Meet the Austins (5 page)

Read Meet the Austins Online

Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Meet the Austins
4.95Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Now, wait a minute, John,” Daddy said. “I was just about Maggy's age when my mother died when Uncle Douglas was born. And it was inconceivable to me that everybody in the world didn't know about it, that anybody could be unaware that my mother was dead. And when the paper boy came by our house that night, he didn't know, and he called out to me just as usual, as though nothing at all had happened, and I was embarrassed for him, that he shouldn't know about an event
that must surely rock the foundations of the universe. And I told him that my mother was dead, and I'm sure I felt more a sense of importance than grief.”
“Grief for the big things takes a long time to come,” Mother said. “You know how, when you cut yourself badly, you don't feel it at all for a long time? It doesn't hurt till the numbness wears off? Grief is like that.”
“Yeah, I think I see,” John said slowly.
“On the other hand,” Mother went on, “I don't think Maggy's reactions to her tragedy are quite the same as yours were, Wallace, or as our children's would be. For one thing, she'd only been with her father for a month when the accident happened. She'd never known him at all before then.”
“Never known her father! But—” I started.
“Okay, Vicky,” Daddy said, “let's let Mother tell you a little something about Maggy's background. I think it will help you to understand why she is the way she is. We must all try very hard to understand, because we can't have any one child, no matter how tragic her circumstances, disrupting an entire family.”
“She's made a good start,” John said.
“Suppose you'd never known what it was like to be loved?” Mother asked him. “Suppose you never saw Daddy, and I spent all my time going to parties and on cruises and left you with nurses and governesses and did my best to forget I had any children?”
“I'm glad you don't,” John said.
“But that's what it was like for Maggy,” Mother told us. “All the toys and clothes in the world and not one moment of
spontaneous family love. None of the easy security you children take for granted. She had dinner with her grandfather every Sunday. That was as close to family life as she got.”
“Did her grandfather love her?” I asked.
“In his way, I think he did, very much. But he's evidently not a bit like our darling Grandfather, Vic, if that's what you're thinking. He's solitary and strict and stern. And he'd had a bad heart attack just at the time of Maggy's mother's death, which was why she went to her father at that time.”
“How … how did her mother die?” John asked.
“Of pneumonia, while she was traveling in Spain.”
“All this help you to understand a little?” Daddy asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“But how come she's living with us?” John asked. “And for how long?”
“Her grandfather is still ill,” Daddy said, “so we'll just have to take things as they come, from day to day. Dick Hamilton was overjoyed when his little girl came to live with him, just a month before he died. And he had no idea how to handle her at all, except to give in to her completely, to give her whatever she wanted the minute she wanted it. At least he gave her love, real love, which was something she'd never had before, and Elena feels sure that, given time, things would have worked out, that he'd realize he was spoiling her just as she'd always been spoiled. But he wasn't given time.”
Daddy paused and John said, “Doesn't her grandfather want her as soon as he's well? I mean, wouldn't that be the logical thing? If he has lots of money and everything, she wouldn't be in his way.”
“No, she wouldn't, and it would be a pretty sad life for a child, wouldn't it? Maybe Mr. Ten Eyck—that's his name—realizes this. We aren't sure yet.”
“What do you mean?”
“You see,” Daddy said, “Dick Hamilton didn't have any family at all, nobody who belonged to him who could take care of Maggy if anything should happen to him. And in the nature of his work he knew that something might happen to him at any time. So he asked Aunt Elena and Uncle Hal if they would be responsible for her. In his will he has asked that they be her legal guardians.”
“Then why doesn't Aunt Elena take her, if that's what he wanted?” John asked.
“It isn't as easy as that, John,” Daddy said. “In the first place, legally, a wish like that isn't binding. You can will your property, but, according to the law, you cannot will a person. You can only express a wish. In the second place, Aunt Elena doesn't have Uncle Hal anymore. She's all alone. She leaves for a nationwide concert tour next month, and she has a living to earn. And for her own sake she needs her music right now.”
“So it's all a mess, isn't it?” John asked.
“Yes. And Aunt Elena's doing what she can to make it a little less of a mess. She has paid us the great compliment of thinking that this is the place where Maggy can best learn to live the normal life she's never known.”
“Or we can learn to be abnormal,” John muttered.
Daddy laughed and said, “I hope you have stronger personalities than that. Mother and Aunt Elena and Uncle Douglas and I had a talk with Mr. Ten Eyck this afternoon. Legally he's
her next of kin, and the decision has to come from him. Whether Maggy'll be with us for a couple of weeks, or months, or a year, we don't know. This is just a temporary solution until he's well enough to decide what he thinks is best.”
“That's quite a story,” John said. “What do
you
think is best, Dad?”
“I don't know, John,” Daddy said slowly. “As I said, the only thing to do right now is to take things simply, from day to day.”
“Well, I do feel sorry for her now,” John said. “I guess that will help.”
 
