“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 business 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?”
“I’m not sure.” Grandfather’s voice was heavy. “I do know that we’re not good, and there’s a lot of truth to the saying that the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”
I said, slowly, “I can’t make Zachary leave the Island if he wants to stay. Zachary’s used to getting his own way. But when everybody finds out it was he who took the sailboat out—well, you already know the family thinks he’s poison—” I stopped as I heard the car drive up, and Mother and Daddy and Rob came along the path, loaded with bags of groceries.
“Your daughter,” Daddy said accusingly to Grandfather as he came up the steps and pushed through the screen door, nearly dropping two enormous bags, “told me all she needed was more spaghetti for tonight.”
“Oh, I said I might need to pick up one or two other things,” Mother explained airily. “We got some beautiful cheese to have before dinner. And some Parmesan, which Rob has promised to grate for us. It does have a much more delicate flavor than when it comes out of a jar.”
“Nevertheless,” Daddy said, “there are three more bags of ‘one or two other things’ out in the car.” We heard him go into the kitchen and dump his load on the kitchen table. Then he headed for the car again, and I could hear Mother putting things away and Rob chattering to her.
“How many people does my daughter think she’s cooking for?” Grandfather asked the porch ceiling.
It still and always startled me when Grandfather referred to Mother as his daughter, though of course she is. But Suzy and I are the daughters, and Mother is the mother. Confusing enough when there are three generations together. How much more confusing it would be for Zachary and his Immortalists if there could be ten or fifteen generations of one family all alive at the same time.
The smell of spaghetti sauce wafted out to the porch as Mother took the lid off the pot.
Grandfather sniffed appreciatively. “How about cooking up a poem for me, Vic?”
I pushed closer to him and leaned against his knee. “I’ll try. I just wish I could get Zach off my mind.”
Daddy came in with the rest of the groceries. “I’ve got some reading and note-taking to get done before dinner. I’ve got to get on a better work schedule. I’ll tell Mother to shout for you if she needs you, Vic.”
“Sure,” I called after him as he went into the kitchen.
Grandfather looked down at me. He touched the back of his hand lightly against my cheek and tears rushed to my eyes and I blinked them back. “You’ve had a lot thrown at you in a few short weeks.”
To hold back my tears, I asked, “Like what?”
Grandfather held up one finger. “Leaving New York. Leaving a way of life you’d learned to enjoy. Leaving a school where you were challenged and stimulated. Leaving your friends. To leave a friend is like a death and calls for grieving. And then, instead of settling down again in your own home in Thornhill, you came to me.” He held up a second finger. “And you came because I’m dying.”
“But we wanted to come!” I cried. “We want to be with you for as long as—as long as possible.”
“Until I die,” he corrected quietly. “It’s still something thrown at you that you didn’t anticipate.” He held up a third finger. “Jack Rodney’s death. That’s a rough one for us all.” A fourth finger. “And Leo. You spent a good part of the morning ministering to Leo.”
“But I didn’t—”
“You listened to him, didn’t you?” I nodded. “That’s ministering, and it takes enormous energy. And this afternoon you had Zachary.” The fifth finger. “That’s a lot to have thrown
at you all at once. No wonder you’re confused.”
“Confused and confounded.” But he had made me feel better. I looked at the book lying open in his lap. “What’re you reading?”
“Poetry. I felt rather tired this afternoon and not in the mood to concentrate for long spaces of time. So I went back to one of my old favorites.” He picked up the book. “Henry Vaughan. Seventeenth century.”
“That’s your special century, isn’t it?”
“One of them. Listen to this; I think you’ll like it:
“I saw Eternity the other night,
Like a great ring of pure and endless light,
All calm, as it was bright,
And round beneath it, Time, in hours, days, years,
Driven by the spheres,
Like a vast shadow moved, in which the world
And all her train were hurled.”
He paused and looked up at me, and when I didn’t say anything, because I was thinking about the words of the poem, and what they meant in connection with Leo, with Zachary, he flipped the pages and read:
“There is in God, some say,
A deep but dazzling darkness: as men here
Say it is late and dusky, because they
See not all clear.
O for that Night, where I in him
Might live invisible and dim!”
I didn’t hear the last lines because my mind stopped with A deep but dazzling darkness. And then it picked up the first poem he’d read, with eternity being a great ring of pure and endless light.
Grandfather looked at me.
“He’s terrific, this Vaughan guy,” I said.
“There’s no one like the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century writers for use of language.” He closed the book gently. “How is your writing going, Vicky?”
“Well, my English teacher last year really encouraged me.”
“I liked the poems you gave me for Christmas.”
“Not like Henry Vaughan.”
Grandfather laughed and absently patted the book as though it were an old friend. “I doubt if Henry Vaughan was writing finished verse when he was your age. This should be a good summer for poetry for you, Vic. A poet friend of mine told me that his poems know far more than he does, and if he listens to them, they teach him.”
I knew what he meant and I didn’t know what he meant. The only way to find out was to try to write more poetry; I already knew that if I listen to the ocean long and quietly enough, the rhythm of the waves will move into the rhythm of verse and words will come.
Rob came out to the porch and I slipped away, figuring that the next half hour or so would be the only time this day I’d have to myself. Mother said everything was under control for dinner, so I climbed the ladder to the loft and turned on the big built-in ceiling fan, which was all that made the loft bearable in midsummer. Then I opened the wooden shutters we closed in the morning to keep out the sun; they also kept out the breeze. The sun was well on the other side of the house now, so between the fan stirring the air and the ocean breeze coming in the windows I could sit on the edge of my cot and be moderately comfortable.
We each had a wooden box under our bed for our special junk, and I pulled mine out and picked up one of my notebooks. Some of the words Grandfather had read me were weaving around in my head.
