A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “You’ll get blisters. Go rinse your feet and your sneakers and put them on at the water’s edge.” I sounded bossy as all get-out, but I did not like, not one little bit, the idea that someone like Leo thought he knew my own grandfather better than I did.

  He followed my instructions. When he came back across the sand he said, “In the winters when things get too noisy at home, or I have a problem about something and Dad’s too busy and I don’t want to bother him”—for a moment the tears filled his eyes again, but this time they didn’t overflow—“I bike across the Island to your grandfather’s and we have tea together and talk. He’s been a very civilizing influence on me. He’s a wise man.”

  “I know he is.” I stopped myself from adding, ‘He’s my grandfather.’ I don’t know why I was feeling so ungracious toward Leo. Perhaps because our weeping together had been more intimate than I was ready to be.

  “I’m sorry he’s sick,” he said.

  “How’d you know?” It wasn’t that we were keeping it a secret, as though we were ashamed of it or anything, but we weren’t going around talking about it, either. I guess I think death and sex should be allowed privacy.

  “He told me.”

  I wanted to ask, ‘Why?’ but I didn’t.

  Leo answered anyhow. “It wasn’t long before you came, and I asked him how long you were going to stay, and he answered, Most of the summer. You usually don’t stay more than a couple of weeks, so with my big mouth I kept on asking questions, and he told me.” And then Leo did something which didn’t fit the picture I had of him, even the Leo with whom I’d sobbed out rage and grief. He ran back to the water’s edge and shook his fist up at the bland blue sky and the brilliant orb of the sun, too bright to look at, and swore, loudly and steadily. I’d thought, between the kids at school and a year in New York, that I knew all the words, but Leo came out with quite a few that were new to me. He swore with intensity and a strange kind of elegance, and then he dropped his arms and turned his back on the water and the sun and strolled over to me as though he hadn’t done anything unusual. We walked without speaking to the foot of the bluff, with the path rising steeply ahead of us.

  “Where was your grandfather before he came to the Island, before he retired?”

  I looked at him questioningly. After all, he’d said he knew Grandfather better than I do.

  He looked down at his wet sneakers. “I never asked him much about himself, because I was so busy thinking about me.”

  “Aren’t we all, most of the time?” My mind flicked briefly to Sir Thomas Browne’s words in the loft; surely Leo was no more replete with himself than I was with me, and surely we weren’t that much different from anybody else. “About Grandfather—where didn’t he go and what didn’t he do is more like it. When Mother was my age, he was in Africa.”

  “Being a missionary?”

  “Well—he and our grandmother were living with a very small and ancient tribe, and learning their language and setting down their traditions and their wisdom and their history—which were beginning to get lost as the elders died.”

  “That’s not what most people would consider being a missionary,” Leo said. “But then of course your grandfather’s not most people. What else?”

  “Well, he had a big church in Boston and he was tremendously popular. His sermons got rave reviews in the paper, and our grandmother used to tease him about women swooning over him. And just when the church was overflowing he handed in his resignation, like a bomb, and he and Gram went to a tiny mission church in Alaska. He was sixty, but the only way for him to get to all his congregation was by seaplane or helicopter, so he got a pilot’s license, so nobody would go without at least one visit from him every few months.” I’d started climbing and stopped to catch my breath. My climbing muscles hadn’t been that much used in New York, and the backs of my legs felt the pull. Leo lived on the far, flatter side of the island, and I could hear him puffing behind me.

  It had been, I thought, a far more interesting morning than I’d anticipated. I’d learned about the complexity of human beings during the year in New York, but maybe not as much as I’d believed. Leo was certainly much less of a slob than I’d thought.

  Two

  I lost track of time while we were eating lunch, and that may have been just as well, because I wouldn’t have known how to get rid of Leo tactfully if I’d realized how late it was getting. Anyhow, he was still there when Zachary arrived in his shiny black station wagon, tooting at the front door.

