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

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  “I’ll be good, teacher, honest.”

  “Can you take her up, or do you want me to?”

  “I’ll do it.”

  I wanted Art to do it. But I knew that if I protested, or if I showed how frightened I was, that might make Zachary do something wild.

  It was a good takeoff, I had to admit that. Even if it was only my second time in a plane, I knew that the smooth lifting from the ground into the air, almost like Basil leaping from the sea, was well done.

  Zachary did whatever Art told him to do, and did it well. But despite the soaring takeoff I didn’t feel as though I was riding Basil. Maybe I was blocking the pleasure of the ride because Zachary had frightened me when he nearly hit that old woman. There was a gleam in his eyes when he was manic which kept me tense, and which told me that I was a fool if I thought that someone with my lack of experience could possibly be of help to someone like Zachary.

  At one point Art took over the controls because a big jet was coming in for a landing. I could see it far above us, and then getting larger as it came closer. Art pulled on the stick to keep us well out of the way. He and Zachary both had on earphones and I relaxed when I realized that they were hearing instructions from the control tower and we really weren’t in any danger of having the jet crash into us, and that we were much farther away from it than it seemed.

  Art let Zachary take the plane in. It seemed to me that Zachary brought her to the ground gently and without much bouncing, and I wasn’t surprised when Art complimented him.

  Without consulting me, Zachary said he’d be back for his regular lessons and that I’d be with him again on Saturday.

  —Well, I thought,—we’ll wait and see about that.

  The rest of the day was unexpectedly lovely.

  The French restaurant was up in the hills, nearly an hour’s drive, and Zachary didn’t speed but drove slowly enough so we could enjoy the scenery. We ate outdoors, on a tiny flagstoned terrace, looking into a pine forest. There were only two other tables on the terrace, and we were shaded by an enormous maple, the biggest one I’ve ever seen, with a massive trunk that was almost as big around as a redwood.

  At this restaurant there wasn’t even a menu. That’s the ultimate in elegance. The proprietor hovered over us, murmuring suggestions in French.

  We had snails, which I expected to hate, but which I loved. It may have been the garlicky butter sauce which sold me, and the crusty homemade bread to soak up the sauce.

  Then we had boeuf Wellington, which is beautiful rare beef coated with pâté and baked in a flaky pastry, and watercress and endive salad, and for dessert we had crepes suzette, prepared and flamed especially for us on a little table. Zachary didn’t badger me to have a drink, but set out to prove to me how much Shakespeare he’d read, “ … a lot more than either of your other two swains.”

  I’d started out the afternoon being afraid of Zachary, and here he was making me feel glamorous, something I don’t often feel like, and it was a very pleasant feeling.

  A sliver of a new moon was setting, slipping behind the terrace, as the sky darkened, and the waiter brought out candles in silver candlesticks with glass globes.

  “Vicky-O.” Zachary leaned across the table toward me and the candlelight brought out the purply-blue highlights in his hair and warmed the whiteness of his skin, which never seemed to tan. “You’re so good for me, so good.”

  I could only murmur, “I’m glad.”

  “You’re getting better about slapping me down when I try to show off. I only show off because I’m insecure.”

  “We’re all pretty insecure.”

  “Your brother John doesn’t strike me as being insecure. He strikes me as being repellently secure. My shrink says I’ve been deprived of proper familial interrelationships.”

  That sounded like jargon, but I thought it was probably true.

  “You’re good for me because you’re so different from anyone else I’ve ever known. But you’ve got to watch out for those ‘come hither’ eyes.”

  I had to laugh at that. “Don’t put me on, Zach. Suzy’s the one with the ‘come hither’ eyes. You said so yourself.”

  “Hers are so obvious you don’t have to pay any attention. You’re much more dangerous because you’re so completely—shall we call it subliminal?”

  “Flattery will get you everywhere.”

  “No, I’m serious.”

  The proprietor came up just then, to see if we’d enjoyed our meal, to see if we needed anything else. Zachary asked for the check, and when he got it, I was horrified by the bills he put down. Zachary acted as though he were paying for a hot dog.

