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

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  Leo said to Daddy, “He also said that you’d tried to talk sense into him, last summer, to make him take care of his health, and he hadn’t always kept his word to you, but now he’s really going to try.”

  I’d changed a lot during the past year. Why shouldn’t Zachary have changed and grown up, too? I could tell by John’s skeptical raising of his eyebrows that he didn’t believe all that Zachary had told the Rodneys. I did.

  Mother said, lightening the charged atmosphere, “Suzy, be an angel and put in the spaghetti and give it a good stir and then set the timer. Oh—and put the big colander in the sink so it’ll be there for me when the buzzer goes off.” Leo stood up. “Don’t take off, Leo. That wasn’t a hint for you to go. Stay as long as you like.”

  Suzy went into the kitchen and Leo sat beside me again. “I also wanted you to know, Vicky, that before Zachary came, I talked to Mom about going to Columbia next year, and you were right, she’s determined for me to go.”

  “Hey, Leo,” John said, “both Adam’s parents teach at Columbia, and that’s where he grew up, just a few blocks from where we lived last year. Talk about coincidence.”

  “Grandfather says there’s no such thing as coincidence,” I said, and looked at him.

  Grandfather’s lips quirked into a small smile. “The pattern is closely woven.”

  Adam, who had been silent all through the discussion about Zachary, spoke up. “You really think there’s a pattern, sir?”

  “It seems evident to me.”

  “What does that do to free will?” John asked.

  “Not a thing. Any one of us can cause changes in the pattern by our responses of love or acceptance or resentment.” He held a thin hand out toward Leo. “You’re finding that out, aren’t you? And your mother. Her response is always on the side of life. She’s going back to nursing, isn’t she?”

  “How’d you know!” Leo exclaimed.

  “I know Nancy Rodney.”

  “You’re right about her going back to nursing.” Leo still looked at Grandfather bemusedly. “She’s going to the mainland to the hospital for a refresher course, and the visiting nurse on the Island’s retiring in January, and Mom thinks she can get the post.”

  “Splendid,” Daddy applauded. “I’ve a feeling your mother’s an admirable nurse. She has a very special way of inspiring confidence.”

  “My mom’s quite something,” Leo agreed. “And during the time she has to be on the mainland, Jacky and I can take her over in the morning and bring her home at night. It’ll all be in the day’s work for us. At first when Mom talked about working again I was dead against it, but she made me see that it will be much better for her than sitting around doing nothing, and as you said, Dr. Austin, she’s a good nurse and she knows it, and she said she’d been thinking about it anyhow, now that we’re old enough so that we don’t need her at home all the time.” He stood up again. “I really do have to go. I told Mom and the kids I wouldn’t stay long. Thanks for being here when I need you.”

  Suzy came back out. “What’s your rush?”

  “Jack and I have to be up and out before dawn. We have a fishing party from the Inn. My mom’s going to go back into nursing, Suzy.”

  “Super! I set the timer, Mother. Ten minutes.”

  “Vicky—” Leo reached for my hand, then didn’t take it. “I’ve got a full rest of the week, but maybe we could do something on Monday? Take a picnic or go to a movie or something?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Give me a ring.”

  “I will. But not with a diamond in it. Not yet.” And he rushed off.

  “Gross,” was Suzy’s comment.

  “Didn’t think Leo had it in him,” was John’s.

  “Seems like an okay guy,” was Adam’s. “Must be a really rough time for him right now.”

  —He’s growing up, I thought.—Does it take something terrible to make someone like Leo grow up?

  Suzy plunked herself on the floor by Mother’s chair. “May I have a sip of your drink?” She sipped and handed the glass back. “And what do you think about Zachary going to the Rodneys’? I don’t believe it.”

  “Don’t believe he went?” I asked.

  “Or don’t believe what he said?” John asked.

  “Both. I mean, if I’d been responsible for someone’s death I wouldn’t go rushing to the family.”

  “He didn’t exactly rush,” I defended, “and I think he really meant what he said. Give him a chance, for a change.”

  “Why should I?” Suzy demanded. “He’s the pits. And I don’t want to see him, that’s all. If it weren’t for Zachary, Commander Rodney would be alive.”

