A Ring of Endless Light

by Madeleine L'engle

  I put my bike in the shed and went around to the front of the house to check on the swallows. All I could see was a grey fluff of feathers up above the nest. The babies were taking their afternoon nap. I trotted around the stable and went in through the screened porch. Ned and Rochester were lying curled up together, but I didn't see anybody else. Grandfather was not in his usual place on the couch.

  "Hello!" I called.

  Nobody answered.

  I looked in all the stalls and in the kitchen and nobody was there. Grandfather was not in the stall which was his study, where I'd hoped he might be. Not anywhere.

  "Hey, where is everybody?" I shouted.

  No answer. Rochester stalked arthritically in from the porch and whined at the foot of the ladder, so I climbed up to the loft and Rob was lying face down on his cot. If he'd been asleep I'd certainly made enough noise to wake him.

  "Rob."

  He didn't move.

  I hurried across the loft and sat down on the cot beside him. "Rob, what's the matter?"

  He rolled over and his face was all blotchy from crying.

  "Rob, what is it?"

  "It's Grandfather--" he started, and couldn't go on because he was choked up with sobs.

  My heart seemed to stop. "He isn't--"

  "He had a nosebleed," Rob managed to say. "Oh, Vicky, he bled and bled and Daddy couldn't stop it for the longest while and Mother--" He fished under his pillow and took out a wad of wet tissues.

  "What about Mother?"

  "She sat by Grandfather and held his hand and she--she didn't look like Mother at all."

  "But where is she? Where are Grandfather and Daddy?"

  "Daddy called the Coast Guard and they're taking Grandfather to the hospital on the mainland for a blood transfusion. Daddy said they should be back by late afternoon."

  "With Grandfather?"

  "Yes. Daddy promised him he wouldn't leave him in the hospital."

  I looked at Rob's tear-streaked face and the strange darkness in his eyes, and I wondered fleetingly if all this was too much for Rob, if not the rest of us.

  He blew his nose, and then wiped his cheeks with the palms of his hands, leaving grubby streaks. "Where's Elephant's Child?"

  Elephant's Child is the much-loved remains of the stuffed elephant which had always been Rob's special thing. But he hadn't bothered about Elephant's Child for ages. Now he stretched across the cot on his stomach, leaning over and peering under and wriggling until he pulled Elephant's Child, worse for wear, from under the bed, and wound the music box, which amazingly still worked, and Brahms's Lullaby tinkled across the loft.

  "Mother asked me to stay home so I could tell you about it."

  "Where's Suzy?"

  "Off somewhere with Jacky Rodney. She's going to work for him."

  So John, as usual, was right.

  "Suzy's not old enough to have a pilot's license." I don't know why I sounded so cross.

  "Neither is Jacky. Leo has the license."

  "She'll just get in the way."

  Rob looked at me questioningly, then said, "Suzy can be mighty handy."

  I sighed. "I know. How'd it happen, Rob, how did it start?"

  "We were all sitting out on the porch, and Mother was just about to bring out lunch, and suddenly blood began to pour down Grandfather's face ..." His lips started trembling.

  "Sorry, Rob," I said swiftly. "If Daddy's not making him stay in the hospital, it can't be too bad. Hey, I had a great time with Adam this morning. I even fed two of the dolphins, Una and Nini." I wanted to tell him about Basil, to give him a present to take his mind off Grandfather, but I knew Adam was right and Basil shouldn't be talked about.

  I told Rob about Una and Nini, and how Adam held a fish in his mouth and Nini took it as delicately as Suzy eating strawberries and cream. And I told him that Ynid was going to have a baby soon and that there were two dolphins with her to be midwives. And after a while I realized that Rob was curled up on his cot, sound asleep.

  I slipped quietly down the ladder and went into the kitchen to get things started for supper. I set the table and made the salad dressing and cut up celery and scallions and green peppers, washed the lettuce, and then fixed the tomatoes and put them in a small bowl to be added later. I looked in the refrigerator to see if I could figure out what Mother had planned for supper. There were peas, so I shelled them. I saw some hamburger and a basket of mushrooms, so I figured at least I could make Poor Man's Beef Stroganoff, which I set about doing.

