Certain Women

by Madeleine L'engle

  Jarvis frowned. “I hate nature.”

  “That’s your privilege. Let David be where he is happy.”

  “Is he happy?”

  Abby answered carefully, “He is acknowledging and accepting his life, and that is preparing him for his death. When we’ve all visited him, then we must all leave him and Alice alone.”

  Emma nodded, her eyes filling with tears. These days on the Portia had been days out of time and therefore days without end. Jarvis’s coming had precipitated her awareness of ending.

  “We’d better eat.” Emma tried to keep her voice from trembling. She put the casserole on the table, and Jarvis finished handing around the knives. He said nothing more about getting David away from the Portia.

  Ben came up from the engine room, stopped, and washed his hands. He was about to sit down at the table when his head went up, listening. He held up his hand for silence.

  From the radio in the pilothouse Emma could hear, “The Portia, the Portia, the Portia.”

  Ben leapt up the steps to the pilothouse and the radio, saying, “Portia here. Over.”

  “Stop.” Abby stood with her hands out, holding back, as it were, Nik and Jarvis, who were following Ben. “Don’t crowd up to the pilothouse. Ben will tell us whatever it’s about.”

  Emma strained her ears, but Ben had evidently turned down the volume. She heard a muffled expletive.

  “What’s going on?” Jarvis demanded.

  “The Coast Guard’s calling us on the ship’s radio,” Alice said. “Wait.”

  Ben came down the steps. “Alice, go up to Dave.” Then, to the others, “That was a message from Sophie. She and Louis are arriving at Port Clements tomorrow.”

  “How on earth—” Emma started, then turned to her brother. “Jarvis?”

  “I happened to mention to Sophie that I was coming.”

  “It’s too much!” Emma expostulated. “We were going to call everybody, one at a time. You know the Portia’s a little boat, we don’t have room—”

  “Emma.” Abby’s voice was quiet. “Hush.”

  “I’ll book them rooms at the hotel.” Jarvis’s voice was smooth. “It will all work out beautifully, you’ll see.”

  “Jarvis, Father’s death is not a production for you to stage—”

  Jarvis reached across the table for Emma’s hand. “Sorry, sis. Staging it is my way of not falling apart. Sorry. I shouldn’t have spoken to Sophie.”

  “She had to know, sooner or later,” Nik said. “Maybe it isn’t bad to have us all here, get it done with, give Dave some peace.”

  “He can’t be overwhelmed—” Emma started.

  “We won’t overwhelm him,” Nik promised. “One at a time, and for whenever and however long Alice decides.”

  Alice came down the steps from the pilothouse, her face calm. “I have Dave quieted down now for the night. If you’ll look out on that little patch of sand, there’s a bear, beachcombing.”

  Emma and Nik went eagerly to the windows and there, indeed, grubbing about on the sand, was a black bear, ignoring, if he was aware of, their presence. The long evening light slanted against his fur, giving it golden lights.

  Alice asked, “Jarvis, are you through with dinner?”

  “It’s a good thing I eat quickly.”

  “Ben will take you to Port Clements. What time do you want him to come for you in the morning?”

  “I get up at ten,” Jarvis said. “Eleven would be good.” Then he added, “If that’s convenient.”

  Abby asked, “Are Sophie and Louis coming in at the same time that Nik and Jarvis did?”

  “Weather holding,” Ben said, “they should be on the same plane. I’ll get the Zodiac ready.”

  “Need any help?” Nik asked.

  “Sure. I can always use a hand.”

  Emma watched them go out to the back porch. She was not sure what she was feeling. Far past and near past were running together. Nik was the Nik of their youth, when Adair and Etienne were alive, and the King David play was new and growing, and Bathsheba was Sophie—time again dissolving. But Nik was also the Nik of the near past from which she had fled.

  Abby had pulled out her sketchbook and was drawing swiftly. Emma was able to glance at the pad and saw that with a few strokes Abby had put Jarvis on the page.

  Jarvis looked at Emma. “How do you find Nik?”

