saying. “Whatever you say. Whatever you want it to mean. It means whatever you say it means, okay?”

“I'm a good mother, Lydia. Whether you like it or not.”

“I know you are. I think you are. Okay, okay, okay.”

I hated to hear them argue but I was glad they were back in the groove of being friends. It might sound like arguing if you were listening, but in reality it is just the way they act together. They have this way of setting each other off. The minute they get together they heat each other up. Miss Lydia will come in off a plane ride and before she sets her bags down in the hall they are drinking coffee. (It used to be wine or vodka martinis, even in the morning. I have seen them sit down at the dining room table at ten o'clock in the morning with a martini in their hand and the jazz poet dragging himself out of bed to come and join them or the skinny poet, Mr. Lancaster, that you can hardly understand a word he says he drinks so much and is so brilliant, and there is no telling what other poets or artists coming over and beginning to talk about things that interest them. Miss Lydia getting up and going to put classical music on the record player and the sunlight pouring in the leaded-glass windows of the doors out to the balcony. Red geraniums in pots without a single yellow leaf. Their voices rising with excitement. Oh, the good old days.) Anyway, here they were in Maine and Miss Crystal down to virgin whiskey sours and Miss Lydia down on her luck so much she has to have a fling with Alan, and they have made up. Thank goodness. “You have got to paint on a grander scale.” Miss Crystal is taking over the conversation. It sounds like she might have slipped a small amount of whiskey into her drink. “You can paint the human face better than anyone working in the United States, maybe the world, so go for it. The next time you get a portrait commission tell them twice the price and you'll stretch a canvas the size of Whistler's ladies at the Frick. Tell them twenty thousand dollars and they can be the subject of your masterpiece.” Miss Lydia chuckles. I guess she is thinking about the secret project she has going over the garage. I had a peek at it when I went out there to take supplies but she made me swear not to look again or tell. Oh, it is going to be so fine.

“I'll do it,” she's saying. “They'll go for it. The bourgeoisie. Jesus, Crystal, they're so pitiful. They dream of art. They want what I can do. Don't let me get discouraged. Don't let me forget.”

Finally, Mr. Daniel Hand called at ten one morning from Tennant's Harbor and said they were on their way, tell them the directions. Fifteen minutes later they were pulling up in the driveway. They were in a convertible. Mr. Daniel in the back and the girls up front, the dark-haired one was driving. The blond one got out and King scooped her up into his arms and kissed her while everybody watched. If this was the beginning of keeping his hands off her it was a strange beginning. Mr. Daniel pretended not to notice and began unloading luggage from the trunk. They must have brought everything they owned. It took three of us to carry in the luggage.

“This is Jessie, Traceleen,” King said to me, handing her over. “This is the girl I love. And this is her sister, Olivia. They're the same age.”

“We had different mothers,” the dark-haired one said. She was looking right at me. Ready to take on the world. “If you can wrap your mind around that one,” she added. “Well, now we're here. We were going to go to Switzerland but Jessie had to see her boyfriend. We're glad we came.”

“This is my niece, Andria,” I answered. “She will show you around the place. And this is Crystal Anne.” Andria stuck out her hand and Crystal Anne moved in close to see her long-lost cousin. “Are you really a Cherokee Indian?” she asked. “I think that is the greatest.”

“Some days more than others,” Olivia answered. “It depends on the positions of the planets.” I was taken aback by that. I am not accustomed to young people talking like they know the world. This was a strange young girl for sure and would add spice to our summer.

Then the young people put on tennis clothes and spent the afternoon playing tennis games. Crystal Anne was so excited. She almost ran herself to death carrying Cokes and Gatorade out from the kitchen. I caught hold of her one time and hugged her to me, her little sweaty body was like trying to hold a hummingbird. “What's happening out there? Who's beating who? Who's winning the games?”

