A Live Coal in the Sea

by Madeleine L'engle

  She knew they were right. And wrong.

  How many rights add up to a wrong? And vice versa? 7 × 7 = 49. 8 × 6 = 48. Numbers are not ambiguous. But what about Mach’s theory? Do the fixed stars play a part in this story?

  She received an invitation to Noelle’s wedding, with a handwritten letter: ‘I know you can’t come all the way North. I wanted to ask Mac to come back to campus and marry me, but then I thought that was terrifically selfish when Andrew’s friend says you have a brand-new baby, and anyhow, Mom really likes the new rector here, and I’d like Ferris’s and my wedding to be a good time for her.

  ‘By the way, I asked Andrew’s Liz to send you an invitation to their wedding. Andrew wasn’t sure it was appropriate, but I assured him it was fine. He’s deliriously happy. Liz is a brilliant doctor and also a love, and her father seems to think that Andrew was a gift sent him directly from heaven. I’m happy for him. I hope I won’t give Ferris the hell Dad and Mom are giving each other. Andrew’s not a bit like Dad. Sometimes I wonder if I am, and it worries me. But I can’t imagine being unfaithful to Ferris.’

  Camilla folded the letter. ‘Thank God she didn’t ask you to do the wedding. Would you have felt that you had to?’ she asked Mac.

  ‘I’m not sure. Fortunately it’s a question I don’t have to ask myself, so I can forget it. We have the most beautiful baby in the world; she’s gloriously healthy; she thrives on her mother’s marvelous milk. A year ago Christmas you lost a baby. This year we’re baptizing one, and that’s all we should think about. It’s Christmas Eve, my darling, and we’re celebrating birth.’

  Dr. Edison said, ‘Since Mr. and Mrs. Bishop are otherwise gainfully employed at the Cathedral in Jacksonville, I will be the member of the older generation for Frances.’

  Camilla put the baby in Dr. Edison’s outstretched arms. ‘We’re so glad you can be with us tonight. And we’ll all drive together to Florida for the baptism.’

  ‘We’ll take my car,’ Dr. Edison pronounced. ‘It’s heavier, and the tires are better.’

  ‘Frances says thank you to her godmother.’

  ‘I’m a little old to do my proper duty by that blessed child.’

  ‘Mac says a girl baby is allowed two godmothers; I’ve asked my old friend Luisa, and she can’t get away, so you’ll have to stand in for both of you.’

  Dr. Edison kissed the top of Frances’s dark head. ‘It will be my joy.’

  ‘Hey, Camilla,’ Luisa had said, ‘you know I don’t believe in all this religion stuff, but I’m honored to be Frances’s godmother. I may not be able to do much for her soul, but I’ll do my best for the rest of her. Thanks. Thanks for asking me.’

  The church was beautiful, decorated with holly and pine branches, with poinsettias banked about, both scarlet and white. Everyone in the congregation had a candle, and the light glowed against the dark wood, against the walls, which were to be painted early in the new year.

  The youth group moved about the nave of the church, lighting candles, until the loveliness of light brought tears to Camilla’s eyes.

  ‘Behold the light of the world,’ Dr. Edison whispered.

  Freddy Lee read from Isaiah, the great rolling verses of “Comfort ye, my people,” and then Pinky stood and sang, “For He Shall Feed His Flock,” her singing voice pure and sweet and in startling contrast to her daily speech. Frances slept through the entire service, despite Dr. Edison’s occasional anxious cluckings, which Camilla was sure would disturb the baby. But Frances slept on, unperturbed.

  It was after midnight when they got home and opened the bottle of champagne Dr. Edison had brought.

  ‘To peace at Christmas, and in our hearts,’ Mac toasted.

  They drank. ‘Can we say peace in the world?’ Dr. Edison asked. ‘Do we ever learn? There is still war and prophesies of war, and what would the Prince of Peace think of that?’

  ‘Peace in our hearts,’ Camilla said. ‘No matter what.’

  ‘It’s a big no matter what,’ Dr. Edison said, ‘just in your own little household.’ She held up her glass. ‘To peace, then, peace for ourselves, peace for the world.’

  Dr. Edison drove them to Jacksonville.

  At dinner that first evening Art said to Mac, ‘It would have been appropriate for you to have baptized your daughter in your own church.’