  Before Daddy could speak, to my surprise Adam cut in. “Wait a minute. You can’t pile a load of guilt on someone like that.”

  Suzy looked her stubbornest. “It was his fault, wasn’t it?”

  “Suzy,” Daddy remonstrated, “we’ve been through this too many times already. I thought you’d taken in some of the things I said.”

  “I still blame him.” She scowled. “And so did Vicky, until it turned out to be her precious Zachary.”

  Before I could think of a response, Adam said, “I don’t mean to butt in, but I have to. You can’t hindsight that way. When something happens, it happens, and you have to accept it and go on from there. I know that. I know it from personal experience.” He spoke with quiet intensity.

  “But if the boat hadn’t capsized—”

  “The heart attack could have happened while he was weeding the garden,” Daddy said. “Adam is right.”

  I could see that Suzy was dying to ask Adam what his personal experience had been, and I knew that John, if not Mother and Daddy, would jump on her if she did. I guess she knew that, too, because she turned away without saying anything more.

  Grandfather pulled himself up from the couch, sliding Ned from his lap. “Excuse me a minute. I won’t be long.” He walked toward the kitchen, Ned following and rubbing against his legs. Mother’s always been worried about Ned tripping him, but Grandfather says that he and Ned know each other’s ways. “You all right, Father?” Mother’s voice was calm, but there was anxiety under it. And I noticed that Grandfather was walking more slowly than he used to.

  “Just want to get something,” he called back.

  “He wants to read us something from a book, I’ll bet,” I explained to Adam. “Whenever we have an argument about anything, Grandfather has something in a book that settles it, or at least makes us ask some new questions. And in spite of all his books, he knows exactly in which stall and on what shelf every single one is, and what’s in it.”

  “What’ll it be this time?” Mother asked.

  “Shakespeare,” Suzy said.

  “Einstein,” John said.

  “Could be the Bible,” Daddy added.

  Grandfather came out with a paperback book. “It’s by Elie Wiesel.” He riffled through the pages. “It’s not quite as pertinent as I thought, but it will do. Adam thus bequeathed us his death, not his sin … We do not inherit the sins of our fathers, even though we may be made to endure their punishment. Guilt cannot be transmitted. We are linked to Adam only by his memory, which becomes our own, and by his death, which foreshadows our own. Not by his sin.”

  “Hey, I like that; that’s interesting.” Adam’s face lit up. “What’s the book, sir?” he asked.

  “Messengers of God, about some of the Old Testament characters, not only your—” He frowned slightly. “You’re Adam’s namesake. What’s he to you? What’s the opposite of namesake?” He rubbed the heel of his hand across his forehead. “I can’t think, I can’t think—”

  I saw Mother looking at him worriedly. “It’ll probably come to you at two in the morning, Father.”

  He nodded. “It’s a fascinating book, though there are some sections I’d love to argue with him, especially when he writes about what Christians think, which by and large is far from what I think.” He turned a few pages. “Here’s something else in the Adam chapter t
hat I like. Listen well, young Adam. He had the courage to get up and begin anew … As long as he lived … victory belonged not to death, but to him … It is not given to man to begin; that privilege is God’s alone. But it is given to man to begin again—and he does so every time he chooses to defy death and side with the living.”

  A shadow seemed to move across Adam’s face. Then: “I learned that the hard way, but I learned it. Hey, may I borrow that book?”

  “How’d you—” Suzy started.

  John shut her up by cutting across her words. “When I’m through with it.”

  Unrepressed, Suzy said, “And all this stuff about man being privileged to start again is very sexist. What about women?”

  Mother laughed. “Correct me if I’m wrong, Father, but doesn’t the Bible say, So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female?”

  “That’s right,” Grandfather corroborated.

  “So we females are half of mankind, Suzy, and don’t let inverse sexism cheat you of your fair share.”

  “Oh—okay.” She did not sound convinced.

  “So,” I ventured, “maybe Zachary can begin again?”

  “I doubt it,” John muttered.

  “Give him a chance, John,” Mother said.