  “Come along, Vicky-O. It’s over an hour’s drive to the dock, if you want me to creep like a tortoise. It’s hard on the Alfa Romeo to be held in check, but for you I’ll do anything.”

  He did put one arm around me while he drove, but he didn’t speed, and I wasn’t afraid of him. I felt a vague kind of tenderness, a sensing that he needed to be protected.

  Protected from what? From himself, mostly.

  When he said goodbye to me at the stable, he kissed me, a long slow kiss, but he didn’t try to make anything more out of it than that, and I was grateful.

  Why did Adam have to keep getting in the way when Zachary kissed me? Adam had never shown the slightest indication that he wanted to kiss me, though I’d stupidly thought he was going to that night we’d sat together on the beach.

  I turned off the light Mother’d left on for me, and climbed the ladder to the loft. I saw a slip of paper lying whitely against the grey of the blanket and picked it up. Enough light came in as the lighthouse beam swept around so that I could read it.

  I DON’T HATE YOU. SUZY.

  Neither Suzy nor I is good about apologizing. That note meant a lot, coming from Suzy.

  Eleven

  I went to the lab with Adam on Friday. We fed the dolphins in the pens, then went to the beach and swam out. He had me call Norberta and Njord, and they came. Njord and I played, and Norberta hovered maternally.

  Adam had me ask Njord to swim to the right, to the left, and he would do what I wanted him to do and then he’d butt me and make it quite clear that all work and no play would make Njord a dull boy and he wasn’t having it. We alternately played what Njord wanted to play and worked, for about an hour.

  Then Norberta butted Adam and me, and then Njord, as though to say, ‘School’s over for the day,’ and they took off.

  Without consciously realizing what I was doing, I turned my mind toward Adam. Do a cartwheel in the water, like Basil.

  I held my breath.

  Adam dove down. Up came his legs. Flip. Head and arms were out of the water. Just like Basil.

  Adam, do you really think of me as nothing more than a child? I realize I’m naïve and backward for my age in lots of ways, but I don’t feel about you the way a child feels. I’ve never felt about anybody else the way I feel about you, touched in every part of me … Is it only my feelings? Doesn’t it touch you at all?

  He broke in, saying sharply, “Vicky, what are you doing?”

  I could feel heat suffusing my face. “N—nothing.”

  Now he was shouting at me. “Don’t do that!”

  “Why? Why not?”

  “Because—because—” He clamped his mouth shut. But he was telling me without speaking, Because it’s too intimate.

  I had felt, down on the beach with Leo, when we were holding one another and weeping, that this kind of sharing was more potent than kissing. But that was nothing, compared to this, to the merging of two minds. The power in this was explosive.

  But I did it with the dolphins. Why was it all right with the dolphins?

  And the answer came lapping gently into my mind like the water lapping about my body. Because this is how dolphins are, all the time. They’re able to live with this kind of intimacy and not be destroyed by it.

  Our family is close, but in comparison with this other kind of closeness the distances betwee
n us are greater than the distances between galaxies.

  I had, without asking permission or assent, totally invaded Adam’s privacy.

  And yet, although he had shouted at me, stopped me, he was not angry at me.

  Without saying anything further, he turned and swam in. When I joined him, he was standing on his head, so I knew everything was all right.

  But I didn’t know what to say. I waited.

  Still standing on his head, he spread his legs into a V, and said, “I have to keep reiterating that I don’t think you realize quite what a special thing you have going with—with dolphins. Have you ever had precognition?”

  “You mean knowing something’s going to happen before it happens?”

  “Yes.”

  “No. I don’t think I’d want it. I think it would scare me.”

  “How about teleportation?”

  “You mean thinking with things and making them move, the way I do with dolphins?”

  Adam flipped over onto his feet. “More or less.”

  I thought about it for a moment. “I’ve never tried it. It would certainly make tidying my room easier. Do you think it’s possible?”

  “I didn’t, till I got involved with my dolphin project and did some reading. There’ve been some cases which seem authentic. I just wondered …”

  “What?”

