L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (15 page)

"How about Leo Rodney?" He turned briefly toward me, his pale lashes trembling with rain. Leo's not exactly a lion type. More like a basset hound puppy, "It's a nice name," I evaded. He turned back to the sea, his light hazel eyes narrowed as though against sunlight, though the day seemed darker than ever. Cornelius Codd was waiting in the doorway of a weathered lean-to. He had an unlit pipe in his mouth and wore a shiny yellow slicker. His old woolen cap was pulled down over his hair. He gestured with the pipe. "Car's out back." "Thanks, Cor." Leo shook his hand. "This is Vicky Austin." Cornelius Codd took my hand in both of his. Although his hands were calloused and horny, his grasp reminded me of Grandfather's. The pickup looked to be about the same age as Cornelius. Leo took my elbow and I put my foot on the high step and jumped into the cab almost as though I were getting on a horse. The leather of the seat was cracked, with bits of stuffing coming out, and the springs had long 209 since sprung. But it still drove. Quite a change after the Alfa Romeo. We reached the cement-block cube of the hospital and as Leo drove around to park I saw that behind the modern building were several much older and lower brick buildings, and it was as though the island were light-years away from this drab place of city noises and smells. We drove around until we found a place in the crowded parking lot. I stayed close by Leo's side. The only time I'd ever been in a hospital was after my bike accident at home in Thornhill, and it was a small hospital and of course Daddy knew everybody and because I was his daughter I got all kinds of special TLC. This huge complex with its jumble of ancient and modern buildings was very different. I dropped slightly behind Leo, so I could follow. "Do you know where to go?" "I'm not sure. I should have checked with Mom. We might as well go in through the emergency room." Does picking up blood constitute an emergency? I knew even less than Leo, so I didn't say anything. We went in through the emergency-room door, which was, in fact, the door closest to us, and Leo pointed to an empty seat. "Wait here. I'll go see what's what," he said, and went to stand in line in front of the nurses' desk. The room was filled with rows of wooden benches and there were folding chairs against the wall. I looked around at people of all ages and degrees. A nurse was moving along the rows, and I heard one young man say, holding out his finger, "This squirrel just up and bit me, so I thought maybe rabies ..." An old woman on the bench in front of me was moan- 210 ing, "God help me, O God help me, do you have to be bleeding to death before anyone pays any attention?" A doctor came out of one of the cubicles, a nurse called out, "Norris," and an old man with a bloody bandage around his hand followed the doctor into the cubicle, A woman came in, carrying a limp little girl, maybe three or four years old. A nurse looked at them, touching the child lightly. "Sit down. I'll come take her history in a few minutes." The woman found a seat. Was the child already dead? Surely death would constitute an emergency-or maybe it wouldn't, being too late. I couldn't see whether or not the child was breathing. How long would they have to wait? I thought I was going to be sick. I swallowed, swallowed. Leo was threading his way back across the room, gesturing. I followed him through an inner door and out into a long corridor. I took a deep breath of cool air and my stomach quieted. We went up a flight of stairs and down another corridor and into an office where someone told us to wait. I felt that we were in a nightmare. Leo nudged me toward a chair. "Leo, I think there's a dead child there and the nurse didn't pay any attention." Leo tried to explain. "Mom says there's a nurse trained to look at people and make a quick assessment of who can be helped and who's too late and who's a real emergency and who can wait." "Doesn't she ever make mistakes?" "Sure. Mom says that's inevitable. Still, it's the best system they've come up with," I thought of the old woman who said you had to be 211 bleeding to death before you got any attention. How can anyone, no matter how specially trained, tell who's a real emergency and who isn't? A nurse came in and greeted us pleasantly and took Daddy's note saying it was all right for me to give blood. I lay on a high, narrow bed, and a nurse wrapped some rubber tubing tightly around my upper arm, had me make a fist, and then dexterously inserted a needle into a vein on the inside of my elbow. The needle was attached to a tube leading to an empty plastic container and I watched, fascinated, while it began to fill with my blood. When it was over, the nurse said, "Sit up slowly now, hon. Sure you don't feel faint?" I didn't. Not in this small, clean, uncrowded room. It smelled like Daddy's office and that was a home smell, a good smell. The nurse patted my shoulder. "Brave girl. Now I want you to drink this good hot broth before you leave. Your young man's all through, too. He's in the waiting room just outside." "Does he have the blood for my grandfather?" I sipped the broth and looked at the calm, kind face of the nurse over the rim and wondered if she could stay this kind and calm if she worked in the emergency room. "Everything's all set. Drink slowly, there's no rush. 