  Emma replied coolly, “Tired from all the travel, just as you are.”

  “He’s written a good new play.”

  “I’m glad.”

  “I’m producing it.”

  “Good.”

  “What about you, Emma?”

  “I’m here for Papa. That’s all. I don’t want to talk about anything else.”

  “Jarvis!” Nik called. “Your limousine is ready.”

  Jarvis rose. “I guess I’m a lot of trouble.” No one spoke. He added, “I don’t really like being on boats—except one like the France. I’m better off in the hotel with my own bathroom. I’ll be more use if I get my creature comforts.”

  “It’s all right, Jarvis.” Abby smiled, closing her sketchbook. “We’re all made the way we are. Have a good night’s sleep and we’ll see you for lunch.”

  “Shall I bring anything? I assume there are available grocery stores.”

  “We could do with more milk and eggs,” Emma said.

  “And I’ll get a bottle of wine for dinner. Thanks, all of you. Good night.” He waved, an insouciant Jarvis wave, and went out on the loading dock.

  Emma went to the pilothouse to say good night to her father. He was drowsy but held out his arms to her. “Ah, Em, Em. Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Papa, fine.”

  “They’ll all be here tomorrow, all the available ones.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll make my peace with Billy and Adair and Etienne later.”

  She pressed his hand gently.

  “Everard and Chantal. Good children. You’ll say goodbye for me?”

  “Yes, Papa. I will.”

  “Goodbyes are not easy, but I’m ready to move on. I’m not reluctant, Emma, not holding back. I don’t have answers to the questions, at least not yet, but I have some good questions. I have loved life, and I believe that life is to be loved, because it is a gift.”

  Again, she pressed his hand.

  “Love it, Emma.”

  “I do. Most of the time.”

  “You can love it even when you’re in anguish.”

  “I know.”

  “When you’re onstage, you love. We both love well when we’re onstage. You’re better offstage than I’ve been. But I’m not beating my breast. I’m not saying what I want to. What I want is for you to be happy.”

  “I know, Papa. Thank you. Mostly I am. Good night.”

  “Emma, you don’t have to make the mistakes I have made.”

  “I know.”

  “Good night, my sweet child.”

  There were tears in her eyes when she left him. She got ready for bed and was using the upper head when Ben returned in the Zodiac, which he simply tied by the side of the boat, since he would be using it again the next day.

  Emma came out, her warm bathrobe belted round her.

  “Emma?”

  She looked at him questioningly.

  “Emma, if I could, I’d do anything to get you away from Nik. But you’re an actress, a city person. You wouldn’t be happy out here. And I’m not like Alice. I couldn’t transplant to New York. Anyhow, you’re still in love with Nik.”

  She looked down at her feet in fleece-lined slippers. “Yes, Ben.”

  “Why don’t you go back to him?”

  “I’m not sure. It’s complicated.”

  “I know it’s been painful for you, the way Dave’s been going on and on about the King David play, but it’s also brought you back to Nik, hasn’t it?”

  “In a way.”

  “Don’t be like your father’s wives, Emma. I know you’ve had lousy examples, but marriage has to be w
orked at.”

  “Why haven’t you ever married again, Ben?”

  “I’m a loner. I loved my wife, and since her death I’ve learned to live comfortably with my memories and myself. I’m married to the land, the sea. I’m like a great blue. I love my friends, but ultimately I need to live alone. So who am I to give you advice?”

  “It’s good advice, Ben. Generous.”

  “Will you take it?”

  “I’ll think about it. I promise.”

  Think. It was hard to think with her father lying on the bunk in the pilothouse, with the entire family, at least the entire remnant of the family, arriving to say goodbye. Despite the fact that she was in her nightclothes, she went out onto the loading dock, let down the rowboat, and got in, rowing quietly away from the Portia. She was not heading in any particular direction. She merely needed to be alone with the water and mountains and sky.

