‘Stop,’ Olivia commanded. ‘This does no good.’
Camilla said, ‘You’ve taught me, you two and Mac, that I can’t blame my own fears and problems on my parents. I have some say in how I behave. By and large, Mac’s done pretty well. He’s a brilliant teacher. His students adore him. He’s written a couple of wonderful articles, and he’s right, he does need to do a book. What he emphasizes most is mercy, the kind you talked about, Mama, William Langland’s. We have to be merciful to ourselves before we can be merciful to anybody else.’ Then she laughed, harshly, like a seagull. ‘I still do not feel very merciful toward Grange or Harriet.’
‘Or Grange’s ex-wife, for not having given him your mother’s letter?’
Camilla leapt up as she heard Taxi scream. She ran into the house, letting the screened door slam behind her, and went up the stairs two at a time. Taxi was sitting up in bed, his eyes closed, screaming. Frankie was struggling out of sleep. Camilla sat down by Taxi and held him tight, pressing his thin body against hers, and the screams stopped.
Frankie said calmly, ‘Taxi had a nightmare.’
‘I know, darling,’ Camilla said. ‘He’s over it now. Go back to sleep.’ Her body moved rhythmically, rocking Taxi.
‘Where you bin, Mommy?’ he asked.
‘Sitting on the porch with Mama and Papa.’
‘Are you coming to bed soon?’
‘Very soon.’ She gently put Taxi down in the bed, covering him with the sheet and a light cotton blanket. If she got to him in time he did not fully wake up, and he would not remember the nightmare in the morning. She did not know whether or not this oblivion was the best thing for him. What good would it do him to remember whatever horror his sleeping brain was showing him? Grange and Harriet had not actively abused him. The nurse they had for him had told Camilla and Mac that the boy was thin because they had a hard time finding food he would or could eat. They lavished attention on him when they were with him. And presents. Toys, expensive toys. They did not discipline him, the nurse said. That was left to her, and it was apparent that the Granges wanted as little as possible. Mrs. Grange had talked about letting children express themselves, not repressing them. The nurse, herself, did not like a whiny child.
‘I’m the fourth to have this job,’ she said. ‘I learned quickly that if I wanted to keep it I had to be softer with Tommy than I thought was good for him.’
Frankie said, ‘Mommy—’
‘Yes, darling?’
‘Sometimes Taxi doesn’t hear when I call him. Then if I say Tommy he hears, but he gets mad at me.’
‘It’s difficult to have your name changed.’ Camilla kept her voice level.
‘Why did they call him Tommy?’
‘Perhaps they thought Tommy was an easier name.’
‘Taxi’s easy.’
‘For us, because that’s how we’ve always known him.’
‘Mommy, he gets so mad, so mad. He hurts me.’
Camilla moved from Taxi’s bed to Frankie’s, took the little girl in her arms. ‘I know. It’s hard to understand. But when he feels secure again, he won’t lose control of himself.’
When would he feel secure? Mac returned, and Camilla and the children flew back to New York.
Mac put his arms around her as they were undressing, getting ready for bed. ‘I’m sorry.’
For a moment she stiffened in his arms. He had never apologized before.
‘Darling, darling, I’m so sorry. I left you. I walked out on it all and left you. I’m not strong. I don’t know how I’m going to manage.’
Now her arms were around him, too. ‘We have to take it day by day.’
‘He’s so changed. He’s not our son.’
‘Yes. He is. No matter what happens.’
‘He’s your brother.’
‘I’m his mother.’
‘You’re blood relations. I can’t stand what he’s doing to us, to Frankie.’
‘I can’t stand it either. But we have to.’
‘Oh, God,’ Mac moaned, ‘why do I think it ought to be easy? Why do I think everything ought to be all right?’
‘Because that’s what we all want.’
‘But that isn’t how life is. I know that. I preach that. No promises of rewards if we’re good, or punishments if we’re bad. No promises, except that it matters. Cosmically.’
They sat on the side of the bed, still holding each other. ‘Cosmically,’ Camilla agreed, ‘to the stars in their courses.’
