A Severed Wasp

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  Katherine slammed down the phone.

  “Ma mie! What was it?”

  Katherine’s voice was cold with rage. “One of those filthy calls accusing—”

  “Accusing who of what?”

  “You and me of—” She glanced toward the window.

  Mimi replaced the phone on the night table. “It’s entirely my fault. People assume I’m lesbian, and anybody who’s my friend must be one, too. It’s nasty, but not to be taken seriously.”

  Katherine was trembling. “The other time they brought in Felix, too—they accused me of being his mistress.”

  Mimi laughed, a robust laugh of mirth. “Dear Felix. Well, in the morning we’ll call the phone company and get your number changed.”

  “I like my number,” Katherine said stubbornly.

  “Too bad. If you don’t want these calls to continue, you’ll have to have a different number and a private listing. I’ve had to do it, too. I can’t be bothered with people using the telephone as a receptacle for their vomit.”

  Katherine lay down. She felt as though the anonymous caller had physically assaulted her. She had expected anonymity in her retirement, no more horrors of dead rats, perverse callers. “Vomit. That’s what it’s like. We had one caller in Paris who breathed into the phone, but never said anything.”

  “I think I’d prefer the outrageous suggestions to breathing,” Mimi said. “You never know what a breather is going to do. Those who get their sexual kicks verbally seldom do anything violent.” Her voice was brisk, matter-of-fact. “You are all tense, just as I had you beautifully relaxed.” Her hands began to knead, bringing calm back to tight muscles.

  “Why,” Katherine demanded, “are people determined to think of one in terms of sexual activity?” Realizing that she was repeating her words to Dorcas, she said, “I do not like to be limited. I am all of myself. But first and foremost I am Katherine, pianist.”

  “Hush,” Mimi said. “If you can delineate people according to their rutting habits, you don’t have to make allowances for normal human complexity. I love you, Katherine. I don’t want to make love with you, but I love you, and that is natural. I love to touch you, and that, too, is natural, and I don’t give a hot hoot in hell if it is misinterpreted. As to what is normal and what is abnormal, probably all sex which is not purely for the purpose of procreation is abnormal, so let’s not worry about being normal. And stop looking out your window. Nobody is looking in. That idiot phone call didn’t come from across the way. It’s connected, somehow or other, with the Cathedral.”

  “The Cathedral? Why on earth—”

  “Last winter I had a few similar calls. I got a friend from the hospital to stay with me for a week, and when one of the calls came in I hotfooted it downstairs to Quill’s. Fortunately, this was one of the times when he was home, and I got hold of the operator while upstairs my friend kept the caller on the phone, and the number could therefore be traced. It was from the front reception desk at Cathedral House. At midnight.”

  “And who was it?” Katherine’s voice was shocked.

  “No way of telling. It could be somebody who’d got hold of a key and had a duplicate made. It could be somebody who works at the Cathedral, from one of the canons down to one of the maintenance men. It could be anybody. I saw no reason to go to Dave about it—I’d satisfied my own curiosity. He has enough problems. I had my number changed. And that was that.”

  “Oh, Mimi.” Katherine closed her eyes. “I thought retirement was going to simplify my life. No more crises, no more personality clashes, no more of life’s complexities. I thought I could sit with my piano and my books and sort out my memories and die with everything tidily arranged.”

  “Katherine, I know you’re naïve, but not that naïve, please.”

  “I did not expect this kind of thing.”

  “Nobody expects it. But there are a lot of sick people in the world, and more yearly. The statistics are not pretty. As to being straight, I doubt if anyone worth knowing is entirely straight. We all have our kinks and quirks. My own private life wouldn’t pass any vigilante group’s regulations for moral virtue. Katherine, you are never going to quiet down if we keep on talking. Be quiet. I love you, and I value our friendship, but I love you in the most straight way possible. You know that. So pay that idiot phone call no mind. Tomorrow, first thing, I’ll get your number changed.”

