Troubling a Star

by Madeleine L'engle

  “I’m quoting. Shakespeare.”

  She snapped, “No wonder you never get invited to anything. You’re a politically illiterate literary snob.”

  “I don’t see anything particularly snobbish about Shakespeare. We’re reading some of the sonnets in English.”

  “So leave them at school.” Suzy plunked herself down at the table.

  “I like them. They say a lot of what I feel.”

  “They’re lovesick drivel,” Suzy said, “and you’re a lovesick idiot, always dreaming about Adam Eddington.”

  “What about you and Mr. What’s-his-name?”

  “Neddocks. We call him Ned. He likes it. He’s a super teacher and he says I’m one of the best students he’s ever had.”

  Mother and Daddy came in then, and Daddy helped himself to oatmeal. Mother asked, “Ladies, do you have plans for after school today?”

  Suzy said, “I’m having a special science lab. Ned’s offering it to ten of us.”

  “Vicky?”

  “I thought I’d call Aunt Serena and see if I could have tea with her.”

  “Good,” Daddy said. “She needs company.” He sat down and picked up last night’s paper and began reading it.

  —So do I, I thought, and headed for the phone.

  Cook answered and said Aunt Serena was still upstairs but he knew she’d be delighted to see me, and to come along after school. “Owain can meet you at the school-bus stop.”

  “No, thanks,” I said quickly. That was all I needed, having the kids see me picked up in a Bentley driven by a chauffeur in uniform.

  Perhaps Cook understood, because he said only, “The rain’s supposed to stop this afternoon. Stassy’ll have some good hot tea waiting for you.”

  When I got back to the kitchen, Mother said, “I’m glad you’re going to Clovenford. I met Mrs. Eddington a couple of times when she was still going to hospital benefits, and she was charming.”

  My father added, “We should all age with that kind of wisdom, but not everybody does.” He folded the paper and pushed back his chair. “I’m off. I shouldn’t be late this evening. I hope.”

  Almost always when my father said that, there was some kind of emergency and he was late. If he wasn’t home by eight, Mother fed us and waited for him.

  I got off the school bus in Clovenford and walked the mile to Aunt Serena’s. Cook was right; the rain had stopped, but it was still dripping off the trees. It wasn’t cold and the occasional drops of rain plopping on my head felt good. Walking along Aunt Serena’s street was like being in another world where I could forget Thornhill and school and everything else that made up the winter of my discontent.

  The pink bricks that led to Aunt Serena’s house were shiny from the rain. There were big copper buckets of golden chrysanthemums on either side of the front door, and Stassy was there to open it and greet me. “Come along, Miss Vicky, dear.”

  I followed her to the sitting room, where, again, the fire was bright. I kissed Aunt Serena hello. It felt quite natural to do so.

  Then I told her I’d promised Adam I’d take her on a walk before tea, and we’d just walk around the house, indoors, so she creaked reluctantly to her feet. She walked with one hand on my arm, a little wobbly at first, but steadying. We walked all over the house. There was a little elevator, just big enough for the two of us, that took us upstairs. There were plenty of bedrooms and bathrooms, so nobody would have to share.

  Aunt Serena’s bedroom was a large front room over the living room, with a big sleigh bed. There was a fireplace with a wood fire burning. A chaise longue was by it, and a couple of comfortable chairs. On the floor was a great gorgeous rug with the same soft silvery-green background as in her sitting room downstairs. She saw my admiring look. “Adam brought it from China.”

  “Adam?”

  “Adam I, as your friend Adam III would call him. Adam III was named after my husband and my son.”

  “A goodly heritage.” I quoted one of my grandfather’s favorite phrases from the Psalms.

  She smiled at me radiantly. “Oh, my dear, yes.”

  We rode the elevator downstairs and Aunt Serena took me through the kitchen to the greenhouse room, where it smelled warm and springlike, and where there were the largest geraniums I had ever seen. Then we went back into the dining room and she showed me a portrait of her husband which hung over the sideboard. Adam I was a kindly-looking man with a big nose and a slightly crooked mouth which gave him a smiling look. On the opposite wall was what I thought at first was a portrait of Adam, but then I realized the clothes and the haircut were different.

