I Cannot Get You Close Enough (32 page)

“What?” we go. “What's it about?”

“Aunt Anna is definitely in Switzerland with this doctor she loves. He is trying this desperate cure. They take her blood out and put it in a machine and then they inject it back in and she has to sleep for many days. It's so experimental only the strongest people with the strongest genes can even try it. If it works they might win the Nobel prize for their work. She is in love with him and he is in love with her. He is this great scientist that used to treat children with cancer and there is this other doctor with them. A Chinese doctor. She wrote to me again. She couldn't bear for me to think she was dead because she knew I was depending on her to love me. It is driving me crazy to keep this secret.” Then she starts crying and Crystal Anne goes over to her and starts rubbing her back with her darling little hands and patting her.

“You can't ever tell a soul,” Olivia says. “This is the greatest secret of my life. Don't talk about it, even to me. Well, now you know.”

“Why would they keep it a secret?” I say. “People get cured from cancer all the time. They don't have to go off to Switzerland and pretend they're dead.”

“You don't understand,” Olivia goes. “It's against the law to try this stuff. What they are doing is so dangerous and terrible. Only Aunt Anna would try it. If it works on her it could save other lives. You see, what she had might be hereditary. We might all get it, so she has to find a cure to save everyone who is kin to her. At any time it could break out in Jessie or in me or Aunt Helen or Aunt Louise or Dad or anybody in the Hand family.”

“In me?” Crystal Anne says. “I'm your cousin.”

“No, you're too far away. It can only be a niece or someone. Wait a minute, let me see.” Olivia stopped crying and starts rubbing her head with her hands. “Your grandmother and my grandmother are sisters but you couldn't have this gene because it's a Hand gene. It is only passed down in people related to the Hands.”

“Don't tell Crystal Anne all that stuff,” I say. “If you got a letter from your aunt, let us see it.” She ignored that. She got up and started pacing around and talking real fast like she does when she's lying.

“My Indian blood can probably fight off the disease. The one I'm really worried about is Jessie. She's left-handed, remember, and so was Aunt Anna.”

“Let's see the letter,” I said.

“The main thing to worry about is finding a cure before anybody else gets it. That's why this has to be a secret. They would stop what Aunt Anna's doing. The government doesn't let you experiment on yourself.”

Crystal Anne is being very quiet and has come over to stand by me. All I can think is that Aunt Traceleen will kill me if I let her get any weird ideas about she's going to get a disease.

“Shut up, Olivia,” I say. “That's all I want to hear about you thinking you get letters from a dead lady.”

“I'm going to tell Dad,” Crystal Anne says. “He can ask our friend Lake who's a doctor.” She was hanging her head. She wouldn't look at Olivia or at me.

“You don't need to ask anyone,” Olivia said. “You're a Connell and a Manning and a Weiss. This doesn't have anything do with you. I shouldn't have told you anyway, but you have to keep it secret.”

“We're going to get our perms tomorrow,” I say. I was playing into Olivia's bullshit but what was I to do. If Aunt Traceleen knew I'd let Crystal Anne listen to all Olivia's shit she'd jump all over me. Aunt Traceleen doesn't float around on a cloud in my head. Aunt Traceleen is real. “We're going to do body waves,” I went on, pulling Crystal Anne over close to me and hugging her. “You want to get your body wave, don't you?”

“Yes.”

“Then don't tell anybody about our secrets out here. If you tell we won't let you in our clubs anymore.”

“I should tell my dad,” she says. “He ought to know about this because he is a lawyer.”

“Let's clean up this mess and go up to the house,” Olivia said. “We can't let you come to the meetings, Crystal Anne, unless you can keep the secrets.”

“Okay,” she says, but she isn't looking at us. She's looking at her hands. “I won't tell him then.”

“There's no way you can get it,” Olivia says. “The only ones in danger are the Hands.”

