A Ring of Endless Light

by Madeleine L'engle

  "Why?" I asked.

  "I'm bored with life."

  "Bored?"

  "Bored. So bored it hurts like a toothache."

  "Why?"

  "It's a lousy world."

  "Would being dead be less lousy?"

  "Sure. It would be nothing, nice quiet nada, nada, nada."

  "So how come you're still here?"

  "Some boy scout Coast Guard foiled me by rescuing me."

  His words were like lead in the pit of my stomach. "Commander Rodney."

  "That's the name. They took me to the hospital on the mainland. I'd swallowed a lot of water before he interfered."

  Interfered.

  I wanted to scream with outrage.

  "I know he meant well, Vicky. And I didn't know he'd died until yesterday evening."

  "Didn't know--"

  "In the hospital I was taken right to ICU and they didn't think I'd live. My lungs were a mess and my heart had been pretty badly strained. At first nobody had time to say anything, they were so busy plugging me into various life-support systems. And I certainly wasn't in any condition to ask questions." He paused, looking at me, but I was staring straight ahead, avoiding his gaze. After a bit he continued. "Then, when I came round in intensive care, mighty displeased to be there, Pop asked that I not be told because he thought it might make me have a relapse--my heart was still fibrillating."

  "Would it have made you relapse?"

  "I doubt it, though that would have been a consummation devoutly to be wished. And then Pop would have put me in deep-freeze and I could wait quietly to be thawed out in a more enlightened age."

  Our horses pushed slowly through the shifting green shadows. A vine brushed across my face and tickled my nose. "Commander Rodney wasn't put into deep-freeze. He was buried. Yesterday. In the ground."

  "Stop trying to make me feel guilty, Vicky. I'm not hung up on moralism like you Austins. I didn't know he'd died till after I saw you yesterday and something made me ask a few questions."

  Our horses plodded along placidly. Small green branches brushed against their flanks, scratched my legs through my jeans. The sun filtered sleepily through the leaves. I felt that my mind had turned to dust, to the fallen leaves bruised under the horses' hoofs. "Leo," I said. "The one you met this afternoon at Grandfather's. That's his oldest son."

  "So what?" Zachary urged his horse into a trot and Daphne followed.

  "Wait a minute. There's something I don't understand. You came to the Island looking for me, and then instead of coming to me you rented a boat and set out to drown yourself."

  "There're a lot of things you don't understand." Zachary smoldered his gaze at me. "I came looking for you, and then when I found out where you were, suddenly it didn't seem worth it. It wasn't you. It was everything and nothing. Life. Ma's death. Talking to anybody. Not worth it."

  "I'm sorry," I said, wanting to reach out my hand to touch him. "I'm sorry about your mother."

  He shrugged. "I miss her in a funny sort of way, but not so's you'd notice it. She gave me anything I wanted, but so does Pop. Nothing's changed that much."

  Did he really mean that? "If you've been so sick, should you be horseback riding?"

  He glanced at me obliquely. "Why do you suppose we're just ambling along the bridle paths?"

  "Up to this minute I thought it's because I'm not an experienced rider."

  He reached across and patted my hand. "That's part of it. But also I'm taking care of myself, Vicky-O. I don't want to be back in that stinking hospital again. Give me credit for some sense."

  "Capsizing a sailboat wasn't very sensible."

  "Shut up! I didn't ask to be rescued, damn him!" He dug his heels into his horse's flanks and they shot off down the path and disappeared around a curve.

  My placid dapple-grey broke into a trot and then a gentle rocking canter. I didn't try to push her. I didn't want to catch up with Zachary.

  He'd always had a death wish. But I'd thought, when we'd said goodbye a year ago, that he was pretty well over it and ready to get on with the business of living. Now it seemed he was just the same as when we first met. Galloping his horse was proof of that.

  Commander Rodney had been committed to life. And he was dead.

  The woods thinned. The trees became smaller and scrubbier. Then we moved through some low bushes and the bridle path ended on the beach, the great, gently curving oval of Second Bay. Zachary's horse had stopped its wild gallop and was standing at the water's edge, flanks heaving.