  Because the stable is built on the bluff where it elbows toward the sea, you get a good view of the ocean from both the front and the back of the house, though the kitchen and the porch have the better view. Our grandmother wanted it that way when they were remodeling, because she said she spent most of her time in the kitchen, and if the porch was next to the kitchen it could be used as a dining room for maybe seven months a year. Not that she was a slave to the kitchen like some of the supposedly grandma types on TV commercials for lemonade (artificial) or cake mixes. She was a Boston Bluestocking and a cordon-bleu cook, black hat, and Grandfather used to say that if the church went out of business they could always open a restaurant.

  Zachary stood at the front door. He wore jodhpurs and a fawn-colored turtleneck, and he carried a crop with a silver handle which he was switching against his thigh.

  “Want to come in for a minute?” I asked, not sure what to do about Leo.

  “Why not?”

  I led him in by the side door, pointing out the baby swallows. The three parents were swooping around anxiously, and Zachary seemed amused by the strange ménage à trois.

  “Immoral little buggers, aren’t they?” He grinned at me. Once indoors, he looked around, still flicking his crop, glancing into the stalls with all their books; sagging, comfortable chairs; the double stall that was Grandfather’s office; and the one next to it, with a long map of the world on the outside wall, which let down to become a table for cold or rainy weather. There was plenty of both on the Island.

  “Intriguing,” Zachary said. “It looks rather like—”

  “It is,” I replied. “It was.”

  “A stable?”

  “Yes.”

  “A big one, then.”

  “Yeah. It belonged to rich friends of my grandparents, the Woods, who have the big house about half a mile down the road.”

  “They must have an imaginative architect.”

  “My grandmother.”

  “Seriously?”

  “She could do almost anything she put her hand to.”

  “Will I meet her?”

  “No. She died a few years after Grandfather retired.”

  “Oh, I remember,” Zachary said. “He’s the minister.” He sounded as though he was saying that Grandfather was involved in organized crime. No—as a matter of fact, Zachary probably had considerable respect for organized crime.

  Everybody was still sitting around the table.

  Zachary said a general hello, politely, and then looked pointedly at Leo. I introduced Zach first to Grandfather, since the meeting the day before hardly constituted an introduction, then to Leo.

  You couldn’t imagine two people less alike than Zachary and Leo. Zachary was like a negative of Leo, though you couldn’t possibly say that Leo was a positive of Zachary. Where Leo’s straw-colored hair was bleached by the Island sun and salt, Zachary’s was black as midnight. Leo’s skin was ruddy-brown and freckled from wind and weather; Zachary’s, winter pale. Leo’s eyes were hazel and wide apart and guileless; Zachary’s were steel-grey, not sea-grey like Adam’s but metallic. Well—Adam’s eyes were gray, and Zachary’s were grey, the way his last name is spelled. And the combination of dark and pale—Zachary was just as gorgeous as I had remembered him during those long months in New York when I never heard from him.

  Leo said, “I’d better be getting on home. Jacky and I go back to work tomorrow. This is our busiest season.”

  In answer to Zachary’s look I said, “L
eo and his brother, Jacky, run charters to the mainland and the other islands, if someone doesn’t want to wait for the ferry. They also take people deep-sea fishing.”

  Leo bowed slightly. “At your service.”

  “I may take you up on that. Are you expensive?” Zachary asked.

  “More than the ferry. We charge the going rate for charters. Monday’s our day off. See you, Vicky?”

  “Sure,” I replied, thinking at him,—Go, Leo, go, before you find out who Zachary is, if he is the rich kid whose boat capsized; and if he is, before he finds out who you are.

  He went.

  “How about our ride, Vicky-O?” Zachary asked.

  I looked at his jodhpurs. “I don’t have any riding clothes.”

  “Jeans are fine. Sandals aren’t so good. Got anything else?”

  “Sneakers.”

  Zachary glanced down at his beautiful boots. “Better than sandals.”

  “I’ll go change.” And I went off to the loft, leaving Zachary sitting out on the porch, in Leo’s chair, accepting a glass of iced tea.

  When I returned I heard Mother saying, “Zachary, I’m so sorry.”

