A House Like a Lotus

by Madeleine L'engle

  I shook my head. “Thanks, Zach, I don’t want to talk about it till I have it all sorted out.”

  “Sometimes talking helps sort things out.”

  “I’m not ready. You talk if you want to. I’m sorry you got hurt. I do care.”

  “You do, don’t you? Thanks, Pol, but I’m a selfish bastard and I deserved anything I got. I lived by sophomoric mores, Number One all the way. In my world, love affairs were taken with incredible seriousness, which ought to mean at least an expectation of permanence.”

  “Doesn’t it?”

  “Ha. Totally serious can mean a few days, and then along comes someone over the horizon who has more money or more prestige, and whoops, musical chairs, change partners. You know how, at cocktail parties, the person you’re talking to is looking over your shoulder, in case there’s somebody more important to talk to?”

  I didn’t. I’d never been to a cocktail party.

  “In my world they’re looking over your shoulder while they’re making love, and it’s musical chairs again.” He sounded bitter.

  “Are you talking from experience?” I asked.

  “Pretty Pol, in experience I am old enough to be your grandfather.” He put his head down on my lap, and I ran my fingers through his silky black hair. Another first for me. I was amazed at how natural it seemed.

  “You’re lucky, Red,” he said. “My parents don’t know anything about trust. They never trusted each other, and they never trusted me. And I’ve never trusted them. And your parents trust you, enough to let you come to Greece all alone, not because they want to get rid of you, but because they trust you. I mean, that’s pretty incredible.”

  Even though my parents didn’t know I was in Greece all alone, their trust in me, and in the rest of us, was indeed pretty incredible. And that trust had been betrayed, and I hoped they’d never have to know the extent to which it had been betrayed. Part of growing up, I was discovering, was learning that you did not have to tell your parents everything.

  Did Mother and Daddy carry trusting us to an extreme?

  What choice did they have? The three little ones were the only ones young enough to be monitored twenty-four hours a day. Den was in junior high, the rest of us in high school. We did have curfews, and if there was a valid reason we couldn’t make them, they trusted us to phone. When Xan and Kate were late, twice, without calling, they were given a 10 p.m. curfew for the month, which meant no going to Cowpertown after school hours. From their point of view, that was only an inch away from capital punishment. They complained the entire time, but they kept the curfew.

  If I’m a slow developer, Kate’s a rapid one. I knew that she’d gone a lot further with boys than I had, not that I’d had much chance, and that this concerned Mother and Daddy. And sometimes Xan seems older, as well as taller, than I. But how much did Mother and Daddy know about string-bean Xan? He was already six three, and good-looking, and a little arrogant, and he brought home straight A’s and was star of the basketball team and president of his class. But did they know him?

  And how much did they really know about me? When I went out with Renny, Mother and Daddy knew what our plans were, whether we were going to drive, whether Renny had borrowed a boat. They probably suspected that Renny kissed me good night. Did they trust us blindly?

  How could Max ever trust anybody again, after what her father did? And yet she trusted.

  And I knew that there wasn’t any other way to live. You simply cannot go around sniffing suspiciously at everyone and everything, expecting the worst. At least, Mother and Daddy couldn’t. And, by gene and precept, neither could I.

  ‘People are trustworthy only by virtue of being trusted,’ Daddy had once said.

  Having your parents trust you is a pretty heavy burden.

  On the other hand, I trusted my parents.

  “What’re you thinking?” Zachary asked.

  “Oh, trusting people. Letting them down.”

  Zachary patted my thigh. “I can’t imagine you letting anybody down.”

  I ran my fingers through his hair again. “You don’t know me very well.” The thought flashed across my mind that I had let Max down. I pushed it away.

  Zachary yawned. “We’d better be getting back to town. I’ve made reservations on the roof of the Hilton. We’ll have drinks outside first, and I’ve reserved a window table. The view is better than the food, though the food’s not bad. Rather bland, to please unexperimental Americans. You can even get a hamburger.” He eased out of my lap, stood up, held out his hand to me, then took one finger and touched my cheek. “So soft,” he murmured. With the tip of his finger he circled my eyes, then leaned toward me and kissed me.