“King and Jessie are playing Andria and Olivia. It's the third set. King has to serve with his right hand because he's a pitcher and it wouldn't be fair and I'm the scorekeeper. Andria and Olivia won one set and King and Jessie won one. Now they're in the third set. It might take a tiebreaker. It's five-five. Let me go, Traceleen. I have to get back.” She flew down the stairs, her hands full of Coca-Cola bottles, a bird on the wing. I'm as bad about her as Miss Crystal is about King.

That afternoon, the afternoon the Hands arrived, was as nice as it could be. Crystal and Lydia and Mr. Hand sat on yard chairs watching the tennis match. The young people played until they were exhausted. King and Jessie won in the end. Even right-handed, King could serve better than the others could. Then the young people went in to take off their wet clothes and change to go have a bonfire on the beach. And the grown people began to play. They kept coming in trying to drag me out but I wouldn't play. I am going to have my own standards about how I live in Maine and that is that. “I am the cook,” I told them. “Not the tennis star. You can have the tennis court,” I added, when they insisted. “I will take the kitchen.”

I want to stop a minute and tell you about this kitchen. It is the most unusual one I have ever seen. The original kitchen was in a separate house so they wouldn't burn the house down when all the cooking had to be done on wood-burning stoves. This new kitchen was made out of a downstairs bedroom and stairwell and hall. It has several different ceiling heights and a large brick fireplace with the bricks stripped down that takes up most of one wall. There is a cozy breakfast room with a big wooden table and heavy chairs and there is a little organ that children can play. Every morning someone would play some notes while breakfast was going on. Just look over and remember the organ was there and sit down and play half a song or part of a song.

But the main thing was the cabinets. One summer Miss Noel had been all alone up there and she decided to make a work of art out of her kitchen. She took all the doors off the cabinets and painted the insides beautiful colors. Blue, yellow, pink, red, orange, green, even chartreuse. A dark burgundy was in one, in another the deepest purple. When the sun was shining in the old wavy glass windows and lighting up the cabinets you knew you were cooking with art. I have been wanting to do that for my own house ever since I got home but I haven't found the time to do it.

Inside the cabinets was an assortment of dishes for breakfast and lunch. Many different kinds of glasses and cups and bowls. The nicer things were in the dining room. We used the nicer things a few times but mostly we would end up eating in the breakfast room with everyone walking around looking in the painted cabinets and picking out their special cups and glasses. I got attached to a blue drinking glass with a painted plate to match. For cereal I had a red bowl with a flower on the bottom. There were a number of things about this summer that seemed to make children of us all.

Jessie and Andria liked each other right away but the same wasn't true of Andria and Olivia. They had a standoff. To begin with, Olivia had hardly ever seen a black person in her life until she started coming to North Carolina.

“She's from Oklahoma,” Miss Crystal told me. “She says there isn't a black girl her age in the whole town of Tahlequah. She just needs to warm up to Andria.”

“Andria doesn't wait for any warming up. She's got that bad temper, and if she gets mad at Olivia she'll stay mad. We have enough going on around here without there being a feud among the young people.”

“Don't worry,” Crystal said. “Just wait. They'll like each other. They have to. Who else do they have to talk to?”

She was right. Jessie and King were paired off and Crystal Anne was Andria's slave. If Olivia wanted a friend she would have to come to Andria.

It didn't happen for three days. Then it happened in the strangest way. They got on this diet together. One morning about three days after the Hands arrived Olivia came down to the kitchen and announced she was going on a grapefruit diet.

“I can't look at myself in a bathing suit,” she said. “I look so terrible I can't stand it. I'm getting the fat off my hips before I show my body on that beach again. This will do it.”

“What kind of diet are you going on?” Andria shoved the plate of bacon and eggs I had prepared for her away and got up and walked around the table to where Olivia was reading a diet out of a
Seventeen
magazine.

“It's this article about diets women used to go on that aren't good for you. Listen to this. ‘The grapefruit diet was popular in the fifties. Women would eat nothing but grapefruit and eggs for four days, then nothing but grapefruit and eggs and one banana for three days, then back to grapefruit and boiled eggs!' I've heard of it before. My Aunt Lily went on it once, She lost twenty pounds in two weeks.”