  Sorry about what? That Zachary was in the capsized boat? That he was the one the Commander rescued? If so, better to have it out in the open.

  But it wasn’t that. It was Zachary’s mother. She was dead, killed in an automobile accident in California, only a few miles from home.

  “It was her own fault,” Zachary was explaining. “She never should have been allowed to drive. She’d been off, buying her spring wardrobe. Pop sent it all back, several thou’worth.” He spoke in an even voice.

  I wondered if he grieved for her, if her death was what had caused the pain in his eyes the day before, and I wasn’t sure. If someone had asked me yesterday morning who I knew best, Zachary or Leo, I’d have answered without thinking: Zachary. If I stopped to think, I knew it was the other way around; and certainly I knew Leo better after this morning than I ever had before.

  We’d met Zachary a year ago, during the camping trip we took after we’d rented the house in Thornhill and before moving to the apartment in New York. Zachary and his parents had pulled up to the campsite next to ours in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in Tennessee, and we watched them set up camp in amazement and amusement. The black station wagon was last year’s version of this year’s, and I couldn’t have told them apart, except that they were both obviously bran-span new. And Zachary had very quickly made it clear that the Greys’ things were always new, and whatever was latest. They had every gadget we’d ever heard of, and several we hadn’t. Mr. Grey even unrolled a linoleum rug to cover the canvas floor of the tent, and tied an enormous piece of plastic over the top. He had an aura of money; he positively reeked of it. The Woods probably have as much money as the Greys, but they don’t reek. Mrs. Grey in this day and age wore corsets—or is it a corset? Whatever, her pouter-pigeon figure was definitely not her own. She looked as though she’d be lots more at home sitting at a bridge table than watching her husband cook steaks over a charcoal fire on a grill that belonged on a patio rather than in a state campground.

  And now she was dead. More death. And Zachary didn’t look or seem that different. Would the world close around the space that had been Commander Rodney as it appeared to have closed around Mrs. Grey, leaving no mark?

  Then I heard Zachary saying, “Do you know anything about the science of cryonics?” He reached for the pitcher to pour himself some more iced tea, but there wasn’t much left.

  “I hadn’t exactly thought of it as a science.” There was a chilly edge to my father’s voice. Zachary seemed to be having his usual effect on my family. Last summer, when he’d more or less followed us from campground to campground, I’d been flattered and fascinated. I was flattered that Zachary found me worth pursuing across the country, and fascinated by his sophistication. Even now, after a year in New York, I still felt gauche and naïve.

  “Oh, come, sir,” Zachary was saying to my father. “Quite a few people in the A.M.A. are taking it seriously.”

  “What’s cryonics?” Rob asked.

  Whatever it was, I could see that Daddy didn’t think much of it.

  Zachary was explaining, “We belong to a group in California called the Immortalists. We believe that it isn’t necessary for people to die as early as they do, and when we understand more about controlling DNA and RNA it will be possible for people to live for several hundred years without aging—and that time is not so far in the future as you might think.”

  We were all silent, listening to him. Mother glanced at Daddy, and then took the silver pitcher and headed for the kitchen for more iced tea.

  Zachary went on, “Cryonics is the science of freezing a body immediately after death, deep-freezing, so that later on—in five years, or five hundred—when scientists know more about the immortality factor, it will be possible for these people of the future to revive the deep-frozen bodies, to resurrect them.”

  Grandfather spoke with a small smile, “I think I prefer another kind of resurrection.”

  Zachary’s lips moved in a scornful smile. “Of course, the problem at the moment is cost. Not many people can afford it. We feel lucky that we can.”

  “You did—you did that to your mother?” Rob sounded horrified. I was, too, come to that. I’d known, vaguely, that this kind of thing was being done in California, but not by or to anybody I knew. I looked at Grandfather.

  He gave me his special grandfather-granddaughter smile. “Resurrection has always been costly, though not in terms of money. It took only thirty pieces of silver.”

