Two-Part Invention: The Story of a Marriage

by Madeleine L'engle

  I was fine with the carnival men, but in other ways I felt as inadequate socially as I had in Jacksonville. And how could I call myself a writer? I had a few poems published in very small magazines. I sold two stories during that decade, one to Fantastic Universe, one to Gent, and one novel, A Winter’s Love, which was published (after a number of rejections) by Lippincott and disappeared with hardly a trace.

  I was homesick for New York. I wanted to be challenged and stimulated by people who were brighter than I. I felt that Hugh was wasting his talent in the store, although I admired the way he built it up into a viable business.

  If sometimes he was too worn out to be affectionate he showed his love powerfully by taking the children to school with him in the morning on his way to the store—he had had breakfast with them first, thus giving me the chance to write at night, and sleep an hour or so later in the morning.

  In the evening when he got home from the store, we had Quiet Hour. Anybody was invited who wanted to sit and have serious conversation; mostly the kids chose to do something else. As I heard Hugh’s car door slam, I would put a match to the kindling and light the fire (as I look back on those years, it was always winter). At dinner we were the whole family, together, but until the children were older and we were back in New York we had that one hour before dinner to ourselves.

  And there were some wonderful moments, some beautiful memories. One winter when Bion was a baby there was a three-day ice storm, and although we kept fires going in the two fireplaces the house got colder and colder. On the third day, friends who heated by kerosene or coal and were not dependent on an oil furnace took the children. Hugh and I cooked dinner over the coals, then built up the fire and lay on the floor, looking into the flames and talking deeply in our amazing solitude.

  And then we made love.

  Eight

  Oh, my love.

  When we first learned of Hugh’s cancer I was dry as the parched land suffering drought in the Southeast. Now the tears are close to the surface. For the third time this summer I come to the Psalms for the evening of the fourth day and read, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” and the tears rush out silently and stream down my face. Music, too, tends to pluck at the chords of emotion. Tears are healing. I do not want to cry when I am not alone, but by myself I don’t try to hold the tears back. In a sense this solitary weeping is a form of prayer.

  But things continue to go wrong. Hugh gets a bladder infection. What next?

  One morning he starts uncontrollable vomiting. It goes on and on. He cannot even take the antibiotic for the urinary-tract infection, though it is in liquid form. He returns to the hospital, through the emergency room, hoping to be treated only as an outpatient until the vomiting is controlled. But despite his reluctance, it is evident that he must be admitted. The doctors are baffled and discouraged. Hugh’s appetite should have returned weeks ago; he should have been gaining strength. He should have had the surgery and be recuperating by now.

  John, our old friend and general practitioner, had sent a patient of his to visit Hugh when he was first in the hospital, a man in his fifties who had had the same surgery Hugh is facing, who now drives a school bus, goes fishing, considers himself, three years after surgery, to be cured. What is happening with Hugh? Where will all this end? Can I believe that he, too, will be cured? What about all those prayers with which he is surrounded? I know that these prayers are faithfully coming. I believe in them. What is happening?

  The days drag on. I am overimpatient that the doctors cannot find out why Hugh cannot eat solid food. I expect too much of ordinary human beings who happen to have more training in medicine than the rest of us. They are not gods. They are doing their best. I must watch out for false expectations.

  And I must have realistic but not false expectations of myself. It is all a delicate and difficult balance. Sometimes I am strong with that wonderful strength which is not my own but is given (much of it through the prayers which steadfastly keep coming); and sometimes I crumple. At four o’clock this morning I sat up in bed and wept, sitting up to weep because to cry lying down makes one’s nose stuffy. And to let go, at four o’clock in the morning, is all right.