  11

  When Mimi had left, Katherine felt quiet enough so that the poison of the phone call no longer burned. She curled up comfortably, turning her mind to happiness, dreaming first consciously, then slipping into the shallows. She was standing by the piano in the house in Paris, Justin beside her, his hand spread out over her belly, an expression of bemused joy in his face. She had felt quickening that day.

  ‘Minou,’ he said softly, ‘wanting this child is not just to appease my gargantuan pride. I want your baby. Not just any baby, your baby, which is as close to having our baby as we can come. And it will be our baby, and we will be a family.’

  She could feel the tiny movement against Justin’s hand. That there was life within her suddenly became real.

  He continued, ‘We are one, you and I, and I do not underestimate that. But it will be good for us to be a family. Good for our marriage. I do not like my pride, but it is a fact. I cannot seem to get rid of it. But this is far more than that; it makes that negligible. Do you understand?’

  She was not yet far enough away from the physical presence of Lukas. Justin, she thought sadly, had come further than she. ‘I’m beginning to.’ And then, leaning against him, ‘I understand that I love you. And you love me.’

  ‘And we will love the baby. Our baby,’ he said, and held her close.

  12

  In the morning, while she was having coffee, someone from the phone company rang, giving her a new number, and telling her that it would be in service by early afternoon. She would give her new number to a few people—only a few. She would write to Julie immediately. Mimi. Felix. Probably Dorcas. The Davidsons? Would she have to explain to the Davidsons? What a stupid, unsavory business. She looked at her watch. With the change of time and Kristen’s odd, musician’s hours, she’d likely be at home.

  She was. “Mormor, to what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “To an anonymous phone caller. I’m changing my number. Do you have a pencil handy?”

  “Yes, here, let me get my book. Okay.”

  Katherine gave her the number, and Kristen said, “I had an anonymous caller once, before I married Martin. He made all kinds of lewd suggestions. What a bore for you.”

  “Mine doesn’t make suggestions, and I can’t tell if it’s male or female. It accuses me of various peculiar sexual activities. It’s quite absurd.”

  “What are these ridiculous accusations?”

  Kristen’s voice was amused, and the very amusement took away from the ugliness of the calls. “For one thing, I’m supposed to be carrying on an affair with Felix—my retired bishop friend.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past you,” Kristen said. “Is he attractive?”

  “Not in that way, though I find him endearing.”

  “Mormor, I’m glad you called. I was thinking about you.”

  “Were you? Why?”

  “Oh, lots of reasons. I suppose the world is beating at your door, as usual, people pouring out their woes? There’s something about you that makes people want to bare their hearts to you. Sometimes we used to get jealous, afraid you’d love some wounded sparrow more than us.”

  “Never. You know that.”

  “I do now. Mormor, did you feel sick when you were pregnant?”

  “When I was pregnant with your mother. For the first three months I felt miserable. It goes away.”

  “Promise?”

  “Promise. Are you going to a good doctor?”

  “The best in Oslo. Mormor, I’m getting cold feet. I want this baby, but I’m just beginning to do well professionally. The only thing that gives me hope is that
you did it, too, had babies and kept on with your music.”

  “I hope you’ll be a better mother than I was.”

  “Nonsense. But I’m lucky. Martin’s mother is more than willing to take care of the baby while I’m working.”

  “Good.”

  “She frightens me a little,” Kristen said. “All that domestic energy. I’m more comfortable with you, Mormor, and not just because we are related by blood. I’m your kind of person. I’m making some new recordings, by the way, all of Mozart’s stuff. I should have them ready for you for Christmas. Mormor, I have to ask you something.”

  “What’s that?”

  Kristen sounded unwontedly hesitant. “I know that retirement doesn’t mean you aren’t busy—but—will you come, when the baby is born? I need a buffer between me and Martin’s mother.”

  “What about your own mother?”

  “I love Mor. You know that. But she’s terribly busy with the business. And she’s not a musician.”

  Katherine paused. Then, “I want to come. Even if only for a few days. But not if it will hurt Julie. We don’t have to make a decision right now. I will come if it seems the right thing to do.”

