Meet the Austins

by Madeleine L'engle

  “Like what?” I said.

  “Well, like anything. Even lettuce or spinach. They’re alive. They’re just as alive in their own way as a cow is in its way. Or a pig like Wilbur.”

  “Then you’d starve to death,” I said.

  “Yeah. So we eat steak.”

  “And turkey. And tomatoes. And they all taste wonderful.”

  “Grandfather talks about a choice of evils,” John said. “Maybe that’s it. We have to choose between eating something that’s alive or starving to death. But I love eating, Vic. It doesn’t seem an evil to me. I don’t mean I just love the food, but the family part of it. The sitting around the table and talking and being together.”

  “Next time we go to Grandfather’s you’d better ask him,” I said. “But remember in the Bible there’s a lot about Jesus’ eating? Getting together with His friends and disciples and sitting down to eat and teach. Grandfather talked about that once. And you remember—is it Arabs? I think it’s Arabs—anyhow, if someone’s eaten bread with them, broken bread, they can’t do him any harm.”

  But now John was getting sleepy. “That was awfully good shepherd’s pie we had for dinner,” he murmured.

  I kicked him through the covers. “Get back to your own room before you fall asleep.”

  So we kept right on eating and liking it, too. But Suzy wouldn’t eat any bacon the next morning, or sausage, or anything to do with pig all that week. And she seemed sort of cranky and not like herself. And one night when it was bedtime she said she had a stomachache.

  Then, one evening after we’d all sat down to dinner, Mother said, “I found a whole pile of bubble gum and candy in one of the boots in the pantry. I was trying to create a little order out of chaos, and I hardly think a boot that is supposed to keep your feet warm and dry is a place for things like that. Whose is it?”

  Her voice was perfectly pleasant, but it was a little too quiet for comfort. Nobody said anything.

  Daddy said, “It sounds rather like hoarding to me, anyhow. How about it? Who’s the culprit?”

  Still nobody said anything.

  Mother said, “I didn’t realize I was starting anything. You’re allowed to buy candy with your allowance. I just want to know who’s been putting it in a boot.”

  I wasn’t the one, so I looked curiously and a little anxiously around the table at everybody else. I saw that John was looking around, too. Suzy was staring straight ahead with a set expression, and Maggy was staring at Suzy.

  Rob said, “I didn’t do it.” He couldn’t very well. His allowance is six cents, five cents for Sunday school and a penny for emptying the wastepaper baskets every Saturday morning. Maggy gets five dollars from Mr. Ten Eyck every week, but Mother and Daddy put four dollars and seventy-five cents of it in the bank for her, so she only has a quarter to spend, like Suzy.

  We all knew it was Suzy, but Daddy said, “John, do you know anything about this?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “Vicky?”

  “No, Daddy.”

  “Maggy?”

  Maggy looked down at her plate, across at Suzy, and down at her plate again. She didn’t say anything.

  “Did you put the candy and gum in the boot?” Daddy asked.

  “No, Uncle Wallace.”

  “Suzy?”

  “No,” Suzy said, and didn’t look at him.

  “No what, Suzy?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Suzy said.

  “About what?”

  “About who took the candy and put it in the boot.”

  “Took the candy?”

  Suzy didn’t answer.

  “Whose boot was it?” Daddy asked Mother.

  “Rob’s.”

  Rob has more than once been known to confuse the truth with his imagination, but he was looking right at Daddy now, and anyhow we all knew it was Suzy, and that it was more than buying candy and gum with her allowance and saving it in the boot.

  Mother said, “Suzy, why don’t you tell us about it?”

  Suzy shouted out, “I haven’t anything to tell!” and got up so roughly that she knocked her chair over, and ran pounding upstairs, where we could hear her crying at the top of her lungs.

  Maggy said, “Suzy took the candy from the store.”

  Daddy said, “Don’t tell us about it, please, Maggy. We want Suzy to tell us.”

  “But she stole it,” Maggy started.

  “Margaret. I said that we want Suzy to tell us.”