  I have been looking over my old journals (something I seldom do) as I relive the volatile years of our marriage. It has been fun to relive our early years in the theatre, our courtship, stormy though it was, the birth of our babies. Sometimes I come upon unexpected things. In one entry, written during our early years at Crosswicks, I read: “They said in college that there was one housemother who was a widow and who could not go to sleep without a green velvet arm in bed with her.” I think of being in bed alone and wonder if I will ever wake in the night and not stretch out foot or hand to touch the living flesh of my beloved. I ache for that strange housemother, although I know that, whatever happens, I will never want a green velvet arm. I have left behind forever the “blankie” and the favorite stuffed animal.

  So I sleep alone. In the morning I swim for half an hour before breakfast, do whatever needs to be done, make myself a sandwich and a thermos of soup, and spend the rest of the day in the hospital.

  One morning during my pre-breakfast swim, I remember some words Helen Waddell wrote about prayer, and go to look them up in my big brown Goody Book where I have copied them down: “They asked the abbot Macarius, saying, ‘How ought we to pray?’ and the old man said, ‘There is no need of much speaking in prayer, but often stretch out thy hands and say, ‘Lord, as Thou wilt and as Thou knowest, have mercy upon me.’ But if there is war in thy soul, add, ‘Help me,’ and because he knoweth what we have need of he sheweth us his mercy.”

  Help, I cry. Help!

  In the mail I get a loving note from Mother Ruth of the community of the Holy Spirit. She enclosed a little card from England printed with the words: “He setteth in pain the jewels of his love.” They are good words. They could equally be reversed: God can provide the setting in which the pearl of pain is placed.

  We learn to live in the cloud of unknowing, not only the cloud of God’s mystery, but the cloud of unknowing what is going to happen from day to day. That is always true, but when things go along routinely we are less aware of it. Something unexpected seems to happen every day this summer. One problem for Hugh is cleared up, and immediately something else occurs. The doctors, who were calmly optimistic in May, are less certain as we move toward September.

  In The Irrational Season I wrote that when two people truly love each other, each one must be willing to let the other die first. I may be reluctantly, painfully willing, but I could understand a clean death better than this nibbling away at the man I have loved for so many years.

  I have a friend whose husband is being taken away from her by Alzheimer’s disease, so that he is a senile wreck of what was once a handsome, virile, dominant man. That is far worse than this. There are many people in situations far more terrible than ours. But there is a quality of limbo to this unknowing.

  Hugh has his seventieth birthday in the hospital. He has reached the Biblical age, three score years and ten. “And if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labour and sorrow, for it is soon cut off and we fly away.” Labour and sorrow and it is over too soon. I come from a long-lived family. So does Hugh. Seventy does not seem old.

  Earlier in the summer I had talked to our children about wanting a special surprise for Hugh for this birthday, perhaps a little trip together. When he became ill, but with a hopeful prognosis, we decided on a birthday dinner, and I hoped that it would be in celebration of his recovery, and we would invite his doctors. It is all right, it is healthy to dream.

  Back in June when Josephine was East for Léna’s and Charlotte’s graduations, and Hugh was in the hospital, she bought her ticket from San Francisco so that she could be here for the birthday dinner. Now she is coming, simply to be with us, to see her father. Maria, our younger daughter, with a brand-new baby at home (our joy, this difficult summer), and another baby only
a year and a half old, will be able to be present only by phone.

  Léna and Charlotte, living together in our apartment in New York, come up by bus, arriving the day before their mother. That evening, according to tradition, we make hot cocoa and climb up into the high four-poster bed with volumes of Shakespeare. We have read, during several summers, various comedies, taking turns with the roles. I refuse to read Hamlet because, of course, we all want to play Hamlet.

  We read together, a scene or two, but our minds are not on Shakespeare or his characters, this night, two nights before their grandfather’s seventieth birthday. It is their first encounter with the life-threatening illness of someone they love. We talk, about their summer jobs, about college coming up in a month, about family, about love. Simply being together is good.

  We will not be able to have the celebratory party we had hoped for. Nothing has gone as expected. Despite my love for my granddaughters, my pleasure at their presence, I feel that there is a black hole in the middle of my sternum.