  I pulled away, and started toward the car.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked. “You know our chemistry’s explosive.”

  “Chemistry’s not enough.”

  “Why not?” I didn’t answer. “If you gave in once, why not now, when you know things are really fizzing between us?”

  “I said,” clenching my jaw, “chemistry’s not enough.” I picked up the picnic basket and put it in the car.

  Zachary ran after me. “Hey, wait up. Was I being offensive?”

  “You might call it that.”

  “Well, listen, Pol, hey, listen, I’m really sorry. Okay?”

  “Okay.” I still sounded pretty chilly.

  “You’re going to have dinner with me tonight? I’ll be good. Promise. Okay? I’ve never met anyone like you, and I’ve learned, honest I have, it’s a mistake for me to think you’re going to react like anyone else. I don’t want you to. I like you the way you are. So you will have dinner?”

  “Sure. Dinner will be fine.”

  I’d never had anyone pleading to have dinner with me before. If I needed affirmation, Zachary was providing it.

  The view from the roof garden of the Hilton was as spectacular as the view from Zachary’s balcony. I ordered lemonade, and Zachary had a Metaxa sour.

  Metaxa. Urs often called Max that.

  “Have a sip?” Zachary asked.

  I shook my head.

  “Polly, I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  He was saying it, and I still didn’t quite believe it, that he really wanted to be with me three days in a row. “I’d love to.”

  “And after tomorrow, what? Am I ever going to see you again?”

  “Who knows? It’s a small world.”

  “I’d like to be friends with you forever. I want to know there’s something permanent in human relations.”

  I sipped my lemonade. “I’m not sure there is.”

  He signaled the waiter for two more drinks. “I’m the one who’s the cynic, not you. What about your parents? They sound pretty permanent to me.”

  “As things go in this life, I guess they are.”

  “And that’s what you’re looking for?”

  “Ultimately. But not for a long time. I have to get through college and figure out how to earn my living.”

  “And you’re going to wear your chastity belt all that time?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “If I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that you never know what’s going to happen. But right now, tonight, in Athens, I’m wearing my chastity belt.” I thought I’d better be firm about that, for myself as much as for Zachary.

  The maitre d’hotel summoned us then, and took us to our table. After we’d ordered, Zachary said, “I wish I knew who he was, this guy who hurt you so much. He’s made you put your armor on so there isn’t even a chink. Why are you rejecting me?”

  “I’m not rejecting you. We’ve just met, and already we’re friends. I could have been very lonely, and you’ve been wonderful.”

  He smiled at me across the table. “If you ever take off that chastity belt, Polly, it’ll be for real.”

  He walked me back to the King George and kissed me gently just before I got in the elevator. I took another long, hot bath, to help me unwind. Got into bed and read. I realized that I misse
d the family, even Xan.

  He had come into my room one night while I was reading in bed, knocking first, which is a tradition. Our rooms are our own.

  ‘Yah?’ I didn’t sound very welcoming.

  He stuck his head in the door. ‘I’m sorry about the other night.’ He was so tall that he almost had to bend down to get in the door. His wrists and ankles showed past his pajama sleeves and legs, and he was skinny, because of having shot up so quickly.

  ‘What other night?’

  ‘You know. What Kate and I said about the Mulletville kids and stuff. About Max and Ursula and you. I’m really sorry.’

  ‘Okay.’ But it wasn’t okay, and I didn’t sound or feel gracious. Maybe eventually Max would have told me all that she’d told me, but it mightn’t have hurt so much.

  ‘I hate those Mulletville kids,’ Xan said. ‘It’s not fair.’

  He sounded so vehement that he reminded me of my little sister Peggy, who frequently stamped and said, ‘It isn’t fair,’ and Mother would reply, ‘We never told you life was fair.’ ‘But it ought to be,’ Peggy would insist.

