Meet the Austins (17 page)
Authors: Madeleine L'engle
Mother and Daddy both laughed. “I wonder how Doug and Elena would feel about our rearranging their entire lives for them?” Mother asked.
“Well, if you ask me,” John said, “I think the reason none of Uncle Douglas's girlfriends ever pans out is that he's been in love with Aunt Elena for years.”
“I think you're right, John,” Mother said, “but remember that we must give Aunt Elena time. It's not a year since Uncle Hal's death. She isn't ready to love again quite yet. But she and
Uncle Douglas have always been close, warm friends, and perhaps it's excusable of us to hope that something works out between them.”
Uncle Douglas have always been close, warm friends, and perhaps it's excusable of us to hope that something works out between them.”
“If I were a gambler,” John said, “I'd lay money on it. How about you, Dad?”
“A conservative amount, at least,” Daddy said. “Meanwhile, leaving aside the ideal solution you've suggested, what about Maggy?”
“Well, Dad, if you'd asked me a few months ago I'd have said I didn't give a darn about what happened to her as long as you got her out of the house.”
“But you do give a darn now?” Mother asked.
“Yes. I do.”
“We all do,” I said.
“So,” Daddy said, “you think maybe we should urge her grandfather to let her stay on with us for, say, another year?”
“Yup.”
“Well, I think that's just what we're going to do,” Daddy said, “but we're glad you feel about it as we do. Remembering that Maggy isn't an easy child to have about the house, and I don't think she ever will be, even with more security.”
“But she's sort of become our responsibility,” John said. “We can't just throw her out the way some people do dogs when they come up to the country for the summer and then just let them out of the car somewhere when they're on their way back to the city.”
“And a child is more important than a dog, I hope,” Mother said, misquoting Alice in the Red Queen's voice.
“So what the plan is, then,” Daddy said, “is for us all to go
up to the island for a week. I'm going to take that real vacation Mother has been trying to get me to take for so long. And a week on the island with Grandfather sounds mighty good to me, I can tell you. Then, after a week, Mother and I will go down to New York, leaving you children with Grandfather. Mr. Ten Eyck has arranged a meeting for us with the lawyers and Aunt Elena, and we'll also have to go down to the probate court and talk with one of the judges there. Uncle Douglas is going to be at all the meetings, too, which will help, as Mr. Ten Eyck seems to have taken a liking to him. But we have to face the fact that we really haven't the slightest idea what Mr. Ten Eyck's decision will be.”
up to the island for a week. I'm going to take that real vacation Mother has been trying to get me to take for so long. And a week on the island with Grandfather sounds mighty good to me, I can tell you. Then, after a week, Mother and I will go down to New York, leaving you children with Grandfather. Mr. Ten Eyck has arranged a meeting for us with the lawyers and Aunt Elena, and we'll also have to go down to the probate court and talk with one of the judges there. Uncle Douglas is going to be at all the meetings, too, which will help, as Mr. Ten Eyck seems to have taken a liking to him. But we have to face the fact that we really haven't the slightest idea what Mr. Ten Eyck's decision will be.”
“You mean he might not let her stay with us?” John asked.
“Exactly. He's a very erratic old gentleman. Now, one thing in our favor is that he thought Sally Hough's visit with us was funny, and that he never had any real intention of letting Maggy go to her. But he is seriously considering getting a nurse and governess and keeping the child with him in New York.”
“But that would be awful for her!” I exclaimed.
“We think so,” Mother said, “but other people may not think our life is as warm and happy and healthy as we think it is. Our biggest hope is Uncle Douglas. Mr. Ten Eyck thinks he is amusing, and he likes his painting, and he's commissioned him to do a painting of Maggy's mother from a series of photographs. Uncle Douglas doesn't like working that way, but he's going to do it for Maggy's sake.”
“So that's the story up to now,” Daddy said. “Don't say anything to the younger ones about it. It would be a lot harder for Maggy to know her fate is being sealed than for her to have
a vague feeling that maybe people are discussing her. And we want the trip to the island to be fun and not spoiled by tensions and anxieties. Okay?”
a vague feeling that maybe people are discussing her. And we want the trip to the island to be fun and not spoiled by tensions and anxieties. Okay?”
“Okay,” we said.
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We had thought it would never be time to leave for the island, or that we mightn't be able to leave at all, because, Maggy's problems aside, with Daddy you never know. But suddenly it was time to pack, and we were going to leave the next morning.