  “This summer, with Basil, and Norberta and Njord—is this the first time you’ve had this kind of experience in any way, shape, or form?”

  I wandered slowly back to the water’s edge and dabbled my toes in the foam. “Maybe there’ve been—hints—if I look back on it. But nothing I’ve recognized. And with the dolphins, it’s just seemed so natural …”

  Adam splashed along beside me. “It’s natural for dolphins. It’s not natural for people.”

  My skin prickled. “Well. It feels natural to me.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you. It is natural to you, and that’s terrific. It’s nothing to be afraid of. The dolphins are to be trusted.”

  “And people?”

  He looked down at the froth on the little waves. “Some are. Some aren’t.”

  “Are all dolphins to be trusted?”

  His grey eyes were sober. “There hasn’t been enough research for me to answer that. Let’s just say that proportionately dolphins are more trustworthy than people. Want a Coke?”

  “Sure. Work always makes me thirsty. My treat this time.”

  Adam had to kick the Coke machine to make it work. We sat at the table by the window I’d come to think of as our table, and he talked about some of the research he’d been doing in connection with his project. It was being a good day in a way because he was treating me like a colleague, not like a child; and it was a frustrating day in another way because Suzy’s little lizard was running up and down me as I looked across my Coke glass at Adam’s alert smile, and while I preferred being a colleague to being a child, I also wanted more, much more.

  And I thought of that incredible moment of intimacy after Njord and Norberta had left, and it both scared and excited me.

  Adam didn’t call me ‘sweetie.’ Mostly he didn’t call me anything, not even Vicky. But there was electricity between us.

  Real electricity. When he took my hand to say goodbye we made an electric shock and I could almost see sparks.

  But all Adam said was, lightly, “You’re dangerous, Vicky. I’d better steer clear of you. Except among the dolphins. See you Wednesday?”

  “Sure. Wednesday.”

  I went home, and all the rest of the day I remembered the workout with Njord, and the electric moment of contact with Adam afterward. I wondered if he thought about it, now that it was over, and if so, what.

  On Saturday I went flying with Zachary again, and I had to admit that he handled the plane beautifully. Art told him that he could end up a professional pilot if he wanted to.

  “I can make more money as a lawyer. I’d rather fly for fun.”

  Art, looking dark and chunky in a brown leather jacket, asked, “Aren’t you going to inherit a lot of bread?”

  “Enough so Uncle Sam’ll take most of it. Anyhow, as my pop could tell you, there’s a certain seductive pleasure in making it.”

  Instead of driving me someplace for dinner, Zachary took both Art and me to the airport restaurant—not the coffee shop, but the posh restaurant, with wine lists, and large menus with high prices.

  Zachary and Art talked flying. Art told us about his experiences as a fighter pilot. I hated it.

  Well, so did Art. “War made more sense when people fought with swords, or even clubs, and you knew who you were fighting. Now when we kill we don’t even see who we’re killing and mostly it’s civilians, women and kids and old folks who have no way to defend themselves. If I ever get called up again I’m going to be a C.O. I’ve had it with killing. Never again.”

  I almost asked, ‘You mean you’ve really killed somebody?’ and stopped myself. He had, though not face to face, and he probably didn’t even know who he’d killed or how many.

  He began to tell us about the early days of flying, because both his father and his grandfather had been pilots, and he told me to read Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s books about flying.

  “I’ve read only The Little Prince, and that’s one of my favorite books in the world. I didn’t realize he was really a flyer.”

  “One of the great ones.”

  We lingered over dinner and coffee, and Zachary and Art drank a bottle of wine. Sometimes while they were talking my mind would flicker away from them, to the dolphins, to Adam. Adam the square; the philosopher; the cartwheel turner and headstander. The colleague. Adam, who had, for a moment, heard me in the silence as the dolphins heard me—

  “Vicky-O !” Zachary snapped his fingers in front of my face. “Where were you?”

  “Oh—off in dreamland.”

  “Come back to Art and me. Want some more coffee?”

  “No, thanks.”

  It was a good evening with Zachary and Art. Around Art, Zachary was more real than I had ever seen him before.