‘The stars aren’t very communicative about it,’ Mac said, and pulled her down onto the bed.
‘The one time I would like a cigarette,’ he said later, ‘is now.’
‘I didn’t know you ever smoked.’
‘For a while. Long ago. Did you?’
‘Smoke? No. I didn’t like it.’
‘Darling, you’re incredible, the way you just keep going and don’t let it get you down.’
It got her down.
One day she came home from NYU and went out to the playground to collect the children. They were on the seesaw, and a slightly older child said, ‘My turn next.’
‘Okay,’ Frankie said.
‘So what’s your name?’
‘I’m Frankie. Frankie Xanthakos. He’s Taxi.’
‘Taxi Grange?’ the older child asked.
Taxi brought his end of the seesaw down to the ground with a bang, and jumped off, so that Frankie’s end, in turn, hit the ground. He rushed at the other child. ‘I’m Taxi Xanthakos! Never call me Grange or I’ll kill you!’
The older child backed away. ‘I’m sorry, my dad told me your name was Grange—’
Frankie, trying to smooth things over, said, ‘It was, for a while, when he was with his other father.’
‘No, no!’ Taxi shrieked. ‘Daddy is my father. I’m Taxi Xanthakos! You shut up! Don’t you ever say that again!’ He jumped on Frankie and threw her to the ground. Grabbed her by the hair and began to hit her head on the hard-packed earth.
Several older people came running to Frankie’s rescue, as Camilla, too, raced toward the children.
Frankie screamed. Screamed.
A young man, one of the seminarians, pulled Taxi off her. ‘Cut that out, young man.’
Camilla came rushing up, panting. ‘I’ll take care of it. Thanks.’
A young woman had her arms around Frankie, who was sobbing. ‘Her brother was—’ Her voice was indignant.
‘I know. I’m sorry. I’ll take care of it.’
The children had long been too big for her to tuck one under each arm as she had been able to do before Grange and Harriet took Taxi away. She put a firm arm about Taxi, reached for Frankie’s hand. ‘Thank you all, very much. Thank you. Taxi. Frankie. Come. Right now.’
But she would never again be able to let them play alone in the playground.
Luisa said, ‘Best send them to separate schools, a boys’ school for Taxi and a girls’ school for Frankie. That way there won’t be too many questions asked. People need to let them be ordinary brother and sister for a while.’
Taxi’s therapist agreed, although he was adamant about their not letting Taxi deny his paternity. ‘We never do,’ Camilla said, ‘but Taxi does, and we’re trying to let him heal so that he will be able to accept what happened.’
Luisa said, ‘If they’re in separate schools the problem won’t come up.’
Camilla discussed it with Olivia and Art.
‘Separate schools? It’s a good idea,’ Olivia said. ‘For many reasons. Taxi and Frankie are older now. They need to be separated.’
The bishop made an affirmative grunt, then said, ‘It was a delight to watch them play together like puppies, but the time for that is over, anyhow. They need to go their separate ways. Taxi has to do some healing on his own.’
Olivia asked, ‘Is Frankie painting?’
‘Colored pencils,’ Camilla said. ‘The kind you dip into water, so they’re half pencil, half paint. Dr. Edith sent them to her and she adores them.
She’s painting tapestries, with small figures caught in ivy, or branches of trees, and frightened animals fleeing into the underbrush.’
‘She’ll work a lot out that way,’ Olivia said.
‘That’s what the therapist says. Frankie gets it out in pictures, but Taxi acts it out. If my father weren’t still alive I might do everything differently. I don’t know. I can’t keep on hurting him if I don’t have to. I thought he was going to die when everything got splashed all over the news, with everybody eagerly lapping up our private tragedy. His voice on the phone changed completely. Despite everything, it used to be strong. But now he sounds like a very old man.’
The bishop said, ‘He had three years of respite, as it were, when Taxi was away.’
‘But he knows Taxi’s back, and that things aren’t easy. I still write him every week—I’ve never stopped—and so I’ve told him what’s going on, lightening it as much as possible.’
The bishop said, ‘I think this is one of the situations where there is no right choice. We have to pray that we make the choice that is the least wrong.’
