The Joys of Love (17 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: The Joys of Love
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“We're both going swimming, and Ben's going to meet us on the beach. Come along,” Elizabeth told her.
Ditta's whisper was almost as loud as her speaking voice. “How's John Peter's tooth?”
“Do be
quiet
, can't you? Have you no consideration?” Bibi
moaned, and pulled the covers over her head so that her feet stuck out at the bottom. Elizabeth, Jane, and Ditta retreated into the hall.
“How's John Peter's tooth?” Ditta repeated.
“He had to go to the dentist, poor lamb.” As she reported on John Peter, Jane looked in pain herself. “Come on. Let's get down on the beach.”
At this hour on a Sunday morning the section of beach in front of the theatre was still deserted. Most of the company took full advantage of the fact that dress rehearsal did not begin till three in the afternoon to sleep. Many of the apprentices took advantage of no classes to do the same thing.
Ben was already there and greeted them, calling, “The water's icy! Come on in!” He jumped up and down in the shallow waves, his arms hugged tight around his chest, and shivered.
Jane pulled a scarlet cap out of the pocket of her beach robe and started tucking her hair up under it. Ditta carefully spread a multicolored towel out on the sand, sat down on it, and proceeded to cover herself methodically with suntan oil. “Now tell me exactly what Miss Andersen said to you and Ben,” she demanded of Jane as Elizabeth ran across the sand and joined Ben in the water.
“Good heavens, it
is
cold!” Elizabeth cried as she splashed in.
“I never should have come in so soon after breakfast,” Ben said. “Those chicken livers Mrs. Browden gave us are having a frightful argument with
my
liver. I've always wondered what it must be like to be liverish. Now I know.”
Elizabeth splashed on by him. “I took lifesaving at college. I'll save you.”
Ben walked slowly through the water toward her and suddenly disappeared most frighteningly from view under a small wave. This falling down an imaginary hole was one of his favorite tricks, but it never failed to startle Elizabeth. After a moment he came up. “Let's sing underwater,” he said, “and see if we can guess what we're singing.”
“Okay,” Elizabeth agreed, and they submerged.
Ben, holding his nose, sang loudly, large bubbles rising to the surface above him, until he had to come up for air. “What was I singing?” he asked.
Elizabeth laughed and shook her head. “What was it?”
“I'll give you a hint. It might remind you of you. Now see if you can guess.”
“Oh, good heavens, ‘Sweet Betsy from Pike.'”
“Right the first time. Now you sing.”
They submerged again. When they came up, Ben said, “It certainly didn't sound like anything but it was probably that awful song about gopher guts. Am I right?”
“Couldn't be righter.”
Ben shivered. “This ocean's too cold for me. Let's go sit in the sun and get warm for a little while.”
“You go on in,” Elizabeth said. “I'll be along in a few minutes.”
The ocean was very calm, the waves scarcely more than ripples. Elizabeth lay on her back and floated, letting herself rest on the deep and gentle breathing of the sea. She thought, Perhaps this is the last chance I'll have to be in the ocean this
summer. A small sudden wave washed over her face and she sat up spitting the saltwater out of her mouth.
She shook the water out of her hair, then splashed through the shallows toward the sand. Ditta and Ben were walking up the beach looking for shells. Jane sat on her yellow beach robe, her red-capped head down on her knees. Elizabeth stood by her and hopped, first on one foot, then on the other, to get the water out of her ears. “Aren't you going in the water?” she asked.
“In a minute. Liz, it's awful to love anybody so much.”
Elizabeth sat down on the beach beside her, and the soft white sand turned dark wherever she dripped water onto it.
“What's the matter?”
“I had a cousin who knew somebody who
died
because of a tooth,” Jane said tragically.
“Oh, Jane!” Elizabeth laughed helplessly.
“I know it's awful,” Jane said, “but I love him, so I just can't seem to help worrying about him. I don't think I could bear it if anything happened to him.”
Elizabeth let the sand sift through her wet toes and stick to them. “Don't go around asking for trouble, though.”
“I know. I'm a nut,” Jane said. “But when you love anyone the way I love John Peter, when you're so happy, you can't help being afraid fate is just waiting to give you a slap. Maybe that's my puritan ancestry or something. But—don't you feel that way about Kurt?”
Elizabeth thought for a moment. “I guess I would if I ever really got to know him the way you know John Peter. But it's different with Kurt and me. I—I just come when he calls me.
It's—I can't explain, but we're not
equal
the way you and John Peter are. I think of Kurt when I wake up and when I go to sleep and whenever I'm not with him. But I don't think he thinks of me like that. Yet.”
“It was different with John Peter and me,” Jane said. “We both knew from the very first minute we met each other. It was at an audition last winter at drama school. John Peter's turn came after mine and I stayed to listen to him just out of curiosity because I thought he looked interesting and then we left the theatre together. And then we went to the Automat for lunch and just stayed there and talked for hours and hours and it seemed as if we couldn't ever stop talking. And looking at each other and smiling. And then we went to a French movie and then we went to an Italian restaurant in the Village for spaghetti and just went on talking and talking. And we just knew. There wasn't ever any question for either of us.”
“It—it must be wonderful when it happens that way. But I don't think it does with most people.” Elizabeth looked out over the horizon and a sudden feeling of sadness crept over her.