  I am really not usually that great around the kitchen. Far too often Mother has to prod me--and the rest of us--to get our chores done. Now I was keeping busy to help myself as much as Mother. But I could not turn off my mind; Rob's description of Grandfather bleeding had been all too graphic. So I let my mind drift to Basil and Adam.

  Dolphins are communal creatures, Adam had told me. They cannot give birth alone; they need midwives, need friends. What about dying? What does a pod of dolphins do when one of them has been hurt--maybe by a harpoon--or is old? How do they help, birthing or dying, without hands? Do they surround the one who is dying and hold him by their presence? Do they have any conscious thoughts about life and death? Can they ask questions? Or do you give up questions when you give up hands?

  I jerked as Rochester barked, his welcoming, friendly, happy bark. So it must be all right.

  I was somehow hesitant to go out to the porch. But I went. Grandfather was sitting on the lumpy couch, looking a little pale, but calm and serene. Mother, I thought, looked paler than Grandfather.

  Daddy sniffed. "I smell something delectable."

  "I just threw some things together ..."

  Mother gave me a quick hug. "Vicky, you're an angel." "How's--how's everything?"

  "I'm fine," Grandfather said. "All that new young blood and I'm ready to go try climbing one of those mountains I never had time for while I was in Africa and Asia."

  Daddy sat down on the couch beside him. "The mountain climbing mightn't be too bad, but I wouldn't advise jet travel just yet."

  "I wasn't thinking of flying over," Grandfather said. "I thought I'd swim. Where's everybody?"

  "Rob's asleep. John and Suzy aren't home yet. They're late. Oh--I vaguely think I heard John say something about Dr. Zand wanting him to do something after five ..."

  Mother went out to the kitchen, not with her usual brisk pace, but sort of wandering. I sat in the swing. Rochester hunched down beside Grandfather and Daddy, and put his head on Grandfather's knee. Ned sprang up into his lap and started purring. It was somehow as comforting as Basil's smile. And I wanted to tell Grandfather and Daddy about Basil. Instead, I pushed the wooden floor of the porch with my toe so that the swing creaked back and forth.

  "Father," Daddy said, "I am going to rent a hospital bed for you." Grandfather started to protest, but Daddy went on, "It will be more comfortable. This old couch is a mess."

  Grandfather's hand stroked Ned and the purr came louder. "During my lifetime I've learned a good bit about dying. In Alaska, for instance, an old man or woman would prepare to die, and would call the family for instructions and farewells. And when they had done what they wanted to do, wound up their affairs as we might say, they died. It was a conscious decision, a letting go which involved an understanding of the body that we've lost. And I thought then and I think now that it's far better than our way of treating death. But what I didn't realize when I was watching someone's sons and daughters standing around the deathbed, sometimes stolid, sometimes weeping, always moving deeply into acceptance of grief and separation, was that I do not have the strength of my Eskimo friends. It hurts me too much to see you being hurt."

  Daddy took his hand. "It's a part of it, Father, you know that."

  Grandfather looked at me. "I know. But the look in my daughter's eyes this afternoon ..."

  Grandfather was looking at me but he was seeing Mother.

  "Perhaps I'd be better off in the hospital. Perhaps you shouldn't have brought me home ...
I thought I could die with you around me, and I did not realize how much it would hurt you and that I cannot stand that hurt."

  "Perhaps," Daddy suggested, "you ought not to deprive us of that hurt?"

  I knelt by Grandfather, and Rochester leaned against me, almost knocking me over. "I think the Eskimos are right, Grandfather, and I know you're just as strong as anybody else in the world."

  He looked at me and blinked, as though clearing his vision. "Vicky?"

  "Yes, Grandfather. We don't want you off in the hospital where you're a number and a case history. We want you to be strong enough to let us be with you." I bit my lip because tears were beginning to well up in my eyes.

  The screen door slammed and Suzy banged in. "Hi, sorry to be late."

  I scrambled to my feet.

  "Jacky's really giving me a lot of responsibility," she announced triumphantly.

  "That's great," I said without enthusiasm.

  "Suzy." Daddy stood up. "Come in the kitchen with me for a minute."

