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

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A Ring of Endless Light: The Austin Family Chronicles, Book 4 Page 11

by L'Engle, Madeleine;


  “It’s a different kind of oneness. It’s a deep but dazzling darkness.”

  Now he took my hand in his. “Poetry does illuminate, doesn’t it? Bless you for understanding that, and for remembering.”

  Daddy returned then.

  Grandfather said, “About that hospital bed. I think I would like to have it in my study, where I’m surrounded by the books that have been my friends throughout my life.”

  “I think we can manage that, Father.”

  “And where I can have some privatecy. This porch is rather like a railroad station—in the days when there used to be railroad stations. I will need some time to be alone, to meditate.”

  When the screen door banged again, I jumped. So did Grandfather, who had closed his eyes. It was John, and Mother and Suzy came out of the kitchen, and at the same moment the phone rang and Suzy rushed to answer it. I haven’t raced her for the phone in ages.

  She called back out, “It’s that nerd Zachary.”

  “I’ll take it in Grandfather’s study,” I said. “Hang up in the kitchen.”

  “Well,” said Zachary, “why haven’t you called me?”

  I wasn’t in the mood for this. “Why would I call you?”

  “Because I left three messages for you to call me, one with your father, one with your mother, and the last time with your little brother.”

  “I guess they forgot, because—”

  He cut me off. “Forgot, nothing. I’m persona non gratis in their eyes.”

  “Grata,” I corrected automatically.

  “I told you my cram school was lousy. Didn’t make us take Latin, most of us would have flunked it. Anyhow, your parents forgot accidentally on purpose.”

  “Zachary. My grandfather has leukemia and he had a hemorrhage today. Daddy had to call the Coast Guard and get him to the hospital on the mainland for a transfusion. They had other things on their minds than phone messages.”

  “Oh. Doesn’t this two-bit island even have a hospital?”

  “There’s a fund drive on for a cottage hospital. We should have it by next summer, but that doesn’t help us this year.”

  “So your grandfather’s on the mainland?”

  “No, Mother and Daddy brought him home. He’s much better.”

  “Good, then. Listen, I’ve hired your pal Leo for Saturday afternoon and evening. I want to take you to the mainland for a swim at the country club, and then dinner, and there’s a concert you might like to hear, a pianist. Okay?”

  “It sounds fine. I’ll have to check with my parents.”

  Zachary sighed exaggeratedly. “So check.”

  “I’ll call you back tomorrow.”

  “When?”

  “Right after breakfast.”

  “Okay.” He hung up without saying goodbye, typical Zachary fashion.

  I went back to the porch and Rob had come down and was sleepily rubbing his eyes. Daddy had fixed drinks, and John handed me a Coke with a good big wedge of lemon, the way I like it.

  “Thanks to Vicky,” Mother said, “dinner’s all ready. I’ve just put some rice on to go under the stroganoff. It’ll take a few minutes, so let’s relax while we wait.”

  And for a brief moment the world seemed stable again.

  In the morning after breakfast I was puttering around the kitchen helping clean up, when Daddy came in and put a call through for a hospital bed, and then a call to Mr. Hanchett, on the mainland, saying that Grandfather would not be able to take the church services for the rest of the month. I was glad I wasn’t around when he told Grandfather; Daddy’s voice had that just-too-level quality it has when he’s doing something he has to do and doesn’t want to do.

  Mother came in as he hung up. But she’d heard.

  Her voice, too, was unnaturally level. “We’re really unusually lucky.” She put her hand on Daddy’s arm in an affectionate gesture. “It seems almost providential that you’d already planned to take this summer to write that book.”

  “I haven’t done much so far,” Daddy said. “I’m going to have to set up a regular routine of work. If I don’t get it done before I resume private practice—”

  “—it’ll never be done,” Mother finished. She looked around the kitchen, as though seeing it for the first time. “There are so many people who live in cramped quarters, and when something like this happens, they don’t have the choice we do, to keep Father at home, to be with him. They have to resort to a nursing home; they don’t have any alternative …”

  Daddy put his arm around her. “Perhaps it’s easier when there is no alternative.”