When we got up, all was excitement and sound and fury. Daddy got a call and went tearing down to the hospital, but he promised he'd be back in an hour. Mother made pancakes and sausage for us all so we wouldn't need so much lunch, and she packed a picnic basket for lunch, but I think she had an idea when Daddy went down to the hospital that he wouldn't get back and we wouldn't be able to go. But he did get back, not in an hour, but in an hour and seventeen minutes, which wasn't bad, considering, and Mother gave him a plate of pancakes and sausage and told him to eat them quickly before the phone rang again, and Daddy said not to worry, he wasn't taking any more calls.
Mother told us all to put our bags in the back of the car. We took out the back seat and made the suitcases into a sort of seat and put an old quilt over them, and Suzy and Maggy begged to sit there first, and of course Rob wanted to sit with them, and they didn't want him to, and he cried, and Daddy shouted at us all to go get in the car, he didn't care how we sat as long as he and Mother had the front seat, but we were to get into the car and stay there and be quiet or they'd go without us. We didn't quite believe that, but Daddy sounded as though he half
meant it, so we went and got in the car, and Rob finally settled for the middle seat with John and Rochester and me, because Rochester insisted on sitting with Rob and Elephant's Child, though we tried to get him to go in back with Maggy and Suzy, who didn't want him anyhow.
meant it, so we went and got in the car, and Rob finally settled for the middle seat with John and Rochester and me, because Rochester insisted on sitting with Rob and Elephant's Child, though we tried to get him to go in back with Maggy and Suzy, who didn't want him anyhow.
Finally, Mother and Daddy came out to get in the car. Just as we were about to start, Mother said, “Oh, Wally, excuse me, there's something I wanted to do I forgot,” and she disappeared into the house again. She was gone a good five minutes and when she came out again she wasn't carrying anything with her or anything, and Daddy said, “What was it you forgot?”
Mother said, “I just painted the seats on both the toilets. There's never any chance to do it. No matter how many signs I put up, you know perfectly well somebody'd forget and sit on the wet paint, so I gave them both a good coat of white paint and they'll be dry by the time we get home.”
Daddy laughed and said, “Victoria, you being you, I might have known it would be something like that,” and Mother laughed, too, and climbed in beside him, and we were off.
We had gone all the way down the hill to Clovenford, past the hospital, past Daddy's office, past the railroad station, and were starting uphill again at the other side of town when Mother said, “Who's holding Colette?”
Then everybody asked everybody else, and nobody was holding Colette; we'd forgotten her.
Daddy turned the car around and we started for home again. Mother said, “It's one thing forgetting Colette, but do you remember the time Daddy forgot Rob?”
“When did Daddy forget me?” Rob demanded. “How could Daddy forget me?”
“I never heard about that,” Maggy said. “Tell me about it, Aunt Victoria.”
So Mother told about the time when Rob was just a tiny baby and we were all going, one Sunday afternoon, on a picnic. We each had something to remember, and Daddy was in charge of Rob. He put Rob's car bed in the car, and a bag of diapers, and some Pablum, and I was in charge of the paper plates and cups and napkins and things like that, and John was to watch out for Suzy, and Mother took care of the food, of course, and we all started off, and when we got to the place where we were going to have the picnic, Mother went to get Rob out of the car bed and Daddy had never put him in! He'd left him sound asleep in his crib!
So Mother said forgetting Colette was a mere nothing, and she started us off singing songs. When we got back to the house she was going to go in, but Daddy sent John in after Colette. “If I let you in the house, Vic, you'll find something else that needs a quick coat of paint.”
So John came out carrying Colette, and we started off again. What with Daddy's trip to the hospital and our forgetting Colette, it was exactly two hours after we'd expected to start, but Mother said that wasn't bad at all. And the weather couldn't have been more cooperative if it had tried with both hands. June was cold, so we all had jackets on, with sweaters underneath, and soon we took them off and just had our sweaters. The sun was shining and little clouds were scooting
across the sky, and in almost everybody's dooryard there were lilacs blooming.
across the sky, and in almost everybody's dooryard there were lilacs blooming.
Daddy said, “Vic, did you bring your guitar?”
Mother said, “Yes,” and then, “Heavens, where is it? Suzy and Maggy, if you're sitting on it I shall be in a towering rage.”
But John said, “Relax, Mother, I rescued it, it's here with Vicky and me and we're not letting Rob or Rochester use it for a bed.”