  “The resemblance is remarkable, isn’t it?” Aunt Serena was smiling, but there was a sadness in the smile. “My son, Adam.”

  Adam II.

  “My great-nephew’s father is the son of my much younger brother. However, Adam III is very similar to my son in nature, sweet but determined. We are very close, young Adam and I.”

  “I’m glad,” I said as we moved back to the sitting room. Somehow this was bringing me even closer to Adam. Adam III.

  She asked, “Would you like tomato sandwiches again?”

  “I’d love them. Do you grow tomatoes in your greenhouse?”

  She nodded. “Owain has a green thumb. Both he and Cook enjoy gardening, and the way vegetables are grown today, bred to be picked by machines, with a concomitant loss of taste, I am grateful for their talent.”

  Stassy wheeled in the tea tray. I poured again. Aunt Serena’s hands looked too thin and frail for the heavy silver teapot. Today the slices of lemon had cloves in them, and I think it was a different kind of tea. Cook had made cucumber-and-watercress sandwiches as well as tomato, equally tiny and delicious and totally unlike the sandwich I’d eaten for lunch in the school cafeteria.

  Aunt Serena again bathed me with the radiance of her smile. “I gather that you and my great-nephew are—an item? Is that what it’s called today?”

  “We aren’t exactly an item.” How I wished we were. I looked into my empty cup, at the lemon with the clove.

  “Because you’re both too young? I could see that Adam is truly fond of you.”

  I put my cup down. “I’m truly fond of him. He makes me feel real.”

  She nodded. “My son, Adam, had that quality, too. He was a fine scientist, and it does please me that Adam III is following in his footsteps. Not that I would wish young Adam or anybody to try to fulfill someone else’s destiny. In this day and age, it’s all anyone can do to fulfill his own. Or, in your case, her own. Do you know where you’re aiming, Vicky?”

  I shook my head. “I wish I did. My brother John is a scientist. You’ve met John.”

  “Yes. A good friend for Adam.”

  “Suzy, my younger sister, has always wanted to be a doctor or a vet. My little brother, Rob, is too young to have to worry about what he’s going to do.”

  “What do you most like to do?”

  “I like to read and to write. Sometimes I write poetry. But not many poets earn their living with poetry. I don’t think I’d make a very good teacher. I get too impatient. Suzy says I’m snobby, and I hope I’m not.”

  “You have high expectations,” Aunt Serena said. “That’s not a bad thing.”

  “Thanks. Adam is lucky to know what he wants to do.”

  She smiled again. “He, too, will have to decide how he wants to use his experiences. Antarctica should teach him a few things. It is one of the most beautiful places in the world, but not hospitable. It took me several years to give up hope that my Adam would be found—not alive—but that there would be some trace. Cook and his brother went to see if they could find any—any evidence.”

  Evidence of what? I wanted to ask. But just looked at her, and listened.

  “Cook went with Adam—my Adam—on his first expedition, so he knew the terrain reasonably well. I’ve been there, on pilgrimage, as it were, and the beauty is awesome, but I hope heaven will be a little gentler. At least Adam, my son Adam, Adam II, died doing the w
ork he loved, and while he was in the midst of life. My husband lived up into his eighties, but he never enjoyed his work as Adam did his. I have a pricking in my thumbs that Antarctica may be important to you.”

  What? That didn’t make sense. The only reason Antarctica meant anything to me at all was that Adam was going to be there. My Adam. Adam III.

  She went on, “Cook’s got a package of cookies for you to take home. He loves to bake, so you’re giving him a marvelous excuse. He’s a fine cook, much too good for me now that I seldom entertain.”

  It was time for me to go, not to ask questions. “Thank you, Aunt Serena. I’ll come again if I may.”

  “Of course you may. When?”

  “Tomorrow I have to study for a heavy test, and Wednesday I have choir practice, but I could come Thursday, if that would—”

  “Thursday would be splendid. And perhaps another time you could stay for dinner. Cook would like that. And so would I.”

  I went out through the kitchen, where Cook was polishing a big copper pot. He looked up at me. “Owain has your cookies in the car.”

  “Thank you. Cook, Adam said I could ask you something.”

  “Go on.”

