A Live Coal in the Sea

by Madeleine L'engle

  —I came close to swooning myself, she thought,—until last night.

  He led her past the church, the Church House, down a side street to a coffeehouse which catered to faculty and townspeople, rather than students. He opened the door and as she stepped in she saw several groups of older women, and a table with faculty, including Dr. Grange’s wife. Instinctively she pulled back.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Mac, I’d rather not go in here—’

  ‘Okay.’ He led her out, looked at her, raising his eyebrows.

  She tried to laugh, gesturing back toward the table. ‘Professor Grange’s wife was there—’

  ‘And you’d rather not see her?’

  She nodded. ‘I know it has nothing to do with her—’

  ‘Sure, it’s understandable. Let’s go back to the Church House, then. There’ll be coffee and maybe some cookies. People may come barging in, but it shouldn’t be overly busy at this time of day.’

  They went into the room where they had been the night before. He settled her in a sagging chair. All the chairs sagged. The room smelled of basement mustiness, overlaid by steam heat. ‘I’ll be right back with coffee. What do you have in yours?’

  ‘Milk, if possible.’

  ‘Is possible. We have an ancient fridge for milk and Cokes and stuff.’ He left the room, walking with an easy lope, and returned with two blue-and-white mugs. ‘I hope you like it strong.’

  Strong? It tasted as though it had been boiling all night. ‘Sure. Thanks.’

  ‘Camilla.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Camilla what?’

  ‘Dickinson.’

  ‘I’m Macarios Xanthakos.’ He laughed. ‘We didn’t introduce ourselves properly last night. My grandfather was a Greek immigrant, a peddler who ended up doing moderately well for himself.’ He stopped, and something dark clouded his face. ‘My mother’s from Charleston, South Carolina, one of those rare birds. There’s nothing like a Charlestonian. How about your parents?’

  ‘Oh, they’re Easterners. Nothing special. My father’s an architect. When we came back from Italy when it was time for me to start college, he joined a firm in Chicago. It still gives me a thrill when a building is going up to see a sign reading RAFFERTY DICKINSON, ARCHITECT.’

  ‘What’s he like?’

  ‘Tall.’ Mac winced slightly, but her eyes were half closed and she did not see. ‘Strong. I used to think he was like Atlas, holding up the world. You know that statue in Rockefeller Center?’

  Mac grinned. ‘With one foot slipping.’

  ‘I used to worry that Father’s foot would slip and the world would fall. Every time I went past that statue I’d beg him not to slip, not to let it go.’

  Mac said, ‘He’s still holding on.’

  ‘Um. My father’s a good man. Thoughtful. Whenever I was home from school he’d take me to museums, talk to me as though I could understand all about art and architecture. He’s—rather Anglo-Saxon, I suppose, not overtly affectionate. Not cuddly.’

  ‘Passionate?’

  ‘I suspect so. But with one’s parents one doesn’t tend to think about that part of their lives—unless one’s mother’s proclivities force one to do so—’

  ‘Have you talked to anyone about this?’ His voice was tentative. ‘I mean a therapist, or—’

  ‘Her psychiatrist. I think he wanted to see things from my point of view. My point of view is that my mother is a tramp, a high-class tramp, but a tramp. I could forget about it when I was away at school and remember the good things about her, about both my parents—’

  ‘And?’

  ‘I loved—love—them both, and I get angry with them both. My father somehow couldn’t give my mother the—the little pettings that she needed. He couldn’t fill some vast hole in her that needed to be stuffed with reassurance.’ She was surprised at her words. She had never talked to anybody about her parents in this blatant way. Not to Luisa, who never stopped probing. Not to anybody.

  ‘And you?’

  ‘What about me?’

  ‘Do you have a vast, unfilled hole, too?’

  She paused. Then, ‘I don’t think so, not more than the normal holes we all have.’

  ‘Yeah, you’re right.’ His voice suddenly went bleak. ‘We all do, don’t we?’

  Before she could wonder what his hole was, she heard the clicking of high heels and two young women came in, dangling empty mugs. ‘Any more famous Greek coffee left? Or did you finish it?’

