Certain Women

by Madeleine L'engle

  ‘Emma, are you talking about someone you know?’

  Emma looked again toward the kitchen and heard Sophie and her father laughing. ‘Myrlo. Papa’s third wife.’

  ‘You evidently don’t like her.’

  ‘No. I don’t. But I don’t want to talk about her in front of Papa.’

  ‘My God,’ Nik expostulated. ‘When I see your father and Sophie, I can’t imagine either of them being married to anyone else. But then, it’s only King David and Abigail’s marriage that makes any sense to me. Abigail’s a wise woman, and she gives him good advice, such as suggesting that he go to the Philistines to hide from Saul. And when he’s horrified at the idea of going into enemy territory, she points out to him that it’s the one place Saul won’t go after him.’

  ‘Pragmatic and intelligent, as you say.’

  David Wheaton came in from the kitchen. ‘So what next?’ he asked.

  ‘David crosses over into Philistine territory,’ Nik said. ‘And once he and his wives and his retinue are all there, David asks Achish, the Philistine king of Gath, for his own city, and Achish gives him a place called Ziklag.’

  ‘At least Ziklag is easy to pronounce,’ David said.

  ‘So David got to Ziklag,’ Nik went on, ‘and he and all his family and servants made themselves at home there, and then the Amalekites made a raid on the town while David was away, and when David and his men got back they found nothing but devastation, and their wives and their children had all been taken. Gone.’

  Sophie came in. ‘Everybody okay, my jewels? Need anything more to eat?’

  ‘We’re stuffed to the gills.’ David pulled her to him. Sit down and join us.’

  ‘Nik, you will come for Thanksgiving, won’t you? We’ll eat at three, so Davie and Emma will be ready to go to the theater for their half-hour call.’

  ‘I’d love to come,’ Nik said.

  David smiled at him. ‘I’m glad you’ll be with us. It won’t be easy. It will be the first big holiday without the whole family.’

  ‘We have to be brave.’ Somehow Sophie managed not to sound trite.

  Emma looked at the darkness crossing her father’s face.

  ‘Davie,’ Sophie said softly. ‘We have to make it good for Inez and Louis. They’re still too young to be—’

  David cut her off. ‘It’s all right, Sophie. We’ll gather together, diminished though we are, and make merry.’

  Abby called Emma from France the night before Thanksgiving. ‘Darling, are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, fine. Abby, it’s so good to hear your voice!’

  ‘Yours, too. And I got through to you without any trouble. Amazing. Letters take so long, I just like to check in once in a while. Any news?’

  ‘We had a letter from Etienne a few days ago.’

  ‘Good, oh, that’s good. Anything else?’

  No word from Adair.

  ‘Not really. Well, Nik Green, the author of the play I’m in, is coming for Thanksgiving dinner.’

  ‘Good. I look forward to meeting him. I love you, Emma.’

  ‘I love you, too, Abby.’ She hung up, flushed with pleasure from Abby’s call, and wondering how much of her feelings about Nik she had given away to her perceptive godmother.—I do love you, Abby, she said as she turned away from the phone.

  That love had not diminished, Emma thought, as she got a pair of rubber boots for Abby. Ben had dropped anchor, and they were close enough to row to Whittock Island, but there were too many of them for the little rowboat. Emma had helped Ben get the large rubber Zodiac down from the upper deck, using a system of pulleys, swinging the Zodiac off the deck and lowering it into the water, The sky was a soft grey, cool but gentle.

  Ben jumped into the Zodiac with agility, despite his bad leg. Then he had Abby stand at the very edge of the narrow deck and drop into his upraised arms. He was strong and sure and Abby went to him with complete confidence. He seated her on the inflated rubber side of the Zodiac, and then Emma and Alice jumped in.

  Emma remembered a rehearsal of a play where her role had been the young Queen Victoria and a footman had pulled out a chair for her to sit in.

  ‘Now, Emma, darling,’ the director had said, ‘the difference between a queen and a commoner at a time like this is that the commoner looks to see if the chair is there whereas the queen sits. There is no question in her mind that the chair will be there. That is how you will do it. Sit.’ Abby had gone to Ben with the assurance of royalty.

