A Winter's Love

by L'Engle, Madeleine;

  Madame Berigot smiled at her as she always did; no matter how depressing the day, no matter how many things had gone wrong, she could always count on warmth and friendliness from Madame Berigot.

  “Madame looks well,” the older woman said to Emily.

  Emily fished in her pocket for change and put it on the counter. “Thank you.”

  “All of a sudden,” Madame Berigot said, “so much younger. Before this I have not realized that Madame is beautiful.”

  Emily blushed. “Why, thank you!”

  Madame Berigot looked across the counter and laughed. “Is it all because of Mademoiselle Virginia and her friend being home for the holidays?”

  “We have a lot of fun together,” Emily said, grateful that she was already blushing.

  “They are splendid children,” Madame Berigot told her. The bell on the door tinkled and a customer came in.

  “Good night,” Emily said, and hurried out.

  It was just a joke with Madame Berigot, meant to make her laugh. The feeling of deceit was her own entirely.

  She walked slowly along the street towards the Splendide, waiting for her flushed cheeks to cool off, looking in the shop windows at the holiday cakes and at jewelry and skiing equipment and post cards. In the shop next to the casino was the dress Abe had said he wanted to buy for her, the Renaissance princess’ dress, and she stood looking at it. From the skating rink came the music of the loudspeaker, blown through the night air of the streets faint and clear, C’est l’eternel et doux songe qui sonne aux heures d’amour.…

  It was almost time to go meet Abe and simply by going to him, walking blindly through the snow without an answer, she was by indirection giving him an answer. Either she ended it or she didn’t, and indefiniteness was not ending it. It was saying at least maybe, and this time there could be no such thing as a maybe. If she went to the Splendide, to Abe, it meant the end of her life with Courtney.

  She stood there in the middle of the icy street, not moving, not seeing the people who walked by her, hurrying to keep warm, going in and out of the shops, several turning to stare at her as she stood there, sightless, motionless.

  This was the time. The answer must be made now. The two worlds had to meet and she was free to stay in Courtney’s or to move forward into Abe’s. But if she moved into Abe’s world it must now be a world of reality; she had to step out of the dream world in which she had lived with Abe and into the waking world in which the future must be spent.

  A large woman, coming out of the boulangerie, her arms full, bumped into Emily, and this jolting started her walking slowly down the street, but still she did not see where she was moving. She was shivering violently, and automatically her step quickened, but she did not realize that she was cold. She wanted most horribly to cry, she who had cried more in the last few days than in the rest of her life put together.

  For suddenly she realized that there was no decision to be made. Once the dream was over, once the eyes opened to the daylight, there was no choice except to leave the world of the dream. In the dream it was possible to imagine a life with Abe and without Courtney, but once she was awake she had to accept the fact that it was a dream. It did not mean that her love for Abe had not been—was not—real; it was simply that the world in which this love could continue to flower was not real, and the world of Courtney and the children was, and that was the world where she must stay.

  Now she saw the street around her again and she realized that she had walked past the casino. She turned around and stood looking at the door for a moment, at a man walking out, at two women smiling over-brightly at him as they went in. She was still shivering but her cheeks were burning hot and she felt that she had reached the turning point in an acute illness.

  Plunging her gloved hands deeper into her pockets she continued to walk away from the casino.

  There was something terribly wrong with the day and Virginia did not know what it was, a precariousness, a darkness to the approaching night that had nothing to do with the absence of light. It was going to storm tomorrow, everybody said so, and it must be this, the tension presaging the storm, that made her move restlessly through the villa, up the stairs, up into the cold of the bedrooms, into her parents’ room, to turn around slowly as though looking for them, though she knew that they were not there, her mother out, her father in his study, then to stand, her elbows on the marred surface of the wood (for it was undoubtedly something become too shabby to use at the hotel), her chin on her fists, staring at the pictures there. The picture of her mother, first, with Virginia, sullen, scowling, her hair stringing to her shoulders, standing leaning against her mother’s knee, and Alice, golden-curled like Connie, sitting on her mother’s lap, a smiling, enchanting baby, reaching up to stroke her mother’s cheek, while Virginia continued to glare at the photographer. No comfort in that picture, although Emily’s hand rested lovingly on Virginia’s shoulder and her tender smile was equally for both children.

  One of Virginia’s elbows slipped off the edge of the chest, jolting her. Looking around quickly as though she expected to see someone standing in the doorway, a witness to her humiliation, she replaced her elbow gingerly, and focused now on the double frame from which her father stared. On the right-hand side was Courtney sitting in his office in the library building at the university, the desk and floor and bookshelves piled with books, and papers characteristically spilling out of the wastebasket and a cigarette held loosely in his long stained fingers and a half-quirk of a smile on his lips and in the close-set blue eyes; this was the father who was safety and stability and she stood there staring until her eyes refused to focus and the image shifted and doubled and retreated and returned. Then she looked to the left-hand picture, her father because she had been told it was her father, a grinning freckled boy, in white flannel slacks and a sweater, holding a tennis racquet and a silver cup under one arm and an enormous book under the other, and only the book seemed familiar and imaginable.

