A Live Coal in the Sea

by Madeleine L'engle

  At her next visit the obstetrician said, ‘You may not realize it, Camilla, but you’re overtired. Stay in bed for a few days, read something relaxing. Forget that such a thing as a vacuum cleaner exists.’

  ‘That’s not hard.’ Camilla laughed. ‘I never remember the vacuum cleaner unless it’s absolutely necessary.’

  Olivia came up from Jacksonville to help out until the doctor allowed Camilla to resume normal activities. She sat on the foot of the big brass bed and said, ‘One thing Art and I can do for you is get someone to come in to do the heavy cleaning. It’s more important for you to be able to drive over to the university than to clean house. We’re going to do everything we can to make sure this baby arrives safely, and at term. Have you told your parents?’

  ‘Not yet. I thought I’d wait until I get a little further along.’

  Olivia looked at her thoughtfully, and Camilla realized that if her mother had been like Olivia she’d have been on the phone immediately.

  ‘You’ll have to have an air conditioner here in the bedroom,’ Olivia decided. ‘Let us do that for you, too. Now. How’s your mother?’

  They could talk about the air conditioner later. ‘Fine. Father says she’s quite big, but that doesn’t bother her, she still thinks it’s all marvelous.’

  ‘I’m glad she’s doing well. All right, love, you nap now. I have a few things to do.’

  Olivia found a young woman who would come and clean the house. She bought and saw to the installation of a window air conditioner, despite their protestations.

  ‘If your mother knew you were pregnant in the Georgia heat she’d be out buying air conditioners first thing. Meanwhile, let Art and me take care of it. Forget your pride. It’s for a good cause. Mac may be used to the heat, but you need to be cool enough to sleep at night.’

  Camilla had been using the sheet only to wipe away the sweat. She could not disagree. The air conditioner blocked the view of the pine tree, which Camilla regretted. But she also knew that she would sleep better at night.

  Again the parish rallied round, bringing baked custard, flowers, a pretty bed jacket, delighted to have a bishop’s wife in Corinth even for a few days, basking in reflected glory, asking Olivia to tea with the Altar Guild, to the Garden Club meeting, hosted by Mrs. Lee’s sister, Alberta Byrd, who did not approve of Camilla’s work in Athens.

  ‘Don’t fret,’ Olivia said. ‘The rector’s wife always gets criticized.’

  When Mac left the house in the morning Camilla and Olivia had long talks, lingering over the milky coffee Olivia brought Camilla with her breakfast.

  Olivia said, ‘I don’t want to talk overmuch about this baby until you feel life and we’re more secure, but we still have Mac’s crib and quite a few other things we’ve been saving for our grandchildren.’

  Camilla stretched luxuriously. ‘I think this baby’s taken. I haven’t had any of the little contractions I had before, and I was a lot more nauseated during the first few weeks, so I think everything’s proceeding normally.’ She put her hands across her belly, enjoying the roundedness, which was more pronounced each day.

  The day before Olivia was to return to Jacksonville, and Camilla would be allowed to resume moderate activity, Camilla and Mac received a letter from Frank. He was being married in England, in Cambridge, and he wanted them to be there, to get to know his bride, and he hoped Mac would be his best man.

  ‘It’s too bad,’ Mac said, ‘but of course we can’t go.’

  ‘Of course you can go,’ Camilla said.

  ‘But you—’

  ‘I can’t. I know that. But you have to go. It’s only right and proper that you should be Frank’s best man, as he was yours. He came all the way from Turkey to us. I’d feel terrible if you didn’t go because of me. I’ll be fine. Truly.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘I’ll come stay with Camilla while you’re away, Mac, and you don’t have to be gone more than a few days.’

  ‘You really think—’

  ‘It’s Frank,’ Olivia said, as though that settled everything.

  Olivia returned to Jacksonville and Camilla went back to Athens to teach two classes. Each afternoon she spent a couple of hours lying down, grateful for the air conditioner. She read mystery stories, theology, physics. Wrote a paper that Dr. Edison told her would be published in the University Quarterly, a modest honor, but one which pleased her.

