Meet the Austins (6 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Meet the Austins
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Mother untangled him. “No, Rob. Suzy has to stay by herself.
Come on, let's go to the piano, Rob, and we'll play some songs till Daddy gets back. Want to come, Vic?”
I knew we were singing the songs for Suzy and Maggy as well as to amuse Rob and keep him from being upset. Daddy was home earlier than usual that evening, but it seemed as though it was ever so much later. John came in and sang with us,
Cockles and Mussels
, and
The Eddystone Light
, and
You Take the High Road
, all the old favorites, and when Daddy came in he said, “Well, this is a nice family picture! Where're the two little girls?”
So Mother told him.
 
I was awfully glad I wasn't Suzy or Maggy. It wasn't so much the spanking. It was the talking-to.
“Those were not toys you were playing with,” I heard Daddy say as he went into the office with them. “People's lives depend on those instruments. When I made a rule that you were not to play in the office, I made it for that reason. You knew this, Suzy, and it was up to you to explain it to Maggy.”
Then the door shut firmly behind them.
But that wasn't quite the end, either of the spankings or of the screaming.
For the first time that evening we could tell that Maggy felt bad about something. Suzy wasn't the only subdued one with red-rimmed eyes at dinner. For once, instead of trying to monopolize the conversation, Maggy just sat there and ate.
And then what she did next was something none of the rest of us could or would have done. Only Maggy would do something like that.
Daddy had office hours at home that night; he does twice a week. He started right after dinner. The office lights shine onto the catalpa tree outside Rob and John's—only now it was Rob's and my—room. I lay in bed and listened to Rob snore and looked at the light from the office as it splashed yellow on the big leaves of the catalpa tree. I felt cozy and sleepy, and I was getting used to being in John's big bed instead of my own. The big bed and Rob's little one are a soft, goldeny pine, and two of the walls are pine, too, satin-smooth old boards almost two feet wide. The other two walls are papered with blue paper with a white snowflake pattern. On the wall opposite the bed there's a big picture of a sailing ship with full white sails and blue water and skies and white clouds scudding.
Anyhow, I lay there in the big bed when suddenly there was a scream, a piercing scream, not a Maggy scream, but a scream that wasn't like anything I'd ever heard before. I sat up, wide awake, and the scream came again. It came from the direction of Daddy's office and I didn't know what could have happened. Nobody'd ever screamed that way before, even little kids with shots. I heard feet running and I knew Mother was dashing to see what was the matter. And John went thudding downstairs. Rob didn't move and for a moment I was too scared to. Then I got out of bed and hurried downstairs after John and almost bumped into Mother and she said, very sharply, “Vicky, get back into bed. At once.”
“But what's happened? What is it?”
“I'll tell you later,” she said. “Get upstairs to bed.” It was the quiet voice, so I turned around to go back up, and just then
Daddy came through the living room, pushing Maggy in front of him.
“John, Vicky, get upstairs at once,” Daddy said, and we turned and ran. John came in and sat on his bed with me. We'd peeped into Suzy's room and she was asleep. Once Suzy goes to sleep she's like Rob; nothing wakes her.
John said, “Hold it while I get my glasses. I was so scared I forgot them.”
I knew then he'd been good and scared. John is so nearsighted he can't see two feet without them, and putting them on as he gets out of bed is a reflex. I could hear him bumping into something and then he came back in, pushing his glasses up his nose with one hand and rubbing his shin with the other. “What on earth—” he started, and then we heard Maggy yelling. It was a good solid yell this time, nothing imaginary or hysterical about it.
“I bet Daddy's giving her Hades,” John said.
“But why … what do you suppose she did—”
Mother came up then and looked in and said automatically, “Whisper so you won't wake Rob,” and sat by John on the foot of the bed.
“What happened?” we both asked.
In the light from the bathroom and the light from Daddy's office windows I couldn't tell whether Mother was trying not to smile or not. She said, “Daddy's speaking to Maggy.”
“What'd she do?”
“She said she wanted to be near Daddy to show him she was sorry, so she sneaked into the waiting room and crawled
under the couch, and Mrs. Elliott was sitting on it waiting to see Daddy, and Maggy bit her on the ankle. Twice.”
John and I both giggled. We couldn't help it. Mrs. Elliott weighs over two hundred pounds. She teaches singing at school and she's always going on about how she loves little children and none of us likes her. As a matter of fact, we can't stand her.
“Did she draw blood?” John asked.
