L'Engle, Madeleine - A Ring of Endless Light (6 page)

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 79 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 Zach- ary 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?" 80 "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- 81 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. 82 And Rob was asking, "Me, too?" Adam twirled spaghetti skilUully 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 Zach- ary 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?" Poems are private, and I appreciated his wanting to wait. That was nice, really nice. Daddy pushed back a little from the table. "If we all pitch in and do the dishes, we'll have time for some sing- 83 ing. Go get your guitar, Victoria, and the kids and I'll take the dishes out to the kitchen." It didn't take us all that long. Grandfather doesn't have a dishwasher, but the men brought everything out to the kitchen and I washed and John dried and Suzy and Daddy put things away and Rob and Adam wiped off the table and the counter. And then we were back on the porch, to catch whatever ocean breeze came across the water on this hot night. Rob's hair was damp with heat. "If it's like this at the ocean, what do you suppose it's like in the city?" Daddy asked the world at large. "Guitar tuned, Victoria?" "Adequately." Mother twiddled the little knob for one of the strings. "There. That's better. What'll we start with?" "You start," Daddy said. "How about Come unto these yellow sands'?" When Mother had finished, nobody said anything. I was sitting on the floor by Grandfather's couch, leaning back against it. Daddy and Rob were on the swing. John and Adam had their chairs tilted back, leaning against the porch rail. Suzy sat on the floor near Mother. The fan whirred slowly above us, stirring the sluggish air. A moth beat its pale wings against the screen. There was no need for words. Mother plucked a few chords, then sang another song from one of Shakespeare's plays, When that I was and a little tiny boy.She'd sung us those songs as lullabies, and we all loved them. They made me feel safe and comforted and secure. 84 When she put down her guitar this time, Adam said, "Mrs. Austin, that's tremendous! You could have been a professional!" "She was," Suzy told him proudly. "She sang in a night club," "Very briefly." Mother smiled. "I met your father and that was the end of my career." "But it didn't haveto be." Suzy was vehement. "You could have gone on if you'd wanted to. Daddy didn't make you stop." "Of course he didn't, Suzy. I stopped singing in public because I made other choices. And"-as though to answer Suzy's unspoken but almost audible arguments-"they were my own choices. Society didn't force them on me; neither did your father. It's inverse sexism again not to allow me the freedom to make the choice I did." Daddy laughed. "Victoria, I do love you when you get up on the soapbox." "And other times, too, I hope." Mother laughed back. Suzy continued her own train of thought. "Mrs. Rodney's going back to nursing." Mrs. Rodney was going back to nursing largely because her husband was dead and she needed the money. But Leo had said she'd been thinking about it anyhow ... Mother said calmly, "I've sometimes wondered what I'll do when you kids are all out of the nest. But it won't be to go back to singing. I can put over a song, but I don't have a real voice. We'll just have to wait and see." She looked at Rob, leaning sleepily against Daddy. "I still have a few years before I have to worry. Okay, now, let's all sing together." Her fingers moved over the guitar strings again, the merry strains of The Arkansas Traveler. 85 So we all joined in. And while we sang I remembered that Adam was going to introduce me to his dolphins the next day. And I wondered where Zachary was and what he was doing. 4 �*�In the morning I biked over to the station with John, my bathing suit rolled in a towel and stuffed in my wicker bike basket, because Adam had said something about maybe going for a swim. For the first time I found myself wishing I'd paid more attention to science in school and less to composition and music and things like that. I didn't know anything at all about dolphins, not even the difference between a dolphin and a porpoise, though I thought that porpoise was a generic name which included several kinds of dolphins. At breakfast I'd thought of asking and then decided against it. Anything I was going to learn about cetaceans (as John called them) was going to have to come from Adam. My excitement about going on a date with Adam was very different from the way I felt when I went out with Zach- ary. With Zachary I was excited and nervous and somehow playing a role, almost like when we used to go up to the attic in Thornhill to the costume trunks and put on plays. With Zachary I wore at least an imaginary costume, because I was trying to live up to his expectations of me, and 87 maybe that was why I felt uncomfortable with him at the same time that I was