A Live Coal in the Sea Part 26

'They look very much alike, don't they?' Camilla's eyes followed them in, making sure the screened door was shut. 'My boy-'

'The prettier one, with curly hair-' Harriet looked confused.

Dr. Edith asked, 'What on earth-'

Camilla sat once more on the picnic bench. Her legs felt too fluid to hold her up.

Harriet said, 'We haven't been introduced. I am Harriet Grange. We've come to give Red a chance to see the son he's been denied all these years.'

Dr. Edison said flatly, 'I have no idea what all this is about.'

Grange handed her Rose's letter. She read it slowly, then returned it. Then said, 'Now that you've seen this extraordinary doc.u.ment, now that you've seen the child, you are, of course, going to heed the dead woman's wishes?'

Harriet looked at her left hand with its heavy rings, moved the fingers of her right hand across them.Dr. Edison continued, 'Which are that you do nothing?' Harriet spoke in a low voice. 'Rafferty d.i.c.kinson lives in New Mexico. He has abandoned his child.

He might as well be dead.'

'No!' Camilla's voice rose. She tried to control it. 'He is very much alive.

Please, please. You've seen Taxi, he's well and happy, you can set your minds at rest. Perhaps, later, we could talk about, what do you call them, visitation rights . . .'

Madeleine L'Engle,13,2 Harriet's voice trembled. 'I don't think you realize how difficult this is for us.'

Dr. Edison said, 'I'm sure it is extremely difficult. But now that you've been rea.s.sured that all is well, shouldn't you accede to Rose d.i.c.kinson's last wishes and leave well enough alone?'

Harriet reached again for her handkerchief. 'It's not as easy as that. For me-it seems such an answer to prayer.' 'Mommy! Mommy!' The children's voices rose shrilly. Camilla jumped to her feet. 'They've probably spilled the milk.'

'Let me!' Harriet's voice was eager. 'Let me pour it for them!' She hurried toward the house, her sandals flapping against the stubby gra.s.s. Grange followed her.

Dr. Edison asked Camilla, 'Is this true?'

Camilla nodded. 'Mother's letter-I suppose so. We knew that my father was not Taxi's father, but we didn't know-we didn't want to know-Taxi's so dark, and we thought it was the Frenchman when we thought about it at all.'

'Were you, perhaps, deceiving yourselves?'

'I don't know,' Camilla said. 'We weren't thinking. We were trying to protect Taxi-my father-'

She pulled a quivering breath. 'What are they here for? What do they want?V 'Too much,' Dr. Edison said.

She and Camilla went into the kitchen, where Taxi was refusing to take the gla.s.s of milk Harriet was offering him. 'I want Mommy.'

Grange touched his wife. 'Relax, darling. This is enough for the first day.

Camilla, we'll be back tomorrow to talk further about what's to be arranged.'

Camilla closed her eyes. 'You'll have to give us time. I'll have to talk to my husband about visitation privileges. Please-' Harriet put the untouched gla.s.s of milk on the counter. 'Please, dear Camilla, be realistic. Doesn't Red-'

A Live Coal in the Sea233 Before she could finish the sentence the screened door opened and Mrs. Lee came bursting in, 'Camilla, have you had the radio on? Terrible news! President Kennedy has been shot!'

The country was in mourning for the violent death of a president. But Camilla's world had shrunk again, to the imperative need to protect her little family.

She walked out to the red convertible with Grange and Harriet, said goodbye in what she hoped was a courteous but final way.

Harriet said, 'You've been so gracious, Camilla. I know how difficult our coming must have been for you, especially if you weren't expecting us. We trulythought you knew.'

Grange said, 'This is no time to talk, with this horrible news of Kennedy's a.s.sa.s.sination. We'll be by again tomorrow, to talk further.'

'To talk further about what!' Camilla cried as the convertible vanished dustily down the road.

Dr. Edison looked at the children, who were happily kicking a beach ball back and forth. She said, bluntly, 'They didn't come about visitation rights. They want Taxi.

'No.

'They're trying to be tactful about it, but Harriet was horridly transparent.'

'No. No, Dr. Edith. Then she said, as though to herself, 'Harriet can't have children-' She looked at her watch. 'Mac should be through with his meeting.

I've got to call him.'

'What an appalling story you've had to live with,' Dr. Edison said. 'It was terrible enough, your mother's death, your father's being left alone with his baby- But this-2 'Oh, Dr. Edith'- Camilla walked slowly toward the rectory-'my mother always left a trail of disaster behind her.' When Camilla saw Mac walking along the path that led from the church to the rectory, she ran to him, throwing herself into his arms, blurting out what had happened.