'Bye, now, dear. You may feel a little dizzy but it will pass, and your blood will give life to someone else." I finished the broth. When I stood up I did feel a little dizzy, but it lasted only a moment, and I hurried out to Leo. He rose to greet me. "You all right?" 212 "Sure. Fine. You?" For answer he indicated the parcel in his hand. "Let's get the blood for your grandfather back to the Island." Cornelius Codd was waiting in the door of the shack, as though he hadn't moved the entire time we were gone. His woolen cap was dripping rain. �*� We delivered the blood to Mrs. Rodney, and Daddy asked us if we felt all right, and we said we were fine. "But the emergency room-" I looked at Mother. "As I think back on it, though," Mother said, "I marvel that the nurses were as patient as they were ..." Leo looked at me. "When I come home from the hospital I want a swim to clean off." Mother glanced at her watch. "It's time for lunch." Leo, too, checked his watch, as though synchronizing time. "We'll just go for a quick swim and then I'll take Vicky to the drugstore for a sandwich if it's okay. We did plan to do something together today." "Of course, Leo. And thanks for giving up your morning-and your blood. We're very grateful." "I'll just go put on my bathing suit," I said, and left to get away from the pain in Mother's voice. �*� Leo and I slithered down the steep path to Grandfather's cove. My bathing suit felt wet and clammy from the morning's swim. The rain was falling softly now, and the beach was cool and wet. There were dents in it the size of silver dollars from the heavy rain that had fallen earlier. But now the wind had dropped and the ocean surprised me by murmuring its way quietly into shore. I looked out to the horizon and saw the flash of a dol- 213 phin. Basil? Norberta? I felt a yearning ache. "How far can we swim?" Leo was breast-deep in water. "I'm not sure. There doesn't seem to be much pull." "I saw a dolphin, so we don't need to worry about sharks." Leo flung himself into the water and started swimming. He called back to me, "The tide's turning. It'll be on its way in shortly. We can have a good swim." I followed after him, slowly. The water was much warmer than the air. I swam, swam, letting the water cleanse me of the lingering horror of the emergency room. I needed desperately to wipe out of my mind's eye the images it retained, so I replaced them with images of Basil, of Norberta, of Njord. I needed the reassurance of their smile. I needed to be assured that the world really isn't like the emergency room of a hospital, that there is hope and goodness and love . .. I called them silently, hardly realizing what I was doing. Leo was swimming parallel with the shore now, as though racing someone. I'd swum quite far beyond him. Then, just as I realized how far out to sea I was and that I ought to turn back, I saw them: Norberta and her baby. They didn't swim up to me as they did when I was with Adam. They flashed up out of the water in unison, leaping, diving, leaping, beaming at me. They rose up out of the water, standing on their flukes, and then they dove down and disappeared. Leo, still racing his invisible opponent, had not even seen. I felt a surging sense of relief and elation. I hadn't set 214 out deliberately to call them, but they had heard my need, and they had come in answer to it, but they wanted to reveal themselves only to me, not to Leo. I felt absolutely sure of that, and absurdly happy. How can one person be so frightened, and so sad, and then so joyful, in such a short time? **�)Even in the rain, it was hot work climbing back up to the stable. I took a quick shower. The bathroom is next to the double stall with the four-poster bed, and when I turned off the shower and was rubbing my hair dry I heard a sound I couldn't identify at first. Then I realized that it was muffled crying. I had never before heard Mother cry that way. I didn't know what to do. I decided to do nothing. If I went in to her she'd feel she had to