Camilla sighed. ‘Dr. Edith said that wrong breeds wrong. When one wrong is done, then other wrong things are going to happen.’
But where had this wrong begun? On the day when Grange came to claim his son? When Camilla and Mac agreed to take Taxi? When Rose got pregnant? When Rose was first unfaithful to Rafferty? How far back should it be taken?
Back to Art? Or Art’s father? Or his father’s father’s father?
‘Cepheids,’ Art said. ‘Taxi reminds me of a Cepheid.’
‘What?’ Camilla asked blankly.
‘If I remember correctly,’ Art said, ‘I believe I read it in something you wrote, Camilla—Cepheids are stars which undergo a period of instability when they run low on hydrogen fuel and begin burning helium.’
‘Yes,’ Camilla agreed dubiously.
Art said, ‘Taxi burned up all his hydrogen when he was with Grange and Harriet. And now, like a Cepheid, he’s going through cycles of variation in brightness. He glows with incredible luminosity, whether with anger or pleasure, and then the flare is over and it drops back to its ordinary magnitude.’
Camilla laughed. ‘Oh, Papa, I’m not sure what my colleagues would make of that image, but I get what you mean.’
TWELVE
With Taxi, nothing ever seemed to be enough. But new and quieter patterns were formed. Life did not return to normal, whatever normal once had been. But at least there was shape to their days.
Rafferty Dickinson died, which was not surprising. His arthritis had worsened. He who had never smoked had an odd form of emphysema. He begged Camilla not to come to him, and she honored his reiterated request, both with reluctance and with relief. After his death she and Mac went to New Mexico to bury him, to hold a service in a small nearby church. Camilla stayed on for a few days to tend to business, which was minimal, since her father had taken care of everything possible. She was surprised at the intensity of her grief for a father she had not seen for so many years.
What was also a surprise (though why should it have been?) was the amount of money she inherited. Rafferty had always been generous, though he had withdrawn from Taxi and his problems; the discovery that Grantley Grange was the child’s father had, it seemed, wiped away from him any sense of responsibility.
But the money he left Camilla ensured that now she would not have to worry about bills for continuing therapy for Taxi. Through the man who was not his father, Taxi would be able to have whatever he needed.
Then, having assured herself that Taxi would be taken care of as much as was humanly possible, Camilla breathed a small ‘Thank you’ to her father, and bought a new box spring and mattress for the big brass bed, and a new winter coat for herself.
Life at the seminary settled into a reasonable pattern. Taxi’s moods, his unpredictability, were part of the pattern. When he withdrew from Frankie she shrugged and went to the dining table with crayons or paints. She had a small circle of girlfriends from school, and they were often over at the seminary. She was making her own life, her own way, freeing herself from Taxi.
One day, having walked home from the university to the seminary, Camilla dropped into the chapel for evening prayer and communion. She was a few minutes late, and Mac was already in the pulpit, partway through his homily.
‘… and what are we promised?’ he was asking. ‘None of the ease the media offers us daily. Promises nobody can keep. Promises rejected by Jesus two thousand years ago.
‘What happened to Jesus after John baptized him, after the Holy Spirit in the form of a gentle dove came and hovered over him, after God shouted from the heavens that Jesus was the beloved? Did Jesus have a chance, then, to go home and relax? To have a glass of wine and a meal with his friends? No. The Holy Spirit, that gentle dove, took him up the mountain and offered him to Satan. “Here, Satan. Here is the Messiah. Tempt him.” And Satan tried, using all his psychic powers to tempt Jesus into refusing to be human, into refusing the very thing he had been born to be. “Jesus, you’re hungry. You’ve been fasting. You’re God as well as mortal, you know. Turn these stones into bread and feed yourself, and while you’re at it, feed the rest of the world, too. Bread and circuses, that’s what they want, and if you give it to them, they’ll love you. No? Well, how about jumping from the highest pinnacle of the temple? You know the angels will protect you and not let you be hurt. Listen, Jesus, if you insist on being human, it’s going to be awful. Being human means being mortal, being hurt, dying. Making wrong choices. You’re going to choose all the wrong disciples, not the ones God would choose, and they’re going to betray you; they’ll leave you when you need them most. You’re going to be hungry and thirsty, oh, how thirsty, and you’re going to die horribly, killed by the very institution you love, and what is that going to do to your Godship, if you die like a mortal? You don’t have to do it. Worship me, and I’ll take care of you, I promise you.”