  Josephine comes, and we hold each other closely, physical touch saying what words, at this moment, cannot say. We call Maria, with whom I have been talking daily. A week earlier Bion and Laurie and I left Hugh well tended in the hospital and took the three-hour drive to see the new baby, an adorable little thing with soft strawberry-blond hair. Brought back a picture to show his grandfather. It is hard to be so far away, but good that the phone keeps us daily in touch.

  At the hospital the nurses are enthusiastic about our coming with presents and ice cream for Hugh. We promise to keep the door closed and not disturb the other patients. Later in the evening the nurses themselves come in with a birthday cake, which they can eat and enjoy even if Hugh can’t. His sense of humor despite his constant discomfort has made him loved.

  Hugh and Charlotte have always celebrated their birthdays—which are only two days apart—together. When Charlotte was littler she was usually asked if she’d rather not have a “regular” birthday party with other children, and her immediate response was always, “No, I’d rather have my birthday with Gum.” Gum. The children’s name for their grandfather, a diminutive of Hugh’s suggestion of “Grumpy Old Grampa”—Grumpy Old Gramdpa having been one of his more spectacularly successful roles in high school!

  But this summer there can be no elegant evening party for Charlotte and Gum; a seventeen-year-old tradition is unwillingly being broken. We have, instead, that evening after we come home from the hospital, a triple party at Crosswicks, not only for Charlotte but for Léna and Josephine, whose June birthdays got lost in the shuffle of the girls’ graduation festivities. We make an effort. Have presents for everybody. And I think of Hugh in the hospital with the deadly dull anti-reflux diet, unable to be with us tonight on this, his special day.

  It has suddenly turned cold, this twenty-fourth day of August, and when I walk the dogs after dinner the stars are brilliant. The sight of a night sky with the great river of our galaxy streaming across the dark always fills me with hope. This night, what can I hope for?

  I cry out, “Oh, God, resolve this!” The surgery cannot go on and on being postponed, but Hugh is not yet strong enough for such major trauma. The post-platinum problems surely should be letting up by now, but they are not. Doctors do not like to be unsuccessful, do not like to be unable to understand what is going on. Do not like, perhaps, to be reminded that they are only human beings with medical training and a certain amount of expertise acquired in their years of practice. I don’t require that they be gods. All I care is that they continue to care.

  Again I am grateful that Hugh is not in a big city hospital. The total loss of independence, of privacy, is devastating at best. Specimens are taken of blood, of urine, of stools. But here the nurses and technicians are compassionate and caring, as perhaps it is impossible to be in a huge city hospital with overcrowding of patients and even greater understaffing of nurses and aides. Two of the floor nurses talk with me of their own fathers going through much the same experience that Hugh is enduring. They joke with Hugh, laugh at his unique humor, which amazingly keeps breaking through.

  The esophagus has to be opened again. The esophagitis is still acute. Surgery can’t keep being postponed. Is he strong enough to go through the operation? Decisions will be made soon. He has an ultrasound scan; there is to be another cystoscopy.

  But I am grateful beyond words for the community which surrounds me. I am not alone, as so many people in today’s society are alone. The family is staunchly with me. Here on this floor of the hospital I now know most of the nurses by name. When fruit juice or ginger ale is brought around for the patients, I am included. Charlie, the interim minister from our Congregational Church, comes faithfully to call, to sit and talk, a real visit. There are cards and flowers from various members of the church, although Hugh and I are there only in the summer, unable to be the active members we used to be when we lived at Crosswicks year round. Prayers for Hugh and me continue to uphold and strengthen, and are an affirmation that what is going on in our lives matters. There is a feeling of being an interdependent part of the whole human predicament, a oneness with other patients, other anxious families, a oneness even with people’s tragedies as we read about them in the paper.

