A House Like a Lotus

by Madeleine L'engle

  ‘Everybody helps out,’ I said. ‘Everybody has chores.’

  ‘Most of it still falls on your mother,’ Max said. ‘She’s so tired and so restless she’s ready to do a Gauguin and walk out on all of you.’

  ‘But she won’t—’ The idea was preposterous.

  ‘No. She won’t. Your Uncle Sandy told me that your mother suffered as an adolescent because her own mother was beautiful and successful in the world of science—didn’t she win a Nobel Prize?’

  ‘Yes, for isolating farandolae within mitochondria.’

  ‘Your mother felt insufficient because of your grandmother, and she didn’t want the same thing to happen to you, to make you feel you had to compete. So she’s held herself back, and it’s beginning to tell. She will get to her own work, eventually, but eventually no doubt seems a long time away.’

  I stared into the fire. Now that Max had pointed out that Mother was restless, I could see that it was true.

  ‘Your mother is a truly mature human being, and they’re rare. She’s learned to live with herself as well as with your father, and believe me, your father’s no easy person. He may be a genius, but single-minded scientists tend to let people down.’

  ‘Daddy doesn’t—’

  She cut me off. ‘Of course he does. We all do. You won’t grow up until you learn that all human beings betray each other and that we are going to be let down even by those we most trust. Especially by those we most trust.’

  I didn’t like this, but it had the ring of truth. And I didn’t like that, either.

  ‘If we put human beings on pedestals, their clay feet are going to give way and they are going to come crashing down, and unless we get out of the way, they’ll crush us.’

  And I didn’t get out of the way.

  I hardly heard Max. ‘Your mother has the guts to stick it out on this godforsaken island with amazing grace. Your father’s work is important, and it demands isolation and considerable secrecy, but it’s hard on the rest of you.’ She continued to squat by the fire, poking at the smoldering logs. The fat wood caught and its bright flames soared. Satisfied, Max sat back. ‘Your parents have one thing going for them. They love each other.’

  My response was again a reflex. ‘Of course.’

  Max turned from the fire and smiled at me, her loveliest smile. ‘There’s no “of course” about it. Lots of married people barely tolerate each other. People stay together because of the children, or for financial convenience. Divorce is expensive. But your parents love each other. They’re lovers, and that’s probably incomprehensible to you, but it’s a wonderful thing indeed.’ The fire was blazing brightly now, and she got up and sat next to me on the sofa. ‘It worries your mother that Kate goes to all the school dances and you don’t.’

  I shrugged. The wind beat the rain across the verandah and against the library windows. ‘I don’t like disappointing her.’

  Max put her arm around my shoulders. ‘You don’t disappoint her. She just doesn’t want you to have the same kind of difficult adolescence that she did. But she weathered it. You will, too.’

  ‘I suppose.’

  ‘Polly, love, having it easy is no blessing. To my mind, it hinders maturing.’

  Zachary and I climbed down from the stadium to the sacred precincts and the theatre. I wanted to be able to walk in awe, here where so many extraordinary mysteries had gone on thousands of years ago. It was here that people came to consult the Delphic Oracle in times of emergency. How lonely the Oracle must have been, speaking only in riddles, with no one to understand her except the priests, who may or may not have translated correctly what she was saying.

  The guides were herding their groups like goats-sheep at the Acropolis; why did I think of them as goats in Delphi?—and shooting facts at them in German, English, French. The noise cut across the clarity of the air. Noise pollution is as destructive as any other.

  If I focused on one of the guides I could translate what he was saying. But the facts were delivered with the boredom of repetition.

  “Apollo was worshipped here,” Zachary said, “and Dionysus. Light and dark, reason and fecundity, waxing and waning like the moon.”

  We were standing on a green knoll. Across the valley were the great, dark mountains. The sky moved upward into a vanishing vastness of blue.

  “I’m an Apollo worshipper,” Zachary said. “Or would be if I lived in Greek times. Apollo, the god of reason.”