  I pulled gently on the reins and Daphne slowed to a walk.

  Zachary had accused us of moralism. I'm not positive what moralism is, but I'm sure we're not hung up on it. I think it means that you're certain you know what is right and what is wrong, that you're morally omnipotent. Grandfather, if no one else, taught me long ago what a snare and a delusion thinking you know all the answers to everything can be. Half the time I don't know what's right and what's wrong, and I learned last year that my parents don't, either.

  Was Daddy right to pull up all our roots and take us to New York, for instance? I don't know, and I don't think he knows, either. We had a pretty rough time, but on the other hand we learned a lot of things we'd never have learned in Thornhill. And are Daddy and Mother right in leaving New York and going back to Thornhill? The big New York hospital offered Daddy a grant for another year. Was he right to turn it down? Maybe time will tell, but right now we certainly don't know.

  No, I don't think we're hung up on moralism, not nearly as hung up as Zachary on his death wish and cryonics and outsmarting the world. And yet when he cried out, "Damn him!" I knew it was not Commander Rodney he was damning but himself.

  I think I was even sorrier for Zachary than I was for Leo, and that was peculiar indeed. In a strange way Zachary and Leo were bonded together by Commander Rodney's death, and I wondered what Leo would feel or do when he found out who Zachary was. I wasn't predicting. If you'd asked me yesterday, I'd have thought Zachary was quite likely to stand at the ocean's edge and curse the universe, not Leo. But at this moment Zachary was simply sitting slumped on the big bay.

  Daphne and I drew up alongside them, facing the ocean and the long stretch of water out into eternity.

  Still hunched over, Zachary turned toward me. "This Leo."

  "Yes--"

  "When you introduced us, he didn't react or anything. He didn't seem to know who I am."

  I thought for a moment about Mrs. Rodney and how, if she knew the name of the kid in the capsized boat, she'd quite likely have kept it to herself. "I guess he didn't." What was important to Mrs. Rodney was that her husband was dead; that was what mattered, not Zachary.

  "Is he going to come between us?" Zachary asked.

  "What's to come between?"

  "Come on, Vicky-O. You know you and I have something very special going."

  "Why did it take you a year to bother to get in touch with me, then?"

  "I told you. I spent last year at this prison of a cram school so I could go to college next year. I put everything else out of my life."

  "I'm not sure I want to pick up where we left off." I kept my voice level and steady. "I've changed a lot since last summer."

  "Have you?" He straightened up and smiled at me, slowly, intimately. "Seem the same lovely Vicky-O to me."

  I nudged Daphne's flanks and she started ambling along the beach. Zachary followed. "I've done a lot of growing up. I'm not just the hick kid from Thornhill any more. I've had nearly a year in New York."

  "Fancy that." His tone was lightly mocking. "And after this summer?"

  "Back to Thornhill."

  "Your old man couldn't make it in New York?"

  I didn't even bristle. I just said calmly, "It's not a question of making it or not making it. He wanted a year of doing research, but he's a people person and he wants to get back to being a people doctor."

  "Okay. Gotcha." He smiled at me and this time it was a real smile. "But this summer you're going to spend on this
one-horse island?"

  "I see two horses right now."

  "You know what I mean."

  "Yes. We're going to spend the summer here." I didn't explain. I'm pretty confused on the subject of death myself, but Zachary, I was sure, was even more confused. "I haven't ridden in a while, Zach, and I want to be able to sit down tomorrow. Let's go back."

  "Wait." When Zachary wanted to, he could move like greased lightning. His hand flashed out and took hold of Daphne's bridle. "What are you going to do about Leo?"

  "Do? Nothing."

  "Do you see a lot of him?"

  "The Island's pretty small. We all bump into each other."

  "That's not what I'm talking about."

  I let Daphne shuffle along in the soft sand. Leo and I didn't date, or go together. I've never really properly dated or gone with anyone, which has bothered me, because most kids my age have. As for Leo, this morning on the beach had changed things between us. "I see Leo."

  "Are you going to tell him about me?"

  "I don't know."