  “No, no,” Mother murmured. “I’m always boring the kids by telling them that something easy isn’t worth anything. And it seems somehow as if this—this is meant. You’ll never have another summer like this when you’re able to work anywhere you want. How’s that article going?”

  “The article’s finished, at any rate,” Daddy said. “I sent it off to the New England Medical Journal this morning.” He looked at me. “I’ve got more than enough work to keep me busy this summer. Vicky, I’ve appreciated that you were willing to give up a good job.”

  After the complimentary way in which Daddy spoke, I didn’t say that it burned me that Suzy’d been allowed to turn down the same good job and do what she wanted to do.

  Daddy continued, “Even though you’re going to be more, rather than less, needed as the summer goes on, you don’t have to be a slave here twenty-four hours a day.”

  “She certainly doesn’t,” Mother agreed.

  “I wish you had some kind of a project, Vicky.”

  “Well, I sort of do.”

  “What?”

  “Adam has a dolphin project going, and I’m helping him.”

  “You don’t have any background in marine biology or any other kind of biology,” Daddy said.

  “Adam’s filling me in on what I need.” I stopped then, because I could see that Daddy thought my helping Adam was just about as made up a job as Suzy’s helping Jacky. Only he thought that Suzy had more qualifications for helping Jacky than I did for helping Adam. And without telling about Basil there was no way I could explain anything.

  And as for people living in cramped quarters, Mother and Daddy had Grandfather’s bedroom, but we kids were all together up in the loft.

  “Don’t scowl,” Mother said. “You’re getting lines in your forehead.”

  “I’m not scowling.”

  “Vicky, this summer’s not easy on any of us …” Mother turned away.

  “Who’s complaining?” I couldn’t keep the brittleness out of my voice. I sounded grimly ungracious. So I added, “We all want to be with him. You know that.” And then, “I’ll go make your bed. I’ll get Rob to help me.”

  We had to take Grandfather’s desk out of his study stall to make way for the hospital bed. Daddy put the desk in the stall with the science books and announced that it was going to be his office from now on, and if we wanted any of the books we’d better take them now, because when he was in his office he was going to be writing and he was not to be disturbed.

  The hospital bed was electric, with buttons which raised and lowered it, up and down, head and feet, and when it was flat down with one of those Indian bedspreads on it, it looked like an ordinary bed, but even an ordinary bed had no place in Grandfather’s study. Daddy found a sturdy table to put by the bed to hold the phone, and a reading lamp, and Grandfather’s Bible, and whatever other books he might want to have right by him.

  Later that day the phone men came to put the phone on a jack, so that it could be unplugged if Grandfather wanted to nap. Or, as he said, to meditate.

  And in the afternoon Mrs. Rodney came by.

  Since the house was empty, Grandfather was in his usual place on the lumpy couch on the porch, “where I can see the ocean and sky.”

  Mother and I were in the kitchen, preparing the vegetables for a pot roast. We weren’t talking, but it was an all-right silence. I didn’t know what she was thinking, but h
er face didn’t have the white, pulled-tight look it had when she and Daddy brought Grandfather home after the blood transfusion. I was working on a poem in my head, hurrying to get the carrots scraped so I could go up to the loft and set it down.

  We heard a knock on the door, and Mother said, “Go see who it is, Vicky, and check that the swallows aren’t upset.”

  I slipped out through the porch, shutting the door quietly behind me, because Grandfather had his eyes closed. When I got around to the front of the house, Mrs. Rodney was backing away.

  “Those swallows were dive-bombing me. And their nest is much too shallow. They’ll be lucky if those fledglings learn to fly before they fall out. Are your parents at home?”

  “Yes. Daddy’s writing, and Mother’s in the kitchen.”

  “I’d like to see them for just a few minutes. I take it you’re not using the front door for the duration?” She looked at the three parent swallows anxiously fluttering about the nest.

