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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Meet the Austins
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After a while Daddy came home and Mother told me to go up and tell Suzy and Maggy to wash their hands and get ready for dinner. I went into the bathroom with them to wash my hands, too. Suzy and Maggy were kind of giggling together while they washed up, as though they were sharing a secret they weren't going to let me in on, but after she'd dried her hands Maggy turned to me and her eyes seemed to grow very dark and big and she said, “My father's plane exploded yesterday.”
“Yes,” I said. I thought I ought to say something else, but I didn't know what else to say. You can't just politely say “I'm sorry,” as though it were one of Rob's toy airplanes.
“If he hadn't died he was going to take me to the ocean for two weeks and I did want to go.”
Now I could say, “I'm sorry.”
“People ought to be sorry for me,” Maggy said. “I'm an orphan.”
“I'm sorry for you,” Suzy said earnestly. “I'm terribly sorry for you, Maggy.”
“So you'll be nice to me, won't you?” Maggy asked.
“Of course!”
I
was
sorry for her; with my mind I was sorry for her, but I wasn't feeling any empathy. And that was peculiar: here was Maggy, almost my age, only a couple of years younger, and her mother and father were both dead, and I couldn't think of anything more horrible in the world; and Aunt Elena was a grownup, so of course I couldn't feel about her the way I could
about another girl. But it was Aunt Elena I ached over, and for Maggy I could feel only a strange bewilderment.
Mother called us down for dinner then, and after dinner Aunt Elena and Uncle Douglas left. The funeral was to be the next day, and Mother and Daddy were going down in the morning.
Bedtime was even stranger than it had been the night before. Mother read to us in Suzy's and my room, only now it wasn't Suzy's and my room, it was Suzy and Maggy's room. Suzy and Maggy giggled together while Mother read, and when I told them to be quiet so the rest of us could hear, Maggy said, “My, but she's bossy.”
Suzy said, “I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself, Victoria Austin.”
Rob said, “What for?”
And John said, “For crying out loud, all of you kids shut up.”
Mother didn't say anything. She looked around at us with sort of a quizzical look on her face and went on reading.
Rob went to sleep right away; he always does. I was allowed to read till nine, but even after I turned out the light I couldn't sleep—partly, of course, because I'm older, but also, I wasn't used to being in John's bed. John has a big double bed, and Rob's, which is across the foot of it, is much, much smaller.
Rob has allergies and he often snores in the autumn, and he snored that night and it was a cold night again and he burrowed down under the covers and only a tuft of light brown hair showed and his snores sounded contented and comfortable. I could see him because we always have a night-light on in the
bathroom all night, and it makes just enough light come into our bedrooms so you can see a little.
 
I was just about to settle myself and try to go to sleep when John tiptoed in. He had on blue jeans and his heavy red jacket, and he came over to the bed and whispered, “Get dressed in something warm—you know, jeans or slacks—and come on down,” and disappeared.
I got up and dressed and went down the back stairs into the kitchen and Mother was standing there in her polo coat and she said, “Get your jacket, Vicky. I thought maybe you and John and I might take some blankets and just go sit outside and watch the sky.”
“Can we go up Hawk,” John asked, “and watch from the top of the ski trails?”
Mother hesitated. “Let me check with Daddy.”
Daddy was in the study reading an article in a medical magazine, and he said to go on, he wasn't expecting any calls, but we'd better not stay more than half an hour; it was too cold, anyhow.
So we got in the station wagon, with Colette in my lap and Mr. Rochester in back sitting on the three army blankets we'd brought, and drove to Hawk. Hawk is a beautiful mountain with ski trails and picnic places, and from the fire lookout you can see five states, and we love to go there. When we got out of the car Colette dashed out and barked madly and rushed around in circles the way she always does, and Mr. Rochester bounded around, and Mother and John spread one of the blankets out on the grass and we sat down on it and put one of the
other blankets about our shoulders and the other one over our laps. Mother sat in the middle and both of us sat as close to her as we possibly could. The sky would probably have been just as beautiful if we'd sat on the north lawn at home, but we could have seen the lights of the village, and up on the mountain it seemed as though we were miles and miles from everywhere. The sky was enormous and terribly high. It's a funny thing: the colder it gets, the farther away the sky seems and the farther off the stars look. The sky was so thick with them it was almost as though it had been snowing stars, and down below us there was a white fog, so it seemed as though we were looking out over a great lake. The Milky Way was a river of light, and John began pointing out the constellations, and I found the Big Dipper and the North Star and Cassiopeia's Chair and Scorpio and Sagittarius. Sagittarius is my favorite because it's my sign of the zodiac and I like the idea of aiming for the stars.
Mother said, “I know you're both very upset about Uncle Hal and Maggy's father. We all are. I thought maybe if we came and looked at the stars it would help us to talk about it a little.”
