I Cannot Get You Close Enough (30 page)

“How much do you want to lose?” I put in.

“Only ten,” she said.

“Oh, my God,” Jessie said. “If you lost ten pounds you'd look like a starving orphan or a refugee. Don't go on a diet, Olivia. That's no fun. You look just fine.”

“I'm going on it too,” Andria said. “I bet I've gained a thousand pounds since I've been here.”

“I want to go too,” Crystal Anne put in. “I'm getting fat.” She pinched up a tiny bit of skin from her midriff and showed it around. “Look at this fat.”

“If I catch you going on a grapefruit diet I'll skin you alive,” I said. I had singled out Crystal Anne because it was clear there was no reasoning with Andria and Olivia. Andria shoved her breakfast away and she and Olivia drank a glass of grapefruit juice instead. Then they borrowed the Peugeot and went into town to get what they needed for their diet. By the time they returned they were fast friends. They brought their grapefruits and extra-large eggs into the kitchen and began to make their pitiful little lunch, chattering away about things they thought. After that they were inseparable.

Crystal Anne stuck to them like glue. Everywhere they went she wanted to go there. Since Andria's main job was to keep Crystal Anne out of Miss Crystal's hair, it looked like everything was turning out fine.

Miss Crystal also brightened up after the Hands' arrival. I suppose it made her feel good to have Daniel Hand worshipping her when it was obvious Miss Lydia had a crush on him. I guess that made up for the rivalry over you-know who. Also, Mr. Manny was calling quite frequently and sent several dozen roses on their anniversary.

“This isn't your wedding anniversary,” Miss Lydia said, when the roses came. “You got married in September.”

“It's the anniversary of the day we met. I was visiting a friend in Cleveland, Mississippi, and Manny came there to try a case and came over to have a drink with my friend's husband. I came wandering into the kitchen in a dressing robe looking for a light for a cigarette and he walked out from behind a screen and lit it. So we fell in love.”

“He said she had the prettiest hair he had ever seen in his life,” Crystal Anne put in. “He said if he could have a little girl with hair like that he would never ask for another thing.”

“So he got you,” I said, and hugged her. What a wonderful little girl she is. I cannot believe Miss Crystal pays so little attention to her when she is such a fine smart little girl. Not that Miss Crystal is ever mean to her or lets her be neglected. She just doesn't seem to know she's there half the time.

“Are you going to call Daddy to thank him?” Crystal Anne asked.

“Yes. I'll call him now.”

“Good, then I can talk to him. I miss him so much. I hate to think he's missing all this fun.”

“I'll talk to him,” Daniel said. “I'll tell him I need another man around this place.”

So they put in the call but Mr. Manny was somewhere in Colorado conferring with his client in his million-dollar case and afterward Miss Crystal and Mr. Daniel went off for a walk and I played Monopoly with Crystal Anne. She was the banker and kept trying to sell me hotels and houses at cut rates. Also, she always puts hotels on her utilities and railroads and I never tell her not to. We have our own rules.

“You better buy another hotel,” she would say, her little precious brow wrinkled over her banking operation.

“I don't have a hundred dollars,” I'd reply.

“How much do you have?”

“I have twenty-two.”

“Okay, then I'll sell you one for twenty-two. You want to buy one for twenty-two?”

“Sure I do, honey. Twenty-two sounds good.” Then she would pick out a fine red hotel and set it down on my property and take in two tens and two ones and we would go on with our game. By the time Crystal and Daniel came back from the beach we had every house and hotel in the set on the board.

“Let me cook supper,” Mr. Daniel said.

“What can you cook?” Miss Crystal asked.

“Anything you want. But I think I'll grill some steaks.”

“They're in the freezer,” I put in. “Get them out.”

“I'll watch you cook,” Crystal said. “If you're good you can stay on regular. If not, back to Traceleen and me.”

“He's good,” Jessie put in. She had come to stand at the door. “He always cooks for me. He makes fettucine or tomato pie, don't you, Dad?” She walked across the room and took an apron off a peg and began to help him unwrap the steaks.