stop crying, and I thought maybe she needed to cry. Sometimes if I need to cry I want to do it all alone, without anyone to bother me, even with comfort. And I thought that if Mother needed someone to cry with, the way I'd cried with Leo, it should be Daddy, not me. Maybe I was just being a coward. I don't know. �*� There were quite a few other kids in the drugstore when Leo and I got there. I knew some of them and of course he knew them all. It's always been the hangout for the high-school kids. Leo greeted or waved to them as we went by, but led me firmly to the last booth, which was still empty. We ordered chicken-salad sandwiches and coffee milk shakes. I was hungry, and it tasted good. 215 "Vicky, when I'm at Columbia, can I write to you?" "Well, sure." "I mean, you know all about that part of the city. And I just want to write to you." "I'd like to hear from you. But Adam knows lots more about Columbia than we do."

"If there's some kind of a football weekend or a special prom, do you think you could come?" "I don't think either of us can afford that kind of thing." I touched my jeans pocket, where I'd shoved a couple of dollars to pay for my lunch. "But I'll write to you." "Okay. Want anything more to eat? Ice cream?" "No, thanks." "There's a pretty good movie on tonight," Leo said, "and I've saved enough money to take us to dinner at the Inn. Want to go out in the boat now?" "Leo." I didn't want to hurt him after all he'd just done for Grandfather. "I'd love to go to dinner and the movies with you this evening-but I just want to be home for a while now. It's-it's hard on my mother seeing Grandfather get weaker and weaker, and so quickly." "Okay. Sure." Leo dropped some change on the table and we pushed out of the booth. "Hey, Leo." I reached in my pocket. "I want to pay for my own lunch. I brought the money." "No." "Yes," I said. "Come on. Don't let's fight about it." "I bet you don't offer to go dutch with Zachary." "That's different." "How? Except that Zachary's loaded and I'm not." Basically, when we go out with kids we go dutch. If we let someone pick up the tab it usually means something 216 serious. I realized that with Zachary the usual rules didn't apply. "As you so rightly remarked, he's loaded and you're not." I stuck my money out at him. He took it. "Okay. Lunch, then. But tonight's on me." I decided to think about that when the time came. I didn't want anything to get complicated between Leo and me, but I hoped I'd always have him for a friend. He was the kind of: person, like his mother, who could always be counted on to be there when you needed him. �*� The stable was quiet. Grandfather was asleep, the book of Henry Vaughan's poetry open beside him. Mother was in the kitchen making creme brulee. "I'm like my mother," she said. "I cook for therapy. And it's as much of an art form, I believe, as painting or writing or making music." "Creme brulee's an art form all right. Yum. Anything I can do to help?" "I don't think so. Except keep me company. But I thought you were off with Leo for the day-" "A full day's an awful long time with Leo. He's coming back and we're going to the Inn for dinner and then to a movie. Mother, should I let him pay for me?" She turned slightly toward me, still stirring something in a small saucepan. "Is it being a problem?" "Sort of. He did let me pay for lunch, but he was very insistent about dinner. The thing is, I don't want to hurt his feelings, but I don't want to lead him on." Mother turned back to the stove. "Are those the only alternatives?" "That's what I'm not sure about." "I'm afraid that's something nobody can tell you, hon. 217 You have to sense it out for yourself. As long as you don't make a production of it, I have a hunch you could probably let him pay for one evening. Leo needs to feel that he's a man right now," "Yeah. That's what I thought. Thanks." I looked at her and her eyes were just a little puffy, as if she'd been crying. But her voice was her own voice, without any tension behind it. "I've unplugged the phone by your grandfather's bed, but grab for it here if it rings. Sound carries only too well in the stable." At which moment the phone did ring, and I dashed across the kitchen and grabbed for it. "Hi, Vicky. Adam. Glad it's you. I forgot to check this morning. Are you coming over on Wednesday?" "Oh, Adam-I can't. I'm sorry. I promised Zachary I'd go flying with him." There was a pause. Then: "Guess I can't compete with that. My own fault for not being more clear about it." "Adam-" I lowered my voice, speaking softly into the mouthpiece. "I saw Njord and Norberta today." "Tell me." Then: "Are you alone?" "No." "Okay. Maybe I could come over this evening after dinner." "I'm