  Emma held on to the rope that ran around the edge of the Zodiac. “Papa’s all right?”

  “Emma.” Alice’s voice was firm. “You don’t think I’d leave him if he wasn’t, do you? We won’t be gone long. Not much more than an hour. I’ve given him a shot and he should have a good nap. Dave wants you to see where Ben and I grew up.”

  “It must have been like moving to another planet for you,” Abby mused, “when you moved to New York with David.”

  “Yes. But David was my planet. When I was with him, I was at home.”

  Ben started the motor and pointed the Zodiac at the island. Abby mused, “David does have that effect. Odd. I don’t even remember how many years we’ve been divorced. Chronology tends to fold in on itself as one gets older.”

  Emma said, “Papa met Myrlo when the twins—” Her voice trailed off.

  “Yes, while my little ones were dying. It threw David into utter darkness. He’d warned me, before we were married, that he had periodic depressions, but I was unprepared—It was a bad time.”

  Emma looked down at a can of gasoline in the bottom of the Zodiac. “Papa wasn’t there for you when he should have been.”

  “We were very young, and we both learned a lot from our failures, with ourselves, and with each other. We human beings grow through our failures, not our virtues.”

  “Yes,” Emma said. “Sorry.” Then she laughed ruefully. “But when I think of you—and then Myrlo—”

  Abby’s responsive laugh was gentle. “David’s darknesses are the abyss for him, and Myrlo was his way of reaching out to life. Dearest Emma, you haven’t much more cause to love Myrlo than I have, but you need to take a spiritual dose of salts and get rid of her.”

  Emma acknowledged this with a smile.

  Abby said, “I found it far easier to understand David than I did Myrlo. I was relieved when Marical came on the scene and Myrlo was out. Marical and I were friends until her death, good friends. I did some of my best painting during my visits to her in Mooréa. Now that I’m pushing eighty, I want to concentrate on my friends. David and I are friends.” She looked questioningly at Alice, whose strong hands were palms down on the thighs of her jeans. “I hope that doesn’t bother you, my dear?”

  Alice was slow in replying, saying finally, “It doesn’t bother me. I think I’m glad.”

  “Thank you. It is no longer the custom for those who are dying to call on those they love to say goodbye. David has outlived a great many of those nearest and dearest to him. I still grieve over Etienne going down with his ship when it was torpedoed, and Adair—”

  Emma winced with pain.

  Abby pursued. “I was so grateful that Everard came home safely, and that he took Marical and Chantal back to Mooréa as soon as travel was possible.”

  “It’s horribly far away,” Emma said. “I’ve managed only one visit, shortly after Marical died. It’s one of the most lavishly beautiful places I’ve ever seen. I love your painting of Chantal and her babies on the tree-shaded beach, and I was ecstatic when you gave it to Nik and me. But Mooréa is much too far away for Everard or Chantal to come.”

  “Chantal is happy there, with little ones of her own. It’s just as well she not be uprooted and old memories stirred up.”

  Emma leaned back into the wind as Ben guided the Zodiac toward land. The long summer light shimmered gently against the ripples. Water lapped quietly toward the great silver logs that had washed up on the shore of Whittock Island. Behind the logs, the Douglas firs rose up, dark and secret, th
e wind against their needles echoing the sound of water. Emma said, “I don’t want Jarvis trying to choreograph Papa’s deathbed scene.”

  Abby said quietly, “I don’t think Alice will let that happen.”

  Alice glanced at Abby with a faint smile, and nodded.

  “And Jarvis likes Alice more than he should.”

  Now Alice laughed. “I’m a great deal older than Jarvis, and hardly a femme fatale.”

  “Jarvis likes older women,” Emma said. A small fish leaped out of the water and back in with a splash. Ben nosed the Zodiac toward the shore until the bottom grated against pebbles. He stepped into the water and pulled the Zodiac halfway up onto the beach. Then he turned to help Abby. Emma and Alice splashed in.

  Ben bent down and picked up a couple of two-by-fours that had come in on the tide, lost from a lumber barge. He took them up onto a grassy knoll. “Never know when these will come in handy.”