“I've got to marinate them,” he said. “This may take a while. Fix me a drink, sugar. We'll show these folks how to put a meal on a table.” He was clearing off a space on the counter, taking over the kitchen like a four-star general. Jessie started boiling water to make the tea. Crystal Anne and I put away our Monopoly set and began to set the table. This is the sort of evening that I cherish, when no one has a thing to fight about and are working together toward a goal. King joined us and started getting out the double boiler for the asparagus. “Get that on the back burner,” Mr. Daniel yelled. “Now don't go eating a lot of bread and crackers. I want hungry people when these steaks are done.”

“I don't eat steak,” Miss Lydia said. “But I can boil some eggs.”

“You'll eat this,” Mr. Daniel answered, sprinkling pepper into the marinade. “Get out of my way, little daughters. Your father is about to show his stuff.”

Later that evening, after we had eaten and cleaned up our mess, Daniel and Miss Crystal and Lydia sat out on the porch for many hours, talking and listening to the shortwave radio. I went on up to bed about eleven-thirty. I don't know what happened after that.

6

LYDIA So they are here at last. Daniel and his daughters. They look like people Blake would paint. There I go again, angelizing Daniel. Well, I can't help it. That kind of physical beauty drives me mad, I'm a painter, I'm supposed to believe in beauty. Daniel is more than beautiful. He is good. That kind of grace can only come from goodness; Jessie has it too. She is the single most beautiful young girl I have ever seen in my life. Skin like alabaster or cream or snow. She has softened since I saw her last, the moxie isn't as apparent. I guess she's pulled it in for love. Women do that, go all soft and mushy when they're weaving a spell. There's a metaphor for you. All the ancient stuff is still the best, ancient paintings, language, music from when the world was young. That's why I'm a realist. I see the thrill of cubist painting and the clean thrust of the abstractionists but in the end I want the human face and form. After all, it's the highest invention of nature, the most mysterious and complex.

So I am painting Crystal and someday I'll paint Jessie. Every time I see Daniel Hand I think I have always loved this man. God, he tries so hard with those girls. Imagine having that pair to watch out for and guard. Jessie's never really had a mother. I never met Sheila but even Anna hated her and Anna didn't hate anyone. She thought people were interesting or funny. Once she said to me, “I think I have lost every passionate response to people, Lydia, they amaze me in their diversity and need. I want to document them and give them meaning. I want to stop laughing at them but I can't because it's all so comic and so funny. Sometimes I wake from dreams and laugh at my own behavior, laugh out loud at everything I do. Listen, I think consciousness may only be a way to escape from dreaming and this idea that consciousness is a curse may be the silliest idea of all. Why are we so glad to wake? We are always glad to wake from sleep. We crave the light and the dazzling light-filled dramas of our days. It's night we hate and the caverns of our dreams. Helen used to dream she left one of her babies at the grocery store. She almost ground her teeth to powder dreaming mothering dreams. We had to take her to a psychiatrist to cure her of thinking she was making mistakes about her babies
while she slept.”

Daniel's girls look alike. I can't put my finger on it though I might be able to paint it. Jessie is taller and blonder but there's a look they have, that goddamn Hand/Manning thing they all inherit.

Crystal Anne will have three grown girls to ape this summer. It will be good to get her away from her attachment to Traceleen. She is Traceleen's child, as everybody knows. Crystal was so sick after Crystal Anne's birth and Traceleen nursed her for the first few months of her life. She imprinted on her, they all say that, as if it were a joke. Well, you couldn't find a sweeter stronger soul to have for an imprintee. Nobility, that's the word you come back to where Traceleen is concerned. She's so Zen. She goes off fishing with that Zen look on her face and she cooks with it and she always tells the truth. I hope she has stopped being mad at me. I know I'm not perfect. And I couldn't help that thing with Alan. It was not my fault. It absolutely was not my fault.

I dreamed the other night that King turned into Parsifal. The afternoon before I found a copy of
The Dancing Wu Li Masters
on top of his gun case and I thought, There is hope yet. He made a descent into cocaine hell and Traceleen and Crystal and Manny and Crystal Anne dragged him back into the world. If I was one of the old painters I might paint them lined up at the abyss dragging King back into the world. I wish we still painted things like that.