going to the movies with Leo-I'm sorry. Could I come over to the lab tomorrow morning?" "Why not?" "How-how early?" A pause. Then: "Come along whenever you get up and we'll have breakfast. The cafeteria opens at six-thirty." "Okay. I'll be there." I hung up, and my heart was 218 thumping. I hoped nothing in my face would betray me. I asked Mother, "Is it okay it I have breakfast with Adam tomorrow? I'll be back in time to read to Grandfather." Mother bent down to set a pan of water in the oven. "Vicky, you don't need to feel obligated to read to your grandfather every morning. He wouldn't want it to be a burden for you." "I know. But it isn't. I really like doing it." "All right. But if you're having a good time with Adam, don't worry about getting back." Would I have a good time? It all depended on Adam. �*� I went down to the beach and sat on my rock. The rain seemed to be slackening off with the drop in the wind. I watched the waves breathing quietly. Adam's call had left me churning, and I thought perhaps if I meditated I'd see more clearly. Mother says my seesaw moods are part of my adolescence and they'll moderate as I grow older. The hospital had thrown me into a pit of darkness; then Norberta and Njord, responding to my need, had lifted me back up to the light. Maybe you have to know the darkness before you can appreciate the light. Meditation, I thought, sitting there on the rock in Grandfather's cove, has something to do with that light. I let my mind drift toward the dolphins, and as I stared out at the horizon there was the lovely leap I was half expecting, and I was sure it was one of my friends. My breathing quietened, slowed, moved to the gentle rhythm of the sea. The tenseness left my body until it seemed that the rock on which I sat was not embedded deep in the sand but was floating on quiet waters. 219 My mind stopped its running around like a squirrel on a wheel, and let go. I sat there and I didn't think. I was just being.And it felt good. I wasn't sure how long I sat there, letting go and being, when a sea gull flew directly above me, mewling raucously, and reminded me that I'd better get back up to the stable. As I reached the top of the cliff, Daddy and Rob got out of the station wagon, our nice, battered old blue station wagon completely unlike Zachary's hearse. I followed them into the porch and shook the rain out of my hair. Mother came hurrying out of the kitchen, putting her finger to her lips, and Daddy held the screen door so it wouldn't slam. "Father still asleep?" "Yes." Mother put her arms around Daddy and he held her. Our parents are not the kind who never kiss in front of their children, but there was something very special about the way Daddy put his lips against her hair, her cheek, her lips. "C'mon," I gestured to Rob, and we went into the stall which held the children's books. "Why aren't you with Leo?" he asked. "I'm going to dinner and the movies with him later. I wanted to come home for a bit. It's pouring again." Rob was witness to that piece of obviousness, standing dripping in his yellow slicker. He shucked it off and put it over a chair. "Vicky, there're probably lots of planets besides us with people on them, don't you think?" I sat down on one of the low round leather ottomans. "John says we'd be pretty megalomanic if we thought we were the only inhabited planet in all of the solar systems in all of the galaxies." 220 "Mega-" "Megalomania It means thinking you're the most important." He nodded, looking solemn. "So maybe there's a planet somewhere where nobody has any eyes." I looked at him, and I thought his own eyes were shadowed, and I wanted to hug him and pull him onto my lap the way I sometimes did when he was little. But he was sounding as though he felt very grownup. "Could be, I guess." "Well, if nobody had any eyes, they'd all get along all right without them, wouldn't they?" "Sure, I guess they'd compensate." "They'd get along with hearing, and smell, and touch, but they wouldn't have any idea what anything looked like." I wasn't sure what he was driving at, but I knew that it was important to him. "No, they wouldn't." "And if someone from our planet went to the planet where no one had eyes, and tried to describe something to them-the way the rain looks falling on the ocean, or the lighthouse beam at night, or the sunrise-it couldn't be done, could it?" He sounded anxious. I tried to understand. "No. It just wouldn't be possible. If you didn't have eyes, if you lived in a world of touch and sound, then nobody could tell you what anything looks like. Why, Rob?" He pulled up another ottoman and sat, elbows on knees, chin in hands. "Well, maybe when the people on the planet with no eyes