  Upstairs, Suzy was still crying at the top of her lungs. Mother started to push back her chair to go up to her, but Daddy said, “Leave her alone, Vic. We haven’t finished eating dinner yet.”

  It had started out to be such a nice family meal. And now we were all upset. Rob got up and started for the stairs, and Daddy shouted, “Robert, sit down!”

  And Rob said, “But I want to go to Suzy.”

  “Leave Suzy alone,” Daddy said, “and finish your dinner.”

  We had strawberry mousse for dessert, and none of us enjoyed it. Suzy kept crying, and Mother finished her dessert and said, “Excuse me, Wally. You children do the dishes tonight, please,” and went upstairs.

  We did the dishes with a lot better grace than usual. Daddy went into the study to read and Rob played records. He’d played Pinocchio three times from beginning to end before Mother and Suzy came back downstairs.

  “Where’s Daddy?” Mother asked.

  “In the study.”

  “Well, let’s all go in, then,” Mother said. “Suzy has something to say.”

  We went in and Mother took Suzy firmly by the hand and they followed us.

  “Suzy has something to tell us all,” Mother said.

  Suzy stood there, gulping, and finally she flung herself into Daddy’s lap and just sobbed over and over, “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

  Daddy held her for a moment, and then he put her on the floor in front of him, between his knees, saying, “I know you’re sorry, Suzy, and I’m glad, but I think you’d better tell me what you’re sorry about.” Suzy kept on crying and hiccuping, and Daddy said firmly, “Suzy, don’t you think you’d better stop this and get it over with?”

  So Suzy said, “I went into the store after Brownies, and I went into the store after choir, and I took candy and gum and put them in my pocket, and then when I got home I hid them in Rob’s boot because those boots are too small and he hardly ever wears them anymore.”

  “You mean you bought them with your allowance?” Daddy asked.

  “No,” Suzy said. “I took them. And I’m going to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins at the store and I’m going to tell them what I did and pay for them, all the ones I still have, and all the ones I ate, and I’ll never do it again.” And she started to cry again.

  “Suzy,” Daddy said, “you are to stop crying or you’ll make yourself sick.”

  “I can’t,” Suzy said.

  “But you must.” He waited until Suzy had stopped, and then he said, “You know you did two things that were wrong, don’t you? First in taking—stealing—from Mrs. Jenkins, and second, in not telling the truth when Mother asked you about it.”

  “I know,” Suzy whispered.

  Daddy looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, “All right, Suzy. You say that you’ll never do it again, and I believe you. And I want you to promise that you’ll always tell the truth to Mother and me, too. No matter what you’ve done, you only make it worse if you try to lie your way out.”

  “I never lie,” Maggy said righteously.

  Daddy looked at her sharply. “Never?” he asked. “Think that one over, Margaret.”

  “Are you going to punish me?” Suzy asked.

  “Mother has asked you to go to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, and you’re going. That’s all. I think you’ve punished yourself enough. But why, Suzy? Why did you take it? Can you tell me? Do you know?”

  That was something we all wondered. We couldn’t blame this one on Maggy; she didn’t have anythi
ng to do with it. But I couldn’t help wondering if she hadn’t put the idea into Suzy’s head. But maybe that’s not fair. Suzy could have got the idea from other people, too. Nanny Jenkins told me that sometimes her mother and father do have trouble with children taking candy and things. Nanny says if her father didn’t have his cello, running the store would drive him crazy.

  Suzy shook her head. “I was hungry,” she said.

  So maybe that was it, because she hadn’t been eating nearly as much on account of Wilbur the pig.

  “What happened to your allowance?” Daddy asked.

  “After Sunday school and Brownies there’s only fifteen cents,” Suzy said.

  “That’s plenty for candy,” Daddy told her. “No wonder you’ve been cross and unlike yourself all week and had a stomachache the other night.”

  “It wasn’t just my stomach,” Suzy said. “I think it was a heartache, too.”