  “You strike me as being rather Dionysian,” I said. The name Dennys comes from Dionysus, but my Uncle Dennys is both sober and reserved. Sandy says it’s because Dennys spends his time with the unfathomable mysteries of the human brain.

  Zachary bowed. “Thank you. I take that as a compliment. But I don’t want you to think about philosophy. I want you to pay attention to me.”

  “Even you can’t compete with all this.”

  He took my hand. “Avanti! Let’s go.”

  It was a good day. Confusing, but good. Zachary made me feel I wasn’t just a gawky, backward adolescent who didn’t even need a bra till I was fourteen, but that I was mature, and attractive to him.

  We went to the son et lumière show at the Acropolis, which somehow had less magic close up than it had had from the roof of the King George the night before. Then to the Plaka for a late supper, a small place Zachary had discovered that wasn’t touristy. Good food and Greek music and lots of laughter in the air. I decided that I was meeting Sandy’s challenge pretty well. Very well.

  After the meal, we sipped small cups of the sweet Greek coffee and I was sorry the day was almost over.

  “Polly, I haven’t had this good a time in ages. You don’t put any pressure on me. You take me as I am. Dare I ask you to spend tomorrow with me?”

  Dare he? I hadn’t dared dream that he would. “Dare ahead.”

  “We’ll do something fun. Take a drive. Have a picnic. I’ll pick you up at ten again, okay?”

  “Fine.” What would I have been doing if Zachary hadn’t picked me up? Going on that bus tour and feeling sorry for myself?

  Max had once said, ‘We cannot afford the luxury of self-pity.’ Self-pity is destructive, I do know that. But Zachary made it very easy for me not to need the luxury.

  In the taxi he leaned toward me and brushed his lips against mine, then kissed me, gently. “That’s not your first kiss,” he said.

  No, but it was different. I was different.

  He kissed me again. “Polly, I don’t know what you’re telling me.”

  “Good night,” I said firmly as the taxi drew up in front of the hotel. “And thanks, Zachary. It’s been a good day, a really good day.”

  Back in the room, I undressed and bathed and then wrapped myself in towels and sat at the desk, getting my journal for school finished for the day. How would Miss Zeloski translate what I had written? I wrote about what I had seen, but not that I had been with anybody.

  Then I took a postcard from the stationery folder and wrote the family. Wrote a separate card to Charles. And to Renny.

  There was one postcard left. Should I write Max and Ursula?

  I shut the folder.

  Writing the journal for Miss Zeloski was as much fun as it was work. Even if I didn’t tell her about being with Zachary in Delphi, I enjoyed writing about Apollo and Dionysus.

  Max had shown me some sketchbooks she’d made in Greece. Line drawings not of the present but of the past —Semele and the swan; Jason being brought up by the centaur Chiron; Orpheus with his harp.

  There were other notebooks I’d loved looking through, each one dealing with a special place and time. The Bushmen of southern Africa, a race of tiny people who had come, Max thought, originally from Egypt. The Schaghticoke Indians from the part of New England where my grandparents still live and where I was born. The nomads, or Numidians, of North Africa.

  Max had not been familiar with Gaea, so I showed her some more pieces I’d written about the native Gaeans. I didn’t go into anthropology, just wrote about
the way they lived, accepting some things from the twentieth century, rejecting others. She liked my Gaean pieces, and so did I.

  It was nevertheless a complete surprise the day she called and suggested I come over for supper, that she had something to show me.

  ‘Let’s go to the bedroom,’ she said. ‘I’ve a good fire going, and with the February northeaster blowing, it’s the warmest room in the house. It can be colder on Benne Seed Island than in the Arctic.’

  ‘Where’s Urs?’

  ‘Shopping on the mainland. Planning something special for supper.’

  I paused on the landing, as usual, to look at the Laughing Christ. There was no way one could feel self-pity in front of that absolute joy. Even in laughter the face reflected a tolerance and forbearance that made me ashamed of my own tendency toward judgmentalness.

  Max paused, too. ‘I’m glad you like him.’ We went on up the stairs. The long windows in Max’s room that led out onto the verandah were closed, and though we could hear the wind sweeping around the house, the fire was comforting.

