A Live Coal in the Sea Part 18

Mac's feet could be heard coming up the stairs slowly, not his usual leaping up two or three steps at a time. When he stood in the doorway she did not look at him. She could not stop the tears from sliding down her cheeks. Rose is dead, is dead. Mac is going to Korea, to Kenya, to-to England, to Frank. Oh. Father, poor father ...

She felt a fresh surge of anger, whether at her mother once more, even in death, revealing her infidelity, or at Mac for his So? she asked herself. Mac already had the tickets to England, a special rate; he would be penalized if he canceled or put his flight off.

He went down to the kitchen and returned with hot milk and nutmeg in one of the mugs they had saved from the Church House, cracked and stained, but treasured.

He put the "Dumky" Trio on the turntable. Quantum followed him into the room and jumped onto the bed, peering at Camilla anxiously, then beginning to purr.

Again, tears filled her eyes. But that was all right. If she wept he would think it was for Rose, for Rafferty, for the baby. She pressed her knuckles against her lips to try to stop. But she did not speak to him about her feeling of abandonment. She could not bring herself to say, 'Mac, please don't leave me now. I need you.'

'Mother,' Frankie had once said, 'the trouble with you is that you will avoid confrontation at any cost.'

But what good, in most cases, would confrontation dot It would only exacerbate what was already pain and anger. Would Mac have stayed if she had asked him?

Olivia arrived the next afternoon. Mac had packed quietly, taking his clothes out of the closet, out of drawers, down Madeleine L'Engle160 to his study, leaving quietly as soon as he had kissed his mother goodbye.

Camilla went downstairs and sat in the rocking chair in the kitchen, a chair which had been given them by the ladies of the Altar Guild. She had made chicken salad, sliced some tomatoes and sweet onions with basil. That would be plenty for dinner for herself and Olivia.

Olivia perched on one of the kitchen stools. 'How are you, dearest child?'

'Okay.'

'Baby still kicking away?' 'Yes.'

'Does that help?' 'Yes.'

Olivia hooked her little feet, in of the rungs of the stool. She speak, then closed it, finally asked, helping?'

'Yes, and thank you, Mama. The bedroom steamy jungle without it.!

'When Mac returns-' Olivia started.

Camilla looked directly at Olivia, elegant in a grey skirt and grey silk blouse, a cameo at her neck, elegant and beloved. 'You told me it would happen again, Mac's leaving.'

'The sins of the fathers. I don't know. Mac's a grown man. We can't 2 'No.

'In the past we have found it best not to do anything. Or perhaps we are afraid to do anything, to say no, Mac, not now, you can't go off and leave your wife now.' Then she looked at Camilla. 'Did you ask Mac to stay?'

Camilla shook her head.

Olivia sighed. 'It's hard for us to overturn our background. I, too, was brought up not to ask. It's almost impossible to unlearn.'

Camilla sat back in the rocking chair, closed her eyes, one.grey suede pumps, on opened her mouth to 'Is the air conditioner would be a A Live Coal in the Sea161then opened them, questioning. 'Mama, will he come back? This is not Kenya.

He won't go and then stay away for a year Olivia slid down from the high stool. 'He's going to Frank. Therefore I know he will come back.' She went to the fridge and opened the door. 'Let's eat upstairs in the bedroom where it's at least ten degrees cooler.'

Rafferty called while they were eating in the bedroom, taking advantage of the air conditioner. The atmosphere outside was thick, with a low growling in the background. Some where a storm was brewing. With the change of time it must have been midnight or after in Paris.

'I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do,' Rafferty kept saying.

'The baby-is the baby going to,be all right?V 'He'll live. They gave him a blood transfusion and he's going to make it.

What on earth am I going to do with him? What on earth?'

Olivia had gone downstairs to the phone in the study. 'Right now, Rafferty, you need some sleep.' 'Rose-Rose-the funeral-2 'What about it, Father?' Camilla asked gently.

'There's a little church not far from-one night she said that if anything happened she wanted to be buried there. I thought she was just being morbid.