  She was not like Ben. Life in the theater is, at its best, life in community, and she needed community. Seeing Nik again had been both painful and joyful. Nik was Nik, and that was not going to change. Emma was Emma. Was she strong enough to allow both of them to be themselves? Bahama had instilled in her an honoring of promises, but she could not keep her promise unless she was willing to allow Nik to be Nik, not a projection of someone who could fill all her empty spaces, heal all her wounds.

  A late-night bird sang a sleepy song, and she rested her oars, listening. Her father and his wives had not been able to do that, to allow each other to be who they were. Sophie had come close. Alice—Alice, she thought, was unique. She had learned much about wisdom and maturity from Alice. We are all wounded, and we will never heal until we accept our wounds, whether they be wounds of glamour, like David’s, or—as Regan had called it—naïveté, like hers. Her father had blundered over and over again, had, perhaps, let her down over Billy. But she had let him down in not noticing that he, like King Lear, was moving toward death. Yet, ultimately, their love had been stronger than their human flaws.

  If Nik had committed adultery, so had she, and both of them in more ways than physical. If Nik was no further from accepting his wounds than she was, he had made it quite clear that if she was willing to accept their marriage, so was he. She did not want to go back to him because he could dazzle her with his bright good looks and mind. She needed to accept his darknesses, too. And her own. For if there is no darkness for the light to shine against, we cannot see the light.

  She looked up at the sky, still luminous with a soft, pearly light. She would be in her bunk before it was dark enough for stars.

  She turned the rowboat and headed back toward the Portia.

  Abby already had the curtains drawn around her bed. Emma walked past quietly and on into the forward cabin under the pilothouse. Alice was in her sleeping bag, reading. Emma said, “I don’t know why it’s thrown me so, everybody arriving all at once this way.” She spoke softly, trying not to disturb Abby in the double bed, or Nik and Ben up in the main cabin.

  “It’s brought death close,” Alice said. “They’ve all come to say goodbye to Dave, and that’s made us face our own goodbyes. We’ve been living so much in the moment, even with Abby here making her farewells, that we haven’t projected into the future.”

  “And now Nik and Jarvis, Sophie and Louis, are making us project?”

  “Yes, Em.” For a moment Alice’s voice quivered. “It’s hit me, too. I’m so in the routine of taking care of Dave that I’ve forgotten the routine is going to end.”

  There was a long silence between them. Emma looked around the cabin, at Ben’s books, at the lingering light showing through the portholes. “The Portia—”

  “Dave wants Ben to keep it.”

  “Oh, good. That’s good.”

  “But Ben will have to find other work. David pays him, and generously, for what he does.”

  “Nobody could really pay Ben for what he does,” Emma said. “Like Sophie, he does it mit Liebe.”

  “Emma, Nik wants to talk to you. You, alone.”

  “I know.”

  “You’ve seemed—amazingly welcoming, considering everything.”

  Emma laughed softly. “We ought to stop talking. I’m sure we’re disturbing Abby.” She lay down, pulling the sleeping bag about her shoulders.

  Ben was, as always, up early. Nik, used to theater hours, like Jarvis, and with a three-hour time lag, was still in his sleeping bag when Emma came up to the galley to start the coffee. She tried to be quiet, but Nik stirred.

  “Hi.”

  “Nik, sorry. I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I’m eminently wakable. So, you’ve been looking through some old scenes from my long-defunct David play.”

  “It’s not defunct if you’re still working on it.”

  “What I’m doing now is a different play, completely different.”

  “The old one—”

  “It was doomed. Not because of you, Em, or the things that tore us all apart. I never ended it.”

  “No.”

  “David won all those battles and went back to his holy city. And there were the ten concubines Absalom had shamed. And David treated them well, ‘and put them in ward … but went not in to them.’”

  “He went not in to them because they were defiled?” Emma demanded.

  “That was how they thought, in those days.”

  “The ones who are defiled are the ones who are punished, rather than the one who did the defiling?”

  “Hey, Emma, that was one of the reasons I was writing the play, writing about David’s women and women in general, and trying to get over some of my own male chauvinism.”