“
Really,
John!” Mother exclaimed. “Maggy has frightened Mrs. Elliott into hysterics. You mustn't laugh, it's very rude. I've got to go back downstairs now and help Daddy cope with Mrs. Elliott, but I knew you two wouldn't go to sleep until you knew what had happened. John, go get back into bed. Vicky, lie down and go to sleep. I might as well take Rob to the bathroom now.”
She sat Rob up in bed and in his sleep he put his arms around her and gave her a big kiss; he can be very sweet as well as perfectly awful. Then she stood him up and walked him, still in his sleep, to the bathroom, and the minute he got back into bed he started snoring loudly. “I'd better get Daddy to give him an antihistamine tomorrow night,” Mother said absently, and bent down and kissed Rob. Then she kissed me, and as she left I could hear Daddy bringing Maggy up to bed.
“I meant to hurt her,” I heard Maggy saying.
“I know,” Daddy said. “But no matter what Mrs. Elliott said, there was no excuse for your behavior, Maggy. She's going to have a bad bruise where you bit her.”
“She said my father's plane couldn't have gone to another star. I was telling the kids about it at recess, and she was listening
and said it couldn't be true and I hate her.” Now Maggy started to cry, really to cry, in a different way than we'd ever heard her cry, not shrieking and yelling, but crying as though it came all the way up from her stomach, and Daddy didn't say anything, and I knew he was just sitting there with his arms around her. After a while the crying stopped and I heard her saying to Daddy, “I love you,” and Daddy said, “I love you, too, Maggy.” And then there was silence, and after a while I heard Daddy get up and leave the room. John came out to meet him at the head of the stairs.
“Dad, it was my fault,” John said.
“What was your fault, John?”
“About the stars. You know what I told you last year—how I'd figured out that after we died we maybe went to different stars to kind of go on learning?”
“You told Maggy this?”
“She asked me,” John said. “She wanted to know, if her father's plane had exploded in the middle of the sky, what had happened to him and where he had gone, and I said maybe he'd gone to live on another star. And I guess she thought the plane had gone on to another star. I'm sorry, Dad, I didn't mean—”
“That's all right, John,” Daddy said. “We'll talk more about it tomorrow. It was good for Maggy to cry it out the way she did just now. I've got to get back down to Mrs. Elliott.”
“Mother's with her.”
“Yes, I know. Good night, John.”
John came back in to me and sat on the foot of the bed again. “That blasted Elliott,” he muttered. “She never could
keep her mouth shut. No matter what she thinks, she didn't have any right to upset Maggy about her father. I don't blame her for biting.” Then he began to giggle again, and I began to giggle, too, and we were both holding each other and rocking back and forth in a fit of laughter.
T
here's a family story about me when I was Rob's age or younger. I'd done something I shouldn't have done, and I'd been spanked, and I climbed up into Daddy's lap that evening and twined my arms around his neck and said, “Daddy, why is it I'm so much nicer
after
I've been spanked?”
Well, Maggy was ever so much nicer for a long time after that. She stopped grumbling over making her own bed, and she did her share of setting the table, and she didn't break nearly as many things.
Then we had a terrible week. It all began with Suzy. We were reading E. B. White's
Charlotte's Web
aloud, and one evening early in January we came to the part about Charlotte's death. And Suzy cried. She didn't cry when Uncle Hal died, but she cried, hard, about the spider. And this is not like Suzy. She never cries over books. But she always seems to care more about animals than she does about people, anyhow. She's the one who
feeds the cats every night, and she's the reason we have so many cats, because each time Mother and Daddy threaten to get rid of any of them she carries on so. She wouldn't even let them get rid of Prunewhip, and everybody had to admit Prunewhip's about the ugliest cat anybody's ever seen.
So she carried on over Charlotte.
Mother tried to explain to her that according to the spider calendar Charlotte had lived to be a very old lady and had had a fine life and lived to be as old as any spider does and older than many. But that only partly comforted her.
Then we came to the problem of Charlotte's friend, Wilbur, the pig.
All teary, Suzy asked, “Mother, why did Mr. Zuckerman want to kill Wilbur?”
“Well, Mr. Zuckerman was a farmer, and farmers do kill pigs and sell them for meat.”
“Have we ever eaten pig?”
“Yes. Often.”
“When?”
“Well, whenever we have ham, that's pig. Or bacon. Or pork chops. Or sausage.”
“I
hate
sausage.”
Sausage is one of Suzy's favorite things.
But after everybody had gone to bed and Rob was asleep, John came back in. “Vicky?”