  Sometimes she lay with her eyes closed, making patterns with numbers. She started with the Fibonacci series, in which each succeeding number is equal to the total of the preceding two: 1,1,2,3,5,8. Then, onto games of her own: the square of any number is one more than the multiple of the two numbers on either side of it. 5 × 5 = 25. 4 × 6 = 24. And 7 × 7 = 49. 6 × 8 = 48.

  Take it further. Multiply two numbers separated by one number. The answer will be three numbers more than the multiple of the numbers on either side. 3 × 5 = 15. 2 × 6 = 12. 4 × 6 = 24. 3 × 7 = 21.

  And one more step. Multiply two numbers separated by two numbers. The answer will be four numbers more than the multiple of the numbers on either side. 3 × 6 = 18.2 × 7 = 14. And 7 × 10 = 70. 6 × 11 = 66.

  She visualized the patterns on imaginary graph paper, delighted at their beauty. She told Dr. Edison of her pleasure in these mathematical designs, and Dr. Edison jumped into the game, making it more complex, using fractions as well as whole numbers to add to the intricacy of the flowering patterns.

  Finally Camilla wrote her parents that she was pregnant again, and that all was going well this time. The babies would be only a few months apart. She still could not quite visualize that her baby would be able to play with her own baby brother or sister. She could not quite comprehend having a baby brother or sister. When she was a teenager, maybe. But not now.

  ‘What you must think about now,’ Mac said, holding his hand to Camilla’s belly to feel the soft stirrings of the baby, ‘is taking care of yourself.’ He looked tired, and she reached up to touch his face. It would be good for him to get away from the parish tensions, even if only for a few days.

  Frederic Lee, the senior warden, had come to Mac with the appalling news that the Morrisons and the Byrds were in the process of divorcing. Lydia Morrison was seen with Gordon Byrd at the country club. Alberta Byrd had gone to Herb Morrison for counsel over her divorce. This was the biggest tempest to hit the teapot of Corinth in recent memory, and passionate discussion went on for weeks, with people taking sides, and Mac trying to keep them from doing so.

  On Sunday evening at the youth group Gordie Byrd had asked loudly during prayer time for Lydia Morrison to leave his father alone. Pinky and Wiz shouted in anger. Mac finally had to roar, ‘Quiet! All of you! Gordie, we do not use prayer time to attack each other or to manipulate God.’

  Wiz muttered, ‘Do that again, Gordie, and I’ll kill you.’

  Freddy Lee said, ‘This is a lousy situation for all of us, but let’s not take it out on each other. Wiz, please.’

  ‘They don’t think about us, do they?’ Pinky demanded.

  Freddy said, ‘Hey, the only thing we can do is try not to be like our parents. I mean, we live in a different world.’

  Gordie said, ‘It certainly isn’t any better. At least people used to know their places.’

  They were heading into another potentially explosive subject. ‘Let’s turn to the Psalms,’ Mac said. ‘Freddy, read Psalm 121 for us.’

  Later that night he said to Camilla, ‘What a mess. I didn’t handle that very well, did I?’

  ‘About as well as it could be handled.’

  ‘And I’m going off to England right in the middle of this. It’s terrible timing.’

  ‘It’s Frank’s wedding,’ Camilla reminded him. ‘If you’re not here, they can’t use you as a whipping post. Maybe when you come back it will all have blown over.’

  ‘That’s wishful thinking. And the kids will all want to come dump on you. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

  ‘Sure. I love the kids, and I’ll try to steer t
he conversation into some kind of quiet waters.’

  ‘Watch out for Gordie.’

  ‘Will do.’

  In the morning, after Mac had left for his office, Pinky Morrison knocked on the kitchen door. She was indeed pinky, her face flushed from much weeping.

  ‘Camilla, can I come in?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘I hate Gordie Byrd.’ Camilla waited. Pinky sat on the couch, hiccuping her anguish. ‘I thought Daddy was perfect. He was like a god to me.’

  At least Noelle had not made that mistake, and her brittle anger had been better protection than Pinky’s raw grief. Camilla put her arm about the girl’s shoulders. ‘No one is perfect, Pinky. You can’t put that load on anyone, even your father. He’s hurting over this, too.’