  He wheeled his horse so that he was looking straight at me. "Vicky, I need you. I knew I needed you when I came to this godforsaken spot looking for you. And then--things--just got the better of me and I wanted out. And now I don't. I want back in. But I need help."

  "I'm not a psychiatrist." I started walking Daphne back toward the stables.

  "I've been seeing a shrink. That's not what I need. I need you. I think I need you in the setting of your whole peculiar family."

  "We're not peculiar."

  "Oh, yes, you are. Don't you realize that in my world my parents were peculiar because they'd never been divorced? Basically because it would have been too much trouble. But you live in a world where not only are your parents not divorced, they appear to love each other."

  "They do."

  "And you do things like going to church and saying grace and zuggy stuff like that. I don't know anybody else in the world who does that. And the weird thing is that in spite of it all you're real." He gave me his fullest Hamlet look, and reached out and gently touched the back of my hand with his forefinger, a tender caress which sent ripples all through me. "And you--you're such a mixture of being much older than you are and much, much younger."

  "Well--how long are you going to be on the Island?" I asked weakly.

  "As long as I can stand that fourth-rate hotel."

  "We like the Inn."

  "Sorry. As long as you'll put up with me is a better answer. And truer."

  I felt like asking, along with Pontius Pilate, "What is truth?" But I just posted gently as the horses trotted along the bridle path.

  When we got back to Grandfather's, I didn't ask Zachary in. I thanked him for the ride and held out my hand.

  He gave me a funny look, but there was pleading in his eyes that really got to me. "Vicky, you don't know--"

  "What?"

  "You're sanity in an insane world. You're reason where there isn't any reason. Reason to live. I need--" He stopped. And I waited. He looked at me intensely. "Oh, Vicky-O. I'm so damn confused."

  Zachary. Confused. Vicky's the one to be confused.

  "Vicky," he said in a very low voice. "My old lady--" He stopped and swallowed. "I need you. You don't know how much I need you." He turned and walked quickly away.

  Was he overdoing it? I didn't think so. His voice had none of its usual flip sophistication. And there was a naked vulnerability about him he had never been willing to reveal before.

  I went into the stable and hallooed. I needed some nice, stable (no pun intended) conversation. Not about death. Or guilt. Or moralism. Or porpoises being clubbed or people being frozen. Something homely, like how you tell your spaghetti's done by throwing a strand against the wall; if it sticks, it's done.

  Grandfather called from the porch. He was lying on the couch, a book in his hand, and I could see that it was poetry. He told me that Mother and Daddy had gone into town, marketing, and Rob was with them. Suzy was still somewhere with Jacky Rodney, and John, of course, was at work. I could smell the comforting aroma of simmering spaghetti sauce, and I wanted as much comfort as I could get.

  I sat on the floor by the couch and echoed Zachary. "Grandfather, I'm horribly confused."

  He looked at me questioningly.

  "You met Zachary."

  His eyes probed mine. "Handsome indeed, and troubled."

  "He is, oh, Grandfather, he is, and it's way over my head."

  "I think your parents would like you to steer clear of him."

  "I'm nearly sixteen. Is it right for me to steer clear of someone who needs me?"

  "I'd have to know more about it." He reached out with his long fingers and ruffled my hair, which I'd had cut short for summer.

  For a few minutes I sat and enjoyed the feel of his fingers in my hair, and the soft breezes from the ocean and the ceiling fan. Then I sighed. "Grandfather, it was Zachary who was in that capsized sailboat, Zachary who was rescued by Commander Rodney."

  He was silent for a minute, as though thinking. Then: "It did seem odd that he should have appeared right after the funeral."

  "He didn't know."

  "Didn't know what?"

  "He nearly died, and what with one thing and another, he didn't know about Commander Rodney till yesterday--after he'd seen us. He said something made him ask questions. And so he found out."

  "And he's upset and guilty?"

  "I'm not sure. He says he isn't. But what Zachary says and what he means aren't always the same."

  "But you've been blaming him, haven't you? Not perhaps Zachary, but someone you didn't know."

  "Scapegoating, you mean?"

  "That's the easy way out, isn't it?"

  "Yeah, easier to blame some rich dumb kid than God."

  "God can handle your anger, Vicky."

