A Live Coal in the Sea

by Madeleine L'engle

  ‘I was there,’ Art said, ‘in Paris with Rafferty. Like it or not, I am drawn in.’

  ‘Please,’ Camilla begged, ‘please don’t let it make trouble between you, between us.’

  ‘We shouldn’t quarrel over the phone.’ Olivia sounded ashamed.

  The bishop said, ‘What we must look for is God’s mercy. God’s mercy shown through our own.’

  Olivia murmured, ‘At the moment I’m not feeling that much mercy.’

  ‘Olivia.’ The bishop’s voice was stern. ‘Of all people, you know about mercy.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know that we are never outside God’s mercy.’ His voice choked.

  ‘Never outside it, my darling,’ Olivia said. ‘I know that. I’m sorry. I just don’t want to see our children walking into something that’s going to bring them grief.’

  In his grief, Rafferty called frequently, too frequently. ‘But what can we expect?’ Olivia said. ‘Poor bereaved man—bereaved of his wife, of his son.’

  Rafferty said, ‘The baby’s name is officially Artaxias Xanthakos Dickinson. I have to do that much for him, give him my name, legitimize him.’

  When the baby left the hospital, Rafferty wanted to come directly to Corinth, have them find him a hotel, an apartment, a nurse. To Camilla’s relief, Olivia was with her when her father called, and vetoed this. ‘Give me the phone, please. Now, Rafferty, this is quite impossible. Corinth doesn’t have a hotel. The apartments for rent are rooms in people’s homes and you wouldn’t find them satisfactory at all, nor would anyone want to take in a middle-aged man with an infant. You have a place to live in Paris. Keep the baby in your apartment there … You have a nurse to take care of the baby. If you need more help it’s available … No, Rafferty, not yet. You must wait until Camilla’s baby is born.’

  “Grandmother”—Raffi rolled her green wool socks into a ball—“you were wonderful, you and Grandfather, to take my dad like that.”

  “Not wonderful,” Camilla said. “We just did what had to be done. We never thought it would be easy. But he gave us great joy. We believed that he was God’s wondrous gift to us. He had that same ability to delight that he does today in his acting, that quality that makes him so loved.”

  “So what’s he up to now?” Raffi threw the sock ball up into the air, caught it. “Why did he suddenly tell me you might not be my grandmother?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know why he raised questions now that he was determined to keep unasked. It isn’t like him. It contradicts everything he …” She went out to the kitchen to stir the sauce she was making over a low flame. Raffi, barefoot, followed her. “I’m sorry, Raffi. This is being a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I’ve been going over the past in my mind, trying to make sense of it. It involves a lot of people who died before you were born.”

  “People I never had a chance to know,” Raffi said, scowling, “but who still seem to be very much around. One night when Dad was angry with Mom he compared her to your mother. He called her a whore.”

  The blood drained from Camilla’s face. “That was a terrible thing for him to say.”

  “But was it true?”

  “Of your mother? Of course not.”

  “But yours—”

  “My mother was not faithful to my father. It was a terrible word for Taxi to use, but it wasn’t far from the truth. But your mother—”

  “She sticks by Dad and sometimes I don’t know why. She’d gone out to lunch with an old dancer friend. There wasn’t anything to it. Dad wanted to hurt her, and he did.”

  She thought of Frankie’s words. Could the lie with which they had all lived ever be redeemed?

  Why was Taxi suddenly and deviously opening doors he had been adamant about keeping locked? Didn’t he know Raffi would come to Camilla? What did he expect or want her to tell her? “Raffi, your father was born after my mother—his mother—was killed in an accident, and the blood tests showed that my father was not his father.” It was the truth, but a truth which explained little.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Camilla said. ‘Oh, Mac, I’m sorry. Sorry for Father. Sorry for the baby.’

  ‘For your mother?’

  She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know. All I want to think about is our baby.’

  ‘Yes,’ Mac said. ‘Our baby.’ He pressed the palm of his hand gently against her. ‘Any day, now. Can you let everything else go?’