  ‘Is he? He and Mom talk about it all the, time, about finding fulfillment and all that stuff, as though breaking up a marriage didn’t matter. As though Wiz and I don’t matter. Wiz isn’t saying anything but he’s a total mess. I hate them! I hate them all!’

  ‘It’s okay to be angry.’ Camilla spoke calmly, firmly. ‘You’ll get through it, Pinky.’

  ‘Did you? I mean, did you ever get angry at your parents?’

  A slightly hysterical laugh bubbled up in Camilla’s throat. ‘Oh, yes, Pinky. But I got through it.’ Any number of times.

  Mac came home for a sandwich and lemonade, and then Camilla walked wearily upstairs and lay down on the bed, falling into a deep sleep.

  The phone woke her. She answered groggily, then was shocked into wakefulness as she heard her father’s voice, calling from Paris, the line crackling as though echoing his anguish.

  ‘Camilla. Terrible news. Rose was out shopping. Things for the baby. Coming home in a taxi. An accident.’ He jerked the sentences out. ‘She was killed. They rushed her to the hospital, but she—They did a cesarean section. The baby’s alive. He’ll be all right—it’s a little boy. He needs a transfusion and I’ll give blood for that. They’re cross-matching the blood right now. But Rose is dead, Camilla, Rose is dead.’

  ‘Oh, Father,’ she kept saying. Then, ‘Call me right after the transfusion. Please. To see if the baby’s all right. To see if you’re—’

  ‘I’ll call,’ he said. ‘Rose is dead, is dead.’

  After her father had hung up, Camilla lay there, unable to accept what he had told her. It had occurred to her that her mother might have problems giving birth. But not this—this irrational wiping out of life, just a few weeks before the baby was due to be born.

  All she could think of was Rose’s constantly stretching out toward life, greedily, always searching for something she could not reach.

  She lay flat on the bed, her hands over her belly as though to protect her baby. The quick and the dead, as the Book of Common Prayer had it. “Quick” was a good word, a live, living word. She felt it, quickening, the affirmation of life within her.

  Rose was dead, dead before she ever saw the baby she awaited so eagerly. Rose is dead, Rafferty had said, is dead, is dead.

  But they had saved the baby. Camilla had read newspaper accounts of such modern miracles. Probably this, too, would get into the papers, at least in Paris. BABY DELIVERED FROM MOTHER KILLED IN ACCIDENT.

  —My brother, she thought suddenly.

  She lay there numbly, holding the quick life within her, until Mac came home.

  ‘Oh, my darling,’ he moaned, and in the protection of his arms her tears came.

  He lay down beside her, putting his hand on her belly. Feeling. Listening.

  She said, ‘I was so angry when I lost the baby and Mother kept hers. And now—’

  ‘Hush,’ he soothed. ‘You didn’t hold on to your anger. You let it go.’

  Tears came again, more quietly now. ‘Ambivalent,’ she said. ‘The best I felt was ambivalent.’

  ‘Hush. You loved her. Let yourself grieve.’

  ‘I did my grieving years ago. My mother died to me when I discovered she was having an affair and trying to use me as a shield to keep it from my father. I was a naïve adolescent to have clung to the image of Mother as perfect virtue for so long. She was so beautiful she had to be good. And when she wasn’t, it was death. As much death as—’

  The phone rang. Mac was lying on the side of the bed by it. He had done his best to discourage parishioners from calling in the evening, except in an emergency. This was Pinky’s mother and the emergency had been going on for weeks.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I can’t talk now. We’re waiting for an overseas call. Camilla’s mother has been killed in an accident.’ The parish would have to know sooner or later. Camilla could hear little shrieks of horror from the other end of the line. Mac replaced the receiver, firmly. Pinky’s mother would be busy now, spreading the news.

  They lay together quietly until the phone rang again. Mac picked it up. ‘Rafferty, we’re so terribly sorry—’

  Then Camilla could hear her father’s voice, but not his words, could see Mac’s face become still as stone. Then, ‘No, Rafferty, we can’t come. Camilla’s pregnancy is still precarious … No, I’m sorry … As soon as the baby is old enough to travel, you come to us … You can’t leave the baby, Raff … No … He is, after all, Rose’s baby … I’ll tell Camilla … You call us tomorrow when you’ve had time to—’ Then he held the phone out as though it had been slammed down on the other end of the line.

