The Summer of the Great-Grandmother

by Madeleine L'engle

  Father went without Mother, but with another newspaperman with whom he often worked somewhere deep into South America to do a story on a newly discovered tribe of Indians who had escaped both persecution and influence by the Spanish conquistadors. The two men returned to New York with a number of artifacts, and some jewelry for their wives, including, for the other wife, Mrs. J., some Indian prayer beads, which consisted of a series of silver beads interspersed at regular intervals by red beads, from which hung, on slender silver chains, curved silver moons.

  The two men were sent, later, to Cairo to do a story, and took their wives. In the evening they fell into the habit of wandering slowly through the Casbah, to take advantage of the cooler air. Today’s youthful world wanderers are no more adventurous than my parents and their friends; the Casbah has never been a particularly safe place for a white non-Moslem.

  They found a small coffee house which became their regular stopping place. There they would sit and talk and sip the strong, sweet native coffee. One evening Mrs. J. wore her South American prayer beads, and the proprietor of the coffee shop looked at them in great surprise, and said, “I have some beads just like those.”

  “That’s not possible,” Mr. J. said. “These come from deep in the South American jungle, and they are religious beads.”

  The proprietor went into the darkness of his tiny shop and returned with a sandalwood box. He opened it and gently withdrew from a bed of pale blue cotton a necklace of silver beads interspersed by red beads, from which hung, on slender silver chains, curved silver moons. The only difference between the Arab’s necklace and the South American one was that the Arab’s necklace had a phallic symbol at the bottom, from which hung silver moons.

  My mother wanted it. She wanted it badly. But the shopkeeper was horrified. No, no, it wasn’t for sale. It belonged in his family. It, too, was for prayer, to be used with the Koran.

  Mother still wanted it and asked to see it every evening. Every evening the proprietor would bring it out and dangle it in front of her, then return it to the bed of pale blue cotton. One evening he let them know that perhaps, after all, he would be willing to sell it, but at an outrageously high price. Father countered with an outrageously low one. Each evening the shopkeeper would come down slightly, and Father would eke up. It soon became apparent that they would have to stay in Cairo indefinitely if the two prices were ever to meet in the middle, and the time of their departure was not far off.

  The Arab suggested that they play dice for it.

  Father agreed. He won.

  Mother gave me the necklace while I was still in college because it is heavy, and it burdened her to wear it. I love it dearly, for all kinds of iconic reasons. That Indians in the South American jungle and highly civilized Arabs should produce an almost identical piece of religious jewelry is a beautiful and exciting thing to me. To use beads with a prayer, Indian or Moslem or Christian, is to enflesh the words, make thought tangible. Unless misused, it is not in the realm of superstition but is an affirmation of creation, of all matter, of ousia. I treasure the necklace on all counts. At the moment it is in Tallis’s office, waiting to be restrung, and I miss it.

  Would Mother remember it, this summer, and the adventure of getting it? I doubt it. How do I reconcile this sedentary old woman with the mother I never knew? someone who rode donkeys across dangerous mountain passes? who could control a balky camel? who watched from a Moslem harem while Father was with the men during a religious ceremony, watched the fervor which set people to walk, unburned, over hot coals, or to lie comfortably on beds of up-pointed nails? A large nail was driven with a hammer completely through a worshipper’s skull, but so sophisticated were these religious frenzies that the nail was driven into the head in a way that did not damage the brain. Even knowing that, Mother fainted.

  This pre-Madeleine Madeleine is also my mother, and one I have slowly come to know as she has told me about herself.

  Her sharing of herself has helped to make me who I am, and yet I have been free to respond to her stories or not to respond; to be fascinated or to be bored. I owe her an enormous debt of gratitude for all the good things she has taught me, for standards to live by, for criteria learned in childhood which are helping me to live through this summer, which is rushing by, no matter how much separate days may sometimes drag.

  I do not know what we will do when we reach summer’s end.

  IV

  Summer’s End

  1

  A year or so ago I wrote in my journal, “Only death will give me back my mother.”

  But I cannot say, “O komm, süsser Tod.” Death is not sweet. I want death for my mother, and this is bitter.

  But there are sweet and lovely things, too: this is the summer of the great-grandmother, but it is also the summer of two important weddings; the first, Maria and Peter’s; tomorrow, Theron and Joan’s. Theron, my agent, my little brother: I am full of happiness for and with him. Another happiness is that this is the first wedding ceremony for Alan to perform. He has officiated at several funerals in England, but this is the first wedding.

  We’ve assembled all the retinue possible for Great-grandmother and the babies, so the exodus—for less than twenty-four hours—won’t be too hard on them. Bion and the girls reassure us that everything is all right, they can take care of everything, Grandmother and the babies will be fine, everything is under control.

  Jo and Alan leave for New York right after lunch; they’ll spend some time trying to get their apartment ready for winter; their furniture is to arrive from England imminently. In the evening they are to go to Theron and Joan’s for a wedding rehearsal and dinner. Hugh and I are having dinner at Anton’s, with Tallis and some other friends.