  “That’s right.” We went in through the side door, the one that leads into the stall where Daddy was working. He looked up, frowning, then smiled as he saw Mrs. Rodney. I knew he hated being interrupted, but I also had a hunch that Mrs. Rodney had something important to say, so I left her there and went to the kitchen to get Mother.

  When we got back to Daddy’s stall, Mrs. Rodney was saying, “And since my refresher course at the hospital doesn’t begin till September I’m free as a lark this summer, and I’d like to be Mr. Eaton’s nurse.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Daddy said. “At the moment he doesn’t need much in the way of nursing.”

  “But he’s going to.”

  “I can—” Mother started.

  Mrs. Rodney broke in. “Please let me. It will make me feel needed. I love your father, and I am trained to do things like giving a bed bath without jolting or hurting.”

  Daddy nodded, twirling the felt pen he’d been writing with. “Victoria, I think your father would rather not have you see his weakness. Nancy, it’s very generous of you, and we’re most grateful.”

  Mrs. Rodney said, “And this is friendship on my part, not business. I want that understood.”

  Daddy said, “We’ll see about that when the time comes.”

  “Suzy told us about the transfusion. It helped?”

  “Greatly.”

  “If you think he should have them on a regular basis, I think we could manage them here, rather than putting him to the fatigue and stress of going to the hospital.”

  Now Mother spoke. “Oh, good. The hospital was—efficient, for the most part, and altogether horrible.”

  “Most city hospitals are,” Mrs. Rodney said briskly, “especially the emergency rooms. Many people get frustrated with the long waits in the clinics, and so they come to the emergency rooms. The result is that there’s no way everybody can be treated promptly.”

  Mother said, “If my husband hadn’t been a physician, and able to cut through red tape, we might still be there. And I waited in the emergency room—it seemed hours.”

  “City emergency rooms can be pretty awful,” Mrs. Rodney said. “It’s a pity we won’t have our cottage hospital on the Island till next summer. But Dr. Austin can arrange for the blood, and Leo can bring it from the mainland. The kids and I’ll all donate some blood. You’ll let me know whenever I’m needed?”

  Mother put her hands swiftly to her face, covering her eyes, then dropped them. “Nancy, to say thank you is simply inadequate—”

  “It’s little enough. My nursing is the one gift I have to offer a family that’s very dear to me. By the way, Vicky, that black-haired young Lothario is planning quite a day for you on Saturday.”

  I’d phoned Zachary to tell him it was all right, but now I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave, even for a few hours. “Zachary likes to do things elegantly.”

  “Poor young man,” Mrs. Rodney said. “It took courage for him to come talk to me the way he did. I hope he makes something of himself.”

  “I hope so, too,” Daddy said, but he didn’t sound optimistic.

  “If Vicky gives him a helping hand, that’ll do a lot for him. You’ve been very good to Leo, Vicky. Thank you.”

  “Leo’s—quite a guy,” I fumbled.

  “He’s got a lot of growing up to do. Well, folks, I’ve got to get along home. Thanks.”

  “Thank you, Nancy,” Daddy said, and got up from the desk to see her out. “After those fledglings are out of the nest, this door becomes verboten.”

  When we lived in Thornhill, bedtime used to be one of the best parts of the day. Mother always read to us, and we sang, and said prayers, and sometimes Mother would get her guitar and sit on the stairs where we could all hear her equally well, and sing.

  In New York it changed, not because it was New York and a very different world but, as Mother said, in the nature of things and our growing up. John was away at college, and anyhow for the past couple of years he’d stopped being part of the good-night ritual because of homework. And I had enough homework to occupy me till bedtime, and I stayed up an hour later than Suzy and a couple of hours later than Rob, and my bedtime routine had become little more than saying good night to Mother and Daddy.

  So that evening after dinner I was pleased to have Daddy say, “How about some reading aloud in the evenings?”

  “I’d like that,” Grandfather said.

  “What kind of a book?” John asked.

  “I hadn’t really thought that far,” Daddy said. “Your mother reads aloud beautifully and I’d be happy to hear almost anything.”

  “How about the phone book?” John suggested.