  Abby sat on one of the great logs, bleached silvery-white by the salt water. “Odd to realize that much of the flotsam and jetsam that washes up here comes from Japanese fishing boats.”

  “Not much between here and Japan.” Ben bent down with a cry of pleasure and picked something up off the beach. “It’s a wooden float, an old one. Most of them are plastic nowadays.”

  He led them along a narrow path that wandered first through low bushes, then trees, until they came to a clearing where there was a weather-beaten house. Inside was a large, high-ceilinged room with a loft at either end. “Those were Alice’s and my bedrooms,” he said. “I still sleep in mine when I’m ashore. I’ve put in skylights and a fireplace, and I can lie in bed and look at the stars—when it’s clear—or listen to the rain and the crackling of the logs.”

  “It’s charming, Ben.” Abby sat in a padded rocking chair. One long wall of the room was full of books.

  “Southeast,” Ben said, “where the worst of the storms come from. Books are good insulation.”

  The opposite wall had sliding windows which led out onto a small garden. Ben went to his kitchen, which was similar to the open galley on the Portia. “I’ll make some coffee,” he said. “The generator’s not turned on, but the gas still works.”

  “We don’t need anything,” Abby said quickly.

  “I’d like a cup of coffee.” Ben smiled at her. “It won’t take long. Powdered or canned milk only, I’m afraid, since I put the cooler away when I’m living on the Portia.”

  “You have a wonderful hi-fi set.” Abby was looking around. “All the comforts of civilization in the middle of the wilderness.”

  “Unfortunately, the hi-fi, too, depends on the generator,” Ben said. While the coffee was perking, he went into a small storeroom and came out with two glass jars, giving one each to Emma and Abby. “Salal jelly. We learn to make use of whatever grows on the island.”

  “Wonderful, Ben!” Abby thanked him. “Salal jelly is delicious with meat—strange, and a little exotic.”

  “You warm enough?” Ben asked her.

  “Plenty, thanks.” The old woman had on a heavy off-white cardigan and a matching woolen cap. “When I come to the Portia, I dress for mid-winter even in mid-July.”

  “Tide’s going to be low early tomorrow morning. We’ll spend tonight where we’re anchored, hunt for abs in the early morning, and then take off for the Queen Charlottes. Plenty of phones when we get to Masset Inlet.”

  Alice was curled up on an old leather sofa, behind which was a library table and an oil lamp with two yellow globes. “This was my favorite reading perch in stormy weather. Whittock wasn’t a bad place to grow up.”

  Ben poured coffee into delicate china cups, each different. Emma and Alice took powdered milk; Abby preferred hers black. Alice looked at Abby. “Did Dave talk to you about King David?”

  “Oh, yes, my dear,” Abby replied. “It’s been a continuing obsession with him. And when I was teaching, King David’s story was part of my Living Literature course.”

  “All the wives,” Emma said wryly. “He’s too old to play David now, but he’d make a marvelous Saul. Sometimes I think he’s more like Saul than David, with his depressions coming on him, not unlike Saul’s evil spirit.”

  Abby said, “His depressions are terrible, but clinically atypical.”

  Alice looked at her questioningly.

  “No matter how deep in darkness he sank, he could always rouse himself to go to the theater.”

  Alice agreed. “Yes. Odd.”

  “Even after Billy and Adair—” Abby turned to Emma. “Wasn’t he playing in a comedy, then, too?”

  Emma nodded. “He went to the theater every night and made people laugh and feel happy, and then he came home and sank into the pit again. Sophie sent Louis up to the Cathedral to the Choir School to get him away. The choristers had to be boarders, so Louis was spared it all.”

  “Why cancer now?” Abby demanded. “Why, at his age, when he’s always been so healthy, never a smoker, a moderate drinker, though certainly an immoderate lover—”

  “We’re living longer, we human beings,” Alice said. “Antibiotics have made an enormous difference. If we’re not killed in some kind of accident it’s likely cancer will get us in the end, particularly as we go on polluting our planet.

  “I’m glad Dave’s here.” Alice put her cup down carefully. “Not just the Portia, but this part of the world where death is as accepted as birth. In New York when we were seeing the doctors, when he was having all the tests, there was much more fear in the air. We went to have a drink with one of David’s old producer friends. Everybody was given real glasses—except David, who was given plastic.”