  ‘Half a pot at least,’ Mac said. ‘Help yourselves.’

  Camilla rose. ‘I’ve got a paper to write. I’d better get back.’

  Mac glanced at the two women as they went on through to the kitchen. Then he turned back to Camilla. ‘Do you have a class with Grange tomorrow?’

  ‘Friday.’

  ‘Okay, I’ll pick you up afterwards—unless you have something else on.’

  ‘No. Friday would be fine. Thanks for the coffee.’

  He walked her back to the dorm. ‘Is college being good for you?’

  ‘Very good. Much better than that Italian boarding school. I like my classes, and being challenged academically, and I have friends, good friends.’

  ‘People you can talk to?’

  ‘About ideas. Politics. Art.’

  ‘About Grange?’

  She shook her head, tried to smile. ‘Most of my friends think my mother’s terrific, and I’d just as soon not tarnish that image. She’s truly beautiful, all blond and blue and golden and sunny. A lot of artists have painted her, trying to catch the light.’

  ‘You’re beautiful yourself. I’m partial to people who are moonlit and starlit.’

  ‘Thanks. That’s nice, really nice. I don’t have an ugly-duckling complex. But compared to my mother … But you know, I don’t think I want to be that kind of beautiful, so that you’re terrified of losing it. Her dressing table’s crowded with all kinds of lotions and creams, and little ivory rollers for wrinkles, and whatever’s the latest to keep people looking young.’

  ‘Does it matter to your father?’ he asked. ‘That she keep looking young and beautiful?’

  ‘He loves her beauty. I think she still dazzles him. She was a child bride, nineteen, my age, when she married Father, twenty when she had me, so she’s only thirty-eight …’

  ‘And your father?’

  ‘Oh, older. He’s forty-seven. I don’t know why he keeps on loving her, except that she’s so beautiful and so insecure. Why is she so insecure? I know my father loves me, but he’s always trying to put the marriage back together, and he tried to protect me from Mother’s—from her infidelities. I love him, but I’m hardly ever home. Listen, I’ve been blabbering on and on about me, which is something I don’t do.’

  ‘I like your blabbering,’ he said. ‘Next time I’ll blabber, too. See you Friday.’

  They had reached her dorm. For once the vestibule was empty. He kissed her.

  She went to her room. Luisa’s door was closed. No one stopped her. She sat at her desk but did not reach for her books. She felt suddenly happy. A strange, unfamiliar feeling.

  Wonderful.

  Wonderful, and not to be defined.

  What is happy?

  How often had Taxi said, ‘I just want to be happy, Mom.’

  —I am moderately content, Camilla thought,—but I’m no longer sure what being happy means. Did I really know, all those decades ago when I first met Mac? Is happiness only for the very young? Maybe being content is enough.

  She looked out her bedroom window, away from the lake, at the familiar campus. It was still early enough for lights to be on in most of the buildings, for students to be crossing and crisscrossing the ice-dark, paths, still looking very much as they had looked when Camilla was an undergraduate.

  Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

  Maybe.

  The phone rang, and she turned back to the bed table, heard her daughter-in-law’s voice. “Thessaly!”

 
; “Mom, I hope this isn’t too late.”

  “Of course not. I’ve just come upstairs. How are you?”

  “Oh, fine. There was a movie I thought I might like to see tonight, and I missed being able to call and suggest that we go together.”

  “I miss that, too. Is something wrong?”

  “Oh, no, not really. Taxi isn’t happy, I mean more so than his usual state of not being happy. He upset Raffi. Did she tell you?”

  “About Red Grange? Yes.”

  “I don’t understand what got into him. I just wanted to say—well—Raffi—”

  Camilla sat on the edge of the bed, holding the phone between ear and shoulder. “I’m going to tell her.”

  “Oh, good.” There was a long-drawn-out sigh on the other end of the line. “We should have, long ago, shouldn’t we? But Taxi—”

  Camilla’s voice was tired. “We’re doing the best we can, under the circumstances.”

  Thessaly sighed again. “That’s all we can do, isn’t it? Mom, I miss you.”

  “I miss you, too, Thessaly. Maybe during spring break, when the weather’s more clement, I can come in for a few days and we’ll see some shows.”