thrilled. And going out with Adam was even more different than going out with Leo. Leo was turning out to be human, but I didn't think doing something with Leo was going on a date. Adam was different from anybody I'd ever known. He wasn't spectacularly gorgeous, like Zachary, but he had a kind of light within that drew me to him like a moth to a candle. At the funeral his light was doused, and I felt a deep hurt within him, beyond the hurt caused by Commander Rodney's death. And then, when he talked about dolphins, he was alight and alive and I wanted to know why. And I didn't think this was going to be easy, because there was something-reticent, I guess is what I mean- about him. He was living in a kind of barracks, a long, grey building up on stilts, which would make it cool in summer and cold in winter. He was sitting on the steps, waiting for us. He had on cut-off blue jeans, and his legs were long and tan. Old sneakers, with the ties broken and knotted. A faded blue T-shirt. He smiled, and the light came on inside him. He jumped down the steps and came over to show me where to park my bike in the long rack in front of the lab, which was a building like the one he lived in. Inside the lab was a smell of ocean and fish and Bunsen burners. There were lots of tanks with various species of fish, and what seemed as many starfish as Grandfather has books. Most of them were growing arms: fascinating. John went off to the other end of the lab to check on a tank of lizards. I could see his boss, Dr. Nora Zand, talking to him in an excited way, and John was peering into the 88 tank. Adam and I stood by a big tank in which there were a dozen or more starfish, each with an arm partly regenerated. "Wouldn't it be terrific," I suggested, "if people could do that? Then surgeons wouldn't have to pull out their knives so quickly." "It's not outside the realm of possibility." Adam was looking into the tank, studying the starfish. "Human beings and starfish are both chordates and come from the same phylum." I wasn't sure what that meant. "You mean they're sort of our distant ancestors, way back on the family tree?" "Yah." Adam moved on to the next tank, and I followed. At the end of the lab, John was sitting on a high stool, writing on a clipboard. Dr. Zand had gone. Adam bent over the tank. "So what we learn about starfish and how they regenerate could someday apply to human beings. You're quite right, it would revolutionize medicine." "Isn't it more what things ought to be, rather than knives and stuff?" "Probably." "How much do we know about it?" "The central nerve disc is vital. We've been able to make some isolated arms regenerate by implanting them with part of the central nerve disc, which seems to provide the electric energy for regeneration. But we haven't made that much progress. Starfish have fascinated people for centuries. The first formal paper on regeneration was written by an Italian, Lazzaro Spallanzani, way back in 1768. We know a little more than he did, but not as much as you might expect." 89 I stared down at a starfish with all five arms, the fifth not quite complete, still in the process of growing itself back. "We've been spending more time on machines and bombs and industry than we have on things like starfish, haven't we? Has anybody tried anything with people? I mean, do we have an equivalent of the central nerve disc?" He gave me an oblique look. "We don't know all that much about it yet. Electrical charges have been used in stimulating broken bones to heal. But in the wrong hands it could be disastrous, producing malignancies and all kinds of horrors. Come along and I'll show you the dolphin pens. Got your bathing suit?" I indicated the rolled-up towel. We paused as we passed John, who pointed at a lizard in the tank; regeneration was just barely visible in a severed foreleg. "Terrif," Adam said. "We're off to Una and Nini. See you later." I assumed Una and Nini had to be dolphins. We left the lab building and walked downhill toward the water. One of the loveliest things about Seven Bay Island is that each of the seven bays has several coves, some quite large and open, some small and protected, like Grandfather's cove. The path down to the beach from the lab hairpinned and zigzagged instead of descending precipitously like the one to Grandfather's cove, so it was easier walking. Even so, the sun beat down on us and I could feel sweat trickling down the small of my back. We headed for a long and narrow cove in which several pens had been built. We paused at the first pen, where two pale-grey dolphins were leaping up into the air, shedding sparkles of water, while a middle- aged man with
a balding head tossed them fish from a 90 bucket. I thought he was the man who had cried at Commander Rodney's funeral. His baldness was sort of like a monk's tonsure, a dark fringe all around his head, with a pink circle of skin at the crown. He had brown spaniel eyes and I liked him. He saw us, gave me a quick look, and called out, "Hey, kids, want to take over?"