Just then a shooting star flashed across the sky, and John said, “There's a shooting star and I don't know what to wish. I want to wish it back to before yesterday and that none of this would have happened, but I know it wouldn't work.”
I said, “Mother, I don't understand it,” and I began to shiver.
Mother said, “Sometimes it's very hard to see the hand of God instead of the blind finger of Chance. That's why I wanted to come out where we could see the stars.”
“I talked to Aunt Elena for a while,” John said, in a strained sort of voice, “when everybody else was busy. We took Mr. Rochester and Colette for a walk.” Mr. Rochester came up to us then and lay down beside me with a thud, putting his heavy head across my knees. Colette was already cuddled up in Mother's lap. I looked toward John, and the lenses of his glasses glimmered in the starlight. “She said that she and Uncle Hal knew that they were living on borrowed time,” John said. “They'd always hoped it would be longer than it was, but the way their lives were, they only lived together in snatches, anyhow. And she said she was grateful for every moment she'd ever had with him, and, even if it was all over, she wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world.”
“She said that to you, John?” Mother asked.
“Yes,” John said, and then another star shot across the sky, this time with a shower of sparks. We sat there, close, close, and it was as though we could feel the love we had for one another moving through our bodies, moving from me through Mother, from Mother to John, and back again. I could feel the love filling me, love for Mother and John, and for Daddy and Suzy and Rob, too. And I prayed, “Oh, God, keep us together, please keep us together, please keep us safe and well and together.”
It was as though our thoughts were traveling to one another, too, because John said, “Oh, Mother, why do things have to change and be different!” He sounded quite violent. “I like us exactly the way we are, our family. Why do people have to die, and people grow up and get married, and everybody grow
away from each other? I wish we could just go on being exactly the way we are!”
“But we can't,” Mother said. “We can't stop on the road of Time. We have to keep on going. And growing up is all part of it, the exciting and wonderful business of being alive. We can't understand it, any of us, any more than we can understand why Uncle Hal and Maggy's father had to die. But being alive is a gift, the most wonderful and exciting gift in the world. And there'll undoubtedly be many other moments when you'll feel this same way, John, when you're grown up and have children of your own.”
“I don't understand about anything,” John said. “I don't understand about people dying, and I don't understand about families, about people being as close as we are, and then everybody growing up, and not having Rob a baby anymore, and having to go off and live completely different lives.”
“But look how close Grandfather and I still are,” Mother said.
John shook his head. “I know. But it isn't the same thing. It's not like when you were little.”
“No,” Mother said. “But if I'd never grown up and met Daddy and married him you wouldn't be here, or Vicky or Suzy or Rob, and we wouldn't be sitting up here on Hawk Mountain shivering and looking at the stars. And we must have been here at least half an hour. Time to go home.”
We went home and then we just stood outside for a while. The moon was sailing high now, and the sky was clear above the black pines at the horizon, with Northern Lights, which we hadn't seen up on Hawk at all, sending occasional rays darting high up into the sky. Daddy had heard us drive up, and he came
out and stood with us, his arm about Mother. I'd never seen such a startlingly brilliant night, the fields and mountains washed in a flood of light. The shadows of trees and sunflowers were sharply black and stretched long and thin across the lawn. It was so beautiful that for the moment the beauty was all that mattered; it wasn't important that there were things we would never understand.
I
had thought, getting into bed after we came down from Hawk, that now everything was beginning to straighten out, that things would get back to the way they always were. But I guess it was just because I wanted to think it. And maybe it wasn't just Uncle Hal. Maybe it was because John was fifteen and I was twelve and everything was ready to change anyhow.
The first thing that happened was that I woke out of a deep sleep with my ears filled with ear-splitting screams. I sat up in bed, still so sleepy that I didn't know what was going on, only that something awful must be happening. The light switched on in Mother and Daddy's room, and then in the guest room, where John was, and I heard feet hurrying into the room where Suzy and Maggy were, and the screams went right on. I flung myself out of bed and ran in, too, my heart pounding, and Maggy was sitting up in bed screaming at the top of her lungs.
Daddy said, “John, Vicky, go back to your rooms.” When
Daddy speaks that way, we hop. I heard him saying, “Margaret, you are to stop screaming by the time I count to three.” He counted slowly, “One, two, three,” and Maggy was quiet as suddenly as though Daddy had turned off a faucet, and then she bellowed, “My mother's dead and my father's dead and you should be sorry for me!”
Daddy's voice was very quiet, but I could hear every word. “Maggy, no matter what bad things happen to us—and very bad things have happened to you—we still have to have a certain amount of consideration for other people. There are six people in this house besides you who are trying to sleep and who need their sleep. Suppose you come downstairs with me for a few minutes and we will see if we can't get you calmed down. Meanwhile, Suzy, I want you to go back to sleep. Maggy is not going to make any more disturbances tonight.”