  Mac replied, ‘It is even more appropriate for her grandfather to baptize her and give her a start in the new life.’

  Camilla looked at her husband, at her father-in-law, at the love in their faces. Olivia, too, looked at them, then at Dr. Edison. ‘We are happy to have Frances’s godmother with us, dear Edith.’

  Frances hiccupped and Dr. Edison asked, ‘Is she hungry?’

  Camilla smiled. ‘I just fed her.’

  ‘Blessed, blessed babe.’ The bishop took Frances from Camilla.

  ‘Papa,’ Mac warned.

  ‘Oh, the time for constant attention is very brief. There’s nothing worse than a spoiled child. Don’t worry. We didn’t spoil you, did we?’

  ‘There’s some difference of opinion on that subject. Were you spoiled, Camilla?’ Then Mac answered his own question: ‘No, you weren’t. You had nurses and all that, but you were still a poor little rich girl.’

  ‘I got over it.’ Camilla laughed. ‘I really love to cook. But I wish there was a magic wand I could wave so the bathroom would clean itself. Do you think there’ll ever be self-cleaning bathrooms, like self-cleaning ovens?’

  ‘It’s a long way down the road,’ Mac said, ‘and I don’t trust those self-cleaning ovens.’

  ‘Since we don’t have one, it’s not a problem,’ Camilla said. ‘Right now I’m quite happy with my old oven, where I can’t even adjust the temperature properly.’

  ‘Don’t rush things.’ Olivia took the baby from the bishop. ‘Be like Frances and take all the spoiling you can get for right now.’

  NINE

  When Frances was three months old, and Taxi was seven months, Rafferty sent the child to them. They left Frances with Dr. Edison and drove to Atlanta to the airport. Rafferty himself was not coming. He was sending the baby with the nurse.

  Two days earlier a van had backed up to the rectory and unloaded a crib, two high chairs, a double stroller, a large playpen, and several boxes of educational toys and stuffed animals. Rafferty had wanted to send matching cribs, but Camilla had said firmly that Frances was sleeping in Mac’s old crib.

  As they approached the gate at the airport, they saw the nurse, dressed in a white uniform, with white stockings and shoes, and marceled iron-grey hair, coming down the ramp of the jetway, carrying the baby. They approached her, and she came toward them, not hurrying. ‘Mr. and Mrs. Xanthakos?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘This is Taxi.’ She handed the child, wrapped in a yellow blanket, to Camilla. He was barely larger than Frances. He did not look seven months. The nurse gave Mac a large canvas bag. ‘More nappies, and his formula. I have typed out complete instructions for you.’ She looked them both up and down in assessment. ‘Taxi needs a great deal of love. And discipline. I hope you aren’t going to show favoritism. I’ll leave you now. I’m taking the next plane back to Chicago.’ She turned, said ‘Goodbye’ over her shoulder, whether to the baby or to them Camilla could not tell, and walked away.

  The baby began to cry.

  ‘Oh, God,’ Camilla said, patting him. ‘He’s lighter than Frances. His bones are like a little bird’s.’

  ‘Come on. Let’s go find a place to sit down.’

  They walked to a gate where no plane was listed and the seats were empty. A uniformed woman was apathetically emptying the ashtrays. Camilla sat, put the baby on her knee, jigging him gently, something Frances was beginning to love, and the crying stopped. He looked at her with great tear-filled eyes. Camilla’s eyes. Frances’s eyes were the rich brown of her father’s.

  Frances, robust and healthy, with dark hair still short, was often taken for a boy. Taxi, with smaller bones and dark hair curling softly
about his face, looked like a beautiful little girl. He reached up one small hand and caught hold of Camilla’s hair, stuck the other fist in his mouth, and sucked.

  Mac, rummaging in the canvas bag, brought forth a single-spaced typed sheet of paper. He started to read: ‘He gets fed every four hours. The nurse does not approve of feeding him sooner. Or later. The bottle is supplemented by baby foods, except at night. She’s sent several jars, and two boxes of cereal. Good heavens, Camilla, Frances is already sleeping through the night, and this child is fed at midnight and again at four.’

  ‘He’s certainly not overfed.’ Camilla’s hand went over the baby’s back, feeling the little knobs of the spinal column. ‘His diaper needs changing.’