  “Nancy Rodney’s doing that, isn’t she?” Grandfather said. “If she can give him a chance, I think the rest of us can, too.”

  I looked at him gratefully. “She’s giving Zachary a chance, and she’s beginning again herself, in going back to nursing. It ought to be going forward to nursing, oughtn’t it?”

  Grandfather had been turning the pages. “One more thing. This is for young Leo.” He looked about, as though surprised at not finding Leo, then turned back to the book. “Suffering, in Jewish tradition, confers no privileges. It all depends on what one makes of that suffering. It is possible to suffer and despair an entire lifetime and still not give up the art of laughter.”

  Adam was looking at Grandfather, his lips slightly parted. He seemed to be taking what Grandfather read very personally, and I was as curious as Suzy.

  “Wiesel knew what he was talking about,” Grandfather said. “He survived the hell of Nazi concentration camps and the loss of almost everyone he loved, and yet he somehow or other kept the gift of laughter.”

  “Oh, wow,” Suzy said. “Jacky’s going to do okay. We had a good time today in spite of—of everything. And we laughed some, too.”

  “Leo and I—” I started, and didn’t have to finish, because Suzy said, “I thought you didn’t like Leo.”

  “I didn’t. Until today. He’s not nearly as much of a slob as I thought. We had a good time. We really did. But we didn’t do much laughing.”

  “Tears need to come first,” Grandfather said softly, just to me. How did he know? He went on, speaking to everybody, “Who was it who said, It was by the force of gravity that Satan fell?” Again he pushed the palm of his hand against his forehead. “I’m losing my memory …”

  John spoke lightly. “Join the club.”

  Grandfather dropped his hand to his knee. “Gravity and levity—wherever there’s laughter, there is heaven. Real laughter, that is, not scornful or cynical laughter.” He handed John the book. “Here. But I want it back when you’re through.”

  “I’m very reliable about returning books. And I’ll vouch for Adam. That is, I’ll see to it that he gives it back when he’s through.”

  “I’m pretty reliable about books, too,” Adam assured him.

  “Look!” Suzy pointed, and there was Rob, curled up beside Rochester in the corner, sound asleep.

  Daddy laughed. “We can hardly blame him. That was pretty heavy conversation for a seven-year-old.”

  “Or a thirteen-year-old,” Suzy commented.

  “You held your own.” Adam smiled at her.

  Maybe it was a pretty heavy conversation for a lot of people, but it didn’t seem to bother Adam, and that made my heart lift.

  The buzzer in the kitchen rang, loud and shrill.

  “Come help me, Vicky,” Mother said, and we went into the kitchen.

  When we gathered around the table, with the candles lit under the hurricane globes, we all held hands and sang grace. I wondered how Adam would feel, but I looked down at the table and not across at him. And then I heard his voice, and he was singing with John, in a good, strong baritone.

  I wondered if we were really as peculiar a family as Zachary thought. On the other hand, I didn’t think Zachary and his family were that average, either. Our family is our family and I’ve always taken us completely for granted, and I was glad Adam seemed to take us for granted, too, us kids, and our parents, and our grandfather, who talked about gravity and levity and heaven and all the things Zachary said nobody talked about.

  I looked up and Adam was eating and Suzy was asking him something about his family.

  He reached for the Parmesan and spooned it liberally onto his spaghetti. “I’m an only, and since both my parents are academics, I’ve lived pretty exclusively in an adult world. I think I missed out on a lot.” And he smiled on us all.

  “What are you working on this summer?” Daddy asked Adam.

  “Oh, I do have a project going, and like John, I’m a general bottle washer. This is my summer for no excitement whatsoever. And I hope those aren’t famous last words.”

  “I hope not, too,” Mother said. “We’ve all had enough excitement to last us a long time.”

  John explained, “Adam’s much more than a bottle washer; that’s me. He’s into other bottles, the bottle-nosed dolphin.”

  “I thought you were working on starfish,” Daddy said. “Didn’t you work with Dr. O’Keefe last summer?”

  “Yes, sir. But this summer I’ve asked if I can do a special project.”