Daddy kept Maggy downstairs for quite a while; I was half asleep when I heard them coming back up. There wasn't a sound out of Maggy as Daddy tucked her in, and after the light went out in Mother and Daddy's bedroom a moment later, there wasn't another sound that night.
In the morning Mother had on a dark dress instead of a skirt and sweater, and she and Daddy drove us to school instead of letting us walk down the half mile to the school bus as usual. This was so they could introduce Maggy to Suzy's teacher. They'd had a talk with the principal the evening before and decided that Maggy would start in Suzy's grade; it would make it easier for her to be in with someone she knew. Mother and Daddy said they'd be back in time for dinner and that I was to start the potatoes, and John and I were to take care of the little
ones. Rob was at a neighbor's until I got home from school; I was to pick him up on my way. I felt distinctly nervous about an afternoon with Maggy without Mother and Daddy, and I had a feeling that John did, too.
After school, Maggy and Suzy and I got off the school bus and started up the hill to our house. John goes to the Regional High School and he doesn't get home till after four, so I had over an hour to be in charge and I didn't like the idea a bit. Suzy will do what John says, but she almost always argues with me or just doesn't pay attention. And with Maggy to boss her around, heaven knew what she'd do. I felt distinctly trepidatious.
We stopped for Rob. He had Elephant's Child with him. As usual. Elephant's Child is an elephant that used to be blue but is now gray—a more ordinary color for elephants, anyhow—and it has a music box inside that plays Brahms's
Lullaby
, and Rob adores it. He's had it since he was a baby, and he's always been very careful of it and never over-wound it, and it still played all of its tune—something that Suzy's and my music-box toys never did, because we always managed to break them.
As soon as Maggy saw Elephant's Child she wanted to hold it. Now, maybe it wasn't very generous of Rob to say no, and pull away, and hold Elephant's Child even closer to him, but in his place I think I'd have felt exactly the same way.
Maggy pouted, but she didn't say anything and kept on walking up the hill, just behind Rob. When we were almost at the house she reached out and grabbed Elephant's Child and raced on ahead with it, laughing in a horrid, screechy way, keeping just out of reach of Rob and winding the key to make Elephant's Child play.
Suzy didn't say anything, but she looked troubled. Rob howled. I was no good at all, because both Rob and Maggy were making so much noise no one could hear me. Finally I made myself heard over the din. “Give it to him, Maggy, please!” Maggy flung Elephant's Child in the vague general direction of Rob, and it landed in the middle of a barberry bush. Rob plunged in after it, getting all scratched up and howling louder. I finally managed to get everybody herded into the house. I may get mad at John at times, but I'd have given anything in the world to have had him walk in at that moment. Rob was sobbing, “He's broken! Elephant's Child is broken!”
“Give him to me, Rob, let me see,” I said.
He handed me Elephant's Child, and I twisted the music-box key and it just went around and around the way those things do when they've been too roughly handled, and Brahms's
Lullaby
didn't play.
“Oh, Rob,” I said helplessly. “Maybe Mother or Daddy can fix him.”
“Let
me
see,” Suzy said. “I bet he isn't broken at all. We're just making a fuss over nothing and making Maggy feel bad. I bet I can make him work.”
“Okay, Doc,” I said. “You try.”
“Well …” Suzy said, when she realized the music-box part of Elephant's Child was indeed broken.
Rob had stopped yelling. He took Elephant's Child from Suzy and held him close and went into the study and sat down in the big black leather chair and put his head down against Elephant's Child, and I could see that his lip was quivering and tears were sliding down his cheeks, but he wasn't making any sound.
And I wasn't feeling any empathy about Maggy at all.
“What a lot of fuss about a stupid old toy,” Maggy said crossly. “Can't your mother and father get him another?”
“I suppose if you break a toy you just get another one?” I demanded angrily.
“Of course.”
There was no use saying that we didn't, and that even if Mother and Daddy could get Rob another Elephant's Child it wouldn't be the same.
“Maggy didn't mean to break it,” Suzy said, but her voice was uncertain. “Don't make her feel bad.”
As far as I could see, Maggy didn't feel bad at all. “Do you two have any homework?” I asked them.
“Just some spelling words.”
“Well, get them done, then.”
“Let's play first,” Maggy said. “We can play hospital again. Come on, Suzy.”
“We're supposed to do our homework before we play,” I said.
But Maggy had already started upstairs, and Suzy went after her.
“Suzy,” I shouted, “Mother'll be furious if you don't get your homework done.”
“I'll do it later, silly,” Suzy called back, and ran after Maggy.
I went in to Rob. He was still crying silently, and when I tried to comfort him he pushed me away. I brought in my homework and sat down at the desk near him, but I couldn't concentrate on anything properly. After a while he got up and
climbed into my lap and put his arms around my neck and I felt better.