  Mac reached into the bag for a clean diaper, while Camilla placed the baby across her knees. His stool did not smell sweet like Frances’s, but then, all Frances had ever had to eat was her mother’s milk. The nurse had provided a bottle of lotion, and Camilla cleaned a red and hot little bottom. ‘This is awful,’ she said.

  Mac stood, holding the soiled diaper in a plastic bag, also provided by the nurse. ‘I’ll have to dispose of this somewhere, and then we’d better head back to Corinth.’

  The baby screamed when they got into the car, until Camilla took him out of the car seat and held him, her seat belt around them both. As soon as they left the traffic of the airport he fell asleep in Camilla’s arms. She glanced at Mac’s hands on the steering wheel, wondering if the problem of two babies was going to be too much for him. Because of Olivia’s assurances, and because Mac was the one who had seemed most certain that it was the right thing—the only thing—for them to do, to take Taxi, she had not dwelt on her fears about Mac. There was too much else to be afraid of.

  If God, as Mac seemed to believe, was asking them to take Taxi, what did that God have to do with Rose’s death, or with Taxi’s conception?

  She turned from those thoughts, which, for her, led nowhere but to confusion, and cuddled the sleeping baby. Taxi did not feel like Frances. He did not smell like Frances. She felt an aching pity for this child whose entrance into life had been so extravagantly traumatic.

  When they got home Dr. Edison was playing solitaire on the kitchen table, and Frances was asleep in her basket, which she was close to outgrowing. Dr. Edison held out her arms for Taxi, and Camilla handed her the little boy.

  Dr. Edison, who had learned how to hold a baby from practicing with Frances, put Taxi over her shoulder and patted his back. ‘I’m pleased you’re going to continue to teach your classes, Camilla. That shows good sense.’

  ‘Not so much sense as that Mac and my doctor insist. We’ll have to see how it goes.’

  ‘Your youth group will help. Several of them popped in this afternoon, full of curiosity, and assurance that they could baby-sit two as easily as one. I understand that Mrs. Bishop didn’t feel it was right for her to come at this time, and I applaud her sentiment. I’m not going to stay. The kids all think you’re wonderful to take this child.’

  Camilla took Taxi from her and sat with him in the rocker. ‘He’s my brother.’

  ‘Yes, and he looks like you. And certainly he looks enough like Frances to be her sibling.’

  Frances woke up, gurgling with pleasure.

  ‘Here, let me have Taxi,’ Mac said. ‘Frances is hungry.’

  Camilla held Taxi out to him, then took Frances from her basket. As soon as Mac sat down with Taxi in one of the kitchen chairs, he opened his eyes, then squeezed them tight shut and started to howl.

  Dr. Edison was drawing her kid gloves through her hands. Now she put them back in her bag. ‘Do you have a bottle for him?’

  ‘In this bag. Frances has never had a bottle. I’m not—’

  Dr. Edison drew a bottle out of the bag. ‘I’d better warm it.’

  ‘Oh, God,’ Mac said, ‘this is not going to be easy.’

  It was an hour before Dr. Edison was on her way, again holding her white kid gloves. They watched her drive off. The babies were up in the nursery. Asleep. For the moment.

  It was strange to go upstairs and see two cribs instead of one, plus all the other trappings Rafferty had sent. There was no place in this medium-size room for their comfortable sofa bed, which had been moved down to Mac’s study. It opened to queen-size, which meant there wouldn’t be much but wall-to-wall bed when Olivia and Art or any other guest slept there. It also meant that Mac would use the chill little box of an office in the parish house more than his study at home. What was a chill little box in the winter, and tolerable for a few weeks in the spring, was a fiery furnace in the summer.

  Camilla glanced at the second crib, bigger than Mac’s old cherry one, enameled white, with Beatrix Potter animals. Taxi was sitting up, looking at her. Not making any sound, not moving, just staring at her with those great deep eyes. Yes. He was seven months old. Where Frances was trying to roll over, Taxi was sitting. She bent over the crib and he held out his arms to her to be picked up. Holding him, she looked at Frances, who was sleeping peacefully, not disturbed by the light from the hall.

  Taxi snuggled against her, his thin arms tight about her neck. She carried him into the bedroom, where Mac was already in bed, reading.

  ‘He was wide awake,’ she explained, ‘sitting up in the crib, not complaining, just sitting there.’ The little boy nuzzled into the curve of neck and shoulder. ‘The nurse said he needs lots of love.’