I thought I’d try a fugue-type poem, since Mother has made us fond of fugues with their haunting, recurring themes. I started with a ballade, but it didn’t work, so I fished around in my box for my journal. I didn’t know why, but I found it difficult to write about the morning with Leo. There was something so intensely private about our crying together that it seemed a violation even to write it out in my journal, which is a dumping place for me, and definitely not for publication. But I knew that it was important, so I simply set it down. And I wrote about the afternoon with Zachary, again just setting down the bald facts. It was, I felt, a very dull entry.
It was the same thing when I tried to write about Adam. What was there to say about Adam? Not much. That he was working at the Marine Biology Station with John and that they were good friends and he was coming for dinner. That I’d met him at Commander Rodney’s funeral. That he’d said I was a dolphiny person.
I wrote it all down, but I didn’t say what any of it meant, and I felt frustrated, so I turned back to poetry, this time a rondel, and at last words started to flow.
A great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart
And breaks apart the dusky clouds of night.
The end of all is hinted in the start.
When we are born we bear the seeds of blight;
Around us life & death are torn apart,
Yet a great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.
It lights the world to my delight.
Infinity is present in each part.
A loving smile contains all art.
The motes of starlight spark & dart.
A grain of sand holds power & might.
Infinity is present in each part,
And a great ring of pure & endless light
Dazzles the darkness in my heart.
It wasn’t great poetry, but it was better than the nonwriting I was doing in my journal. And I thought Grandfather might like it, so I made a fair copy for him.
I felt warm and sleepy, and stretched out on my cot for a nap.
Three
John and Adam got home about five-thirty and immediately changed to trunks to go swimming. Adam’s trunks were zebra-striped and showed off his tan. And his lean, long body. He had strong shoulders and arms and narrow hips and looked like a statue of a Greek charioteer I’d seen in an art book.
I made the salad while Rob grated the cheese and Suzy set the table, and when John and Adam got back we all sat around on the porch for Cokes or whatever anybody wanted to drink, and Mother put a plate out with the cheese she’d bought. We didn’t feel hurried, and it must have been well after seven, when most of the Islanders were long through dinner, and we were still sitting around with our drinks, that John called out, “Leo’s coming along on his bike. Were you expecting him, Vicky?”
Suzy said, “I didn’t set a place for him.”
“I wasn’t expecting him.”
We all watched as Leo jumped off his bike and came panting up to the screened porch. All I could think of was that something else awful must have happened, and then I realized that if it were an emergency Leo would have phoned, instead of biking all the way.
“Come in, Leo,” Mother called. “Welcome.”
Leo came up the porch steps, saying, “Hi,” and looked at the round table set for dinner. “You’re just about to eat and I’m interrupting.”
“We’re in no rush,” Mother assured him. “If you haven’t had dinner, why don’t you join us?”
“We’ve just finished,” Leo panted. “While we were eating—that’s what I wanted to talk about, and I wanted to talk to you all, so I thought I’d bike over.”
“Sit down,” Daddy ordered. “You must have biked at top speed. You’re all out of breath.”
Leo pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his face, which was red from exertion.
“Hey, Leo,” John said, “you remember Adam Eddington. We’re working at the lab together.”
They said “Hi” to each other and Leo put his damp handkerchief away.
“What happened at dinner?” I was sitting on the wicker swing, and he came and sat beside me.
“Your friend Zachary Grey came to call on us.”
“What?” John’s voice was loud.
“The fink—” Suzy started.
“No,” Leo broke in. “He came to apologize. He found out about Dad only late yesterday. It must have been a terribly hard thing for him to do, to come to us that way.”
“Only found out yesterday,” John expostulated. “What’re you talking about? What’d he come apologize about?”
I had
n’t told anybody except Grandfather about Zachary; for one thing, there hadn’t been time; so now I said, “Okay, John was right. It was Zachary in the sailboat, but he nearly died. And when he was in intensive care in the hospital they didn’t tell him about Commander Rodney—I mean, when you’re in intensive care all that happens is you get intensively cared for—” I stopped to catch my breath.
“So, then what?” Suzy demanded.
“When he got out of intensive care, Mr. Grey didn’t want him told because he thought it might make him relapse …”
I thought I heard Suzy mutter to John, “Zachary wouldn’t relapse. He wouldn’t give a hoot.”
I didn’t want to fight in front of Adam and Leo, so I said, “He’s a lot more upset about his mother than he lets on.”
“So who told him about Commander Rodney?” John asked.
“And when?” Suzy added.
I hated all this. “He said that after he saw us yesterday afternoon something made him wonder and ask some questions, and that’s how he found out.”
Suzy started to speak, but Daddy shushed her. “I see.”
Nobody asked why Zachary was so dumb with a sailboat, and Grandfather didn’t say anything. Neither did I. Enough was enough.
Leo put his hand down on the canvas cushion of the swing, so that our fingers touched. He had obviously sensed Suzy’s and John’s antagonism toward Zachary. “Hey, Zachary was extremely nice, he really was. I mean, it can’t have been easy to come to us, after—after everything. He told us that he knew there wasn’t anything he could do for us, but he knew that Dad had saved his life, and he would try to make it worth saving. Mom liked him.” After a second, he added, “So did I.”
I looked at Grandfather, but he was looking out at the sky, rosy with afterglow. Did Zachary really mean that? Or was he just trying to ingratiate himself with the Rodneys? But Zachary had never been one to bother ingratiating himself with anyone. And just as he pretended to be less touched by his mother’s death than he really was, so maybe he was more upset by the Commander’s death than he’d led me to believe.
A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4 Page 6