  “At least you didn’t give me a flat no.”

  “I could never do that. Now. Have you got my new number?”

  “Yes. Thanks, Mormor. I love you.”

  “And I love you.”

  Why was it so easy with Kristen and so precarious with Julie? Why was she so zealous about not hurting Julie’s feelings when Julie could hurt and not even seem to be aware of what she had done?

  13

  Katherine and Justin, Julie and Eric, shared their wedding anniversary, more by chance than design. Norway is at its loveliest in early June, and when, on rare occasions, usually a major anniversary, Katherine and Justin were able to be in Aalesund, it was a great joy. There was a time when Katherine, on tour through Europe, got a call from Justin. Julie had suggested that they come to Aalesund for their mutual anniversaries. Katherine would be in Germany and she could fly to Bergen and meet Justin there, and they would then fly the little grasshopper to Aalesund. Justin had had pneumonia in the early spring and was still very frail; it was an effort for him; but they had wanted to be with their children and they had supposed that they were wanted.

  The thought of three nights in Julie and Eric’s guest room, looking through the pine trees across the fjord to the still snow-capped mountains, was a refreshing one, coming as it did in the midst of a rigorous tour. It would be a delight to have the grands come scramble into bed with them in the morning, to do some brisk walking, to relax. When Katherine and Justin met in Bergen, stopping for tea in their favorite small hotel, they were filled with anticipation.

  ‘And that we have been married all these years is a miracle,’ Justin said, stirring sugar into his tea. ‘That you should still love me—’

  ‘That we should love each other,’ Katherine said. ‘Yes, it’s a miracle, and I’m grateful. And it will be lovely to share it with the children.’

  But when they arrived in Aalesund, Eric’s brother, Leif, met the plane, looking embarrassed, shifting from one foot to the other. He was taking them to the hotel, he said, because the Farfar and Farmor had come from Trondheim to share in the festivities and were staying at the house.

  Katherine would never forget the look on Justin’s face, the paleness as though the rebuff had been a blow, for it slowly changed to a flush. She felt anger and pain for herself, but outrage for her husband.

  ‘Let’s go back to Paris,’ he whispered in French.

  ‘No. We have to see it through.’

  What had it all been about? It was a major anniversary for Katherine and Justin, not Julie and Eric. Wouldn’t it have been more natural for Eric’s parents to have been put in the hotel?

  When they saw Julie she was all spontaneous effusion, kissing them, welcoming them, assuming that of course they understood. What were they to understand? Eric, beaming as usual, explained that his parents were not used to hotels and would be less shy if they stayed in their usual place in the guest room. And they were used to the children and all their noisiness, and he was sure Katherine and Justin would prefer the peace and quiet of the hotel; they would, wouldn’t they?

  There was only hurt in the explanation, no comfort. Julie gave a big dinner party the next night in Katherine and Justin’s honor, but they still felt as though she and Eric had rejected them.

  Eric had been behind it, rather than Julie. But Julie had not seen what Eric was doing, had not understood the pain it caused, and this lack of awareness on her part was added pain.

  That’s past. Long past. It doesn’t even hurt any more. Not terribly.

  She heard the postman in the vestibule, and went out to get the mail. Some fan mail. Something that looked like a greeting card. Catalogues which made pleasant browsing when she was too tired to read. A note from Nils saying that his novel had been accepted enthusiastically by his publishers, but that he had to cut three hundred pages from the eleven hundred. He was furious. A long letter in Juliana’s round, careful handwriting; it was full of news of the farm; Katherine would save it to read carefully at bedtime. A note from Julie, businesslike, dutiful. Perhaps she should phone Julie, rather than writing, but her daughter was not likely to be in until after five, Norwegian time. She opened the rather bulky greeting-card envelope. In it was a get-well card. How odd. She looked at it curiously. It still felt bulky. She opened it, and there, she realized, after a moment of blankness, was a used condum.

  Whoever made the obscene phone calls wasn’t satisfied with the sound of his or her own voice. Instead of being horrified, she was furious. This was filthy, and stupid, and abominable. What shocked her was that if the phone calls were somehow or other linked to the Cathedral, so must this unsigned card and its contents be.