  We leave about three-thirty, taking Cynthia with us. She’s going to Rhode Island with her parents in a few days, and we will miss her in the Crosswicks household. On the drive to New York we talk about the future. I have a sense of hollowness in the pit of my stomach. It is obvious that Mother is not physically capable of making the trip back South. All the girls on the retinue will be returning to school or college after Labor Day. Clara, we know, would be willing to help, but she cannot carry the burden alone. Can we get enough other people who will be gentle with Mother? I will have to move back to New York with Hugh in September, when he will no longer be able to spend several days a week in Crosswicks. And the Cathedral Library must be opened. It runs more or less on the academic year, and I am free to be in Crosswicks all summer, but if I am not in the library it is closed, and I cannot leave it untended indefinitely. Can we get enough of a retinue so that Mother can stay in Crosswicks, and come up each weekend ourselves?

  We talk, reluctantly, about the possible inevitability of a “home,” despite my promise, but we reach no conclusions. It has not yet quite come to that.

  We get to New York just in time for me to change quickly to a long dress, and then we go immediately to Anton’s. After greeting our friends I say, “I want to call home, please, and see if everything’s all right.”

  “Of course it’s all right,” Hugh says, a little impatiently. “Relax.”

  But the feeling that I must call is very strong. Finally he says, “Go ahead, then.” I know he thinks I’m foolish not to take a complete break from the Crosswicks household and the summer’s burdens, but I go into the bedroom and call, collect. Vicki answers, accepts the call, and instead of chatting, immediately gets Bion.

  I say, “Hello, Beau, it’s Mum. How’s everything?”

  He says, “Grandmother died.”

  “What?”

  “Grandmother died, about four this afternoon.”

  Vicki and Margie were taking her for her walk, with Léna encouraging them. As usual, the old woman balked, said, “I can’t,” and slumped several times, and they let her sit on the grass and rest, with Léna urging, “Come on, Gracchi, get up, you can do it.”

  Yesterday and the day before, she walked rather better than usual, but this negative behavior has bee
n regular all summer. When the girls got her to the door they said, “You mustn’t fall now, Grandmother, or you’ll hurt yourself.”

  She went in through the screen door with them, said, “I can’t go any farther,” and dropped in their arms. Not really concerned yet, they called for Bion, and he carried her into her bedroom. While she was still in his arms her breathing faded out and stopped. Later he told us, “Grandmother was alive, and then she was dead. I’m not sure how I knew. I just knew.” There was none of the pain she had feared.

  Bion put her down on the bed. He was sure she was dead, but he listened for heartbeat and pulse and could find neither. He asked one of the girls to get a hand mirror, to test for breath, and there was none: it was King Lear and Cordelia, rather in reverse. They called for Dr. John and the volunteer fire department, which has the ambulance. As always in a tiny village, news travels quickly, and Quinn, the Congregational minister, came over.

  It is selfish of me to want to have been there, and the main thing which has taken away that want is the reports of Bion’s quiet strength. Margie said, “I was flustered and panicky at first, but Bion was so steady and cool that he calmed me down.”

  For my sake, I wish I had not been on the highway when my mother died. But if I had been at home, Bion would not have had this chance to make a leap in growth. I am proud of my son, and, indeed, of all of Great-grandmother’s retinue.

  It seemed somehow right that the phone call should have been made from Anton’s. Hugh went into the living room and told everybody what had happened, and when I returned, arms were open for me. I said, from the heart, “I am only grateful.”

  Tallis probed, “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, I am sure. All I feel is gratitude and joy. I’m going to grieve, and I’m going to cry eventually, but it will be right and proper grief.”

  Then began the phone calls, the first of what seemed to be, during the next forty-eight hours, hundreds of phone calls. We were able to reach Josephine and Alan at Joan’s; Alan got on the phone and I told him. He said, “Jo will want to be with you now. I’ll bring her right over.” I said, “Can she drive me back up to Crosswicks? It will mean that she’ll miss the wedding, but we must get back tonight.” It didn’t make sense for Hugh to drive me up, and turn around in the morning and drive back again; rehearsal in the afternoon, tapes and rehearsal Friday, and then Monday through Friday, his heaviest schedule all summer. Alan, of course, must stay for the wedding.

  He brings Josephine uptown to Anton’s. I knew from the brief talk with Bion that the girls had all rallied round him. Not only were Vicki and Margie there, but Janet came over immediately, and then Jane drove the thirty miles between the two homes. I knew that he was surrounded by four loving females, our neighbors were there, ready to help, and the right thing to do at the moment was for Josephine and me to stay and have dinner at Anton’s, and then leave for Crosswicks.

  Tallis had been planning to drive up the next day with a friend for lunch; this of course would have to be canceled, but he said immediately that he’d come up and do some kind of service, “but I don’t believe in repeating the funeral service”—which would be in the South.

  I asked, “Would you do a Requiem? There won’t be one in Mother’s church, and it would make me very happy if you’d do one for her and everybody who took care of her.”