  Suzy asked, “Are the dolphins in pens?”

  “For a while. Jeb—Dr. Nutteley, my boss—never keeps them penned for more than six months. Then he lets them back out to sea.”

  “You mean so they won’t be corrupted?”

  “This is Suzy’s year to be down on humanity,” John said.

  “If humanity can club a thousand innocent porpoises to death, do you wonder I’m down on it?” Suzy demanded.

  I saw Adam wince and knew he felt as terrible about the porpoises as Suzy did.

  “Nature isn’t all that pure and noble,” John told her.

  “Isn’t it?”

  “Nature is red in tooth and claw.”

  “Who says?”

  “Alfred Lord Tennyson. And it’s true.”

  “That still doesn’t excuse clubbing porpoises and being greedy about oil and wars and murder and pollution and everything people do.”

  Adam looked at her thoughtfully. “There’ve been, and still are, some pretty good people, Suzy.”

  “A few.”

  “It’s those few who make it all worthwhile. Like my boss this summer, for instance. The Marine Biology Station is loosely connected to the Coast Guard, but Jeb Nutteley isn’t having anything to do with experiments which would manipulate dolphins, or use them in ways that are contrary to their nature.”

  “Like what?” Suzy demanded.

  Adam paused, as though deciding what to say. “Well—not by the Coast Guard but other agencies, there’ve been experiments in training dolphins to detect submarines, which maybe is all right. But there’ve also been experiments in training dolphins to carry a bomb to an enemy submarine, to blow it up, a kamikaze act.”

  Suzy let out a yelp of outrage.

  “It’s vile,” Adam agreed. “And Dr. Nutteley won’t have anything to do with that kind of thing. Experiments in using dolphins to save life is something else again. If a dolphin can lead us to a ship in distress, or a lifeboat with people in it who need to be rescued, that’s okay.”

  “What about dolphin shows,” Mother asked, “where they jump through hoops and play baseball and do tricks?”

  “It’s not as bad as clubbing them,” Suzy said.
“But isn’t it sort of ig—ig—”

  “Ignominious?” John suggested.

  “Yeah. Humiliating.”

  “I’m not sure,” Adam replied. “I’ve given it a good bit of thought—or at least Jeb Nutteley has, though we don’t teach the dolphins any tricks. We’re just trying to learn how to communicate with them. But do you think it’s ignominious or humiliating for a ballet dancer to dance in public? Or an actor to perform? Or for a musician to give a concert? The dolphins do seem to enjoy being performers; according to Jeb, they really get a lot of fun out of it. Hey, if anybody urged me I’d have another helping of spaghetti. And some of that super salad.”

  I was glad I’d made the salad.

  Mother filled his plate with spaghetti and sauce and passed him the salad, but Suzy wasn’t about to be deflected. “Adam, could I come over and see the dolphins?”

  Adam hesitated.

  And Rob was asking, “Me, too?”

  Adam twirled spaghetti skillfully around the tines of his fork. “Maybe I’d better ask you one at a time. One of our dolphins is about to pup and Jeb doesn’t encourage mobs of visitors.”

  “Then could I come? Please?” Suzy looked all golden and fringed gentian eyes, and at thirteen she was (as Zachary had once pointed out) way ahead of me.

  So I wasn’t prepared to have Adam say, calmly and firmly, “I think next week, Suzy. I’d already planned to ask Vicky to come over tomorrow.” He looked across the table at me. “Okay?”

  “Sure. Yes. I’d love to. I’m not a scientist like Suzy and John—but I’d absolutely love to.”

  Grandfather smiled on me. “You can write a new poem for me. I very much like the one you wrote this afternoon, Victoria.”

  Grandfather never calls me Victoria. Victoria is Mother, and I’m Vicky, so there won’t be any confusion. I looked at Mother and Mother was looking at Grandfather. And Grandfather’s hand had gone up to his forehead again.

  But Adam asked with interest, “So you’re a poet?”

  “Not yet. Maybe one day. I sometimes write verses.”

  “You know what, that doesn’t surprise me. When we get to know each other a little better, I’ll ask to see some of your poems, okay?”