  Next to the double frame, to Courtney known and unknown, was propped a snapshot of Connie in her high chair in the kitchen in New York with a corner of the stove showing and a saucepan of something cooking on it and beside it some open music with the salt cellar plunked down on one of its pages. No separate picture of Emily, and—What does she look like? Virginia thought, suddenly, wildly—What does my mother look like?

  And she did not know.

  —It’s because I love her. You never know what the people you love look like because you love beyond their looks and you see a different image, more than a camera can catch, more even than a portrait painter, and maybe that’s why some painters paint such awful messes, because they’re trying to paint the insides as well as the outsides, because the outside is such a small part of a thing, and if I could see my mother in my mind’s eye as she is in the picture with Alice and me I wouldn’t be seeing her at all.

  —Oh, mother, oh, daddy, oh, people, oh, world, does anybody ever see anybody whole?

  She fled the room and the pictures with a sense of guilt as though she had been eavesdropping, and around her, still, the air was full of tension, the barometer dropping; she thought—It always does this to people, like something heavy and yet fragile falling from tremendous heights and shattering upon you into thousands of fragments.

  About the villa the wind slapped. Take that. And that. And that.

  Where were the stars?

  She ran to the dark window in her bedroom and peered out into nothingness, the sky clamped down relentlessly, the lights of the hotel somehow pushed further up the mountain.

  She ran around then, turning on lights, thrusting away the darkness, giving warmth—See, I can pull this cord and there is light, it comes!

  She ran downstairs. In the living room all the lights were on and the windows were blind with steam. Mimi and Connie were shrieking with laughter, Mimi on all fours on the floor and Connie riding her.

  “Mimi Opp’s a camel!” Connie shouted, seeing Virginia. “And I’m a wise ma
n riding to the stable with presents for baby Jesus, presents and presents and giddyap and presents and presents and presents and …”

  Virginia moved away from the light and warmth, through the dark narrow hall to her father’s study, past the telephone, a dark shadow hanging on the wall, to the study door, closed and blank.

  There was no line of light corning from under it.

  But where was he? He had not gone out with Emily. That she knew because Madame de Croisenois had come in to see him and then had hurried out without stopping to call goodbye.

  She knocked gently.

  “Daddy.”

  No answer.

  She knocked again.

  “Daddy.”

  She pushed the door open.

  The room was dark and he was sitting at the desk, his head down on his arms. Was he asleep?

  “Daddy.

  “Daddy.”

  He looked up. He looked at her for a moment without seeing her.

  “Get out of here, damn you.”

  He shouted at her. He shouted that.

  She fled.

  Never. Never before. Never like that. It was not just the storm, the barometer falling, the wind flailing, the stars lost, that made the terror in the air.

  She fled to the kitchen.

  She took the back of one of her mother’s marketing lists and tried with trembling fingers to write.—Poetry. Help me. Save me. Poetry. She could not write poetry. Poetry had to write her, she had to open herself to it, and she was closed, closed tighter than a sea animal clamping tight its shell, not a chink open for the poetry to come through.

  She heard the front door slam.

  And no footsteps coming in. She ran to the door and opened it and her father was walking, running, up the path.

  —Why? What has happened?

  Where could she go? What could she do? Where could she run?

  —Get out of here, damn you.

  As though he were shouting those words at her now she shut the front door and ran as though pursued back to the kitchen.

  In the living room Connie shrieked with laughter. Connie. She could give Connie a bath.

  She dragged out the tub, clattering it against the chairs, against the stove. Crash. She splashed in water from the kettle. Put on more water. Stalked into the living room.

  “Connie. Come take your bath.”

  Connie, all blue eyes and golden curls and laughter, still playing with Mimi, “Not yet, Vee. Mimi and I are having fun.”

  “It’s time for your bath.” Virginia’s voice was harsh.

  And Mimi, lazy, casual: “Oh, there’s no rush, Vee.”

  “I’m still taking my presents to the baby Jesus. Now I’m a shepherd and Mimi’s a sheep.”

  “That’s blasphemous. Stop it at once,” Virginia said.

  “Virginia!” Mimi’s voice was sharp.

  “What?”

  “It’s not blasphemous and you know it. What’s the matter with you?”

  “Nothing,” Virginia said, her voice starting to gallop, her lip to tremble. “It’s time for Connie’s bath and I wish her to take it. Emily Conrad Bowen, come here at once. Mimi, will you kindly bring her nightclothes.” Now the tears began spilling out of her eyes and she fled back to the kitchen.

  “Yes, matron, right this minute,” Mimi called after her, but her face was troubled. She turned to Connie. “Run along, Con, we can play some more after your bath.”

  “What’s the matter with Vee? Is Vee cross with me? Was I naughty?”

  “No, daffodil, you weren’t a bit naughty. Something else must be bothering Vee and she’s taking it out on us. You run along to the kitchen, and I’ll get your nightclothes and come protect you from Villainous Virginia in nothing flat.”

  Slowly Connie trailed into the kitchen, where Virginia stood, wiping the back of her hand harshly against her eyes.

  “Get undressed, Connie,” she said. “I’m sorry if I shouted at you. Come on, I’ll take your shoes off. Come on, sit in my lap.”