  Grandfather continued to stroke Ned. Rochester yawned and flopped at his feet. "I frightened Rob," Grandfather said.

  "Rob's been frightened before. He had all kinds of scary things happen in New York, I mean really scary."

  "Victoria," Grandfather started, then stopped. "No, it's Vicky, isn't it? You look very much the way your mother did at your age."

  "Grandfather, you told us once that if we aren't capable of being hurt we aren't capable of feeling joy."

  "Yes ... yes ..."

  "You were with Gram when she died."

  He continued to pat my hand absent-mindedly. "That is different. Caro and I were one. This--"

  "It's a different kind of oneness. It's a deep but dazzling darkness."

  Now he took my hand in his. "Poetry does illuminate, doesn't it? Bless you for understanding that, and for remembering."

  Daddy returned then.

  Grandfather said, "About that hospital bed. I think I would like to have it in my study, where I'm surrounded by the books that have been my friends throughout my life."

  "I think we can manage that, Father."

  "And where I can have some privatecy. This porch is rather like a railroad station--in the days when there used to be railroad stations. I will need some time to be alone, to meditate."

  When the screen door banged again, I jumped. So did Grandfather, who had closed his eyes. It was John, and Mother and Suzy came out of the kitchen, and at the same moment the phone rang and Suzy rushed to answer it. I haven't raced her for the phone in ages.

  She called back out, "It's that nerd Zachary."

  "I'll take it in Grandfather's study," I said. "Hang up in the kitchen."

  "Well," said Zachary, "why haven't you called me?"

  I wasn't in the mood for this. "Why would I call you?"

  "Because I left three messages for you to call me, one with your father, one with your mother, and the last time with your little brother."

  "I guess they forgot, because--"

  He cut me off. "Forgot, nothing. I'm persona non gratis in their eyes."

  "Grata," I corrected automatically.

  "I told you my cram school was lousy. Didn't make us take Latin, most of us would have flunked it. Anyhow, your parents forgot accidentally on purpose."

  "Zachary. My grandfather has leukemia and he had a hemorrhage today. Daddy had to call the Coast Guard and get him to the hospital on the mainland for a transfusion. They had other things on their minds than phone messages."

  "Oh. Doesn't this two-bit island even have a hospital?"

  "There's a fund drive on for a cottage hospital. We should have it by next summer, but that doesn't help us this year."

  "So your grandfather's on the mainland?"

  "No, Mother and Daddy brought him home. He's much better."

  "Good, then. Listen, I've hired your pal Leo for Saturday afternoon and evening. I want to take you to the mainland for a swim at the country club, and then dinner, and there's a concert you might like to hear, a pianist. Okay?"

  "It sounds fine. I'll have to check with my parents."

  Zachary sighed exaggeratedly. "So check."

  "I'll call you back tomorrow."

  "When?"

  "Right after breakfast."

  "Okay." He hung up without saying goodbye, typical Zachary fashion.

  I went back to the porch and Rob had come down and was sleepily rubbing his eyes. Daddy had fixed drinks, and John handed me a Coke with a good big wedge of lemon, the way I like it.

  "Thanks to Vicky," Mother said, "dinner's all ready. I've just put some rice on to go under the stroganoff. It'll take a few minutes, so let's relax while we wait."

  And for a brief moment the world seemed stable again.

  In the morning after breakfast I was puttering around the kitchen helping clean up, when Daddy came in and put a call through for a hospital bed, and then a call to Mr. Hanchett, on the mainland, saying that Grandfather would not be able to take the church services for the rest of the month. I was glad I wasn't around when he told Grandfather; Daddy's voice had that just-too-level quality it has when he's doing something he has to do and doesn't want to do.

  Mother came in as he hung up. But she'd heard.

  Her voice, too, was unnaturally level. "We're really unusually lucky." She put her hand on Daddy's arm in an affectionate gesture. "It seems almost providential that you'd already planned to take this summer to write that book."

  "I haven't done much so far," Daddy said. "I'm going to have to set up a regular routine of work. If I don't get it done before I resume private practice--"

  "--it'll never be done," Mother finished. She looked around the kitchen, as though seeing it for the first time. "There are so many people who live in cramped quarters, and when something like this happens, they don't have the choice we do, to keep Father at home, to be with him. They have to resort to a nursing home; they don't have any alternative ..."