“Hello.”
“Not asleep?”
“Nope.”
John climbed onto the foot of the bed and pulled the quilt over him. “I know how Suzy feels about sausage,” he said.
I'd been almost asleep, so it took me a minute to tumble to what he meant. Then I said, “Me, too. But it doesn't stop me from eating it. Or steak, even though I get terribly fond of the cows we see in the north field every summer.”
“You know,” John said, “there are lots of people in the world who are vegetarians. They don't eat meat or anything but vegetables at all. And there are people who eat chicken and fish but no red meat. And there are people who can't eat pig. Suzy would like that. But I don't think that's any answer. You can't just not eat some things and eat other things.”
“Like what?” I said.
“Well, like anything. Even lettuce or spinach. They're alive. They're just as alive in their own way as a cow is in its way. Or a pig like Wilbur.”
“Then you'd starve to death,” I said.
“Yeah. So we eat steak.”
“And turkey. And tomatoes. And they all taste wonderful.”
“Grandfather talks about a choice of evils,” John said. “Maybe that's it. We have to choose between eating something that's alive or starving to death. But I love eating, Vic. It doesn't seem an evil to me. I don't mean I just love the food, but the family part of it. The sitting around the table and talking and being together.”
“Next time we go to Grandfather's you'd better ask him,” I said. “But remember in the Bible there's a lot about Jesus' eating? Getting together with His friends and disciples and sitting
down to eat and teach. Grandfather talked about that once. And you remember—is it Arabs? I think it's Arabs—anyhow, if someone's eaten bread with them, broken bread, they can't do him any harm.”
But now John was getting sleepy. “That was awfully good shepherd's pie we had for dinner,” he murmured.
I kicked him through the covers. “Get back to your own room before you fall asleep.”
So we kept right on eating and liking it, too. But Suzy wouldn't eat any bacon the next morning, or sausage, or anything to do with pig all that week. And she seemed sort of cranky and not like herself. And one night when it was bedtime she said she had a stomachache.
Then, one evening after we'd all sat down to dinner, Mother said, “I found a whole pile of bubble gum and candy in one of the boots in the pantry. I was trying to create a little order out of chaos, and I hardly think a boot that is supposed to keep your feet warm and dry is a place for things like that. Whose is it?”
Her voice was perfectly pleasant, but it was a little too quiet for comfort. Nobody said anything.
Daddy said, “It sounds rather like hoarding to me, anyhow. How about it? Who's the culprit?”
Still nobody said anything.
Mother said, “I didn't realize I was starting anything. You're allowed to buy candy with your allowance. I just want to know who's been putting it in a boot.”
I wasn't the one, so I looked curiously and a little anxiously around the table at everybody else. I saw that John was looking
around, too. Suzy was staring straight ahead with a set expression, and Maggy was staring at Suzy.
Rob said, “I didn't do it.” He couldn't very well. His allowance is six cents, five cents for Sunday school and a penny for emptying the wastepaper baskets every Saturday morning. Maggy gets five dollars from Mr. Ten Eyck every week, but Mother and Daddy put four dollars and seventy-five cents of it in the bank for her, so she only has a quarter to spend, like Suzy.
We all knew it was Suzy, but Daddy said, “John, do you know anything about this?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Vicky?”
“No, Daddy.”
“Maggy?”
Maggy looked down at her plate, across at Suzy, and down at her plate again. She didn't say anything.
“Did you put the candy and gum in the boot?” Daddy asked.
“No, Uncle Wallace.”
“Suzy?”
“No,” Suzy said, and didn't look at him.
“No what, Suzy?”
“I don't know anything about it,” Suzy said.
“About what?”
“About who took the candy and put it in the boot.”
“
Took
the candy?”
Suzy didn't answer.
“Whose boot was it?” Daddy asked Mother.
“Rob's.”
Rob has more than once been known to confuse the truth with his imagination, but he was looking right at Daddy now, and anyhow we all knew it was Suzy, and that it was more than buying candy and gum with her allowance and saving it in the boot.
Mother said, “Suzy, why don't you tell us about it?”
Suzy shouted out, “I haven't anything to tell!” and got up so roughly that she knocked her chair over, and ran pounding upstairs, where we could hear her crying at the top of her lungs.
Maggy said, “Suzy took the candy from the store.”
Daddy said, “Don't tell us about it, please, Maggy. We want Suzy to tell us.”
“But she stole it,” Maggy started.