  She laughed. “Sorry, Nik. My skin’s like tissue paper right now. And that hit close to home.”

  “I know. I’m sorry. And I take your point about the concubines. That attitude still prevails, to some extent.”

  “It was Myrlo’s attitude. I asked for it, she said.”

  “Sweetie.” Nik’s voice was gentle. “Myrlo paid, and Billy, and Adair. And so did Absalom. Heavily.”

  “And you paid,” Emma said, “for what—”

  Nik cut her off. “We all paid. We don’t live in isolation. When wrong is done, everybody pays. Eventually we have to realize it’s all been paid for.”

  Emma let her breath out slowly, not quite a sigh.

  “It’s time to stop thinking about blame and guilt. Actions have consequences, and they have to be played out.”

  “And then we have to let them go,” Emma said.

  “Can we?” Nik demanded. “Are we both damaged goods? So damaged that we simply can’t make it in an ordinary human way?”

  Emma turned on the flame under the coffeepot. “I was in a show once with an actor who’d had TB, and when I was concerned about his going out in a horrible rainstorm, he told me not to worry, that his TB was cured, and that scar tissue is the strongest tissue in the human body. I suspect that spiritual scar tissue is strong, too, and that it should make us more able to be human, rather than less.”

  “It’s made you stronger,” Nik said. “I’m not sure about me. Am I still using my background as an excuse for all my horrible behavior?”

  “No, Nik, I agree with you that we have more free will than that. We can hang on to our scars, forgetting that they are healed, or we can get on with life.” She smiled, then turned her attention to the galley, taking bacon from the undercounter fridge, putting strips in a large frying pan.

  “Hey,” Nik said, “what would be really good would be if you’d cut up the bacon the way you used to do, and crisp it, and then scramble eggs into it.”

  “Okay. We may have just enough eggs. Norma brought us some, and I haven’t quite used them all up.”

  “Norma?”

  “She’s an Indian, an old friend of Papa’s. And of mine.”

  —Norma, Norma, she thought.—Papa’s dying. How will you see him again?

  The eggs were in a wire basket on the windowsill. Half a dozen left. Barely enough. Jarvis, she
hoped, would remember to bring more. She broke Norma’s eggs into a bowl, added milk, seasonings. Ben had pots of herbs on the windowsills, and she cut chives, summer savory, thyme.

  “You’re a wonderful cook.”

  “I learned to cook in that funny old Croyden Hotel in Chicago.”

  “What I said about incest—I was lashing out, using whatever weapon I could to hurt you. You love your father as his daughter, and you loved Adair as his sister.”

  “How do brothers and sisters love? We were half brothers and sisters. We didn’t have a normal family life.”

  To her relief, Alice came up the steps then, but did not stop. She greeted Emma and Nik on her way to her husband.

  “Emma.” Nik spoke in a low voice. “I know I’ve said some unpardonable things. Beyond apology. But please come back to me.”

  She took a whisk from the drawer and began to beat the eggs.

  “Emma?”

  “Maybe I’m the one who needs to change. Look at the way I rose to your bait over King David’s concubines. I thought I was long healed from Billy, but—”

  “You didn’t rise to the bait,” Nik said. “You had a point to make, a valid point.”

  Emma smiled, looking at the crisping bacon. “You’ve changed, I think, Nik. You wouldn’t have given me a point, not even a valid one, a few months ago.”

  “A few months ago I didn’t know how much I had to lose. Maybe we can’t change, either of us. But maybe we can modify.”

  Emma reached out to touch his sleeve. “I don’t think I want you overmodified.”

  “Just slightly modified, then.” Nik got out of his sleeping bag, stood up. He was wearing a pair of Ben’s flannel pajamas. He took his jeans and a flannel shirt and went into the head.

  Emma drained the bacon fat into an empty coffee can, dried the bacon between paper towels. Turned off the heat under the coffee.

  Alice, sniffing, came down the steps. “Dave says it smells wonderful. That’s good.”

  “Alice, are you worried? I mean, especially?”

  “I’m concerned about his kidneys.”