‘The false promises of Satan, and Jesus knew they were false, and he rejected them. And everything that Satan had predicted came to pass. His disciples did not understand him and they left him. He endured all the agonies that Satan forecast, yes. But Satan forgot all the rest, the unswerving closeness to the Source, the joy of eating with friends, of laughter; the wonder of healing, of making the unloved know they were loved. Yes, he took on our mortality and died like a mortal, and in doing so he gave us his immortality, and with him we shall live forever, forgiven, redeemed, and loved into and throughout eternity. Amen.’
After the service Camilla waited on the steps just outside the chapel until Mac came out. Her voice was diffident. ‘Were you thinking of Taxi, and everything?’
He looked at her. Nodded.
‘I don’t know how to pray.’
‘Neither do I,’ he said. ‘I just ask God to do whatever is best for Taxi.’
Luisa sat at Camilla’s kitchen table, drinking tea. ‘Your girl’s an artist. That should see her through a lot.’
Frankie was in the dining room, painting. Taxi was still at school, at choir practice. Camilla said, ‘She spends as much time as she’s allowed at school in painting and drawing. I think her pictures are becoming a little less violent. She lets a little more sun in.’
‘How’s she doing?’
‘Her schoolwork is good. Her teacher says she’s quiet, and tends to daydream into her pictures. But the other girls like her.’
‘And Taxi?’
‘He’s a star in choir, and that’s good for him. He’s one of the youngest to get solos. His teacher says he’s sometimes disruptive, but he gets good grades. If he finishes his work he sits at his desk and writes his name, TAXI XANTHAKOS, TAXI XANTHAKOS, over and over again. The other day I tried to explain to the teacher why it was so important to him, and he had a tantrum, flinging himself about on the floor and screaming.’
“Why now?” Raffi asked Luisa. “Why does he want it to come out now after keeping it secret all these years?”
<
br /> “It was never meant to be a secret,” Luisa said. “Your grandparents never meant to perpetuate a lie. If Grantley Grange, your grandfather, had left well enough alone, which he would have done if he really loved his son, your grandparents would have let Taxi know, gently, slowly, who he was. But whenever they tried to bring it up, after Grange and Harriet were killed, Taxi would get hysterical. His fever would flare up alarmingly. He believed, and he truly believed this, Raffi, that if they let anyone know he was not their child, Frankie’s brother, it would mean that they did not love him.”
He searched for constant affirmation. If Camilla or Mac praised Frankie, they immediately had to praise Taxi. Camilla was grateful for Luisa’s suggestion of separate schools, where comparisons of the children could not be made. On the other hand, Taxi was often teased. His lovely child’s soprano voice made him petted by the choirmaster and the older students but resented by his peers, who sometimes picked on him.
‘If they were at the same school, Frankie would defend him,’ Camilla said.
Mac asked, ‘Wouldn’t that be putting a heavy load on Frankie? I think it’s best that they’re apart.’
Camilla sighed. ‘You’re right, I know.’
‘We too often do put too much on our girl,’ Mac continued. ‘It’s hard to realize she’s younger than Taxi. Chronologically.’
‘Oh, Mac, once upon a time we used to be so happy.’
‘That time is gone, my darling. We have to live where we are now, somehow trying to clean up the mess.’
—Don’t leave me, Camilla wanted to beg.—Don’t go away.
But she could not ask.
And Mac stayed.
That did not mean that they were not tested.
One day Taxi came home from school with his nose all puffy, and blood still on his upper lip, from where a couple of bigger boys had roughed him up. He was thin and not muscular and he was easy to tease because he responded with an immediate flare of rage.
When he told Camilla and Mac what had happened, he was angry. He wanted Mac to go to the school and punish the boys.
A Live Coal in the Sea Page 26