I.

spoke to the priest-we're not Catholics-he wasn't sure-2 'Father,' Camilla said despairingly, 'I don't want you to have to go through this alone.' She had called her doctor, who had said, 'Do you wish to lose your baby in Paris? I'm sorry, Camilla, I can guess how you're feeling, but I don't want you farther from the hospital than the university.'

Olivia spoke with quiet authority. 'Rafferty, Art, my husband, will be with you.

We have discussed this, and he will fly Madeleine L'Engle162 to Paris tomorrow. Camilla can't come, you know that, but you will not be alone.'

'I'll be most grateful,' Camilla heard her father saying. Again, tears rushed to her eyes, this time tears of awe at what Art and Olivia were offering.

Art and Olivia. Mama and Papa. "They were there all the difference."

Raffi's boots were kicked under the sofa. She sat crosslegged, as Mac had so often sat. Scratched her foot through her heavy green sock. "It's a crazy story, Grandmother."

"As your father remarked, it out-soap-operas his show." -And I haven't told you all, and won't.

Raffi pulled off her sock and inspected her foot. "I need to cut my toenails.

Oh, Grandmother, why didn't I know all this long ago?"

"Perhaps the timing wasn't-" Camilla broke off. "I don't know, Raffi."

"I can't imagine it," Raffi said. "I mean, I can't imagine me being pregnant, and Mom being pregnant, too." She pulled off her other sock. "My poor dad.

What a way to get born."

for me," Camilla told Raffi. "They made What a way.

Even in the midst of it Camilla balked at the irrationality of the situation.She wanted Mac.

Olivia brought Camilla a cup of tea. Camilla leaned up on one elbow to take the cup. 'It's so wonderful of Papa to do this, to go be with my father.'

'Not wonderful at all,' Olivia said. 'Necessary. Rafferty A Live Coal in the Sea163 should not be alone. He is in no condition to make decisions by himself. He needs someone to be there for him. To listen. To care.'

'He's got to be angry.'

'Anger and grief and confusion all mixed together. Yes. Drink your tea, sweetheart. I don't want you getting dehydrated.'

The air conditioner buzzed steadily, fighting the heat. There was too much to absorb. Rose's death. The baby who was not Rafferty's. Rose, Camilla felt occasionally, was within tele phoning distance. Mac was not. Upside down.

Everything was once again upside down.

The phone rang. Rafferty and the bishop calling. Rafferty sounded a little more in control. 'Art found another church, not far. The priest was kind. It will all be quiet and dignified. She would have liked more of a splash, but-this is the best we can do.'

The bishop asked, 'How are my girls? Camilla?' 'I'm fine. Mama is being wonderful.'

'We're about to turn in for the night.' 'The baby. What about the baby?'

The bishop said, 'There'll be time to talk about all that later. Now let me say good night to Olivia.'

At bedtime Olivia came into Camilla's room, stood looking around' as though seeing for the first time the crisp white curtains at the windows, the pale lemon-yellow walls, the polished hardwood floor, the big bra.s.s bed. 'My dear-2 'What is it, Mama?'

'May I sit down?' Without waiting for an answer Olivia sat on the side of the bed. 'The night after Art's consecration-' Camilla looked at Olivia's drawn face. Olivia had started to tell her something that night, and had stopped.

'My son has hurt you,' Olivia stated.

'You told me he would-would leave-,sometimes-' Camilla faltered.

Madeleine L'Engle164 'Even though he is my son, even though I know-' 'Know what, Mama4V 'That night at the beach I left off in the middle, didn't Il And I decided that since Mac had come back from his walk and interrupted us, perhaps I never had to go any further. But now I think I must, for two reasons. One, to help you understand Mae. That alone would not make me break silence. The other-oh, Camilla, there has been gossip raising its ugly head and I do not want you to hear a garbled version from some troublemaker. Better you hear it from me.'

Camilla waited. Afraid.

'I told you about Art, what his father did to him. It was not a secret between us. All I wanted was to protect Art, to keep him from suffering that way ever again. We can't do that, you know, can't keep those we love from suffering, doing wrong, terrible wrong.' Olivia's breathing was shallow. She wore a pale lavender dressing gown and the lace at her throat quivered with her breaths.