  "Maybe I didn't want to face my own anger. And then that someone turned out to be someone I know."

  "How well do you know him, Vicky?"

  "I don't think anyone knows Zachary well. Not even Zachary. You never know what he's going to say or do. And, Grandfather--just to make it more complicated, he wasn't just some dumb kid who didn't know how to handle a sailboat. The boat's capsizing wasn't an accident. He wanted to drown. He wanted to die."

  "Do you know why?"

  "He has a heart condition, and I think it's made him sort of flirt with death. But he keeps talking about being a lawyer, so he can take care of himself and not let other people get the better of him."

  The ceiling fan whirred softly. "Do you think he really wanted to die?"

  I thought about this for quite a while before answering. "It's funny--even when he courts death, I don't think he really believes in it. But maybe I'm wrong, because I just don't understand anybody wanting to die, at least not somebody young, with everything going for him the way Zachary has. But you heard him this morning, all that cryonics junk and Immortalists."

  "I heard."

  "But that kind of stuff isn't what immortality is about, is it?"

  "Not to me." The smile lines about his eyes deepened. "To live forever in this body would take away much of the joy of living, even if one didn't age but stayed young and vigorous."

  I didn't understand, but I had a hunch he was right. "Why?"

  "If we knew each morning that there was going to be another morning, and on and on and on, we'd tend not to notice the sunrise, or hear the birds, or the waves rolling into shore. We'd tend not to treasure our time with the people we love. Simply the awareness that our mortal lives had a beginning and will have an end enhances the quality of our living. Perhaps it's even more intense when we know that the termination of the body is near, but it shouldn't be."

  I wanted to reach over to him and hold him and say 'It is, oh, it is,' but I couldn't.

  Again his eyes smiled at me. "I like the old adage that we should live each day as though we were going to live forever, and as though we were going to die tomorrow." He ruffled my hair again. "This cryonics b
usiness strikes me as fear of death rather than joy in life."

  "That's it! Zachary doesn't have much joy. But neither do--did--his parents. All that money--and they've used it to spoil him rotten, not to love him."

  "Poor little rich boy, eh?"

  "Sort of. Yes." I looked up at the white-painted boards of the porch ceiling, and the light was moving on it in lovely waving patterns from the reflection of the sun on the water; and the ceiling fan stirred the patterns so that it was like a kaleidoscope made of ocean and air and sun. And the beauty moved through me like the wind. And I thought again of Zachary, and the dark behind his eyes that kept him from seeing this kind of joy. "And, Grandfather, what makes it all the more complicated is Leo."

  "How so?"

  "When I introduced them this afternoon, Leo didn't react at all, so I guess he doesn't know the name of the kid his father rescued. I guess that was how Mrs. Rodney wanted it. And I guess she never thought they'd meet."

  He nodded. "Nancy Rodney is more than the salt of the earth. She's the leaven in the bread. And the light that's too often under a bushel."

  "But, Grandfather, if Zachary stays around, they're going to be seeing each other, it's inevitable."

  "Is he staying around?"

  "He wants to."

  "Because of you?"

  "That's what he said."

  "That's a pretty heavy burden, Vicky."

  "Do you think I'm strong enough to carry it?"

  "I think we're given strength for what we have to carry. What I question is whether or not this burden is meant for you."

  "He needs me, Grandfather."

  "You, Vicky Austin, specifically?"

  "Well--yes. I think so." I did not like the way Grandfather's eyes were stern as they looked at me.

  He said, "There's a sermon of John Donne's I have often had cause to remember during my lifetime. He says, Other men's crosses are not my crosses. We all have our own cross to carry, and one is all most of us are able to bear. How much do you owe him, Vicky?"

  I replied slowly. "I don't think of it in terms of owing, like paying a debt. The thing is--he needs me."

  Grandfather looked away from me and out to sea, and when he spoke, it was as though he spoke to himself. "The obligations of normal human kindness--chesed, as the Hebrew has it--that we all owe. But there's a kind of vanity in thinking you can nurse the world. There's a kind of vanity in goodness."

  I could hardly believe my ears. "But aren't we supposed to be good?"