  This oneness is consistent with what we now know of the nature of creation as understood in terms of particle physics. We seem to have forgotten this oneness, this interdependence, with our different countries, languages, religions, factions within religions, with our nuclear families frequently isolated from grandparents, aunts, uncles. We desperately need to remember that we are each part of one another.

  John Gribbin in his book In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat writes: “Particles that were once together in an interaction remain in some sense part of a single system, which responds together to future reactions. Virtually everything we see and touch and feel is made up of collections of particles that have been involved in interactions with other particles right back through time, to the Big Bang in which the universe as we know it came into being. The atoms in my body are made of particles that once jostled in close proximity in the cosmic fireball with particles that form the body of some living creature on some distant, undiscovered planet. Indeed, the particles that make up my body once jostled in close proximity and interacted with the particles that make up your body. We are … parts of a single system.”

  In the act of making love two separate people come together to make one, in a struggle to return to that original unity. In this action of love we are truly part of one another and this unity carries over into our daily living. Is this why the thought of separation by death is so excruciatingly painful? One time when I had returned home after a speaking engagement I said to Hugh, as we sat in the kitchen talking while I cooked dinner, “Wherever I go, you are with me.” Won’t this always be true?

  If we human beings were truly aware that all creation is a unity, as two lovers are aware of unity, wouldn’t we treat each other better? There have been many signs of a newly awakened caring in recent years, and I need to remember all the signs of goodness and hope, particularly after I look at the paper or listen to the news. We are one planet, a single organism. What happens on this floor makes a difference everywhere.

  For the entire universe with its countless galaxies is the setting for this pearl of pain.

  My theological reading for the past several years has been in the area of astrophysics, particle physics, quantum mechanics. These disciplines are dealing with the nature of being, and I find that much theology founders over peripheral things, gets stuck on a limited literalism. But the amazing discoveries in the world of physics reveal a universe which is enormous beyond comprehension.

  Who is this creator to whom I cry out, “Help!” How can I believe in a God who cares about individual lives on one small and unimportant planet? I don’t know. I just don’t know. But I cannot turn away from the hope and the mystery which can never be understood. I know only that when I cry out, “Help!” the fact that I am
crying out affirms that somewhere in some part of me I hope that there is someone who hears, who cares. The One I cry out to is not limited by size or number, and can be glimpsed only in metaphor, that chief tool of imagery of the poet. And it is only in the high language of poetry that anything can be said about God. Hildegard of Bingen likened herself to “a feather on the breath of God.” Lady Julian of Norwich saw the entire universe in a hazelnut.

  This summer I find reality in the simple things of creation. We have enjoyed food with a special poignancy. After a long day sitting with Hugh in the hospital, seeing time go by, and no improvement, I am exhausted when I get home, more psychically than physically. Most nights Bion cooks out on the Weber. A chicken stuffed with lemons that send their moisture throughout the flesh is delicious, served with vegetables from the garden, and a big salad. If it is at all possible we sit out on the terrace to eat, and watch the sunset; the clouds are achingly beautiful. Now at the end of August the night is coming earlier, and we stay to watch the first stars. I am deeply, piercingly rejoicing in the beauty of this gentle New England countryside. Across the fields are the woods and then the ancient hills—from whence cometh my help.

  What happens when we give up our matter at death? Do we still matter? As I sit here in Hugh’s hospital room with my little typewriter on my lap, he is up in the OR having another cystoscopy. I look at a charming mobile of shells hanging from his IV pole, a birthday present. The thoughtfulness of this gift makes it especially precious.

  Every morning before breakfast, while I swim, I silently recite various verses I have memorized. The movement of the body through water helps mind and heart to work together. When I have finished with my alphabet of memorized poems and prayers, I have swum for well over half an hour. It is a good way of timing my swimming, and by holding on to the great affirmations of the Psalms, of Coverdale and Cranmer, of John Donne and Henry Vaughan and Thomas Browne, I am sustained by the deep rhythm of their faith.