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It takes us the best part of two days and a night to get to Grandfather's, and the trip is part of the fun. We have a special place we like to stop for our picnic lunch. It's about two miles out of our way, up a dirt road in a state park, but it's worth it. There's nothing especially exciting about it; it's just beautiful, and it's sort of a family tradition with us to take our picnic basket there whenever we go to Grandfather's. It's a pine forest, and in the summer, no matter how hot it is, it's always cool there, and in the spring or autumn it's protected and it's never too chilly. We did put our jackets back on, and Mother spread our steamer rug out on the soft, rusty pine needles. All the ground beneath the trees is covered with pine needles, with just an occasional little green bush or seedling growing here and there. The trees are quite close together, so that the bottom branches are rusty-looking, too, and then they get green as they reach up to the sun. The wind was singing in the tops of the pines, so that at first you would almost think it was rushing water. Colette went dashing around in ecstasy as though she were a young puppy. Maybe I ought to have a whole chapter on Colette sometime, but, as Kipling says, that's another story.
We had a lovely picnic, egg-salad sandwiches and sliced lamb sandwiches, and Mother had two big thermos bottles of hot bouillon. When we started off again Rob got in the front seat to sit with Mother and have a nap, and John and I sat on the quilt with the suitcases, and Suzy and Maggy were right, it really wasn't very comfortable unless you lay down, but it was fun looking out the back.
We stopped for the night at a motel, and this is always fun, too. Maggy made five of us instead of four, which complicated matters a little, but Rob slept on a cot in Mother and Daddy's room. We really did get an early start the next morning.
The most fun of all the trip is the boat ride on the
Sister Anne.
Rob says he's going to be the captain of the
Sister Anne
when he grows up, and he gets so excited every time we ride on her that he gets quite white and looks fearfully solemn, the way he always does whenever anything is terribly important to him. The first time he rode on a merry-go-round we thought he was scared sick, but it was only because he thought it was so wonderful that his face had that funny look.
Sister Anne.
Rob says he's going to be the captain of the
Sister Anne
when he grows up, and he gets so excited every time we ride on her that he gets quite white and looks fearfully solemn, the way he always does whenever anything is terribly important to him. The first time he rode on a merry-go-round we thought he was scared sick, but it was only because he thought it was so wonderful that his face had that funny look.
It's a three-hour ride to Seven Bay Island. You stop at two other islands on the way out; Seven Bay is the farthest out to sea of all. Maggy had been to Europe once with her mother, but the island ferry was the biggest boat the rest of us had ever been on, and even Maggy said it seemed much more like a boat than the
Queen Mary.
The
Queen Mary
is like being in an enormous hotel. But when you're on the
Sister Anne
you're on a boat and there's no two ways about it. We stood up in the prow and there was the sea spreading out before us, and long lines of wooded hills on either side. The wind was so strong that it
made us catch our breaths, and we closed our jackets tight and the spray blew into our faces. And oh, the lovely smell where the river runs into the sea!
Queen Mary.
The
Queen Mary
is like being in an enormous hotel. But when you're on the
Sister Anne
you're on a boat and there's no two ways about it. We stood up in the prow and there was the sea spreading out before us, and long lines of wooded hills on either side. The wind was so strong that it
made us catch our breaths, and we closed our jackets tight and the spray blew into our faces. And oh, the lovely smell where the river runs into the sea!
We had sandwiches and chocolate milk on the boat for lunch, and Rob insisted on sharing his with one of the sailors he'd made friends with. After lunch we went and stood in the prow again and pretended we were Norse explorers, seeing the coast of America for the first time.
It was about the middle of the afternoon when we reached Seven Bay Island, and then it's a fifteen-minute drive to where Grandfather lives. His hill and his stable are on the ocean side of the island, quite unlike the pretty little town that is clustered about the big bay where the boat comes in.
We piled out of the boat and back into the car, and we were so excited we couldn't sit still, and Colette and Rochester were excited, too, and Colette yipped her shrillest yip, until Daddy said, “John, Vicky, one of you, hold Colette before she makes me wreck the car.”
Grandfather heard the sound of the car coming up the hill and he was out to meet us, and we all fell out of the car and rushed at him until he had to say, “Whoah! Whoah! Don't knock an old man down!” So then we introduced him to Maggy, and he gave Mother a big hug and a kiss, and we all stood around smiling and being happy to be together. Grandfather's stable had been painted with a fresh new coat of barn-red paint since we'd been there last, and Maggy said, kind of dubiously, “Well, it's really the nicest stable I've ever been in.”
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