  Perhaps not then, but definitely yes, when labor started. Corinth, Georgia, was ahead of some of the United States in one area. Camilla’s obstetrician believed in having the father participate in the birth of his baby. Edith Edison provided a small but good tape recorder, assorted Bach fugues to help Camilla along during labor, and a blank tape to record the baby’s first cry, and anything else they might want to put on it.

  ‘I’m not horning in,’ she said, ‘but I do care. Please call me as soon as you start labor, and I’ll stay quietly in the waiting room.’

  Camilla’s labor was long and exhausting, but then came the incredible moment of push and rush and the doctor said, ‘It’s a little girl, a beautiful little girl.’

  Frances. Frances, who shouted lustily at the indignity of being born, and who weighed eight pounds and was nineteen inches long.

  How much had Artaxias Xanthakos Dickinson weighed? Certainly less than Frances.

  Dr. Edith reported to Camilla that when Mac came out to the waiting room and told her that Camilla had given birth to a little girl, he had looked disappointed. ‘But only for a moment. He pulled himself together, and beamed.’

  Camilla laughed. ‘Thanks for the Bach. He was a big help. I don’t think any other mother has timed her labor pains with fugues in this hospital before.’ She looked and felt drained, but Frances was in her arms, little lips making tasting noises.

  ‘O taste and see how lovely the Lord is,’ Dr. Edith said, looking down at her. ‘I gather Mrs. Bishop—as your youth group calls her—is coming to help out?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘She’s a delightful woman. I enjoy her.’

  ‘She’s terrific,’ Camilla said. ‘I love her.’—She and Papa love each other. They are truly lovers. They are in love. Do I really understand that?

  ‘And she loves you.’ Dr. Edison nodded. ‘There are some lines of Blake’s I’ve always liked and I think I have them memorized properly. Listen:

  He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.’

  —Particulars, Camilla thought.—Mac talks about “the scandal of particularity.” Frances is our particular baby. ‘Yes, I think Blake’s right.’

  Dr. Edison said, ‘I saw it as applied to physics when I first read it, but it does apply to people, too. I think your mother-in-law understands particulars. She’s not a do-gooder, because most do-gooders deal in generalities. She never loses sight of the particular person, the unique human need.’ She laughed. ‘I’m moving into my lecturing mode, aren’t I?’

  ‘It’s okay,’ Camilla said. ‘I do it, too. It’s an occupational hazard.’

  ‘I’m glad you’re nursing Frances. She’s a lovely baby. When she is six weeks old I will come and show her the stars. It’s not too young.’

  Years later Camilla still remembered Dr. Edison carrying Frances out to the yard and pointing out the constellations, holding the baby up as though she could see and understand.

  Raffi was six months old rather than six weeks when Camilla carried her out onto the beach in front of a rented summer cottage. ‘And here,’ she pointed, remembering Dr. Edison, ‘are the Pleiades.’

  Thessaly stood by her. ‘Where?’

  ‘There.’

  ‘That little sort of blob of stars?’

  ‘Familiarly known as the Seven Sisters, although—’ She stopped as Thessaly started to dance, leaping from the softer sand near the cottage to the firm san
d by the water, dancing to Camilla and the baby and the stars, twirling, leaping, her white cotton nightgown fluttering delicately with her movements.

  It was a time of peace and joy, as the first weeks with Frances were times of peace and a kind of precarious joy.

  Dr. Edison, arriving one afternoon with some new records, asked, ‘Do you know what you are doing, Camilla, agreeing to take another baby?’

  Camilla, holding Frances against her shoulder, patting her to help her burp, shook her head. ‘No, dear Dr. Edith, of course I don’t know what I’m doing. One baby has already changed our lives considerably. But what else can we, do?’

  ‘I suppose I think you could say no,’ Dr. Edison said. ‘I know he’s your brother, but it distresses me to see your father abdicating all sense of responsibility for his son.’

  Camilla was silent. She did not know how to defend Rafferty. Had Taxi been his own child, surely he would not have wanted to hand him over to Camilla and Mac.

  ‘He has asked it of you,’ Dr. Edison said, ‘and I applaud your willingness to accept this burden, but I am also fearful for you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m fearful, too,’ Camilla agreed. ‘And I do count on your friendship and support.’

  ‘That you have, and will have. But please do have second thoughts.’