  ‘What do you have to show me?’ I asked.

  She smiled at me, the firelight bringing out silver glints in her eyes, then moved slowly to her desk and got an envelope, which she handed to me. It was addressed to Polyhymnia O’Keefe, c/o Maximiliana S. Horne. It had come from a travel magazine, not an important one, but still a real magazine, and they had accepted one of my pieces on Gaea. I wouldn’t get any money, but I’d get two complimentary copies of the magazine. I couldn’t believe it.

  Max laughed and took my hands and swung me around, and I saw an ice bucket on a stand near the fireplace. ‘This calls for a celebration.’ She put a napkin over the bottle and uncorked it gently. ‘The idea that the champagne cork should pop up to the ceiling is insulting to good champagne.’

  We lay on the rug in front of the fire, and after a while Ursula came in and joined us. She brought a bowl of shrimp which had been caught that afternoon, and some spicy sauce. It was lovely. One of the happiest times I’d ever known.

  And I was happier at home, too. The fact that I hated school no longer seemed important. Max was my teacher, as Mother and Daddy had been my teachers on Gaea. And because I was learning, and felt happy about it, I was more patient with the little kids. I helped get them ready for bed without being prodded, read to them if Mother was working with the computer in the lab. I let Kate borrow my favorite necklace for one of the school dances. Xan and I didn’t spat as much as usual.

  And at least a couple of times a week I did my homework over at Beau Allaire. When I’d finished with the written stuff, Max would pull a book down from one of the library shelves and have me read aloud to her. ‘You’re going to have more than one option when you come to choose a career. You have a lot of acting ability.’

  ‘I’m too ugly.’

  ‘You aren’t ugly at all. You have the kind of face that comes alive when you’re speaking. Why would I want to paint you if you were ugly? I’ll take you over Kate, any day.’

  Max taught me to see the world around me with her painter’s eye. Now I noticed not only the loveliness of a new moon seen through a fringe of Spanish moss, I saw also the delicacy of a spider’s web on the grass between two tree roots, saw the little green lizard camouflaged under a leaf. And this seeing the particular wonder of the ordinary was reflected in what I wrote for school, but if Miss Zeloski noticed it, she didn’t particularly like it. And Miss Zeloski was the one who gave the grades, and I had to get good grades.

  ‘Why?’ Max demanded. ‘One does not live by grades alone.’

  ‘I want to go to a good college, and I need to get a scholarship. After all, there are seven of us to educate. So grades matter.’

  Max put the back of her hand to her forehead in a swift gesture of apology. ‘Of course. Stupid of me. Like most people who’ve never had to worry about money, I can be very dense. So. How do we win Miss Zeloski? Get her to give you A’s instead of B’s? What does Miss Zeloski want? That’s the first question you have to ask. You don’t have to compromise in order to please her. Find out what she’s looking for, and then give her that in the very best way you possibly can.’

  ‘I don’t want to give Miss Zeloski anything.’

  ‘You really dislike her, don’t you?’

  ‘She grades unfairly.’

  ‘You are very opinionated, Polly. Part of becoming a mature woman is learning compassion.’

  ‘I know I’m opinionated. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Don’t be sorry. Just think. You talk about being odd man out. How do you think Miss Z. feels?’

  It took me a while to answer. ‘Lonely.’

  ‘And maybe insecure. And that may help explain why obscure poetry is comforting to her. I’ll bet she loves footnotes and all the vines of the groves of academe. The next time she gives you a free writing assignment, give her a well-documented essay. It’ll be good discipline for you.’

  It was. Max made me see the fun of cross-referencing, of finding out, for instance, what was happening in the world of science when Montaigne was writing his essays, and what the lineup of nations was, and who was painting, and what was the popular music of the day. And it worked. Miss Zeloski didn’t seem such a bore to me, and her nasal Southern accent didn’t grate so, and she gave me A’s.