  “Like old days. Let’s.”

  “And Thessaly—if there’s anything—call me, will you?”

  “I will. Of course. I always do. Thanks, Mom.”

  She said good night to Thessaly and got ready for bed. So Taxi wasn’t happy. Why now?

  Happy. Camilla’s heart lurched with happiness when she saw Mac sitting in the back row of Professor Grange’s class on Friday.

  ‘I turned up the heat in the kids’ room,’ he said, taking her books from her, ‘so let’s just go over to the Church House, okay?’

  ‘Sure.’ As they walked along the path to the blue door she asked, ‘Tell me about you. Are you a student?’

  ‘No, I was ordained last spring. I’m assistant minister here at the church.’

  ‘Oh.’ She knew nothing about ministers from personal experience. When they were in the ‘kids’ room’ she regarded him suspiciously, sitting there benignly, looking, with his legs in lotus position, vaguely Oriental, like a Greek Buddha, if there could be such a thing.

  ‘You’re paid to listen to college students pouring their hearts out?’ She felt indignant, betrayed.

  ‘No, Camilla, I am not. I’ve had no training in therapy, or pastoral counseling. My job is to take care of the Sunday school and run an evening program for the teenagers.’

  Torn between anger and curiosity she asked, ‘Do you know the Grange kid?’

  ‘The younger one, Noelle. Is she related to your professor?’

  ‘His daughter. Is there another?’

  ‘An older brother, Andrew. He’s in college, so he’s about your age. A gentle stutterer with flaming red hair. When he’s around he comes to the youth group with Noelle. What are you, by the way, a sophomore?’

  ‘A senior. I suppose I’ll go on for an advanced degree.’

  ‘In what?’

  ‘I have a double major, astronomy and physics. In that area.’

  ‘How often does your mother come up here?’

  ‘It seems like all the time. Maybe it’s two or three times a year. I’m like Father. I keep forgiving her. I suppose you’ll tell me that’s what I’m supposed to do, forgive?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re supposed to do, Camilla. I don’t think you’re supposed to let it destroy your own life.’

  ‘It won’t. You’re just seeing me when she’s been here and been—been destructive—encroaching—and I’m feeling vulnerable. Damn. I don’t want to cry.’ She reached for a box of tissues on the table by her chair and blew her nose. A lot of students probably came into this room to weep on Mac’s shoulder. ‘It’s nice of you to keep Kleenex handy. Do you get lots of people coming in here and unburdening themselves?’

  ‘I told you. I work with the kids. Some of them have problems, sure. But the tissues are there because I had a cold last week, and half the kids have perpetual sniffles. What’s come over you, Camilla, suddenly going all hard like this?’

  ‘I don’t talk this way, throwing myself all over someone. I’m sorry. I don’t know what got into me.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. You’ve been being real, being who you are, with no brittle sophistication.’

  ‘You’re being very kind. I’m not accustomed to—Thank you.’

  ‘Do you know that you have sea-colored eyes? Not Homer’s “wine-dark sea” eyes, but after all, Homer was blind. Not blue, not grey, not green, but like the sea, deep, changing. You’re someone I’d like to get to know. Most of the time I’m surrounded by little kids and early adolescents.’

  She blew her nose. ‘Is that all you do? Kids?’

  ‘I also, when my boss is away, baptize, marry, bury, and most important of all to me, I celebrate what my tutor in Oxford called the Holy Mysteries. I hold the bread and wine in these ordinary hands, and I offer you the Creator of the Universe.’

  ‘So what do you think about the creation of the universe?’

  ‘I don’t think it was made in seven earth-days, if that’s what you’re worried about. From what we know now, it would seem that long before time started, or anything else, a tiny, sub-atomic particle opened up to become all the galaxies in the universe, so we’re all made of the same substance as stars.’

  She looked at him wonderingly. ‘You’re not at all my idea of a minister.’

  ‘Or priest?’

  ‘You’re Catholic?’

  ‘Episcopalian, and I most certainly do not plan to be celibate.’

  She smiled. ‘I don’t think the nuns in my Italian convent had even heard of Episcopalians. It was made clear to me that since I wasn’t Catholic I was an outsider. I sat in a classroom and studied math while the others went to Mass.’