  Finally Daddy smiled. “Now go to bed, Suzy, and go right to sleep. It’s time for all you little ones to be in bed. Past time, and tomorrow’s a school day.”

  But that was only the beginning.

  The next night at dinner everything was fine until Suzy started on about her twentieth carrot stick. She was hungry because she still wasn’t eating pig because of Wilbur, and we had a pork roast and applesauce that night, so she really attacked that carrot stick.

  John said, “You won’t eat pig because of Wilbur but you don’t mind chomping down on that poor piece of carrot. And it doesn’t bother you to think of a potato being roasted.”

  Suzy got kind of pink and then white. “It’s not the same thing,” she said.

  “Why isn’t it?” John asked. “Vicky and I were talking about it the other night. Carrots and potatoes grow. They’re alive. If you’re going to stop eating pig because of Wilbur you ought to stop eating carrots, too. And applesauce. We got to know those apples very well last summer when they were on our trees, but that didn’t stop us from taking a knife and tearing off their skins and slashing them up.”

  “John!” Mother and Daddy said simultaneously.

  We were all surprised at John. He was just coming down with flu and that probably explains it, but we didn’t know that then. Also, whenever John gets hold of a subject that bothers him he worries it like Rochester with a bone until he’s settled it to his satisfaction.

  “I hate you, John,” Suzy said.

  “Why?” John asked. “It’s carrying a premise to its logical conclusion.” Then he relented and sounded more like himself again. “Look, Suzy, I’m sorry, but it’s just silly to go on like this about Wilbur. I’ve been thinking and thinking about it, and it’s just a place where we have to disapprove of nature and that’s that.”

  “What do you mean?” Suzy asked stiffly.

  “Yes, John, I think you’d better explain yourself,” Daddy said.

  “Well,” John said, “we’ve been studying it at school this week. In nature every species lives by preying on another species. Every form of life lives at the expense of another form of life. We may not approve of it, but there’s nothing we can do about it except die of starvation. So there’s nothing for it except what Mother keeps saying the Greeks say: Moderation in all things. Suzy’s not being moderate. She ate spaghetti last night with lots of meat in the sauce. And look at Daddy. Life’s part of his job, but he can’t go around feeling sorry for viruses—he has to do his best to kill them. I don’t believe in going out and shooting animals and things just for the fun of it; I think it’s an instinct gone wrong, from the days when people had to shoot animals to get food to eat. And that’s okay, where it’s a necessity.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” Suzy said.

  “You’re a horrid pig,” Maggy said to John.

  “If you call him a pig you’re insulting Wilbur,” Suzy said.

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake!” John took a large mouthful of pork and applesauce and chewed disgustedly. Then he said, “All I mean, Suzy, is if you want to be a doctor when you grow up you have to stay alive to be one, and to stay alive you have to eat a balanced diet. Moderation in all things!”

  “Same to you, John,” Daddy said. “You didn’t need to get Suzy so upset. That’s not like you.”

  “I’m sorry, Suzy,” John said, a little sheepishly. “I’ll play a game of checkers or Spite and Malice or something with you before bed if you like.”

  But Suzy wasn’t ready to make up. “I have an operation scheduled on Pamela immediately after dinner,” she said. Pamela was one of Maggy’s dolls.

  So that was how the week began.

  We wakened the next morning and it was a beautiful morning. Among the most beautiful of the things we see from up here on our hill are the clouds. It was a clear, sunny day, but over the pines behind the graveyard enormous clouds were tumbled, and more over the fields and mountains, great cold masses of white and gray against the blue of sky.