  Max taught me to understand that Miss Zeloski was far lonelier than I was. She taught me to see that some of the kids who drank and slept around were lost and groping for something they couldn’t find. But she didn’t have much patience with those who hunted down animals and birds. ‘Sadism isn’t limited to the rich and corrupt. One doesn’t tolerate it even when it comes from ignorance and stupidity.’ Then, ‘Come out on the porch. I brought in a Cape jessamine bud this morning. It’s blooming in a small crystal bowl and the air is full of its scent and the promise that spring is just around the corner.’

  Through Max’s eyes I saw more than I’d ever seen before.

  One beautiful early-spring evening, Max and Ursula came to dinner. Daddy and Urs went to the lab, as usual. When dinner was ready, Mother sent me to call them. As I came to the screen door, I heard my name and stopped.

  ‘You mustn’t let Polly bother Max,’ Daddy was saying. ‘Polly has Max confused with God, and she’ll give her no peace if Max goes on encouraging her.’

  Ursula laughed, her warm, sane laugh. ‘I dare say God gets no peace, either, and I’m sure he continues to give encouragement.’

  ‘Max has certainly brought out the best in Polly.’

  I realized I’d done enough eavesdropping, and banged on the door to call them in to dinner.

  At dinner Kate and Xan were talking about tryouts for the school spring play, open to everybody in the high school. It was always a Shakespearean play, and this year was going to be As You Like It.

  Xan said, ‘They chose that because there are so many female parts. They never get enough guys.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Xan,’ Kate urged. ‘If you try out, you’ll get any part you want.’

  ‘It’ll interfere with tennis.’

  ‘No, it won’t,’ Kate said. ‘They schedule rehearsals so it doesn’t interfere with anything.’

  I knew she’d talk him into being in the play. And she’d probably be Rosalind.

  Max asked, ‘What are you going to try out for, Polly?’

  I used Xan’s ploy, which hadn’t worked for Xan. ‘I’ll be practicing for swimming.’

  ‘I told you,’ Kate said, ‘the rehearsals are during school hours. You could have one of the boys’ parts if you want, Pol. They always have to use girls, too.’

  I saw Max and Ursula look at Kate, then at each other.

  Daddy said, ‘I don’t think Polly needs to limit herself to male roles.’

  ‘Oh, I didn’t mean—’ Kate said. ‘It’s just that she’s tall and they need tall girls to play men.’

  I’d tried out for the play the year before, and had a walk-on. Even so, it was the most fun I’d had from school the whole y
ear.

  ‘Do you get a choice of whom you try out for?’ Ursula asked.

  Kate said, ‘Well, you can ask.’

  Xan said, ‘I’ll try out if Polly will.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ I said. ‘At least I can paint scenery.’ I did not mention that I had no intention of trying out for the backstage crew; I was going to try out for Rosalind or Celia. Miss Zeloski did the casting.

  In March, Beau Allaire was brilliant with azaleas in great banks around the house. Max’s gardener got extra help, and the grounds rivaled the great gardens in Charleston. The magnolia trees were heavy with waxen white blossoms. The camellias were exceptionally brilliant. All the long windows were open to the verandahs and the ocean breeze and the singing of the mockingbirds.

  On the day of the tryouts I got home from school to find a normal kind of chaos. The little kids had friends over and were shouting out on the swings and slide. The lab door was shut, with an old hotel DO NOT DISTURB sign on it, which meant Mother was doing something tricky with equations on the computer and needed to concentrate.

  I called Max. ‘I have news.’

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Terrific.’

  ‘Come on over and tell me. Urs is in Charleston and I was going to call you anyhow. You beat me to it.’

  I didn’t want to disturb Mother about the Land-Rover, but Xan said go ahead, he’d tell Mother as soon as the lab door was open again. So I headed for Beau Allaire, singing at the top of my lungs.

  Max was out on the steps, waiting for me. ‘So what’s this big news?’

  ‘I’m going to play Celia in As You Like It.’

  She flung her arms wide, then gave me a big hug. Then pulled back. ‘Who’s playing Rosalind?’

  ‘One of the seniors.’

  ‘What about Kate?”