  ‘And discipline,’ Mac added.

  ‘But love first. Discipline doesn’t work unless it’s founded on the kind of security that comes from knowing you’re loved.’

  ‘Did you ever have that?’ Mac demanded.

  She sat on the side of the bed, rocking Taxi to and fro. ‘When. I was little. And I’ve always known Father loves me.’

  Mac held his forefinger toward Taxi, who grasped it. ‘Even with his sending us—’

  ‘Isn’t that a sign of love?’ Camilla asked. ‘But Taxi—I think the nurse loved him, as much as you dare let yourself love someone you know you’re going to lose. But here he is, seven months old, and he’s never had the kind of spontaneous love most babies—well, maybe not most, but the kind of love your parents gave you.’

  ‘Until I blew it.’

  ‘What?’ She had no idea what he was referring to.

  ‘Camilla—Mama told me you know.’ He looked at her fiercely.

  She held Taxi so tight that he cried out. Quickly she relaxed her grasp, stroking the thin little back gently until he quieted.

  ‘When I left,’ Mac said. ‘When I went to England instead of staying with you when you needed me. She said she tried to explain by telling you about—about Papa. About what—’

  ‘Yes.’ Her throat felt constricted.

  ‘And you still love Papa.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you still love me.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘But we haven’t talked about it. About my walking out.’

  ‘No. I’m not good about—’

  ‘We have to learn.’ He turned slightly so that she saw his profile, thin, fierce as an eagle’s. ‘If we’re going to take this strange little creature—Darling, we’re going to have to talk, not hold back. Otherwise, he may come between us.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘We have to keep open. To possibilities.’

  She knew he was right.

  ‘Back when I was a kid and walked into that church and saw—’

  ‘No, Mac, please.’

  ‘Eight-year-olds can be rigidly judgmental. Even when Mama explained what had been done to Papa—I hated him. I hated Mama for not hating him.’

  ‘Mac, you were eight years old. You’d had a terrible trauma. You didn’t know how to handle it.’

  ‘Is ignorance ever an excuse?’

  ‘Maybe not, but you were a child, it was completely outside your comprehension.’

  ‘I’ve known kids who were more understanding than their parents. I wasn’t. I felt that I had been vomited over, and I couldn
’t get clean.’

  She wanted to put Taxi down, to go to Mac, to hold him, but the baby began to whimper.

  He continued, ‘When Papa got pneumonia and nearly died—I think he thought God was punishing him, and justly. I thought God was punishing me. Mama, who doesn’t believe in that kind of punishment, was trying to hold us both together. The night that everybody—the doctors, the nurses—thought he was dying, I knew that I loved him, that I couldn’t bear it if he died. I sat by Mama in the waiting room of the I.C.U. and we held each other. And love came back.’

  ‘Oh, Mac, darling, darling …’

  ‘I love my father, Camilla. I love and respect him. I’m not a psychiatrist and I don’t understand what childhood abuse does to people. If Papa has wanted—has wanted other men—he has never acted on it. He’s come to a place of fearsome, imperturbable integrity.’

  Camilla put Taxi down on the bed. Reached for Mac. ‘I would trust him with my life. I want our love to be like—’

  ‘No two things can be exactly alike. But as strong. As secure. As—as full of understanding. And, darling, you’ve got to learn to be honest with me, not to hold back.’

  ‘Oh, Mac—I’m not good about letting anybody in on what troubles me.’

  ‘You were, that first night when we met, when your mother was on campus and—’

  ‘That was so atypical I can hardly believe it ever happened. I was wild with anger. It was unlike me, totally unlike me. Cool Camilla, that’s how I’m known.’

  ‘You were real. I felt your realness. That’s why I wanted to see you again. I thought I could be real with you. And you’ve let me. About Korea. About—’

  Taxi began to whimper. Camilla put her thumb against his mouth, and he began to suck. Then he pushed her thumb away and began to yell. ‘I’d better go warm his bottle.’

  Mac looked at his watch. ‘It isn’t four hours.’

  ‘I’m not an English nurse.’ But she did not want to leave. She felt as though they had just crossed a fearful, alien landscape and suddenly the sun had come out.

  An hour later Mac came down to the kitchen to find her sitting in the rocker, nursing Taxi. ‘What are you doing!’