  Adam came for lunch on Sunday. We had beautifully messy BLT’s, with the bacon crisp and the tomatoes dripping juice so that the toast fell apart and we were licking our fingers not to miss any of it, and then using up half a dozen napkins.

  After lunch, Adam said, “Got to be getting along. Want to come, Vicky? We might have a swim.”

  “Sure.” I looked toward Mother and she nodded.

  “If you’d like to come back for dinner, Adam, we’re having moussaka.”

  “Sorry to be ignorant,” he said, “but what’s that?”

  “Ground lamb and eggplant and cheese and sauce and other goodies. If you don’t like eggplant, you won’t like it.”

  “I’ve never had much eggplant. It’s worth a try. I’ve never eaten anything here that wasn’t delicious. Thanks, Mrs. Austin.”

  We got out our bikes and rode side by side except when a car came along.

  I thought at him, trying not to invade his privacy, but still trying to reach him: Talk to me. Talk to me about yourself. Why are you afraid to be friends with me? Why do you keep trying to push me back into childhood just when I’m feeling most ready to be grown up? Talk to me. Really talk. Please.

  When we neared the station he stopped and leaned his bike against a stunted, windblown tree on the ocean side of the road. He beckoned me to follow, so I parked my bike by his, something we couldn’t possibly have done in New York if we’d ever wanted to see our bikes again, and we crossed to the dunes and slithered down to the beach.

  He sat where the sand was soft and warm, and began sifting small grains through his fingers the way he had the night we sat on the dunes and talked. “Vicky, this is definitely just between the two of us. I mean, John knows I had a problem with a girl, but that’s all.”

  I nodded, looking at his sea-deep eyes, and waited.

  “I was responsible for someone’s death while I was in Portugal, far
more responsible than anybody was for Commander Rodney’s …” He paused, and his jaw was clenched, and the same little muscle was twitching that had twitched at Commander Rodney’s funeral.

  “What happened?” I asked at last. I was almost afraid to speak, and yet I thought it was better at this moment to ask the question out loud than to think it at him. He was doing as I’d silently begged him, really talking, and I nearly held my breath.

  At last he said, “Dr. O’Keefe had some very important papers about the regeneration of limbs in human beings, and unscrupulous people were out to get them, and in the wrong hands they could have been disastrous.” Again he stopped, and I remembered our first conversation in the lab, when I asked about human limb regeneration, and he’d more or less turned it aside without answering.

  Finally I whispered, “Did they get them?”

  “No. But Joshua was killed in saving them. And it was because of me. I believed a beautiful girl I should never have trusted, and if I hadn’t, he might not have been killed.”

  “Who was Joshua?” I kept feeling that if I raised my voice I’d stop him from saying what he had to say.

  “He worked for the Embassy in Lisbon. But more than that, he worked with people who really care about what goes on in the world, what happens to all the little people.” He swallowed. “He called it caring about the fall of the sparrow. I guess that’s somewhere in the Bible.”

  “Yes.”

  “He wasn’t interested in money or prestige or knowing the right people in the Embassy. John reminds me of him.” He turned toward me briefly, swallowing again painfully, as though he had a sore throat. “After Joshua died no one tried to make me feel guilty and they wouldn’t let me do it to myself. When something happens, you can always say afterward, from hindsight, that it wouldn’t have happened if only …”

  “I don’t blame Zachary any more. I know that’s a dead-end road.”

  “Yah. It’s easier to stop blaming someone else than to stop blaming yourself, though. The thing is, I did stop, because I finally understood that the best thing I could do was to get on with the business of living, and to care about the things Joshua cared about. But, up until the moment Josh died, I’d never thought about death at all, or what happens after death, because it simply wasn’t part of my world. If anybody’d asked me, I’d have said that death is death and that’s that. But when Joshua died, I simply could not imagine him not being. It wasn’t that I got religion, I just couldn’t imagine all that was Joshua being lost forever.” He lay back on the sand and closed his eyes. “What I did was shelve it, because I couldn’t cope. And now I’m wondering again. Because of your grandfather. And because of the dolphins. And you.”