  “How about Twelfth Night or The Tempest?” Grandfather put in. “We run quite an age gamut and they’d be as good for Rob as for me.”

  “Twelfth Night,” Mother said. “It’s not quite as much of a fairy tale as The Tempest, but it’s got some lovely stuff in it.”

  “And all those songs, too,” Daddy said. “If you’ll tell me where it is, Father, I’ll get it.”

  Instead of getting up, Grandfather nodded. “In the art and drama stall, there’s a big set of Shakespeare. You can’t miss it.”

  “One act a night,” Mother announced as Daddy handed her the book. “Unless we set a definite limit at once, you won’t be able to stop me.”

  Twelfth Night begins with music, so she started with a song, and then began: If music be the food of love, play on.

  I lay on the worn porch floor, my eyes closed, listening. Suddenly I realized that Mother does read beautifully. In Thornhill she was simply Mother, reading to us, the way anybody’s mother might read. Now I knew that not many people could put the richness and life into the words that she did, and that bringing words and music to life was her very special talent.

  When she finished, she closed the book with a bang. Nobody spoke for a moment. Then she said, “Bedtime.”

  Daddy sighed, a long, contented sigh. “Thank you, Victoria. This is going to be a good pattern for our evenings.” He looked at Grandfather. “Come along, Father, I’ll give you a hand.” And I remembered that Grandfather would be sleeping in the hospital bed in his study instead of out on the porch.

  Six

  Those swallows were on my mind. That nest was entirely too shallow.

  When I brought it up at breakfast Saturday morning, Suzy and Rob were all for getting some hay and building it up so that the fledglings wouldn’t fall out, but it was Suzy herself who said, “No. We can’t.”

  “Why not?” Rob demanded.

  “If there’s the slightest smell of human hands on the straw the swallows will just abandon the nest. They won’t feed the fledglings.”

  “Why?”

  “They don’t trust human beings. And small wonder.”

  “But what’ll we do to keep the fledglings from falling out and killing themselves?” Rob’s face was puckered with anxiety.

  Grandfather had come out for breakfast, to sit in the morning sun. “Last year they fell out,” he said quie
tly.

  “And died?” Suzy’s voice rose.

  “Yes. Swallows tend to be careless about their nests.”

  “Let’s put a nice cushion of hay or something soft under the nest,” I suggested. “We can put it on the stone step, and then if they fall, it will be soft and maybe won’t hurt them.”

  “It’ll still smell of human hands,” Suzy objected.

  “Maybe not if it’s been there for a few days. Anyhow, it’s worth a try.”

  “Can’t hurt,” John said. “We’ve got some hay at the station. I’ll bring some home tonight.”

  “But that may be too late.” Suzy frowned anxiously.

  “We’ll just have to risk it,” John said.

  “Couldn’t Vicky bike over and get it this morning?”

  “Why can’t you bike over and get it yourself?”

  Both John and I thought Suzy’s work was made-up work, and that she’d turned down a real job to do something she liked better. Maybe that was so, but I also knew that her work was real to Suzy. And I had brought up the subject of the baby swallows and the nest myself. “I don’t mind biking over. I’ve got a couple of things I need to do after breakfast, but then I’ll go.”

  “Oh, thanks, Vicky, thanks,” Suzy breathed.

  “I’ll leave it for you, right by the entrance to the main lab,” John said. “I’m not sure where I’ll be this morning, but you’ll find a nice pile of hay waiting for you—and for the swallows.”

  After breakfast I helped Mother with the dishes, and to make up the big four-poster bed for her and Daddy—it takes about a quarter of the time with two people. And we made up the hospital bed in Grandfather’s study.

  “Need me for anything else?” I asked.

  “No, Vicky. Thanks.”

  “Well—if you don’t need me, I’ll go get the hay.”

  It was still hot. The sun beat down on me as I biked along. For us, in our part of the world, the sun means life. But in some very hot countries it means death, and with the sweat running down my legs, and my mouth parched and dry, I began to understand why. I should have worn a sun hat or something.

 

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