L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (4 page)

and I didn't date, or go together. I've never really properly dated or gone with anyone, which has bothered me, because most kids my age have. As for Leo, this morning on the beach had changed things between us. "I see Leo." "Are you going to tell him about me?" "I don't know." He wheeled his horse so that he was looking straight at me. "Vicky, I need you. I knew I needed you when I came to this godforsaken spot looking for you. And then-things --just got the better of me and I wanted out. And now I don't. I want back in. But I need help." "I'm not a psychiatrist." I started walking Daphne back toward the stables. "I've been seeing a shrink. That's not what I need. I need you. I think I need you in the setting of your whole peculiar family." "We're not peculiar." "Oh, yes, you are. Don't you realize that in my world my parents were peculiar because they'd never been divorced? Basically because it would have been too much trouble. but you live in a world where not only are your parents not divorced, they appear to love each other." "They do." "And you do things like going to church and saying grace and zuggy stuff like that. I don't know anybody else in the world who does that. And the weird thing is that in 56 spite of it all you're real." He gave me his fullest Hamlet look, and reached out and gently touched the back of my hand with his forefinger, a tender caress which sent ripples all through me. "And you-you're such a mixture of being much older than you are and much, much younger." "Well-how long are you going to be on the Island?" I asked weakly. "As long as I can stand that fourth-rate hotel." "We like the Inn." "Sorry. As long as you'll put up with me is a better answer. And truer." I felt like asking, along with Pontius Pilate, "What is truth?" But I just posted gently as the horses trotted along the bridle path. �*� When we got back to Grandfather's, I didn't ask Zach- ary in. I thanked him for the ride and held out my hand. He gave me a funny look, but there was pleading in his eyes that really got to me. "Vicky, you don't know-" "What?" "You're sanity in an insane world. You're reason where there isn't any reason. Reason to live. I need-" He stopped. And I waited. He looked at me intensely. "Oh, Vicky-O. I'm so damn confused." Zachary. Confused. Vicky's the one to be confused. "Vicky," he said in a very low voice. "My old lady-" He stopped and swallowed. "I need you. You don't know how much I need you." He turned and walked quickly away. Was he overdoing it? I didn't think so. His voice had none of its usual flip sophistication. And there was a naked 57 vulnerability about him he had never been willing to reveal before. I went into the stable and hallooed. I needed some nice, stable (no pun intended) conversation. Not about death. Or guilt. Or moralism. Or porpoises being clubbed or people being frozen. Something homely, like how you tell your spaghetti's done by throwing a strand against the wall; if it sticks, it's done.

Grandfather called from the porch. He was lying on the couch, a book in his hand, and I could see that it was poetry. He told me that Mother and Daddy had gone into town, marketing, and Rob was with them. Suzy was still somewhere with Jacky Rodney, and John, of course, was at work. I could smell the comforting aroma of simmering spaghetti sauce, and I wanted as much comfort as I could get.

I sat on the floor by the couch and echoed Zachary. "Grandfather, I'm horribly confused." He looked at me questioningly. "You met Zachary." His eyes probed mine. "Handsome indeed, and troubled." "He is, oh, Grandfather, he is, and it's way over my head." "I think your parents would like you to steer clear of him." "I'm nearly sixteen. Is it right for me to steer clear of someone who needs me?"

"I'd have to know more about it." He reached out with his long fingers and ruffled my hair, which I'd had cut short for summer. 58 For a few minutes I sat and enjoyed the feel of his fingers in my hair, and the soft breezes from the ocean and the ceiling fan. Then I sighed. "Grandfather, it was Zach- ary who was in that capsized sailboat, Zachary who was rescued by Commander Rodney." He was silent for a minute, as though thinking. Then: "It did seem odd that he should have appeared right after the funeral." "He didn't know." "Didn't know what?" "He nearly died, and what with one thing and another, he didn't know about Commander Rodney till yesterday- after he'd seen us. He said something made him ask questions. And so he found out." "And he's upset and guilty?" "I'm not sure. He says he isn't. But what Zachary says and what he means aren't always the same." "But you've been blaming him, haven't you? Not perhaps Zachary, but someone you didn't know." "Scapegoating, you mean?" "That's the easy way out, isn't it?" "Yeah, easier to blame some rich dumb kid than God." "God can handle your anger, Vicky." "Maybe I didn't want to face my own anger. And then that someone turned out to be someone I know." "How well do you know him, Vicky?" "I don't think anyone knows Zachary well. Not even Zachary. You never know what he's going to say or do. And, Grandfather-just to make it more complicated, he wasn't just some dumb kid who didn't know how to handle a sailboat. The boat's capsizing wasn't an accident. He wanted to drown. He wanted to die." 59 "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." 60 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?" 61 "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 62 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. 63 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 after- 64 noon 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 ringof 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!" 65 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 66 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 67 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 lifesir 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 non- writing 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. 3 �*� 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