  Max had said once, ‘The young have an appalling sense of justice. Compassion doesn’t come till much later.’

  Was I looking for justice without compassion? I’m not even sure what justice would be. If the milk has soured, there’s no way to make it sweet again.

  Now I said to Xan, ‘Since when did you expect things to be fair?’

  He hovered in the doorway. ‘Can I come in?’

  ‘Sure.’ I closed my book, a finger in it to mark the place, to give him a hint that I didn’t want him to stay long.

  ‘I had a long talk with Dad.’

  ‘Did you?’

  ‘In the first place, I shouldn’t have listened to the Mulletville kids. In listening to them, I was encouraging them.’

  I shrugged. ‘I listen to gossip, too.’

  ‘About me?’

  ‘People don’t gossip much about you.’

  He sat on the foot of my bed. Because I’m the oldest, I have the room farthest from the main part of the house and Mother and Daddy’s room. I have a combination desk/chest of drawers. A chair. A closet for my clothes. And a view of the ocean through an enormous chinaberry tree, which is a favorite of redbirds.

  Xan said, ‘Dad told me that Ursula is very highly thought of, and he feels privileged to be her friend, and Max’s.’ He looked at me and added, ‘At least all this has taught me something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I used to think of lesbians as being different from other women, kind of freakish. I didn’t think they were like other people, like Ursula Heschel doing a good job. I mean, being a neurosurgeon is tough.’

  And Ursula managed it without playing God. She came home and baked bread. And took care of Max.

  Xan said, ‘We do gossip and bitch at school about things we really don’t know about. I’m as bad as Kate. What I want to say is, I’m really sorry we brought it up. Being sick was no excuse.’

  ‘Forget it,’ I said.

  Xan stood up. ‘It’s hard to keep your head on straight in a world like this.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I agreed. ‘It’s not easy.’

  ‘You’re not still mad at me?’

  ‘No.’

  On the whole, I thought, Xan kept his head on straighter than I did. I decided I’d write him a postcard all his own, not just a family one.

  I woke up in the night hearing sirens. Greek sirens. I do not like sirens, anywhere. They mean police and fire and violence. They made me feel very alone in a hotel in a strange city. I comforted myself with the thought that Sandy and Rhea would be with me in time for dinner, and it might be a good idea if I made a reservation for a table at the roof restaurant.

  Zachary and I were going to meet in the morning, drive out in the country again, and take the ferry ride from Itea, at the foot of Mount Parnassus, to Aegea, and wouldn’t be back till late afternoon. Was it because I was seeing Zachary in a new country, with home far behind me, that we had come to know each other so quickly? It took weeks and weeks of seeing Renny before we could talk the way Zachary and I had talked in only two days. I had mixed emotions. In a way I would almost be glad to say goodbye to him when Sandy and Rhea came, because he did have a powerful effect on me, and it scared me. And at the same time it would be a wrench to leave someone forever who had appeared when I really needed rescuing.

  Zachary knew that I expected Sandy and Rhea, but not that I’d expected them to be at the airport to meet me, that these days alone in Athens were not part of anybody’s plan. If I still believed in guardian angels, I’d suspect it had all been prearranged for my benefit.

  Max sometimes talked about the delicate balance between a prearranged pattern for the universe and human free will. ‘Sometimes our freedom comes in the way we accept things over which we have no control, things which may cause us great pain and even death.’

  I didn’t understand then that she was talking about herself. We were sitting on the verandah, overlooking the ocean. The wisteria vines were in bloom, the blossoms moving from pale lavender to deep dark purple. Pungent scents from flowers and herbs wafted toward us.

  She changed the subject. ‘I wonder how long Benne Seed will be the kind of lovely island it is now? If the other two plantations should ever be sold, there’d be more developments like Mulletville, only bigger.’

  ‘I’d hate it,’ I said. ‘Daddy’d hate it. He’d have to look for another island.’