  “I think Aunt Serena thinks I know more than I do know about—were you with Adam II in Antarctica?”

  Cook rinsed the pot and applied more polish. “On his first expedition. Yes.”

  “Is that how you met him?”

  Cook shook his head. “We met in graduate school. He was taking courses in economics to please his father, and I was reading classics, not a very fiscally helpful area.”

  “So you were friends.”

  “Very good friends. A group of us lived together in a big old house in Cambridge—the one in Massachusetts. Five of us went with Adam on his first excursion. By the time he was ready to go again, I was in the monastery.” He dried the pot with a big towel.

  I shifted my weight back and forth, from one foot to the other, trying to sort things out. “And on the second expedition something happened to Adam II?”

  Cook hung the pot on a big rack near the stove. “He went out in his Zodiac and never came back.”

  “Adam—Adam III—said maybe his engine failed.”

  Cook’s face was expressionless. “That is one assumption.”

  “Do you think that’s what happened?”

  “We will never know.”

  “Could the air maybe have leaked out, or something like that?”

  “Not likely. The air for the Zodiacs is in separate compartments, and if one should spring a leak, the others would keep it afloat.”

  Owain came in then, wearing a black slicker over his uniform, and said he was ready. So I didn’t get the chance to ask Cook if Adam II’s death was not an accident. I’m not sure I’d have asked even if I’d had the chance.

  When I got home, Suzy and Rob were waiting for the cookies, and I was glad Cook had made a big batch. Rob took a handful and went out to the tree house.

  Suzy spoke through a mouthful: “About the school dance.”

  “What school dance?”

  “Come on, Vicky. The Halloween dance.”

  “What about it?”

  “Do you want to go?”

  “Not particularly.” There’d been no bunch of guys swarming around me asking me to go. I knew Suzy’d had several invitations. That morning she’d sat in the back of the bus between two seniors, both of them basketball stars.

  For once she sounded tentative. “Well, Vic, listen, if you want to, I could, you know, fix you up with someone.”

  “That’s nice of you, Suze, really, but no thanks.”

  “Why not?” she demanded. “Don’t be such a snob.”

  Was I? If nobody asked me to the dance on his own, I didn’t want to go out of Suzy’s charity.

  “It’s an important dance,” she pressed.

  “I know, and I’m sorry.”

  We were both trying to be nice. I didn’t want Suzy to be sorry for me because nobody’d asked me to the dance. But I didn’t want to snap at her, so I kept my mouth closed.

  “Suit yourself,” she said.

  I missed John. When John was home I used to get invited to the dances, and he never made me feel he was arranging things, either.

  That evening I was studying for my English test, Hamlet, which I really thought was a wonderful play, and a lot funnier in some of the scenes than most of us had realized, when Mother came in to say good night. She had those two little frown lines between her eyes that meant she was worried. “About that dance—”

  Just as I’d expected. Suzy’d been talking to her. “I don’t want to go.”

  “Suzy—”

  “No!” I was louder than I meant to be. “I know Suzy means it kindly, but I’m really not looking for a date to go to the dance with. If I wanted one, I’d—”

  “Find one?”

  “At least I’d try. I just don’t want to spend a whole evening with some guy who’s caught up in the changes that have pushed kids out of perfectly good roles. When you and Dad moved to Thornhill, it was a dairy-farm community. But now—how many working farms are left in Thornhill? And half the factories in Clovenford have shut down. It’s a depressed area. People are out of work and kids no longer know who they are or what they’re supposed to be—” I broke off because Mother was laughing, gently, but definitely laughing at me.

  “Thanks for the instant course in Sociology 101.” She smiled at me.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled.

  “I’m sorry, Vic. I know coming back to Thornhill has been hard for you.”

  “What about you?” I wanted to shift the focus.

  She hesitated. “It hasn’t been easy for me, either, but I’ll readjust. I love our house; I love the countryside. John has one foot out of the nest and you’ll follow soon, but Suzy and Rob will be around for a while.”

  “Still—”

  “Don’t worry about me, Vicky, love. I’ve made my own choices and I’m happy with them. It’s your choices I’m thinking about.”