He looked at Dr. Edith, who was walking toward him more slowly. She nodded, then shook her head in sadness. 'You're sure you're not-you're not reading things-'

'No,' Dr. Edison said. 'I'm sorry, Mac. It's possible that I'm overreacting, but I don't think so.'

'They can't mean it.' Mac's voice was harsh.

Dr. Edison said, 'Oh, I think they do. I will certainly testify for you, and so, of course, will Mr. and Mrs. Bishop. I will tell any judge that you are Taxi's parents, and that what Red and Harriet have in mind is criminal.'

'I'll call Jacksonville,' Mac said.

Again the a.s.sa.s.sination was pushed into the background. Olivia's immediate reaction was incredulity. 'No. You must be mistaken.'

Mac said, 'Mama, listen. The letter from Camilla's mother was real. Grange is Taxi's father.'

'You believe that?V 'It's there, in black and white.'

The bishop's voice was heavy. 'We should have foreseen this.'

'Come to us,' Olivia urged. 'You'll be safer here, if this is true.'

Mac, with one foot still in the world, said, 'I can't leave here, Mama, not with the a.s.sa.s.sination . . .'

The bishop said, 'I'll speak with some of my lawyer friends, to see if they have a leg to stand on.'

'Do you want me to come?' Olivia suggested. 'Taxi shouldn't be left with baby-sitters, and Edith can't be there all the time.'

'Please come, Mama,' Mac said, 'for a few days, until we get this settled.'

'I'll call you,' the bishop said, 'when I've talked to the lawyers.'

A Live Coal in the Sea235 'Dr. Edith,' Mac said, 'thank you for being here.'

Dr. Edison said something incomprehensible and rudesounding in Latin, then asked, 'Does anybody else know? That Rafferty isn't Taxi's father?'

'My parents know,' Mac said.

'Did you suspect that it might be Grange?'

Camilla shook her head. 'It seemed better not to know.'

Not to know. Is ignorance ever an excuse?

"I didn't know." Raffi wrapped her arms about herself to control her shuddering.

"I don't think I want to know now." The autumn evening was unusually warm.

Hazy clouds hid the stars.

A group of girls came by the open window, singing an old student song Camilla had first heard when she was in college, and it had been old all those years ago, Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus. They had been immortal then.

Camilla looked at Raffi and suspected that Taxi's intimations had been of mortality when he made his vague suggestions to his daughter. ,Why now? She turned away, body and mind. "The temperature's supposed to drop twenty degrees tonight," she said.

"Grandmother, what you've just told me, about their taking my dad away, it's horrible." She dropped the green socks as though they had suddenly become hot.

Camilla nodded. "Yes, it was horrible. Everybody talked about wanting it to be civilized, but it dragged through the courts."

Swiftly Raffi put her arms around Camilla, holding her tight. "I want you to be my grandmother."

Camilla returned the embrace, a.s.suring, "I am your grandmother. I am Taxi's mother."

"But it's your mother who was my dad's biological mother."

"Yes."

"That makes you my aunt, not my grandmother."

"No. Raffi, that is only a thin and legalistic way of looking at it. Time and experience are the other side of the coin. Mac and I are your grandparents, even if you never knew him. He is Taxi's father."

"Not biologically. And my real grandfather, this Red Grange guy, what a b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"I am beyond judgment," Camilla said. "Surely the real Red Grange, the old football player, would shudder at what has happened in his name. This is enough for tonight, Raffi. I'm sorry. Absorb what I've told you. It's more than enough." Gently she moved away from the girl. The strands of past memories were so closely interwoven that it was impossible to separate them. Why, when in the past Taxi had been so adamant that he was Taxi Xanthakos, did he put questions in Raffi's mind now? Was it the old need to hurt, to punish the universe, out of control again? To punish Red Grange and, failing that, since Red was dead, to punish Camilla, even if he hurt Raffi in so doing? "Raffi, darling, I've hurt you."

"Being surrounded by stuff I can't understand hurts me." "You may never understand it all. I don't. I wish Mac was here.

"You miss him, don't you?"

"Yes."

"He died before I was born. So I can't miss him the way do.""It's fine, Raffi. Missing Mac. I mean. We'd gone through garbage."

"Was there a lot?"

"Plenty. But we'd reached a place of-of mercy. I don't think I can tell you a great deal more until I have more mercy in my heart than I do .at this moment."

"How long is that going to take?"

you our Madeleine L'Engle-236 4 Live Coal in the Sea > >237.