I want to learn to paint the night sky. There was a meteor shower the other night. Daniel and I stretched out on lawn chairs from twelve to two-thirty scanning the skies, watching the shooting stars. “Is it complicated to love another person, or simple?” I asked him.

“Both,” he answered.

“Are you in love with Crystal?”

“No. I just want to take care of my girls. I've got more work than I can do, Lydia. I've got creditors breathing down my neck. If I don't get some breaks soon, I'll have to go into bankruptcy. The bastards are after us. It's tough to run a business now.”

“You spend too much money.”

“It isn't that. It's not being able to make it. Well, I've got a few things in the pot. I've got a couple of new franchises that may help. We'll see.”

“You really have to leave tomorrow?” I was turned all the way around on the yard chair, facing him. I had on my purple silk harem pants and a pair of thong sandals. My best white silk blouse. It was only starlight, but he could see how great I looked if only he had looked. He wasn't looking. I couldn't believe I was lying on a yard chair beside this good-looking man and he wasn't going to make a pass at me.

“I've got to go back to Charlotte in a day or two,” he said. “Take care of my girls for me, won't you? Keep an eye on them.”

Two days later he left. I adore him even if he won't fall in love with me. Where did I go wrong? Why, when I was young and had it all going for me, didn't I latch on to someone like Daniel? Because when they are young the Daniels of the world are silly and gawky. The higher the intelligence the slower the rate of maturation. Not that Daniel has ever considered himself to be intelligent. He thinks he's dumb because he doesn't like to read. Oh, well, I wish I wouldn't start idealizing Daniel Hand. He's got his faults like everybody else. You can see them writ large in both those girls. The strange mixture of bravado and shyness in Jessie. The drive and ambition and self-doubt of Olivia.

7

JESSIE I love King because when I'm with him there isn't any need for anything else. If he's there then I'm happy and that is that. None of them understand that. They think just because he was fucked up last year that I shouldn't love him. Well, Dad was fucked up when he was young and so is everybody else. If I look at King's shoulders or when he kisses me, that is that. I think Olivia is jealous. She'd give anything to have him or anybody. She is the most boy-crazy girl I ever saw only she won't admit it. She covers it up with trying to be smarter than everyone else. Well, there's nothing I can do about it, Dad wants her to live with us and I was the one that told him to. Aunt Anna started all that. She loved me best though. I know that. Because I didn't love her because she was famous or anything like that. I just liked to go around to wherever she lived. I remember when we used to go visit her apartment in New York. We would go to Bloomingdale's and get clothes. Once I got these leather boots that were so beautiful and I got some plaid skirts and sweaters there. We went to see opera and ballet. Not like the Charlotte ballet, but where no one makes a single mistake. She would understand about King and me. She gave up anything for love. She told me that. And she didn't mind if she had to be sad in the end. How could she get cancer? How could anyone that beautiful have to die? I can't think about her drowning herself. It's all Olivia thinks about. Olivia says she is Aunt Anna's spiritual daughter. She told Andria that the other day.

Oh, never mind all that. I am here and I can see King every day. We went out the other night and sat in the car for three hours. I could hold him in my arms forever and I want to do it as much as he does. We are going to. Dad can't tell me what to do with my own body.

ANDRIA If anybody's keeping a vow not to fuck around here I'd like to know who it is. I'm really sick of them holding on to each other all the time. It's about like high school or junior high. I'll tell you what it reminds me of. It reminds me of this play we saw in Montgomery where this fairy kept sprinkling lily juice on these people and whoever he sprinkled it on when they woke up they fell in love with the next person they saw. Two of them were sprinkling it. This guy, Puck, and this other man, the king of the fairies.

I told Olivia about it and she said, “Oh, I read that play.” Which was an outright lie because a few hours later I found her with a book she got out of the library reading it. “He's really called Robin Goodfellow,” she goes.

“Who is?”

“The one sprinkling the magic potion from the flower.”