  We got off to school as usual, the dogs and two of the cats, Hamlet and Prunewhip, following us down to the bus stop and waiting till we got on. And then at school, for no reason, everything seemed to go wrong. I made stupid mistakes in math and had bad papers to bring home. Maggy was sent to Mr. Rathbone, the principal, for being rude to her teacher. I had the same teacher once, so I could sympathize with Maggy, for a change. And when we got home from school John had been sent home from Regional because he’d thrown up, and he had a fever and was in bed with the flu. The guest room, which we were beginning to call John’s room, is over the living room, and the piano is in the living room. I finished my homework, and Maggy and Suzy were playing checkers, and Rob was building a fort with his blocks, so I sat down at the piano to practice, something I don’t particularly like to do, especially scales. So I started on scales to get them over with, and, I must say, I went at them with vim and vigor. I was so full of vim and vigor that it was quite a while before I heard a continuous thumping on the ceiling. I went up to John’s room to see what was what.

  “For heaven’s sake, Vicky,” he said irritably, “I have a headache and I’m sick. Those scales are going right through my head. Shut up!”

  He said it so angrily that instead of being sorry for him I got angry, too. “I’m supposed to practice half an hour a day,” I told him.

  “Why don’t you remember it on days I’m not sick, then? Mother’s practically always having to force you down on the piano bench and hold you there. Why do you have to practice scales today?”

  “Okay,” I said, “so if I don’t do well in piano this week, you can tell Mother why.”

  “Okay, I will,” he said, and I stomped out. I stomped down the stairs and put on my red jacket with the hood and slammed out of the house. Behind the two birches the sky was a soft gold and it turned gradually to gold-green, and in the gold-green part, just between the two birches, was a tiny, silver-horned moon. Above the birches the sky turned to greeny-blue and there was one faint star just beginning to come out. It was cold and very dry, and I stood there and looked and shivered and shivered and looked. Then I came back into the house and sheepishly hung my jacket on my hook in the pantry.

  And then everything should have been all right.

  Daddy had called to say that he’d be late. The evenings Daddy is late we often eat at the table in the study and watch television, and Mother waits to eat with Daddy when he gets home. I helped her set up the table, and the little ones plunked themselves down on the floor to watch Mickey Mouse, and I went upstairs to read. I heard John go into the bathroom to throw up, and when he got back into bed I went in to him and said, “I’m sorry you feel awful, John.”

  He looked green around the gills and he stuck his face down in the pillow and said, “I’m sorry, too. I just heaved again.”

  “I know. I heard you.”

  “Did you tell Mother?”

  “No.”

  “Well, why didn’t you tell her?”

  “I haven’t exactly had time,” I said. “I heard you and came in to tell you I’m sorry.
”

  “When you throw up you want Mother to hold your head,” John said. “I suppose it couldn’t have occurred to you I’d like Mother to hold my head, too?”

  John was sick; he had a temperature of a hundred and two. I knew I shouldn’t argue with him, but, as I’ve said, it was just an awful week. Right from Wilbur the pig and Suzy’s taking the gum and candy, nothing seemed to go right. And I’ve noticed that once you start doing things wrong you just kind of go on doing them wrong till something happens to make you stop. Sometimes I wonder if that isn’t what makes people criminals. Nothing happens to make them stop, and they just go on doing things wrong till they get to be criminals.

  So now I said to John, “You always seem to think Mother is your special property, just because you were born first. She’s busy getting supper ready for me and the little ones.”

  “What about me?”

  “You know perfectly well if you throw up you don’t get anything but ginger ale and crackers. I’m going back down to practice.”

  “You’re doing it just to spite me,” John said. “Wait till I tell Mother.”

  “Mother doesn’t like tattletales.”

  “Why don’t you do something useful for a change,” John said. “Why don’t you do something to help Mother for once?”

  John looked green, and I should have realized he was being cross because he was sick, but it wasn’t my day, either, so I just snapped back, “Like what?”

  “Just use your head, Victoria Austin. If you can’t think of something to do to help Mother, you’re even dumber than I think you are.”

  “You think I’m dumb?”

  “I know it.”

  “I’m in the top group in my grade.”

  “That doesn’t prove a thing. You’re so dumb you couldn’t think of anything to do to help Mother.”

  “Oh, couldn’t I?” I said. “I’ll let the air out of the upstairs radiators, that’s what I’ll do. They were knocking last night and Mother said this morning she’d have to let the air out of them.”