But she continued. 'Art is a handsome older man, but as a young man he was beautiful, like one of those Greek statues. His congregation thought of him as their beautiful young priest, though he was thirty when we were married, and had been a.s.sistant at two other churches. But he was beautiful and, in a strange way, innocent. Perhaps I was innocent, too. It was a long time ago. I've forgotten. Almost forgotten that early happiness.' She sighed, a long, tremulous letting-out of breath. 'We moved to Nashville, our first uprooting. But the church was vibrant, and Art inherited a fine music program. We all loved music, Mac, too, even as a little boy, and he often slipped into the back of the church when the organist was practicing, or during choir rehearsal.'

Camilla once more put her hands protectively over her belly, as though to keep the baby within from being hurt by anything Olivia might have to say.

Olivia continued, 'Oh, G.o.d, this is hard. Before Art's consecration there was a rumble, quickly squashed, but I had A Live Coal in the Sea,165 prayed the past would not come up to smear the present. And now, once again-'

Olivia's voice was low, but clear. 'The year that Mac was eight he came home from school one day and went into the church to do his homework in case there might be music. He saw-' She stopped. Put her face in her hands. Dropped her hands to her lap. 'He saw his father and the organist, sodomizing.' She put her hand to her mouth. Put it down. 'Art was bent over, with the organist mounting him. I'm sorry to put it in such an ugly way, but that's what it was. Mac fled.

T.J. Jensen was already his best friend. He fled to T.J.'s house. When he was not home for the evening meal we had no idea where he was. He always let us know if he was going to be late. Art did not know what Mac had seen. He had no idea.'

-No, Camilla thought. -No. Not Papa. No.

Olivia continued. 'We were ready to call the police when it occurred to me Mac might be at T.J.'s. They didn't have a phone, so I got in the car and went over.

Mac would not speak to me. He lay on T.J.'s bed in fetal position and would not move, and I knew something terrible had happened, but I had no idea what.

Finally I went back for Art. When Mac saw his father he screamed. And Art guessed. And told me.

'We couldn't get Mac to come home. The doctor came. Said Mac had suffered some kind of psychic shock and it was best to leave him where he was unless we wanted him straitjacketed and taken to the hospital. So we went home.'

Tears were running down Olivia's cheeks. Camilla was blinded by shock. She looked at Olivia, but she did not see her. 'The organist,' Olivia resumed, 'I do not want to mention his name. We will not be free while he is on this earth, with his resentment, his jealousy of Art. He went to the bishop and accused Art of seducing him. He turned what had happened around, to save his own skin.'

Upside down. Upside down. Not Art.

'I believed Art then and I believe him now that it was a Madeleine L'Engle,166 A Live Coal in the Sea167 s.e.xual, that he had been living with a friend since they were in college.

"What you are angry about," he told me, "is not the fact of h.o.m.os.e.xuality, but people using other people for their own purposes. What Mac saw was not an act of love but an act of abuse, and abuse stretches across all s.e.xuality." I must have looked as though I were about to faint, because he handed me a gla.s.s of water.

'Finally I whispered, "How did you know?"

'We live in a very small world, he said, and Mac's behavior in school had made him wonder. It took a while and some general questioning for him to put two and'two together, and I know that he didn't tell me everything. There was compa.s.sion in his voice, and no trace of fear for the consequences to himself. I found myself talking, telling him what he had only guessed. Promising silence.

'He reached across his desk to me, and took my hands. He told me that people make mistakes, but are not bound by them. He told me that Art and I would love each other more, not less. I sat there and wept because I thought I had lost Art forever, that he might as well be dead. Young Edward handed me his handkerchief, a clean linen square, and quoted to me something written around fourteen hundred, by William Langland.' Olivia closed her eyes, remembering, reciting.

"'But all the wickedness in the world which man may do or think is no more to the mercy of G.o.d than a live coal dropped in the sea."'

Camilla shuddered. Mercy? If she accepted mercy for Olivia and Art, for Mac, she had to accept it for herself, for Rose, for whoever had fathered the baby.