  —Second thoughts, third thoughts, fourth thoughts …

  Frances was a healthy, contented baby. She woke once during the early hours to nurse, and that was a happy time, the baby in bed with Camilla and Mac. ‘A trinity of joy,’ Mac murmured.

  One evening after dinner, Olivia asked if she could put Frances to bed. ‘Go for a walk. Get some fresh air. You’re being smothered with all that’s happening. And I would rejoice in some time with my precious grandbaby.’

  They accepted her offer gratefully, and after a brief walk went to their favorite spot under the pine tree. Mac took off his coat and spread it out for them to lie on. Camilla put her hands under her head and looked up at the stars, which seemed to twinkle directly onto the branches.

  Mac’s gaze followed hers. ‘The stars make me grateful that Corinth is a small town without many streetlights.’

  ‘Perspective,’ Camilla said. ‘They give us perspective.’

  ‘Are all astronomers star lovers?’

  ‘In a mathematical sense, certainly. Maybe it’s more than that for me because I was a city girl. No tree houses. No gardens. Only one or two of the brightest stars—or planets—at night. Ptolemy said, “Mortal though I be, yea, ephemeral, if but a moment I gaze up at night’s starry domain of heaven, then no longer on earth I stand: I touch the Creator and my lively spirit drinketh immortality.”

  ‘Who said that?’

  ‘Ptolemy. Second century. You remember, with earth-centered orbits of sun, moon, and stars—’

  Mac ran his finger over her lips, then drew her eyebrows, her nose. ‘I’m glad I married such a well-educated wife.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘You know a lot more theology than you think you do.’

  She was too relaxed to protest, murmuring, ‘Ptolemy wasn’t a Christian, was he?’

  ‘Don’t worry, my darling. He isn’t left out.’

  ‘Is anybody?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Not anybody, no matter what?’

  ‘Darling,’ he said, ‘you’re feeling guilty, aren’t you? About your father?’

  The November evening was warm, and Camilla wore only a cardigan over her dress, but she shivered. ‘I don’t know.’ She lay with her head on Mac’s lap. ‘I don’t think it’s guilt. I didn’t do anything to cause this situation. I just resent this intrusion on our first weeks with Frances. I want to focus on the baby, and on us, and when Father calls I’m all torn apart with what he’s having to go through. It was one thing for Mother to be unfaithful, but for her to have a baby that wasn’t his—I think he’s terribly angry, and why wouldn’t he be!’

  ‘But he’s also grieving for her,’ Mac pointed out. He pushed his fingers through her dark hair, gently, soothingly. Quantum came leaping toward them, sprang onto Camilla’s lap, and purred contentedly.

  ‘Mother’s baby—what is it going to do to our lives?’

  Raffi sat in Dr. Rowan’s office. “Our lives get so messed up. How do we escape from each other?”

  “Do we need to escape?”

  “From being hurt? Don’t we?”

  “What kind of hurt, Raffi?”

  “You know.”

  “No. You have to tell me.”

  Raffi tossed her head impatiently. “Listen, I’m not into this abuse thing. It’s the in thing now. You’re nobody if you haven’t been abused.”

  “Oh?”

  “I think my father abuses my mother, but she doesn’t see it that way. There’s something in him that likes to hurt.”

  “You?”

  “Is laughing at me whenever I talk about working in the theatre abuse?”

  “Is it?”

  “Mom says he’s only trying to protect me, that the theatre is such a tough world. But last year at school in the senior play when I was Viola in Twelfth Night he made fun of my performance, and I was good, Dr. Rowan, I was good.”

  “Yes, your grandmother told me how splendid you were.”

  “She’s my grandmother, and she’s on my side. But Dad’s the one who knows about theatre, and all he did was criticize. Said I didn’t know how to use my body. Said my love scenes were laughable. Said he was only trying to help. Is Mom right? Is he trying to protect me? Or is he afraid maybe I might be good enough to be competition?”

  “You’re a lovely young girl, Raffi. Can you be competition to a mature actor at the height of his powers?”

  “In the theatre, anyone who gets attention is competition. Oh, Dr. Rowan, right now I don’t think my father knows who he is, and so I don’t know who I am, either.”