  ‘I don’t think it’ll happen for a while. Spring and early summer, before the long heat sets in, are as lovely here as any place in the world. I’m not sure why I love Beau Allaire. I was never happy here. M.A. and I came out in Charleston, but most of the time Charleston seems as far from Benne Seed as New York. And I’ve spent far too much of my life on that asphalt island. Maybe that’s why I love to come here. But I’d die of loneliness, intellectual loneliness, if I had to live on Benne Seed for long.’

  The idea that Max might not stay on the Island was horrible, but why had I ever thought her return to Beau Allaire was permanent? I remembered Sandy and Dennys questioning her coming, thinking there was something odd about it. But I felt that I, too, would die of loneliness without Max to talk to. ‘You’re not leaving, are you?’ When she did not reply, I asked, ‘Is Ursula’s sabbatical over?’

  Max looked down at her hands, lightly folded, pale against her dark dress. ‘No, Polly. And no, I am not going back to New York.’

  During the normal pattern of Max and Ursula’s year, Urs took August off and they traveled abroad together. In the winter, Max went off by herself to paint, to check on Beau Allaire, to get away from the city.

  ‘And,’ she added, ‘from Ursula. We’re both dominant personalities, and people who love each other need to be apart periodically. I have my own studio on Fifty-seventh Street, but even a city as big as New York can be too small. And I enjoy travel more than Urs does. Even though it’s getting daily more difficult, and one expects planes to be late, connections to be missed, trains to stop for hours instead of minutes, I still love it. Two years ago I spent a month in Antarctica. I nearly got frostbite on my aristocratic nose, but I was totally fascinated by that wild, cold world. I wanted to bring Urs back a penguin, but only if I could bring back a square mile of its environment.’

  For a while I was embarrassed when Max talked about Urs, but she was so matter-of-fact that it stopped bothering me. She talked about Urs as anyone would about a good friend. Slowly I began to forget Xan and Kate’s gossip, even to forget what Max had told me. As Mother had pointed out, it was not where Max’s and my interests lay.

  Mother and Daddy seemed to take it for granted that I might go over to Beau Allaire a couple of times a week. I got my chores in the lab done in the early morning, helped with the little ones as much as possible, once a week stripped the beds and put the sheets through the washing machine. What time was left, apart from school, was my own.

  Max and Ursula ca
me across the Island to have dinner with us every few weeks. And if Xan and Kate heard any more gossip, they didn’t say anything. Sometimes I wondered about Max’s husband, Davin Tomassi, and why they’d married, and what had happened. I asked Mother one day when we were taking sheets off the line, smelling of ocean and sky.

  ‘I don’t know much about it,’ Mother said. ‘I gather Max and Davin remained very good friends, and kept in touch until he died. Max is a very complex human being. A very fine one.’

  The phone rang. In the middle of the night, in the King George Hotel in Athens. Groggily, fearfully, I reached for it, heard a thick male voice asking for Katerina, got an apology for disturbing me. I’d have been furious if I hadn’t been half awake, anyhow. Even so, it scared me. Phone calls in the middle of the night aren’t usually good news.

  I’d thought it might be about Max.

  One warm May afternoon I was over at Beau Allaire. Ursula and I had gone for a swim. Max said she didn’t feel up to it and I thought Ursula’s glance was anxious.

  But the two of us had a fine swim. We knew the tides and undertows and so were able to go out beyond the breakers. When we got back to the house, Max was on the verandah, curled up in the wicker swing, a pile of her old sketchbooks beside her, one open in her lap.

  Ursula picked up a sketchbook Max had filled when they were on safari, shooting with cameras, not guns. Ursula had the camera, Max the sketchbook, and had filled it with pictures of wildebeests, honey badgers, lions, elephants, giraffes.

  ‘Get dressed,’ Max said sharply. ‘I don’t want sand and salt water all over my sketchbooks.’ Then she smiled at us, her special, slow smile which made me feel—oh, not just that Max was fond of me, but that being Polyhymnia O’Keefe, just as I was, with red hair and legs that were too long for me, was an all right thing to be.