“Margaret. I said that we want Suzy to tell us.”
Upstairs, Suzy was still crying at the top of her lungs. Mother started to push back her chair to go up to her, but Daddy said, “Leave her alone, Vic. We haven't finished eating dinner yet.”
It had started out to be such a nice family meal. And now we were all upset. Rob got up and started for the stairs, and Daddy shouted, “Robert, sit down!”
And Rob said, “But I want to go to Suzy.”
“Leave Suzy alone,” Daddy said, “and finish your dinner.”
 
We had strawberry mousse for dessert, and none of us enjoyed it. Suzy kept crying, and Mother finished her dessert and said, “Excuse me, Wally. You children do the dishes tonight, please,” and went upstairs.
We did the dishes with a lot better grace than usual. Daddy went into the study to read and Rob played records. He'd
played
Pinocchio
three times from beginning to end before Mother and Suzy came back downstairs.
“Where's Daddy?” Mother asked.
“In the study.”
“Well, let's all go in, then,” Mother said. “Suzy has something to say.”
We went in and Mother took Suzy firmly by the hand and they followed us.
“Suzy has something to tell us all,” Mother said.
Suzy stood there, gulping, and finally she flung herself into Daddy's lap and just sobbed over and over, “I'm sorry, Daddy, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.”
Daddy held her for a moment, and then he put her on the floor in front of him, between his knees, saying, “I know you're sorry, Suzy, and I'm glad, but I think you'd better tell me what you're sorry about.” Suzy kept on crying and hiccuping, and Daddy said firmly, “Suzy, don't you think you'd better stop this and get it over with?”
So Suzy said, “I went into the store after Brownies, and I went into the store after choir, and I took candy and gum and put them in my pocket, and then when I got home I hid them in Rob's boot because those boots are too small and he hardly ever wears them anymore.”
“You mean you bought them with your allowance?” Daddy asked.
“No,” Suzy said. “I took them. And I'm going to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins at the store and I'm going to tell them what I did and pay for them, all the ones I still have, and all the ones I ate, and I'll never do it again.” And she started to cry again.
“Suzy,” Daddy said, “you are to stop crying or you'll make yourself sick.”
“I can't,” Suzy said.
“But you must.” He waited until Suzy had stopped, and then he said, “You know you did two things that were wrong, don't you? First in taking—stealing—from Mrs. Jenkins, and second, in not telling the truth when Mother asked you about it.”
“I know,” Suzy whispered.
Daddy looked at her for a long moment. Then he said, “All right, Suzy. You say that you'll never do it again, and I believe you. And I want you to promise that you'll always tell the truth to Mother and me, too. No matter what you've done, you only make it worse if you try to lie your way out.”
“I never lie,” Maggy said righteously.
Daddy looked at her sharply. “Never?” he asked. “Think that one over, Margaret.”
“Are you going to punish me?” Suzy asked.
“Mother has asked you to go to Mr. and Mrs. Jenkins, and you're going. That's all. I think you've punished yourself enough. But why, Suzy? Why did you take it? Can you tell me? Do you know?”
That was something we all wondered. We couldn't blame this one on Maggy; she didn't have anything to do with it. But I couldn't help wondering if she hadn't put the idea into Suzy's head. But maybe that's not fair. Suzy could have got the idea from other people, too. Nanny Jenkins told me that sometimes her mother and father do have trouble with children taking candy and things. Nanny says if her father didn't have his cello, running the store would drive him crazy.
Suzy shook her head. “I was hungry,” she said.
So maybe that was it, because she hadn't been eating nearly as much on account of Wilbur the pig.
“What happened to your allowance?” Daddy asked.
“After Sunday school and Brownies there's only fifteen cents,” Suzy said.
“That's plenty for candy,” Daddy told her. “No wonder you've been cross and unlike yourself all week and had a stomachache the other night.”
“It wasn't just my stomach,” Suzy said. “I think it was a heartache, too.”
Finally Daddy smiled. “Now go to bed, Suzy, and go right to sleep. It's time for all you little ones to be in bed. Past time, and tomorrow's a school day.”
 
But that was only the beginning.
The next night at dinner everything was fine until Suzy started on about her twentieth carrot stick. She was hungry because she still wasn't eating pig because of Wilbur, and we had a pork roast and applesauce that night, so she really attacked that carrot stick.
John said, “You won't eat pig because of Wilbur but you don't mind chomping down on that poor piece of carrot. And it doesn't bother you to think of a potato being roasted.”

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