  Camilla, nursing Frances, felt wholly and supremely herself, as she often did when she plunged into the world of astronomy, where the movement of the galaxies was beyond ordinary mathematics.

  Rafferty had left Paris and brought the baby back to Chicago, where he found an English nurse. It would be easier to care for Taxi, as the nurse called the child, in Chicago than in Paris, ‘where I’m known as a cuckold,’ he said, his voice on the phone sounding thick with anger.

  ‘Father, people don’t think in terms of cuckolds nowadays.’

  ‘Oh, don’t they? Even if they don’t use the word, they still think it. The baby’s fretful and cries at night. But he’s a pretty little thing, looks very much the way you did at his age. Black hair and great, shining eyes. Your eyes, that strange mix of green and silver and sometimes blue. I look at him and he could almost be you. That hurts, Camilla, that hurts.’

  ‘Father, I’m sorry.’

  ‘I’ll send you some pictures,’ he said. ‘The nurse insists that I’ll want them later. You’ll see what I’m talking about.’

  When the pictures arrived, Camilla and Mac looked at them, bemused. Although Taxi was four months older than Frances, the picture might almost have been of the little girl.

  ‘They surely look like siblings,’ Mac said.

  ‘He’s smaller than Frances. He isn’t any bigger than she is right now.’

  ‘I don’t think I mind calling him Taxi,’ Camilla said. ‘I’m glad the nurse thought of it.’

  They sent pictures of both babies to the bishop. Camilla’s favorite was one of Frances asleep on Mac’s shoulder, with Quantum perched on his knee.

  In the same mail with the snapshots was a cream-colored envelope, the kind used for wedding invitations. The return address was Wickoff, on East 81st Street in New York. ‘Who on earth?’ Camilla asked.

  ‘Open it,’ Mac suggested.

  It was, in fact, a wedding invitation. Camilla read it aloud, frowning in puzzlement: ‘Dr. and Mrs. James Ansley Wickoff request the pleasure of your presence at the wedding of their daughter, Elizabeth March Wickoff, to Andrew Murphy Grange—oh! It’s Noelle’s b
rother, Andrew.’

  Mac raised his eyebrows. ‘I didn’t know you knew him that well.’

  ‘I don’t. Remember—Noelle brought him by while he was doing a residency at Grady. Quantum loved him. I thought he was nice.’

  ‘So did I,’ Mac said, ‘when he came to the Church House with Noelle. Decent and kind. Does he still stutter?’

  ‘It seems to come and go. Do you think we ought to send them a wedding present?’

  ‘A token, maybe. I’m glad he’s found himself a nice girl. At least, I hope she’s nice.’

  They heard Frances upstairs, calling from her crib, not crying, but making her own special chirrupy noises.

  ‘I’ll get her,’ Mac said.

  ‘She’ll probably need changing.’

  ‘I’m a master diaper-changer,’ Mac called as he hurried upstairs.

  As soon as Frances was six weeks old, Rafferty was on the phone, wanting to send Taxi, with the nurse, to Corinth.

  Olivia, getting ready to go back to Florida, took the phone from Camilla. ‘Not yet, Rafferty. I’m leaving tomorrow. Camilla will be back in the kitchen again, and taking full care of the baby and the house. Wait until Frances is three months old. By then Camilla will be back in the swing of things.’ She came downstairs, carrying Frances. ‘I’ll get Art to call Rafferty. He’ll listen to Art. Oh, my dear, that poor man doesn’t realize what he’s asking of you. He’s so eager to stop being reminded by Taxi of everything that’s happened that he’s forgotten that Frances is his grandchild.’

  ‘Taking on another baby is a very big thing. Will Mac—?’ Camilla could not finish.

  Olivia said, ‘Mac won’t walk out on this. He did his walking out when he went to England for Frank’s wedding.’

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘No one can ever be sure of anything. But I’m his mother, and that’s my hunch. I can’t promise you he’ll never walk out again when things get rough. But I don’t think he’ll walk out on this.’

  And what was Rafferty doing, if not walking out? Who was giving Taxi love during his first months? The nurse? Thinking of this, Camilla nearly picked up the phone to tell her father to bring them the baby, but Mac stopped her, and so did Art and Olivia.