  “I can get undressed myself,” Connie said.

  “Okay, then get undressed.”

  Mimi came down bearing nightclothes and Virginia poured more water into the tub. “Okay, get in.”

  Connie stepped into the tub and immediately jumped out, starting to scream. “It’s too hot!”

  “All right,” Virginia said. “I’ll put in some more cold water, don’t make such a fuss!” Tears sprang to her eyes again.

  Mimi put her hand in the water. “It’s not so hot, Constantia. Your feet are cold and it just feels hotter than it is.”

  “I’m not Constantia, I’m Emily Conrad,” Connie said, getting in more gingerly as Virginia poured in a pitcher of cold water and then turned to the stove and pretended to be shaking down the coals.

  Mimi went to her and put an arm about her shoulders. “What’s the matter, Vee?” she asked gently.

  “Oh, don’t be nice to me!” Virginia cried, her face contorting with the effort not to cry.

  “Take it easy,” Mimi said. “Something happen?”

  Virginia nodded.

  “Want to talk about it?”

  “Oh, I can’t—I don’t know—I don’t want to cry—”

  “Where’s your mother?”

  “Out somewhere. I don’t know where she is.”

  Mimi looked at the clock. It was after six and nothing had been done about dinner.

  Virginia looked at the clock, too. “Sam hasn’t called you yet. Didn’t he say he was going to call you as soon as he got back from the mountain?”

  “He will.”

  “I’m a seal in Central Park Zoo,” Connie said, and rolled over in the tub with a splash.

  “Connie, please don’t get water all over the floor. And wash yourself.”

  “I want Mimi to wash me. I’m a seal and Mimi’s the zoo-keeper and I want her to wash me and feed me fish.”

  Mimi picked up the soap and cloth and began to scrub Connie. “If we go out with Sam and Beanie tonight I suppose we’ll wear those dratted dinner uniforms again. I’d just as soon wear ski clothes. But you look most passable in the good old black velvet, Vee. Let me help you with your make-up and your hair and borrow your mother’s amber beads again and Beanie’ll be wowed all over again. Clothes oddly enough look well on you. You wear them with a cachet that’s going to stand you in good stead when I’m blousy and middle-aged. I’m the kind who’s going to look reasonably beautiful or like an old witch, but you have a kind of chic that’s far more valuable than beauty. Why do you keep looking at the clock? Haven’t you heard a thing I’ve said?”

  “Yes, Mimi, thank you. Connie, you’re clean enough. Get out of the bath now. Mother apparently has forgotten dinner. So I’ll cook you some eggs.”

  “But I want mama,” Connie said. “I want daddy.”

  “They’re out,” Virginia said, her eyes filling again, “and something seems to have held them up, so we’d better go on and eat.”

  “Your father out, too?” Mimi asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know. He just went out.” She dried Connie roughly.

  “You hurt,” Connie said.

  “I’ve got to get you dry or you’ll catch cold.”

  “Don’t take it out on Connie, Vee,” Mimi said softly.

  “Will you please let me handle it!” Virginia cried.

  “I want mama,” Connie said.

  “She’s not here, Con. She’ll be back soon. Come on, get your pajamas on.”

  “When?”

  “Right now.”

  “I mean when will mama be back?”

  “I don’t know, Con, but I imagine soon.”

  “How soon?”

  “I don’t know, Con. Put your slippers on.”

  Mimi took eggs from the bowl on the window sill. “Might as well eat, don’t you think, so you’ll have plenty of time to get ready?”

  “It doesn’t take me long to get ready,” Virginia said. “Any
how they haven’t called.”

  “They will. And if you want to be a succès fou in the social world, my girl, you’ll have to learn to take longer,” Mimi said. “I’ll just make a quick omelette. Hand me the plates, Vee.”

  “I want awfuls,” Connie demanded.

  “You can’t have awfuls,” Virginia said sharply. “You know perfectly well there isn’t a waffle iron here. Please behave, Con!”

  They did not go into the dining room but sat around the kitchen table, because suddenly even to Mimi the dining room seemed cold and empty without Emily and Courtney.

  “Whatever it is—” Mimi started, but Virginia cut in.

  “Can’t you leave it alone, Mimi! Can’t you ever stop prying into people! You always want to know everything!”

  Mimi stopped abruptly and a strange look came into her face and Virginia saw that she had hurt her.

  “Come on, Constantinople, eat that good dinner,” Mimi said, holding out a forkful to the child. “Have another bite.”

  They heard the front door slam then and Virginia ran wildly out into the hall. Her father stood there and she rushed at him in relief, flinging her arms about him.

  He disentangled her. “Where’s your mother, Virginia?”

  “Mother?” she asked blankly. “Isn’t she with you?”

  He shook his head.

  Her eyes widened again with fear. “You don’t know where she is, daddy?”

  “Would I be asking you if I knew?”

  “She didn’t even start dinner before she went out and it’s late, daddy!” Virginia cried in a high, quivering voice.

  Mimi had come, carrying Connie, out into the hall; shifting Connie easily to one hip, she put a restraining hand on Virginia’s arm.

  “What time did she go out?” Courtney asked.