 
I thought I ought to go upstairs and check on Suzy and Maggy, but I could hear them playing, and I decided that as long as there weren't any horrible screams I'd just leave them alone. Rob got out his wooden trains and set them up on the floor by me, and I worked on my homework till John got home.
I could hear him hanging up his things, and then he came into the study and dumped his books down. “How're you making out, Vicky? Everything sounds okay. Hi, Robbie, old man.”
I looked at him glumly. “As a baby sitter I'm a complete flop.”
“Why?”
I told him what had happened. “And I wasn't any help at all,” I finished. “I was worse than no good. Thank heavens you're home, John. I don't know what I'd have done if she started anything else.”
John was examining Elephant's Child. “One thing's for sure,” he said, putting Elephant's Child down. “She's a spoiled brat from way back.”
“What's the matter with her, anyhow?” I asked John. “Do you suppose this is just the way she is—I mean, spoiled rotten and everything—or do you suppose it's because of her mother and father?”
“Well,” John said slowly, “how would we feel if …”
“Stop,” I said quickly. “Stop.”
“She does make it rough,” John said. “I know I'm not as sorry for her as I ought to be.”
“Yeah, that worries me,” I said. “Suzy feels all sorry for her the way I ought to, and I can't seem to make myself.”
“I suppose the thing to do,” John said, “is to try to think how we'd feel if it was one of us. I mean, if there weren't four of us, if none of the rest of you had been born, I might be spoiled rotten, too.”
“That's a nasty thought,” I said. “Not so much you being spoiled as the rest of us not being born.”
“Sometimes I'd be just as happy if you hadn't been,” John said, and I was about to make an angry retort when he said, “Oh, let's not fight, Vic. You know I didn't mean it. I'd better go upstairs and check on those two now.”
When he came down he said, “Well, they're happily tearing up Suzy's best doll so Suzy can do an operation.” Usually Suzy operates on dolls that get broken somehow or other. I didn't think just deliberately destroying one was such a hot idea, and I didn't think Suzy would, either, when it was all done and too late. But John and I thought, under the circumstances, we'd just let it go.
“I know what you mean,” I said grimly. “Let's keep peace and quiet at all costs. I think I'd better go fix the potatoes now before anything else happens. I'd hate to have Mother and Daddy get back and find I hadn't done
anything
they asked me to.”
“I'll help you,” John said unexpectedly. His jobs are things like chopping wood and keeping the wood basket filled and mowing lawns and shoveling snow. We got out the scrapers and set to.
“Sounds funny without Mother playing records,” John said. “Shall I put something on?”
“Uh-huh.”
John put on
Rosenkavalier,
and I was glad, because it's lovely and gay, and I wasn't in the mood for anything that wasn't, and the sound of it made the house feel better, somehow.
Well, we had only one more crisis, and that was when John tried to get Maggy and Suzy to do their homework before they watched
Mickey Mouse Club.
But he gave up, and we sat in the kitchen and realized we were starved because we'd forgotten to have anything to eat when we got home from school. So we had milk and cookies and took some in to Rob and Suzy and Maggy, and Maggy and Rob fought over them and we wished we hadn't. I don't know when we've been as glad to see Mother and Daddy as we were when they walked in at six.
 
After Mother had read to us and the three little ones were in bed, John and I went back downstairs in our nightclothes. Mother said that as long as I was sleeping in with Rob I could stay up half an hour later, and John stays up till he gets his homework done. If I think I have a lot now, what'll I do when I get to high school? Daddy said that since Suzy and Maggy had not done their homework they would simply have to tell their teacher that they had played instead, and take the consequences. Neither of them liked that one bit. They wanted to sit up late and do it, but Daddy said no.
“How about you kids,” Daddy asked John and me. “You about through?”
“I didn't have very much today,” I said. “I'm all done.”
“John?”
“I just have to finish a book report.”
“Let's talk for a few minutes, then.” He put another log on the fire and sat down. Mother turned from getting things ready for breakfast and sat down, too.
“So you had a rough time this afternoon, didn't you?” Daddy asked us. We nodded. He thought for a minute, then he said, “The way things stand now, it looks as though Maggy will be with us for quite a while, and it's going to be an adjustment for all of us. But we must remember that it's going to be an adjustment for Maggy most of all. Now, I know you're both very sorry for her—”
John broke in, “But that's the trouble, Dad. We aren't. We try to be, but we aren't.”
“And at school today, Daddy,” I said, “at recess, she kept sort of bragging about it, and telling people—about her parents being dead, I mean, and her father's plane having exploded.”
“She was a new girl in a new school,” Daddy said. “Maybe that was all she had to brag about.”
“I don't think Vic or I would,” John said. “If anything happened to you or Mother I don't think we'd go around talking about it to people.”

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