  Daddy put his arm around her. "Perhaps it's easier when there is no alternative."

  "No, no," Mother murmured. "I'm always boring the kids by telling them that something easy isn't worth anything. And it seems somehow as if this--this is meant. You'll never have another summer like this when you're able to work anywhere you want. How's that article going?"

  "The article's finished, at any rate," Daddy said. "I sent it off to the New England Medical Journal this morning." He looked at me. "I've got more than enough work to keep me busy this summer. Vicky, I've appreciated that you were willing to give up a good job."

  After the complimentary way in which Daddy spoke, I didn't say that it burned me that Suzy'd been allowed to turn down the same good job and do what she wanted to do.

  Daddy continued, "Even though you're going to be more, rather than less, needed as the summer goes on, you don't have to be a slave here twenty-four hours a day."

  "She certainly doesn't," Mother agreed.

  "I wish you had some kind of a project, Vicky."

  "Well, I sort of do."

  "What?"

  "Adam has a dolphin project going, and I'm helping him."

  "You don't have any background in marine biology or any other kind of biology," Daddy said.

  "Adam's filling me in on what I need." I stopped then, because I could see that Daddy thought my helping Adam was just about as made up a job as Suzy's helping Jacky. Only he thought that Suzy had more qualifications for helping Jacky than I did for helping Adam. And without telling about Basil there was no way I could explain anything.

  And as for people living in cramped quarters, Mother and Daddy had Grandfather's bedroom, but we kids were all together up in the loft.

  "Don't scowl," Mother said. "You're getting lines in your forehead."

  "I'm not scowling."

  "Vicky, this summer's not easy on any of us ..." Mother turned away.

  "Who's complaining?" I couldn't keep the brittleness out of my voice. I sounded grimly ungracious. So I added, "We all want to be
with him. You know that." And then, "I'll go make your bed. I'll get Rob to help me."

  We had to take Grandfather's desk out of his study stall to make way for the hospital bed. Daddy put the desk in the stall with the science books and announced that it was going to be his office from now on, and if we wanted any of the books we'd better take them now, because when he was in his office he was going to be writing and he was not to be disturbed.

  The hospital bed was electric, with buttons which raised and lowered it, up and down, head and feet, and when it was flat down with one of those Indian bedspreads on it, it looked like an ordinary bed, but even an ordinary bed had no place in Grandfather's study. Daddy found a sturdy table to put by the bed to hold the phone, and a reading lamp, and Grandfather's Bible, and whatever other books he might want to have right by him.

  Later that day the phone men came to put the phone on a jack, so that it could be unplugged if Grandfather wanted to nap. Or, as he said, to meditate.

  And in the afternoon Mrs. Rodney came by.

  Since the house was empty, Grandfather was in his usual place on the lumpy couch on the porch, "where I can see the ocean and sky."

  Mother and I were in the kitchen, preparing the vegetables for a pot roast. We weren't talking, but it was an all-right silence. I didn't know what she was thinking, but her face didn't have the white, pulled-tight look it had when she and Daddy brought Grandfather home after the blood transfusion. I was working on a poem in my head, hurrying to get the carrots scraped so I could go up to the loft and set it down.

  We heard a knock on the door, and Mother said, "Go see who it is, Vicky, and check that the swallows aren't upset."

  I slipped out through the porch, shutting the door quietly behind me, because Grandfather had his eyes closed. When I got around to the front of the house, Mrs. Rodney was backing away.

  "Those swallows were dive-bombing me. And their nest is much too shallow. They'll be lucky if those fledglings learn to fly before they fall out. Are your parents at home?"

  "Yes. Daddy's writing, and Mother's in the kitchen."

  "I'd like to see them for just a few minutes. I take it you're not using the front door for the duration?" She looked at the three parent swallows anxiously fluttering about the nest.

  "That's right." We went in through the side door, the one that leads into the stall where Daddy was working. He looked up, frowning, then smiled as he saw Mrs. Rodney. I knew he hated being interrupted, but I also had a hunch that Mrs. Rodney had something important to say, so I left her there and went to the kitchen to get Mother.