die, then maybe they get sent to planets where there areeyes. But you couldn't tell them about it ahead of time." 221 "That's right." "So, maybe when we die, we'll get something as important as sight, but because we don't know what it is, nobody could tell us about it now, any more than we could explain sight to the people on a planet with no eyes." I still thought of Rob as a baby, but he wasn't a baby any more, and he made a lot of sense. Maybe it wasn't the kind of thing you'd hear in most churches, but it made more sense to me than a lot of sermons. And I thought Grandfather would like it. I asked Rob if he'd told him. "Not yet. I just thought of it. But I will, sometime when he's-he's at home." I knew what he meant. Grandfather had been more at home earlier in the morning, before the hemorrhage, when we'd talked about meditation, than he'd been in quite a while. Daddy put his head around the partition of the children's bookstall. "Mother's making tea. Want to come join us?" �*� Leo borrowed his mother's VW again to take me to dinner. "Is Zachary still staying at the Inn?" he asked. "I think he sometimes stays at the Inn, and sometimes on the mainland at one of the guest apartments at the country club." "I'd just as soon he's not there tonight. I want you to myself." I didn't know whether I wanted Zachary to be there or not. I definitely did not want Leo to get cosmic about me. And yet everything that was happening, our weeping on 222 the beach, our morning at the hospital, was bringing us closer together, whether I liked or wanted it or not. He said, "In a way I suppose Zachary and I could be friends. His mother's dead. My father's dead. I think he's just as mixed up about life as I am, though he shows it in a different way. But he has all the money he needs. And I don't." "Hey, you have enough to take me to dinner at the Inn," I reassured him. "And you're going to Columbia in the autumn." The wheels of the little car hished on the wet macadam. I was glad I was driving with Leo, not Zachary. "That's not much in the way of competition, when he can charter the launch any time he wants, and keep rooms at both the Inn and the country club, and feed you on champagne and caviar." "Leo-you don't have to compete. With all his money, Zachary's a lot more mixed up about life and death than you are." "He knows what he's going to do after college-law school. And he's got the money to go there. And the brains." "If he's willing to use them, and that's a big if. It took him all this time to get out of high school." The windshield wipers on the little VW whizzed away, as though joining in the conversation. "Okay, then," Leo said. "I really didn't mean to spend this date talking about some other guy." "Conversation about Leo only," I promised. "And Vicky." He drew up in front of the Inn. "You get out, and I'll go park." I scurried in through the rain. 223 And looked at the Inn through Zachary's eyes. After the country club, it did seem pretty dingy. There wasn't anyone to take my coat. There wasn't, as far as I could see, anyone to do anything. The paint, which should have been white, was greyish. There were cracks in the plaster. The lighting wasn't intimate, it was just dim. Leo came in, and took my jacket. "I made a reservation," he said. "Zachary clued me in to that one. I wouldn't have thought of it otherwise." "No more Zachary," I reminded him. We had a table by the window, and even in the rain the view across the little green to the beach was lovely. The rain slanted against the tall street lights, glowing with golden droplets. And reflected in the night windows, but not blocking out the view, were the lights of the dining room. The menu that was given me, unlike the one at the country club, did have prices. I chose filet of sole because it was the cheapest thing on it. "Hey, Vicky," Leo said, "please have anything you want. I'm going to have steak." That was the most expensive. "I really like sole," I said. "Well, okay, if you're sure. Then I think I'll have it, too." He didn't offer me anything to drink. While we were waiting for our order, the waitress brought in some crackers and cottage cheese and relish. I kept nibbling crackers because I didn't have anything to say. Leo did. "I know you don't play around, and I don't, either, but can't we be friends?" "We are friends." "You know what I mean." 224 I drank a few sips of water. "I told you, Leo, I don't feel that way about you." "Yet.. ." I didn't answer. If I told him I didfeel that way about someone else it wouldn't solve anything, it would only create more problems. He'd know it had to be either Zachary or Adam, and I had a hunch Leo suspected Zach- ary. As for Adam, the last thing in the world