'Finally'-Olivia's voice was so low it was barely audible---:'we all began to heal. I continued to see Edward, the young teacher. We trusted each other. I fed him back the psychiatrist's words. He was a chilly man, and he held a chilly future out to me. Edward laughed heartily, and said that he did not believe in a deterministic universe. "I listen to your throwback to his father. He simply did not defend himself. That is a fact, not an excuse. Who the bishop believed I do not know, but he did not believe in airing the Church's dirty linen in public. He went, himself, to the Jensens.

I.

don't know what he said, but Mac came home. We went to a psychiatrist, all of us. But terrible damage was done. It was the beginning of Mac's retreating whenever anything was too much for him. Art and I went to the psychiatrist together, and then I went to another one as well because I was torn apart with anger. He told me that many children who have been s.e.xually abused become h.o.m.os.e.xual later. He was not helpful to me.' Her small smile was wry.

'Mama-' Camilla breathed.

Olivia nodded slightly. 'Psychiatrists are only people with a little more training than the rest of us. They are not G.o.d. The poor man simply added to my confusion. I walked through life like a ghost, reminding myself of my father.

One evening Mac's third-grade teacher called me, said, diffidently, that he might be out of line but he would like to talk to me about my son. I had not closed myself off from help. I agreed to meet him after school the next day.

Went to his empty cla.s.sroom. He was a slight young man with a pleasant smile.

'He had a reputation for being the best third-grade teacher around, Edward Osler, and I was delighted when Mac was placed in his cla.s.s. He pulled up a chair for me, then sat at his desk and looked at me, a long, thoughtful gaze.I just sat, hard as rock. Finally he said, "I love the kids I teach. Mac is one of the brightest and best." I asked him if something was wrong that he had asked to see me, and he shook his head impatiently, then told me that he was putting himself in a position where he could lose his job if our conversation ever was made public. I was in such a dark place that there was no way I could promise confidentiality until I knew what he was going to say. He would have had every right to terminate the conversation, then and there. He told me that he was h.o.m.o Madeleine L'Engle-168 husband preach every Sunday," he said. "I take from his hands the body and blood of the Lord. Artaxias Xanthakos is a man of love, not self-indulgence or abuse.

You are the one he loves, as Matthew is the one I love. It takes love to recognize love." I asked him, "Have you ever thought of becoming a priest?"

He laughed, and said no, he was a teacher, that was his vocation. He and the love he gave me were so great that they thawed the ice in which I had encased myself.

I turned, at last, to Art for love. At first I could barely endure it. Then, at last, it became once again a joy. I was able to be a wife. A mother.'

Olivia smiled, a small uplift of the lips. 'When Mac knew once more that I loved Art, that Art loved me, he, too, healed. Slowly. We invited Edward and his Matthew to dinner, and they began to come a couple of times a month. Edward told Mac about the tree house he had built, and the next week Mac and T.J. began building theirs. Edward taught him to pitch a baseball with an almost unhittable curve. Mac very seldom came into the church and we made no issue of it. All that mattered was that we became a family again, through G.o.d's inestimable mercy.'

'Oh, Mama-' Camilla reached out to Olivia and the two women held each other.

'You talk about anger, dearest. I know all about anger. I know that it cannot be avoided, that it has to be moved through. You will move through yours because you have a loving heart. You may not understand, because there are things we never understand completely, but you will not stay in anger.'

For the moment Camilla was beyond anger.

Olivia said, 'I have prayed and prayed about whether or not I should tell you this. But the gossip, the ugly hint which came from the organist, who is far, far away in another state, at a large cathedral ... He left shortly after he and Art-I do not think I could have stood it if he had stayed. But while he is alive there is no peace. The slander was squashed, but then A Live Coal in the Sea 169.

Mac's leaving you, abandoning you at such a time--I felt you had a right to know. For mercy's sake.'

The next evening Olivia and Camilla sat at the battered table under the pine tree to eat supper. For a while, neither of them spoke. Finally, Olivia said, 'You've seen Art and me together. You know that we love each other.''Yes.'

'Young Edward Osler was right. Our love became deeper and richer than it had been before. Art forgave me, as I forgave him. It took Mac longer to forgive us, and I knew that I did not deserve forgiveness.!

'Oh, Mama,' Camilla said, 'if we had to deserve it-'