  Abby made a sputter of indignation. Then asked, “There wasn’t any kind of treatment to arrest the thing?”

  Alice shook her head. “He had some radiation, but it’s a very aggressive cancer. There are some new treatments, involving chemicals, but at David’s age the cure, if it is a cure, would probably kill him even more painfully than the disease.”

  “Forgive me—I assume it’s inoperable?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God for you, Alice. After David dies, will you go back to New York?”

  “Whatever for? I went where David went. When David dies, my work is here. I’ll go back to doctoring. When Emma’s in a show I’ll take some time off and come see her. I don’t want ever to lose touch with Emma.”

  “Thanks, Alice. Nor I with you.”

  “Now that there are planes, the world is a lot smaller,” Abby said.

  “Yes. I’m glad you’re here with us, Abby.” Alice looked with her level gaze at David’s second wife, at the peace in her face despite the fine network of lines made by all the tragedies and joys of life. “And I guess I’m beginning to understand David’s obsession with King David. I’m beginning to see that it’s part of his coming to terms with his life before he dies.”

  Abby nodded. Emma gathered up the coffee cups and took them to the sink.

  “Don’t bother, Em,” Ben said quickly.

  “It won’t take a minute, and you don’t want to find dirty coffee cups whenever you return.”

  Abby rose. “I’ll dry.”

  When they were back in the Zodiac, they were quiet until a sleek black head lifted from the water and stared at them with ancient liquid eyes. Abby stretched out her hands. “How I love the seals! Alice, you will let David die when the time comes, won’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  “There’s a terrible tendency nowadays to prolong death. I know you won’t do that. It’s my own weakness—I’m sorry, Alice.” She stopped as Ben pulled the Zodiac to the side of the Portia, turned off the outboard motor, stepped out and up onto the deck, securing the Zodiac.

  “Abby, let Alice or Emma help you to stand—good, so, right here. Now raise your arms—” As he spoke he reached down, put his hands under her arms, and with one swift lift he had her on the deck.

  Emma followed, pulling herself up beside Abby.

  “Thanks, Ben,” A
bby said, slightly breathless. “Old age is a beast, but I’m not going to let it stop me from doing what I want to do—and need to do.”

  Alice went directly to David in the pilothouse. Abby headed for the lower cabin. “I think I’ll take a brief rest.”

  Emma stood at the galley, wondering what to fix for dinner. From the pilothouse she heard her father laugh. Almost inadvertently, she turned her mind to King David and his wives. That morning she had looked in the drawers for another chart for Ben and had come across more of Nik’s sketched-out scenes. Despite herself, Emma kept returning to the script; it was somewhat like pressing a bruise to see if it still hurts.

  “How long have these been here?” she asked her father.

  “Years, probably. I haven’t thought about them till this summer. Might-have-beens can be painful.”

  “It’s not like you to brood over might-have-beens.” Emma looked at him in concern.

  “Perhaps not,” David said. “It could have been a good play.”

  ‘It will be a good play,’ David Wheaton said. ‘But now Sophie wants us to gather round the table. We’re glad you could be with us, Nik. It helps. You’ve brought happiness back to Emma’s eyes.’

  ‘Papa—’ Emma whispered.

  But he was calling them together, Emma, Nik, Everard, Chantal, Jarvis, Inez, Louis. David Wheaton’s children, not his ex-wives. Marical saw Sophie fairly frequently but would not come from Connecticut to any large functions. Harriet stayed in her world of ballet, though occasionally, unlike Edith, she would grace them with an appearance. When they were all seated he held out his hands, and they all clasped hands around the table.

  ‘We give thanks today for this gathering,’ David Wheaton said, ‘and for the food which Sophie has prepared mit so much Liebe. We ask for the safe return of Etienne and Adair. We grieve for the loss of Billy from our midst.’ There were tears in his eyes, and they were all silent, until David continued, ‘As the psalmist said, “Enter not into judgment with thy servant: for in thy sight shall no man living be justified.” And again, “In God is my salvation and my glory: the rock of my strength, and my refuge … Trust in him at all times.” Amen. All right, my darlings, fall to.’