  I opened my paperback Hamlet, closed it again with my finger holding the place. “Maybe I’ve chosen just to mark time. Another year and I’ll be off to college.” I looked down at the orange cover of the book. I didn’t know where I wanted to go to college. I’d thought about Berkeley, but even if I got a good scholarship, did I want to chase after Adam that way?

  When I got home from choir practice on Wednesday, Suzy looked up from her homework. “Adam called.”

  “When?”

  “About half an hour ago.”

  “Did he leave a message?”

  “He said it wasn’t important, he was just calling to check in. He did leave his number. Here.” She handed me a slip of paper.

  I called back. Nine-thirty at home, six-thirty in California. I was relieved when Adam, rather than some other guy in his dorm, answered the phone. “Just wanted to tell you I’ll definitely be coming to New York for Thanksgiving, since I’ll be going to Antarctica in December and won’t be home for Christmas. I’m taking about ten days off, so I’ll be up to see Aunt Serena for a few days.”

  “Oh, good. I had tea with her on Monday.”

  “I’m glad. I like my favorite people to get to know each other.”

  That made me feel good. “She’s wonderful.”

  “Hey, Vic, don’t you have a birthday coming up?”

  “The week before Thanksgiving. I’ll be able to get my driver’s license.”

  “Sixteen’s pretty special. Got any plans?”

  “Not really. We decided to wait till Thanksgiving to celebrate, because John will be home.”

  “Maybe you and I can do something while I’m in Clovenford.”

  “I’d love that.” I wanted us to go on talking, but I heard somebody yelling at him to get off the phone.

  “We’ll talk again in a week or so,” he said. “Give everybody my love.”

  On Thursday I went to Aunt Serena’s, as planned. We had a lovely time. We drank
tea and ate sandwiches and she talked to me about her girlhood, and what Clovenford was like then. We talked about Adam, and his internship.

  “It’s very unusual for an undergraduate to get that kind of grant,” she said. “I’m extremely proud of him. And at the same time I’ll miss him. Cook will be gone, too, in January, for a month. He goes to the Falklands every other year to see Seth, his brother. I encourage these trips, much as I’ll miss him. Not just the cooking—Stassy’s a more than adequate cook—but his presence. He’s like a son to me.”

  “Adam said he was going to the Falklands—will he and Cook see each other?”

  “Alas, no. The timing doesn’t work out. Adam goes in December and Cook’s not leaving till January. Adam will stop off at the Falklands for a few days at Government House with Rusty and Lucy Leeds, the governor and his wife. Wise and warm people. They’re very fond of Cook and Seth. You should see Rusty when he’s dressed up for government functions—” She looked up, saying, “There are some old photograph albums up in the attic, with snapshots of the Falklands, and of Antarctica. You might enjoy looking at them.”

  I like looking at old pictures. “I would.”

  “Just take the elevator upstairs, and you’ll find the attic stairs at the end of the hall. Go on up and feel free to poke around. Don’t expect tidiness. Neither desks nor attics should be tidy.”

  “Our attic certainly isn’t. Shall I bring the albums down?”

  “Please. I’ll tell Owain you’ll be a little late.”

  I found my way to the attic stairs without difficulty, and fumbled around on the wall till I found a light switch. The stairs were as steep as ours, and I climbed on up, smelling the fusty odor that always seems to be in old attics. It wasn’t quite as untidy and cluttered as ours, but Aunt Serena was right; it wasn’t neat. There was an old clothes dummy, or whatever those things are called that look like female human torsos and were used when people made all their own clothes. There was a straw hat perched on top, full of faded silk flowers. There was a wonderful old rocking horse, a big one, which must have belonged to Adam II, but probably Adam III had ridden it, too. There was a big wooden box full of books, and I knelt down beside it, pulling them out, and finding some of my old favorites, The Jungle Books, and Charlotte’s Web and The Enchanted Castle, books Mother had read aloud to us, and which had been hers when she was a child. There were others I didn’t recognize, all about explorers, and then there were some textbooks on marine biology, and a big one on economics. I could have stayed there for hours, looking at the books, but Aunt Serena expected me back with the photograph albums, which I found on some shelves under one of the windows. At least, I found two big white albums which had pictures of penguins and icebergs, so I dusted them off with an old towel that was hanging over a wooden rack, and took them downstairs.