I wanted him to know was that I thought of him as more than a friend. I had enough sense to know that if Adam suspected how I felt he'd more than put on the brakes; he'd get out of the car and run. "As far as feeling that wayis concerned," Leo said, "I think Suzy and Jacky do, and I agree with Mom that they're much too young." "So're we." He leaned earnestly across the table. "Half the Island kids are married out of high school." That was true in Thornhill, too-not nearly half, and half was undoubtedly much too high an estimate for the Island-but enough, enough so that I'd used it as an argument in my own mind in thinking about Adam and me. I'd missed part of what Leo was saying; he was talking about Jacky and Suzy again. ". . . and Jacky said they had lots of fun." 'Lots of fun' can mean more than one thing. "What do you mean?" I demanded. "What kind of fun? How much fun?" "Don't get all excited. Not thatmuch. I mean, not all the way or anything." The idea of my little sister and Jacky: it wasn't that 225 impossible. "If it's not that much, and I'm certainly glad it isn't, why are you bringing it up?" "I don't know. It was a dumb idea." "It was." I looked at Leo and said swiftly, "Let's just forget it. One more thing. I'm not Suzy. I don't work the way she works. She's always been pretty and cuddly and I've always been elbows and knees and not cuddly. But when I cuddle it will be really important. And I don't want it till then. But I do want to be friends with you, Leo, real friends, who can talk to each other and be there for each other, no matter what." He started to speak, then stopped as the waitress came in with our filets of sole. There was broccoli with hollandaise, and parsley potatoes,
and it smelled good. "Why have I been so hungry all summer?" I asked. "Because eating is part of life. So is loving." It rang true. "Let's concentrate on eating, then. For now." Then I asked, "Have you been hungry, too?" "Famished. I talked to my mom about it, and she explained about it being an urge to live. When Dad's father died-he had a heart attack unexpectedly, just like Dad- they wept, and then they made love. And she showed me that this wasn't being disrespectful but a-what did she call it? Oh, yes, an affirmation of the goodness of life." I thought of Mrs. Rodney, short, stocky, sensible, un- glamorous. Commander Rodney was more like a movie star. And I couldn't visualize them making love. Or even kissing the way Zachary and I had kissed. And my parents? Could I visualize it with them? Sooner or later I was going to have to see them as separate people, not just Mother and Daddy. John hasn't called Daddy anything except Dad for a long time. Somehow, calling him Daddy this summer was 226 trying to keep him-well, maybe not exactly omnipotent, but the daddy of my childhood who could kiss a hurt and make it all right. The daddy who ought to be able to cure Grandfather's leukemia. And I realized that part of the pain of this summer was in letting the old mother and daddy go, because that was part of my own growing up. They had to be free to weep, to hurt, just as I did. Daddy had to be free to be human and not able to cure all diseases. And they had to be free to make love, whether I could picture it or not. Leo had been talking through my thoughts. ". . . and faith that God will never abandon any of his creatures. Vicky, where do you think my father is now?" I thought of Rob's planet with no eyes. "Well-I do think he's somewhere." "And what about Zachary's mother?" "Frozen?" "Yeah-frozen. That keeps getting in the way when I try to like Zachary. Much more than the fact that my dad died after he pulled Zachary out of the water." -Leo, you're nice, I thought, -you're lots nicer than I am. I said, "I don't know whether I think freezing her's holding her back or not. I guess if she's really dead, it isn't." "But what if-in a few centuries or so, it should happen the way Zachary thinks, and someone does bring her back to life?" "I don't know. I suppose it's possible. Adam says that anything human beings can think of has to be possible sooner or later." "So what does that do to her now?" 227 I took three bites of sole without tasting them. "I don't know. I guess I think God can cope." "You do believe in God?" "Some of the time." "Not all of the time?" "No. But whenever anything goes wrong or I'm frightened I shout for God to help. So I guess when it comes to the pinch I believe." "You don't feel you have to be strong and self-sufficient enough to be able to do without God?" "Do you?" I countered. "My mom says it isn't either strength or self-sufficiency, and I think she's right. And I guess if she can believe, with all she's seen as a nurse, it's got