  ‘Why on earth did your parents send you there?’

  ‘The school was famous for languages. My parents were so preoccupied with their own problems they just wanted to dump me somewhere safe so they wouldn’t have to worry about me. It was okay. I did learn languages.’

  ‘Are you bitter?’

  She looked at him. ‘What’s the point?’

  Mac’s eyes met hers. ‘I don’t think any of us escape bitterness entirely.’ He looked away. His mouth was closed in a very straight line.

  They saw each other at least two or three times a week, sometimes going to a movie, or a concert, discovering that they loved the same kind of music, music which had an affirmative structure in a world becoming daily more structureless. They loved Dvořák’s Trios, Fauré’s Requiem, Vaughan Williams’s Hodie. She began helping him out on Sunday evenings with his group of kids, learning to cook vast quantities of spaghetti, setting out bowls of salad and platters heaped with cookies which various parents had provided. She did not go to church, feeling that that would be totally hypocritical, nor did he ever suggest it.

  In early March the temperature suddenly soared.

  ‘It’s much too early for spring,’ Mac said, ‘but let’s take advantage of it. If you don’t mind a bit of a tramp, I know a place across the river where they won’t mind if we just sit and drink a cup of coffee. Or tea, if you’d rather.’

  ‘For a change,’ she murmured, her arm in his.

  The trees were delicately laced against the sky, no sign yet of the softening of buds. But the breeze was not cold, and they walked along in companionable rhythm.

  ‘You make me happy,’ Mac said.

  She leaned into him. He was half a head shorter than she was, yet their bodies seemed to meld together.

  The road led through a young woods. ‘This would be a great day for a tree house,’ Mac said. ‘Did you ever have a tree house when you were a kid?’

  ‘I grew up in New York,’ she reminded him.

  ‘Poor, underprivileged kid. I had a tree house in the woods behind the rectory in Nashville. It was the place I could go to when I was upset, or confused, or angry. Did you have an escape route?�
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  ‘When I grew older, I mean when I didn’t have to go out with a nurse or governess, I used to go to the Metropolitan Museum, because it was close to home.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, Camilla, how different we were! And yet in many ways we’ve come out into the same place in our thinking, our concern for the kids, for peace. Someday I want to show you my tree house. My friend T.J. and I built it. We met in first grade and were real best friends until he died.’ He was silent then, so silent that it seemed the woods around them were quieter. Then a truck roared by, breaking the stillness.

  ‘I’m sorry. What happened?’ She spoke in almost a whisper.

  ‘Leukemia. T.J.’s family lived in a sort of shack across the railroad tracks—wrong side, of course. They didn’t know what to do, and basically there wasn’t much to do. There are more treatments now. Then—they just let him die, inch by inch. In the summer when it got too hot they put his cot out on the sagging porch. I stayed with him, read to him, talked. My parents were wonderful, understanding that T.J. needed me, to get his medications, to see that he took them. Mama brought us food, quietly, never intruding on T.J.’s family. But they just took it all for granted, her help, my being there. They didn’t know what to do, so they just didn’t do anything. His parents stood there and endured. Cissie, his sister, was sorry, but she didn’t know what to do and she was off on a succession of dates, getting away from it.’ He shuddered. ‘It went on for a little over a year. Then, one summer night when the mercury never got below body temperature, he died.’ Mac turned off the road, toward a white clapboarded green-shuttered inn. ‘Here we are.’

  She followed him into the building, into an empty dining room, where they were seated at a small table with a freshly ironed pink tablecloth. Mac ordered tea, his voice distant, controlled.

  ‘Mac. I’m sorry. How awful for you.’

  ‘That’s life,’ he said. ‘Death. It’s the result of life, isn’t it? You can’t have death where there hasn’t been life. There was a funeral. People pitched together and paid for the stone: THOMAS JAMES JENSEN, and his dates. I went back to school in the autumn. But I was out of step with everybody. I’d spent all my time with T.J. I did all right academically, but I couldn’t relate to the other kids. I suppose I was grieving, and grief is embarrassing.’