  “Oh, that,” Zachary said, courteously enough. “We think this is more realistic, sir. While only the rich can afford it now, ultimately it should be available to everybody.”

  Into my mind’s eye flashed an image of the afternoon before, when we were standing by a dark hole in the ground, waiting for Commander Rodney’s body to be lowered into it. Somehow that struck me as being more realistic than being deep-frozen. Being deep-frozen went along with plastic grass and plastic earth and trying to pretend that death hadn’t really happened.

  “Of course,” Zachary said, “nowadays a lot of people get cremated, basically because of lack of space in cemeteries.”

  Rob was looking at him in fascinated horror. “You mean your scientists couldn’t do anything with ashes?” He was sitting next to Grandfather and he reached out to hold his hand.

  Now Rob was bathed in Grandfather’s luminous smile. “I’m not depending on superscientists, Rob. When one tries to avoid death, it’s impossible to affirm life.”

  I thought of Mrs. Grey deep-frozen somewhere in California, and Commander Rodney buried on the Island, covered with good Island soil. And Grandfather—perhaps he and Mother and Daddy had discussed what was going to happen to him, to his body, when he died. But they hadn’t talked about it around us. Maybe it wasn’t time.

  Not yet. Please. Not for a while yet.

  Rob was asking Grandfather anxiously, “It doesn’t really matter, does it? whether you’re frozen or buried or cremated or what, God can manage, can’t he?”

  “I stake my life on that.” Grandfather’s smile was only in his eyes, but it was there, warm and confident as though he had laughed out loud.

  I’d almost forgotten Mr. Rochester. He was lying in a corner of the porch in the sun; now that he’s elderly he likes to let his old joints warm up in the sunlight. He got to his feet slowly, but still supplely, stepped over Ned, and crossed to Rob, sitting protectively beside him, and stared at Zachary with a look so suspicious it almost made me laugh; a laugh right then would have been a good thing. Ned rose, stretched, and swished into the kitchen, tail switching.

  Nobody laughed. I said, “If we’re going riding, we’d better go.”

  Mother came back with the iced tea. Grandfather pushed his glass toward her and she filled it.

  Daddy asked, “Where are you going to get horses, Zachary? Vicky’s not an e
xperienced rider.”

  “The other side of the Island, sir, at Second Bay Stables.”

  Daddy nodded. We knew, slightly, the woman who ran Second Bay Stables, the way we know most of the Islanders and the regular summer people.

  Zachary promised, “I’ll see that Vicky has a gentle horse. We’re just going to meander along the bridle paths, nothing dangerous.”

  “And, Vicky—” Mother called after us. “Don’t be late.”

  I got the message. She didn’t finish “—John’s bringing a friend home for dinner,” because she didn’t want me to ask Zachary, too. Mother can manage half a dozen unexpected people for dinner without batting an eyelash. It wasn’t that; it was Zachary. John’s friend was welcome. Mine wasn’t. Which burned me. Nevertheless, at the moment I didn’t think I wanted Zachary to come for dinner, either, with his talk about the science of cryonics and deep-freezing his mother. I don’t know why that nauseated me so. It wasn’t because it was science-fictiony; most science fiction comes true, somehow or other, sooner or later. So it wasn’t that it wasn’t possible; it was that, as far as I was concerned, it was sick.

  “We won’t be late,” I promised not very graciously, and led Zachary around to the car the back way.

  He revved up the engine and started down the zigzaggy road, driving too fast.

  “Hey, I don’t have a death wish,” I protested. “Slow down.” He lifted his foot a millimeter off the gas pedal. I swallowed and asked, “When did you get to the Island?”

  “On the ferry,” he answered. But that wasn’t what I’d asked him. I started to repeat the question, when, not how, and lost courage. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know the answer. Instead I asked, “How did you know we were on the Island?”

  “Detective work.” Gradually his foot was pressing down on the gas pedal. “You’re why I came, Vicky-O. There’s certainly nothing else here. No golf club, no decent hotel, no night life.”

  “That’s what we like about it. There is a speed limit, though.”