to be real. That she believes." I thought of the emergency room that morning. To work in an emergency room and still believe in God would be a real test of faith, and I wasn't sure I'd pass it. Zachary would say that needing God is all self-deception, a cowardly illusion. But Adam hadn't hated me for being afraid, that night when we sat together on the beach. "If it isn't real"-Leo pulled me back into the present- "then nothing makes any sense. It's all a dirty joke. If we get made with enough brains to ask questions, and then die with most of them unanswered, it's a cheat, the whole thing's a cheat. And what about all the people who die of starvation and poverty and filth-is that all there is for them, forever?" I picked at my salad. "Maybe it's like school. And this life we're in now is probably like being way back in kindergarten. And I want to go on all the way through school, and college, and everything. But when you're in kinder- 228 garten you don't have any idea what college will be like. And when you're four or five years old you're not able to understand things that will seem simple later on." "I like that." Leo smiled, and when he smiled his whole face smiled, even his summer's sprinkling of freckles. "Maybe that's what's wrong with freezing people. You arrest them in the kindergarten stage and they can't grow up." The waitress came and asked if we wanted a sundae or pie. Leo chose lemon-meringue pie and I decided on a chocolate sundae with coffee ice cream, nuts, and whipped cream. I hadn't gained any weight this summer as far as I could tell, and Leo was right, or at any rate his mother was. It was an affirmation. 9 �*� It rained all night, as though the heavens were having a gigantic weep. The ocean soughed and sighed and susurrated. It wasn't a storm, with waves crashing roughly into shore, just a slow, steady emptying, rain onto earth and sea, sea onto sand. It made me want to weep, too, and yet I didn't know just what I wanted to weep about. When I woke up in the morning, a little after six, I was bathed in blue and gold. Everything was washed clean; the sky looked as though somebody had scrubbed and swept it; there wasn't a cloud in the unblemished sweep of blue. The ocean sparkled with diamonds; it wasn't a bit like Homer's "wine-dark sea." The beach seemed to have absorbed the gold of the sun, and the grass was green, with a burnishing of brass. The bike ride was cool in the early-morning air, and the breeze blew my hair back from my face and the air was sparkling. It was like music. Mother says there are certain pieces she can't play or sing and feel sad or sorry for herself, and this day was like that. I was in a tingly way appre- 230 hensive about seeing Adam, but I no longer felt rejected. I parked my bike and walked toward the cafeteria. Adam hurried along the path from his barracks, or whatever the dormitory-type building was called. He waved and I waved back. We didn't talk until we'd put our trays on a window table, and the silence was heavy. I tried to concentrate on choosing breakfast. "Okay, tell me." So I told him about the hospital, and then swimming in the rain to wash off the terror, and then crying out for the dolphins, not deliberately but instinctively, and then Nor- berta and Njord coming to reassure me and waving their flukes at me and then disappearing without Leo's even seeing them. "You're sure it was Norberta and Njord?" "Who else? You don't mind, do you? that they came when you weren't there?" "Mind?" Adam seemed to chew the word along with his pancakes. "I admit to a pang of what I suspect is jealousy. But it does bear out my thesis. Okay. Now, you haven't shown me anything you've written yet." I tried not to sound stiff. "I did write apoem for Jeb and Ynid. But-" I dribbled off. "You mean I haven't been very encouraging?" "Not very." "I'm going to get more coffee. Want some?" "No. Thanks." I'd made a big production about paying my own way with Leo. What about with Adam? There wasn't a cashier at the cafeteria. Food went along with the salary and housing. What about guests? I'd have to ask him. 231 He came back and sat down, and stirred approximately three grains of sugar into his coffee, "Maybe you'll let me see the poem you wrote for Jeb and Ynid?" I reached into my jeans pocket. "As a matter of fact . . ." I pulled out a very crumpled piece of paper. "I'm not sure it's still legible." "Let me see." He reached across the table and took the paper, smoothing it out. I felt my hands going cold and clammy while he read; he looked back up at the top of the page and read again. "Hey, Vicky, I really like that, it's good," he said at last. "Nothing loved is ever lost or perished.Okay if I show it to Jeb?"