“When John Peter goes out of a room,” Jane said, “it's as though he takes part of me with him. I'm not complete unless we're together. I'm talking to you, now, and the sun's warm and I feel it, and I like you more than any of our friends, but part of me just isn't here. John Peter has it. I—I don't know what part of me it is—I can't explain it—but it's just as important as a leg or an arm. And I keep waiting for John Peter to bring it back. Behind everything I say or do I'm waiting for him.”
Elizabeth said slowly, “I don't think it's good to get quite as dependent on anyone as that.”
Jane didn't get angry, but she said, “Liz, I don't think you're in love with Kurt.”
“Because I don't feel about Kurt the same way you do about John Peter? There are lots of different ways of loving a person and I don't think one is any better than another. Besides, I
do
feel about Kurt that way; that's one of the things that worries me. Wherever I am I'm always aware of him, I'm always looking for him, hoping that he'll come. And whenever he does, my insides feel like an elevator suddenly dropping.”
Jane laughed. “Yes. That's the way it is. Only
my
insides feel like an elevator rising. I wonder if it'll always be like that, even after we've been married years and years. I don't think it'll ever change, because it just goes on getting bigger and bigger every day, loving him—and I always used to pride myself on being such an independent person! Have you ever been in love before, Liz?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “Not really. I used to pride myself on being an independent person, too. And from what I knew of love I thought it was something to be avoided except on the stage. Oh, I had kind of a crush on the boy who took the lead in the senior play when I was a freshman at college, but it was just kid stuff. And I dated some at college—they were guys who came over from other colleges to be the men in the Dramatic Association plays. Anyhow, I was always so busy at college I didn't have time to fall in love. All the interesting professors were already married, and I didn't go to many of the
dances because I couldn't afford evening dresses and junk and the few I went to I was taller than most of the men I danced with and I hated that.”
“You're taller than Kurt,” Jane reminded her. “Ben's the only one around here who really towers over you.”
“I'm not taller than Kurt,” Elizabeth said quickly. “Not when I wear flat heels.”
But Jane's face had an expectant, rather rigid look and Elizabeth knew that she was no longer listening. “Here comes John Peter!” she cried, and got up and ran tearing across the sand.
 
Elizabeth, munching Mrs. Browden's apple, left the beach shortly before the others. Her hair felt sticky from the salt water and she wanted to take a shower and get cleaned up before lunch. She was in the shower and her hair was full of soapsuds when she heard Ben's voice calling up the stairs, “Hey, Liz! You up there?”
“I'm in the shower,” she shouted above the sound of water.
Then she heard Ben run thudding up the stairs, three steps at a time.
“You sound like an elephant,” she called out to him.
Ben leaned against the bathroom door with such vigor that the whole doorframe shook. “I worked with elephants once. Maybe that's why.”
“
You
did, Ben? When?”
“I was in a show about Cleopatra where four live elephants came on the stage at once and I rode on the head of the leader. My mother almost had heart failure every night and twice on
matinee days during that run. It flopped in New York, but we toured the darned thing all over the United States
and
Canada. Sixteen weeks in Chicago.”
“Ouch, darn it!”
“What's the matter?”
“Soap in my eyes. Tell me more about the elephants.”
Ben let out one of his wild shouts of laughter, so that again the doorframe shook. “One place we played they had to bring the elephants in through the basement and then they were supposed to take the elephants up to stage level in a big freight elevator. Well, the elephants hadn't ever been in an elevator before and they were scared to go in it. Ever tried to force an elephant to do anything it didn't want to do?”
“Nope. Never have.” With her eyes closed and her face streaming with soapy water Elizabeth started to rinse her hair.
“Elephants don't like to be forced,” Ben said. “They started to get mad and the guy who took care of them knew he'd have to think of something else if those elephants were going to get onstage that night. So he sent for me because the lead elephant was fond of me. You know how animals sometimes get about kids. They'll take all kinds of things from a kid they'd ruin an adult for. So this guy told me just to work on the lead elephant, to see if I could get her to go in the elevator with me. You can imagine how important I felt, Liz, their having to send for the kid of the company to cope with the elephants.”
Shaking water out of her ears, Elizabeth laughed. “I certainly can. What did you do?”
“I talked to that elephant, and sang to her, and had her
watch me ride up and down in the elevator until she decided it was okay to get on with me. And I might as well admit to you, Liz, I was scared. And I think the others were, too. I know my mother was dying a thousand deaths. This was a nice elephant, and gentle, but if she'd taken it into her head to get panicky she could have crushed me against one of the walls and that would have been the end of little Ben.”
“Oh, Ben,” Elizabeth gasped as she turned off the hot water and an icy deluge fell over her. “What happened?”
“She was sweet as a lamb,” Ben said, “and we just rode up and down and up and down and the other three elephants stood and stared at us and kind of waved their trunks like trees in the wind, and next thing you know I had all four of them upstairs, and the next week the man who managed the elephants gave me a gold fountain pen with my name on it.”
“The one you still use?”
“Yep. Why I haven't lost it I'll never know. I certainly lose everything else. And I have lost it at least a dozen times but it always turns up.”
Elizabeth pushed against the door. “Hey, move,” she called. “I'm ready to come out.”
Ben stepped aside and Elizabeth, in her flannel bathrobe, her head turbaned in a towel, emerged.
“Matter of fact,” Ben said, “I've come across a lot of actresses who were a lot harder to handle than those elephants. You've got some more freckles, Liz.”
Elizabeth sighed. “Yes, I know. It's from being out on the beach this morning.”
“Listen,” Ben said, “I want to look at that picture of your mother. Okay?”
“Okay,” Elizabeth said, and went down the hall to the room. “Come on.”

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