  She put it all in the fireplace, went into the kitchen for a match, and burned it.

  14

  The next morning she woke feeling heavy and headachy. She drank her coffee and played through her early-morning exercises, and the heaviness lifted somewhat. In the kitchen she prepared watercress and cream-cheese sandwiches. It had been arranged that Llew would drive her up to the Cathedral and the Bösendorfer, and she was fixing him a light lunch. It would surely lighten her mood to work over the program, and she was looking forward to the lunch with Llew, who had assured her that he was going to be in the neighborhood anyhow, and it would be no trouble to pick her up.

  Just as all was in readiness and she had turned back to the piano, the doorbell rang, followed by an urgent knock. “Who is it?”

  “Dorcas.”

  Sighing, she opened the door.

  Dorcas said flatly, “Well, he’s done it again.”

  Katherine looked at her questioningly.

  “Been with Ric. I went to have lunch with June—she called and asked me. I didn’t ask her. We had lunch at her apartment. There was a baby in a cradle—so sweet—and another in a high chair, and June was feeding him while we ate. It was all—oh, beautifully domestic. And then, while we were eating homemade oxtail soup, and that was beautifully domestic, too—she told me calmly that Ric has always been what she calls AC-DC.”

  Katherine waited.

  “June said Ric was highly sexed, and she wasn’t particularly, but she was his number-one person, the one he came home to. He’s the father of their children and a good father, she said, and his outside affairs don’t hurt their marriage. And then—oh, God, Madame Vigneras, she said she’d asked me to lunch to talk because she didn’t want Terry getting too serious about Ric. I think she was a little afraid that if Terry got too serious it might threaten her domestic setup, but she said she didn’t want Terry hurt, because he’s a nice guy. Terry hurt? What about me?” Dorcas’s voice, which had been rising as she talked, suddenly broke. “I couldn’t live like June. It isn’t a compromise I could make.”

  Katherine sat down beside the distraught young woman, moving her hand gently over
the long brown hair.

  Dorcas made an effort at self-control. “Maybe I’m too absolute about marriage vows, too old-fashioned. I know this kind of thing isn’t supposed to matter any more—but that’s how I feel.”

  “I tend to be rather absolute myself. Do you know that this is true? Is June possibly a troublemaker? Have you talked to Terry?”

  “No. Should I?”

  “I can’t make your decisions for you, Dorcas, but I’d think you’d want to find out the truth.”

  “And if he admits it? If he wants a setup like June and Ric’s?”

  Katherine rose, remembering Kristen’s words: young people had always come to her, and the grands had not always been pleased—when they knew about it. She was still corresponding with one of Nils’s friends, now married and living in Copenhagen. “You will have to find out what you can and what you cannot live with. If you continue to feel, as you say, absolute about your marriage vows, I think you have grounds for annulment.”

  “Wouldn’t that—annulment—make my baby a bastard?”

  “I don’t think people think in terms of bastards nowadays. You could certainly, in any case, get a divorce.”

  Dorcas shuddered. “I never thought I’d raise my baby alone. But if I have to, I have to.” There was an almost visible steeling of her spine. “Thank you for letting me talk. It does help me to think about it all a little more objectively. Terry makes a good salary. I’m angry enough to want to sue him for the world.”

  “You haven’t talked to him yet,” Katherine cautioned.

  “I suppose that’s only fair. But he’s already given me a bundle of lies. He promised to go with me to a marriage counselor and he broke the appointment. So, I’ll go back to dancing as soon as I can. I’m a good dancer, there’ll be a place for me in the company. But I’ll never be a real prima donna. I’ve had to come to terms with a lot of things while I’ve been pregnant, and that’s one of them. I’ll get solos, I’ll do moderately well, but I don’t have the—the passion for it you have to have if you’re going to be one of the great ones. That wasn’t easy to accept. I’d made up a glamorous picture of myself that just wasn’t real.”