  That seemed to him, too, to be totally right. Anton asked him, “How are you getting up to Crosswicks?”

  And I said, “Anton, would you like to drive him up and be with us?”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Anton is one of the best cooks I know, but I have no idea what we had for dinner that night. Tallis called a car to come pick Josephine and me up and take us to the Cathedral Close, where we park our car.

  When Josephine and I are delivered at the Cathedral, we see lights in the Chase apartment, so we run up to tell the Chases what has happened, and Cynthia immediately decides to drive right back up with us and stay as long as she is needed.

  We get home a little after midnight. There had been many neighbors and friends dropping by to offer help. The girls are all spending the night. “We don’t want to go home tonight,” Vicki says. “We want to stay here.” So we light a fire and sit together and talk and try to unwind. Léna, disturbed by all the noise and confusion, wakes up and comes downstairs to us. I go out to the Tower to get my night things, for I will move, this night, back to Hugh’s and my four-poster. Léna follows me. She points to the couch under the eaves and says, “You won’t be needing this any more.”

  I am taken aback at this example of the perceptivity of a child, a perceptivity which frequently gets blunted as we grow older. Léna, just a month beyond three years, is still responding with the whole of herself, for that spontaneous remark is quicker than reason.

  We go back to the living room. Bion looks white and tired, but his expression is relaxed and calm. The only outward sign of how much this death has affected him is that he wants to have the three dogs up in his attic bedroom at night.

  He had said on the phone, when I called from Anton’s, “Dr. John was practically ecstatic.” A lovely thing about all the kids is that they accept Dr. John’s relief at Mother’s death. No one has a sense of guilt about anything; they all know that they have taken good care of her; they all feel that it was right and proper that her last days should have been with her family in the house she has always loved; they all feel that it was right and proper that she should have died at home, in Bion’s arms, and they all feel a sense of accomplishment at having shared in this kind of death which is becoming increasingly rare in our day. So here again I am glad that I was not there: my involvement would have taken away from theirs.

  I spend the next two days, it seems, on the phone. I call Dr. John to thank him for everything. There are many people to thank, and many people to be told of this death, which, when it finally came, was unexpected. The phone rings, too; there are calls from all over the country. One friend says, “She was a very great lady. We won’t see her like again.” I hear similar comments from many people, and from almost everyone: “I’ll miss her.” Occasionally I find that it is I who must do the consoling. I say to one Southern cousin who loved her, and who used to telephone her every day when she was in Jacksonville, “It’s all right, Eddie. It’s all right.”

  I phone one of Mrs. O’s daughters, and she immediately says that she will call her mother and have her call me, which is a wise decision. When Mrs. O gets on the phone she is in charge, and telling me what to do, just as she has done all my life.

  Right after lunch Bion drives Josephine and me down to the funeral home. While we are gone, the rented hospital bed is taken away, and this is the one thing which really upsets the little girls, who cry, “That’s Gracchi’s bed! You can’t take Gracchi’s bed!”

  The time in the funeral home is the sour note, and the “home” we go to is one of the best, one of the least smarmy. I do not mind giving all the necessary information for the forms, or making arrangements for flying Mother’s body down South; the bad thing is choosing a coffin. I know that I will have to choose a “nice” one, because this is what the family expects, pall or no. But even if I were free to choose a plain, unlined pine box, the undertakers’ lobby has managed to have them outlawed, in this state, at least.

  The coffins are all expensive and horrible, lined with cozy quilted satins and silks in various pastel colors as though the dead body were going to feel the pillow and the padding. We very quickly choose the simplest.

  It is all very different from what I would have wanted if I could have had my wishes. It is not my mother, this dead shell, but it housed her for ninety years, and I would honor and weep for it before turning it back to the earth. I have not yet been able to cry, and I know that the tears need to come.

  The next day Tallis comes up with Anton for the Requiem. I make an arbitrary decision to limit it just to the people who have helped take care of the great-grandmother, for many cousins, dearly loved c
ousins, want to come up to Crosswicks if there is going to be a service, because they can’t go all the way down South. I make this decision in the state of non-feeling in which I am moving these days, so I’m not sure if it’s the right thing, but probably my instinctive no is correct. Tallis would not want it to be a big affair and the immediate Crosswicks group is all that the living room will hold.

  Maria and Peter come right up from Philadelphia, and with the girls and the neighbors who have done so much for us and for Grandmother this summer, we are about twenty. That’s enough for a house mass in the living room that Mother loved.

  This time out of time in the absolute familiarity of the living room is healing and redemptive for me. Tallis uses a chalice which he designed, setting it with stones which had belonged to his mother; this is the first time he has used it. He has us all sit around the living room as we usually do for our home services when there are too many of us for the Tower. And there in the living room is, for me, the Church, an eclectic group, Congregational, Roman Catholic, Jewish, agnostic, Anglican, atheist. The dogs and the babies wander around. Jo and I sit on the little sofa which Mother bought, and where she always sat. The only additions to the Prayer Book service are from the Orthodox liturgy: stark; terrible; glorious.