Well, sure it helped, but it seemed to John and me it needed a lot more than that, or maybe we didn't have the strong personalities Daddy thought we did. Oh, it wasn't all as wild as it was right there in the beginning; things kind of got into a groove; and, as Mother and Daddy said, it certainly was a challenge; but it seemed that no matter where you turned in the house, Maggy was always there. There seemed to be more of Maggy than the rest of us put together. If Mother wanted to play the piano or her guitar, Maggy wanted to play them, too. When Daddy came home at dinnertime and swung Rob, Maggy had to be swung, too, though even Suzy knows she's much too big and heavy for that sort of thing. One thing John made very clear right from the start was that Maggy was not to go out to the barn and touch his space suit, and I think he scared her into realizing that that was one thing she'd better not do. I didn't blame John for being ferocious with her about it, because Maggy couldn't seem to keep her hands off things, just picking
them up and touching them, things off Mother's dressing table, Rob's toys, my books.
One rainy November afternoon after school I was doing homework, John wasn't home yet, and Rob was sitting on the kitchen stool playing records on his little player. Mother was making Spanish rice and Rob kept asking her what he should play for her next, and none of us thought much about Suzy and Maggy. We thought they were up in their room playing dolls or hospital. I have to admit they played awfully well together, much better than Suzy and I ever did. Maggy would decide what kind of game she wanted to play, but Suzy could always be the doctor, and as long as she was boss in that part of the game it was okay for Maggy to be boss in the rest of it. Of course, Suzy got to the point where she wouldn't let Maggy break any more of her toys, but a great enormous box of Maggy's own toys came up from New York and Maggy didn't mind breaking them a bit. She said she could always just write and ask her grandfather for more. Naturally, Mother and Daddy tried to discourage this, but some doll or other always seemed to be battered up “by accident.”
When John got home that afternoon he made himself a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich, and then said he was going up to his room to do his homework.
“Just look in Suzy and Maggy's room and check on what they're doing,” Mother said. “They're being unnaturally quiet.”
After a moment or two John called down that they weren't in their room.
“Well, where are they, then?” Mother demanded. “See if you can round them up for me, Vicky.”
I went upstairs and looked all around but they weren't anywhere. They weren't anywhere downstairs, either. I thought they must be playing a game and hiding on us just to scare us, so I looked under all the beds and in all the closets, but I couldn't find them.
“If they've gone out in all this rain I'll beat them to a pulp and spread them on my toast like strawberry jam,” Mother said crossly. “Stir this for me, Vicky, and see that it doesn't burn. I'd better go out and look.”
“I'll go,” I said.
“No, honey, you just stir for me.”
Mother put on a raincoat and a scarf around her head, took the dogs, and went out. From the windows I could see her walking about outside in the drenching downpour and calling. She came back in and stood by the closet, stamping and shaking off rain, so that before she had hung up her things she was standing in a little puddle of water that had dripped from her. “Get a towel and dry Colette,” she said, as she gave Rochester a rub until he was dry enough to come in before the kitchen fire to dry the rest of the way.
John came down, saying, “Those girls still missing?”
“Yes,” Mother said, and I could see that she was worried.
“I'll look,” John said. “Did you go into the barn, Mother?”
“No.”
“If they've gone in there and are at my space suit—” John started, and shoved into his jacket.
But they weren't in the barn. “I've got an idea,” John said, and went into Daddy's office.
Daddy's main office is down in Clovenford, which is a much bigger place than Thornhill, and where the hospital is; but he has a small office here at the house.
John went through the waiting room and into the office, and Maggy and Suzy were there, playing. They had Maggy's biggest doll down on Daddy's examining table, and they were in the middle of an operation, and Suzy was using Daddy's instruments from the sterilizer.
I don't think I've ever, ever, seen Mother so angry. We're
never
allowed to play in Daddy's office, or even to go in it without permission. Suzy knows that. Maggy knew it, too, because I'd heard Daddy telling her so. Well, it was obvious they both knew it, because they'd put on their raincoats and gone in from the outside entrance so nobody would see them, and their things lay in wet puddles on the floor.
Mother said, “I'm too angry to spank you, or even to think of spanking you. Your father will do that when he gets home. Go upstairs, both of you, and get into your pajamas. Maggy, get into your own bed and stay there until I tell you to get out of it. Suzy, you will please come back downstairs and you may lie on the couch in the waiting room with a blanket. I don't want you to be near each other, and I want you to think, both of you, think seriously.”
They started to pick up their wet things.
“No,” Mother said. “Leave everything where it is. I want your father to see everything just as you've left it. Go in through the house and do as I say. At once.”
They did. At once. I've never seen Maggy hop so fast.
When they were in bed Maggy began to howl—loud dramatic sobs. In the office waiting room Suzy lay on the couch with her face to the wall and didn't move or make a sound. Mother completely ignored Maggy's howls. John brought his books down to the study.
“I'm sorry, John,” Mother said. “You'll just have to concentrate as best you can.”
“It's okay, Mother,” John said rather grimly. “As long as it isn't driving you crazy, it doesn't bother me one bit.”
After she'd howled for about half an hour Maggy came down the back stairs, pouting prettily to Mother. “I'm awfully sorry, Aunt Victoria. We didn't know we were being bad.”
“Get back upstairs and into bed,” Mother said.
“But I said I was sorry, Aunt Victoria!”
“I'm glad you're sorry, Maggy, but get back upstairs and into bed, anyhow. I will tell you when I think it's time for you to come down.”
Mother spoke very quietly, very coldly, and Maggy obeyed. Up in bed she started to yowl again, but this time it didn't last as long.
Rob had stopped playing records and suddenly we noticed that his lip was trembling.
“Rob, darling, what is it?” Mother asked.
“I want to go in to Suzy,” Rob said.
“I'm sorry, Rob, but you must leave Suzy alone.”
Rob got down from his stool, ran to Mother, flung his arms around her legs, and butted his head against her. “But I want to go to Suzy!”

Other books

A Place Beyond by Laura Howard
Toward the End of Time by John Updike
Dark Sky by Carla Neggers
The Demon King by Heather Killough-Walden
Rainfall by Melissa Delport
A Christmas Wish: Dane by Liliana Hart
A Matter of Heart by Amy Fellner Dominy