"Not too long. I don't want to leave you with painful questions any longer than I have to. But some of them don't have any answers."

"Okay, Grandmother. Let's put on some music and relax." She pulled a disc from the bottom shelf of the bookcase, and the strains of Dvorak's "Dumky" filled the room. Camilla closed her eyes to hide the tears.

When Raffi left she did not go straight back to her dormitory. She went instead to one of her favorite hiding places, the great greenhouse which during the day was filled with biology and botany students. Now it was empty, sweetsmelling, warm. There was a dry ground cloth on the floor at the back, and she lay down on it, on her side, curled up, too battered by what she was hearing from her grandmother even to cry. She slid into a place beyond thought, a place of dark, silent emptiness. But the strains of Dvorak's piano trio broke across her mind's ear. She pulled her knees up, her head down.

The "Dumky" Trio was one of Taxi's favorite records. Camilla and Mac often played music in the evening to help put the children to sleep, and Taxi would shout out, 'Dumky! Dumky!'

The children, sensing the tension in the air after Mrs. Lee's announcement of President Kennedy's death, were slow to quiet down that evening, after Grange and Harriet left, muted by the news. The phone kept ringing, with people wanting to talk about a service for the President. In between calls, Camilla and Mac talked again to Mama and Papa in Jacksonville, seeking some kind of reason within the irrationality which surrounded them.

Frankie called for Hansel and Gretel, and Taxi shouted over her, 'Dumky!' It took both records before the children Madeleine L'Engle.138 were at last asleep. Camilla went down to the kitchen and saw Noelle's unopened letter on the table. She opened it and read: Oh, G.o.d, Camilla, What h.e.l.l. I'm having twins, and that's not the h.e.l.l, Ferris and I are delighted. It's Dad. I can't believe what he's done, leaving Mom when she's having a mastectomy. It's a terrible thing, psychologically, for a woman. The only male equivalent would be losing his b.a.l.l.s, and Dad's lost his all right.

No matter how much Mom says he has every right to be angry with her, he doesn't have a right to take up with this rich b.i.t.c.h. As far as she's concerned, Mom's no more than a piece of junk dropped on the floor. She gives Dad horrible presents, like a bright red open Thunderbird. We hate her. She's no older than Andrew and she's superficial and selfish and she can't stand it that Dad has kids and is about to be a grandfather. Maybe he deserves deballing ...

As Camilla finished reading, the phone rang. It was the bishop. He had been talking with his lawyer friends, who said it was a great pity they had not legally adopted Taxi. They were going to put into motion the adoption process, which would make it harder for anyone to take Taxi away. They hoped it was not locking the door of the stable after the horse is gone.

'I'm driving up in the morning,' Olivia said. 'Art and I feel that one of us should be with you.'

'Please, Mama,' Mac said.

'I have no magic wands. I just want to be with you.'

Overnight the weather turned cooler and it was raining, the whole country in mourning. Azaleas dropped their petals. Grange and Harriet arrived right after breakfast, subdued, grave. Harriet asked to see Taxi. Camilla had sent the children out to play with Pinky, and called to the girl to bring them in.

This time Camilla did not need Dr. Edison to trans A Live Coal in the Sea.839 late what their intentions were. Harriet looked longingly at Taxi, ignored Frankie.

Pinky, unaware of any problem, offered tea.

Harriet shuddered and said that it was hot, but maybe a gla.s.s of sherry ...

'No, my love,' Grange said. 'We must leave. We have an appointment in Atlanta.'

Harriet nodded. 'We will be in touch.'

The children were, in a sense, protected by Pinky's presence, by paris.h.i.+oners coming in and out, wanting to draw together not only by the horror of the a.s.sa.s.sination, but by the latest scandal to rock Corinth. Herb Morrison and Alberta Byrd were married, but Gordon Byrd had no plans to marry Lydia Morrison after all. He was moving from the bank in Corinth to a much larger one in Atlanta, and he was renting an apartment with another banker, a man. This rocked Corinth far more than the death of the President.

The events of Corinth and of the wider world masked Camilla's and Mac's inner turmoil. Pinky stayed to get away from her own troubles, playing with the children. Wiz and Freddy came to join her, while Camilla, Mac, and Dr. Edison sat at the kitchen table, drinking tea and talking in muted voices. It was a relief when Olivia arrived after lunch.

The children, responding to the multiple tensions, were whiny, and after Pinky had fed them and left with her brother and Freddy, Camilla put Frankie and Taxi to bed.