The more I think about all this bullshit the less I believe it. I like sitting out there reading the books and studying how to write. And I like getting to read the letters and poems. It's funny to touch the writing of a real writer and see their name on the bottom of letters all about regular stuff they write their friends. But this stuff Olivia says is total bullshit. Still, it's a job. I have two thousand dollars saved already and they'll probably all give me some tips when the summer's over. You don't have to give a fuck about being black if you don't want to. You just get your education and get out there and start making it and you're okay. Nobody can stop you if you make your mind up to get what you want. Take the pill, go to school, get a job. I'm pretty horny. I'll admit that. But I can take care of that until the guy I want comes along. Let the rest of them do whatever they want. I'm like a tiger walking along through the forest minding my own business. That's how I see it. I walk along. I stop to drink. I hunt and eat. At night I sleep.

CRYSTAL ANNE First they lit the candles and then they got some incense they bought in town and smoked up the whole boathouse and then Olivia read all the stuff in the stocking bags and Andria read this love stuff out of the books Olivia's aunt wrote. She is supposed to be dead but she isn't dead. She is in Europe or England and Olivia is going to see her soon. But then after we did it twice Olivia goes, Well, we need to get in touch with her spirit so we will do the Ouija board and talk to her. Then Andria said if she isn't dead how come we need to talk to her spirit, we could call her on the phone, and I said, If that's true you ought to tell your daddy because it is his sister and he has a right to know.

“No one gets to know,” Olivia said. I was about to choke to death on this incense. It is called jasmine and we got it at that T-shirt store with glass prisms in the window at the pier at Tennant's Harbor.

I'm sick of reading those old books about love, love, love all the time. I want to read some of the
National Geographic World
magazines Traceleen and I ordered last year when Bobbie Green was selling magazine subscriptions. Dad loves them. He couldn't believe it took Traceleen and me to tell him about some magazines that are so good for children. Well, I am in the ninety-ninth percentile of readers in the United States now anyway. I am reading at the ninth-grade level but Dad says don't brag about it and make anyone feel bad. Some people are just better at reading than others and have more books around to practice on. I have always had all the books I want. Dad takes me down to Maple Street and Miss Faust lets me get all the ones I want and tells me ones to buy. So anyway, I'm sick of always reading these same books every time we have a meeting. Olivia also read some of her poems but they are sadder than her dead aunt's are. I wish we could finish our beach coats instead.

Wednesday night we had our fourth meeting and I told Olivia I wasn't staying if they burned all that jasmine incense again so we burned candles instead. Olivia read some nicer stuff this time. Some stories her aunt wrote that have children in them. Most of the children she writes about are not too happy with their homes or else they fight with their brothers and sisters. I only have King and he is so much older we couldn't have fights. I guess I am just an only child. Olivia and Jessie are too but now they have each other. I think it would be so great to have a lot of children in one house like the Carloses that live down the block. I go there a lot when I'm home. They don't even notice if several other people stay for dinner. They just move over and pour another glass of tea. I might have a lot of children when I grow up. If I ever get married. I don't think I want to live too far away from Mom and Dad.

So Olivia got out the Ouija board again and we sat around this table and tried to get her aunt to make the little piece move. I was so scared I couldn't sleep. I wish Olivia would say whether her aunt is dead or not.

When you go outside and stand on the sand looking up at the stars and it's so dark and there aren't any lights to remind you of human beings to protect you, it is very spooky to do that and then talk to some dead person that might be in the ocean or something.

Traceleen is asking me all kinds of questions about what are we doing in the boathouse and Andria made me swear not to tell her. I don't like to keep secrets from people. It made me feel bad to tell Traceleen we weren't doing anything when we are doing all that stuff at our meetings.

I wrote to Dad and told him about the club. I don't know if I'll mail it or not. I never keep secrets from Dad. I can tell him anything. But I promised them I wouldn't tell, didn't I?

8

TRACELEEN The main love affair of the end of June was between King and Jessie. King had promised Daniel not to lay a hand on her and we were watching that.

Absurd, that's all Miss Lydia would say. She thought they should give Jessie some birth control pills and let nature have its way. Miss Lydia is always wanting to give birth control pills to someone but it turns out she does not take them herself. She depends on the rhythm method of birth control because she does not like to take any substances that interfere with her natural system. She says she wouldn't take an aspirin unless she had a broken leg.

“Then why are you so hot to give hormones to Jessie?” Miss Crystal asked. We were having a conversation one morning at breakfast. The young girls were all within earshot.