  ‘What?’ Camilla demanded. Then, ‘Mac, what did Father say?’

  ‘Your father’s blood is the wrong type for the baby.’

  ‘But is the baby all right?’

  ‘Yes. He’s all right. But it’s bad news.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You see, your father’s blood and the baby’s—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Your father said the doctor told him quite bluntly.’

  ‘What, Mac?’

  ‘Rafferty isn’t the baby’s father.’

  SEVEN

  They called Florida, Mac simply stating the facts in a flat, unemotional voice while Camilla listened on the bedroom extension.

  For a moment there was silence at the other end of the line, then a low cry from Olivia.

  Mac said, ‘Mama, you are coming tomorrow as planned, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I’m coming. You’ll need me more than ever now.’

  Mac said, ‘Thank you, Mama. It makes me feel much better about leaving Camilla.’

  ‘Leaving—’

  Mac’s voice continued, without timbre. ‘Mama, you do remember that I’m going to England.’

  Art’s voice came on the other line. ‘But Frank—’

  Mac cut across his father’s words. ‘Frank needs me.’

  Camilla let the phone drop beside her on the bed. Mac was downstairs in the study for the usual four-way conversation.

  ‘Cam!’ His voice floated up the stairway. ‘Where are you?’

  She picked up the phone. She could hardly get the word out. ‘Here.’

  ‘Oh, my dear.’ Olivia’s voice sounded flat. Then, ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Mac’s feet could be heard coming up the stairs slowly, not his usual leaping up two or three steps at a time. When he stood in the doorway she did not look at him. She could not stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks. Rose is dead, is dead. Mac is going to Korea, to Kenya, to—to England, to Frank. Oh. Father, poor father …

  She felt a fresh surge of anger, whether at her mother once more, even in death, revealing her infidelity, or at Mac for his—

  So? she asked herself. Mac already had the tickets to England, a special rate; he would be penalized if he canceled or put his flight off.

  He went down to the kitchen and returned with hot milk and nutmeg in one of the mugs they had saved from the Church House, cracked and stained, but treasured. He put the “Dumky” Trio on the turntable. Quantum followed him into the room and jumped onto the bed, peering at Camilla anxiously, then beginning to purr.

  Again, tears filled her eyes. But that
was all right. If she wept he would think it was for Rose, for Rafferty, for the baby.

  She pressed her knuckles against her lips to try to stop. But she did not speak to him about her feeling of abandonment. She could not bring herself to say, ‘Mac, please don’t leave me now. I need you.’

  ‘Mother,’ Frankie had once said, ‘the trouble with you is that you will avoid confrontation at any cost.’

  But what good, in most cases, would confrontation do? It would only exacerbate what was already pain and anger.

  Would Mac have stayed if she had asked him?

  Olivia arrived the next afternoon. Mac had packed quietly, taking his clothes out of the closet, out of drawers, down to his study, leaving quietly as soon as he had kissed his mother goodbye. Camilla went downstairs and sat in the rocking chair in the kitchen, a chair which had been given them by the ladies of the Altar Guild. She had made chicken salad, sliced some tomatoes and sweet onions with basil. That would be plenty for dinner for herself and Olivia.

  Olivia perched on one of the kitchen stools. ‘How are you, dearest child?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Baby still kicking away?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Does that help?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Olivia hooked her little feet, in grey suede pumps, on one of the rungs of the stool. She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it, finally asked, ‘Is the air conditioner helping?’

  ‘Yes, and thank you, Mama. The bedroom would be a steamy jungle without it.’

  ‘When Mac returns—’ Olivia started.

  Camilla looked directly at Olivia, elegant in a grey skirt and grey silk blouse, a cameo at her neck, elegant and beloved. ‘You told me it would happen again, Mac’s leaving.’

  ‘The sins of the fathers. I don’t know. Mac’s a grown man. We can’t—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In the past we have found it best not to do anything. Or perhaps we are afraid to do anything, to say no, Mac, not now, you can’t go off and leave your wife now.’ Then she looked at Camilla. ‘Did you ask Mac to stay?’