“Because I am a grown woman who understands the workings of my body, Crystal. I know how to watch my temperature and use sponges and I know when I ovulate. A young girl can't be expected to give that the attention it takes.”

“I wouldn't trust taking my temperature to keep me from getting pregnant. My God, Lydia, that would scare me to death.”

“The French have been using rhythm for generations and you don't see them being overpopulated. It's a matter of being fastidious.” The girls were all ears now. When she noticed that, Lydia raised her voice. “I have made my stand. Anyone who wants information or help with birth control can come to me.” She got up from the table and took her plate and rinsed it at the sink.

“The best thing is an IUD,” Miss Crystal said. “No, the best thing is tubal ligation.”

“Don't let anybody do it to you is the best thing,” Olivia said. “It doesn't take a genius to know that.” Then Daniel and King wandered in and started wanting someone to feed them and the conversation went off into the other room.

So we were all involved in the love affair and forgot about Andria and Olivia. Crystal Anne had fallen completely under their spell. First it was Andria she copied, then it was Olivia. Olivia has her hair cut real short in a very fashionable way, and Crystal Anne began begging to have hers cut too.

“Why would you go and cut off all your gorgeous hair?” I asked. “Your daddy would have a fit if we cut your hair.”

“It's my hair,” she said. “I'm tired of looking like some little girl. I want a hairstyle.”

Nine years old, and now she wants to be in style. Here is Olivia, who is only a young girl from an Indian reservation, and she is the fashion expert in Maine. She talked Andria into letting her straighten her hair with permanent wave solution and then Andria used the leftover part to put curls in the bangs of Olivia's hairstyle. Andria has enough ideas of her own from being raised in New Orleans. Pretty soon the table in the kitchen was littered with fashion magazines they bought in Rockford.
Mademoiselle, Cosmopolitan, Elle, Seventeen
, the Spiegel catalog. They have set up a sewing club in a little sewing room they found upstairs. It has yellow-and-white wallpaper and all the furniture is painted ivory. There is an old-fashioned table with a Singer sewing machine. Miss Noel's daughter, Andine, lived here once for several months while she got over a nervous breakdown caused by being in the retail clothing business in New York City. To heal herself she set up the sewing room and made clothes for poor children. Some of the designs for her things are still on the wall. They are just lovely with animals appliquéd on them or cars and trucks. There is a design for a pair of overalls with a red truck on the bib that is the cutest thing I've ever seen. Any child would want a pair of those. “What happened to Andine?” I asked. “Where is she now?”

“She married a doctor and moved to Minneapolis. Noel misses her so much.” Miss Crystal and I were up in the sewing room with the girls. They had invited us up to see what they were doing.

“Does she keep in touch?” I asked.

“She talks to her on the phone.”

“We're going to make orange-and-yellow beach coats,” Olivia said. “We're copying them out of
Vogue.”

“Look at the material,” Andria put in. “Isn't that wild?”

“It's perfect,” Miss Crystal said. “It's what I dreamed would happen if we came up here. When I was young we always had projects in the summers. One summer we copied a dress that Audrey Hepburn wore in a movie. She was this chauffeur's daughter that goes to Paris. We made the dress for my cousin Baby Gwen to wear to be sweetheart of K.A. It was a sheath of grosgrain silk with a huge peplum of darker silk, like this.” She took a piece of material from a chair and tied it around her waist. “You can't imagine what a gorgeous dress we made. LeLe and myself and Baby Gwen and Saint John. Now he's a gynecologist. We listened to
Aida
and made that fabulous dress.”

“What color was it?” Olivia asked.

“It was ivory grosgrain silk. The skirt was a shade of gray. We didn't know what color to make it because the movie was black and white.” She held out her arms. The girls drew near. Then they showed us the patterns they had bought for beach robes and caftans. We spread the material they had purchased out on the table and began to pin on a pattern. Then we began to sew. The afternoon wore on into evening. It was six o'clock when we stopped work and went to the kitchen to begin dinner. Jessie and King were coming in from a fishing trip. They had caught some halibut and King was filleting it at the sink.