Meet the Austins (7 page)

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Authors: Madeleine L'engle

BOOK: Meet the Austins
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Suzy got kind of pink and then white. “It's not the same thing,” she said.
“Why isn't it?” John asked. “Vicky and I were talking about it the other night. Carrots and potatoes grow. They're alive. If you're going to stop eating pig because of Wilbur you ought to
stop eating carrots, too. And applesauce. We got to know those apples very well last summer when they were on our trees, but that didn't stop us from taking a knife and tearing off their skins and slashing them up.”
“John!” Mother and Daddy said simultaneously.
We were all surprised at John. He was just coming down with flu and that probably explains it, but we didn't know that then. Also, whenever John gets hold of a subject that bothers him he worries it like Rochester with a bone until he's settled it to his satisfaction.
“I hate you, John,” Suzy said.
“Why?” John asked. “It's carrying a premise to its logical conclusion.” Then he relented and sounded more like himself again. “Look, Suzy, I'm sorry, but it's just silly to go on like this about Wilbur. I've been thinking and thinking about it, and it's just a place where we have to disapprove of nature and that's that.”
“What do you mean?” Suzy asked stiffly.
“Yes, John, I think you'd better explain yourself,” Daddy said.
“Well,” John said, “we've been studying it at school this week. In nature every species lives by preying on another species. Every form of life lives at the expense of another form of life. We may not approve of it, but there's nothing we can do about it except die of starvation. So there's nothing for it except what Mother keeps saying the Greeks say: Moderation in all things. Suzy's not being moderate. She ate spaghetti last night with lots of meat in the sauce. And look at Daddy. Life's part of his job, but he can't go around feeling sorry for viruses—he has to do his best to kill them. I don't believe in
going out and shooting animals and things just for the fun of it; I think it's an instinct gone wrong, from the days when people had to shoot animals to get food to eat. And that's okay, where it's a necessity.”
“I don't want to talk about it,” Suzy said.
“You're a horrid pig,” Maggy said to John.
“If you call him a pig you're insulting Wilbur,” Suzy said.
“Oh, for heaven's sake!” John took a large mouthful of pork and applesauce and chewed disgustedly. Then he said, “All I mean, Suzy, is if you want to be a doctor when you grow up you have to stay alive to be one, and to stay alive you have to eat a balanced diet. Moderation in all things!”
“Same to you, John,” Daddy said. “You didn't need to get Suzy so upset. That's not like you.”
“I'm sorry, Suzy,” John said, a little sheepishly. “I'll play a game of checkers or Spite and Malice or something with you before bed if you like.”
But Suzy wasn't ready to make up. “I have an operation scheduled on Pamela immediately after dinner,” she said. Pamela was one of Maggy's dolls.
 
So that was how the week began.
We wakened the next morning and it was a beautiful morning. Among the most beautiful of the things we see from up here on our hill are the clouds. It was a clear, sunny day, but over the pines behind the graveyard enormous clouds were tumbled, and more over the fields and mountains, great cold masses of white and gray against the blue of sky.
We got off to school as usual, the dogs and two of the cats,
Hamlet and Prunewhip, following us down to the bus stop and waiting till we got on. And then at school, for no reason, everything seemed to go wrong. I made stupid mistakes in math and had bad papers to bring home. Maggy was sent to Mr. Rathbone, the principal, for being rude to her teacher. I had the same teacher once, so I could sympathize with Maggy, for a change. And when we got home from school John had been sent home from Regional because he'd thrown up, and he had a fever and was in bed with the flu. The guest room, which we were beginning to call John's room, is over the living room, and the piano is in the living room. I finished my homework, and Maggy and Suzy were playing checkers, and Rob was building a fort with his blocks, so I sat down at the piano to practice, something I don't particularly like to do, especially scales. So I started on scales to get them over with, and, I must say, I went at them with vim and vigor. I was so full of vim and vigor that it was quite a while before I heard a continuous thumping on the ceiling. I went up to John's room to see what was what.
“For heaven's sake, Vicky,” he said irritably, “I have a headache and I'm sick. Those scales are going right through my head. Shut up!”
He said it so angrily that instead of being sorry for him I got angry, too. “I'm supposed to practice half an hour a day,” I told him.
“Why don't you remember it on days I'm not sick, then? Mother's practically always having to force you down on the piano bench and hold you there. Why do you have to practice scales today?”
“Okay,” I said, “so if I don't do well in piano this week, you can tell Mother why.”
“Okay, I will,” he said, and I stomped out. I stomped down the stairs and put on my red jacket with the hood and slammed out of the house. Behind the two birches the sky was a soft gold and it turned gradually to gold-green, and in the gold-green part, just between the two birches, was a tiny, silver-horned moon. Above the birches the sky turned to greeny-blue and there was one faint star just beginning to come out. It was cold and very dry, and I stood there and looked and shivered and shivered and looked. Then I came back into the house and sheepishly hung my jacket on my hook in the pantry.
And then everything should have been all right.
Daddy had called to say that he'd be late. The evenings Daddy is late we often eat at the table in the study and watch television, and Mother waits to eat with Daddy when he gets home. I helped her set up the table, and the little ones plunked themselves down on the floor to watch Mickey Mouse, and I went upstairs to read. I heard John go into the bathroom to throw up, and when he got back into bed I went in to him and said, “I'm sorry you feel awful, John.”
He looked green around the gills and he stuck his face down in the pillow and said, “I'm sorry, too. I just heaved again.”
“I know. I heard you.”
“Did you tell Mother?”
“No.”
“Well, why didn't you tell her?”
“I haven't exactly had time,” I said. “I heard you and came in to tell you I'm sorry.”
“When
you
throw up you want Mother to hold your head,” John said. “I suppose it couldn't have occurred to you I'd like Mother to hold my head, too?”
John was sick; he had a temperature of a hundred and two. I knew I shouldn't argue with him, but, as I've said, it was just an awful week. Right from Wilbur the pig and Suzy's taking the gum and candy, nothing seemed to go right. And I've noticed that once you start doing things wrong you just kind of go on doing them wrong till something happens to make you stop. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't what makes people criminals. Nothing happens to make them stop, and they just go on doing things wrong till they get to be criminals.
So now I said to John, “You always seem to think Mother is your special property, just because you were born first. She's busy getting supper ready for me and the little ones.”
“What about me?”
“You know perfectly well if you throw up you don't get anything but ginger ale and crackers. I'm going back down to practice.”
“You're doing it just to spite me,” John said. “Wait till I tell Mother.”
“Mother doesn't like tattletales.”
“Why don't you do something useful for a change,” John said. “Why don't you do something to help Mother for once?”
John looked green, and I should have realized he was being cross because he was sick, but it wasn't my day, either, so I just snapped back, “Like what?”
“Just use your head, Victoria Austin. If you can't think of
something to do to help Mother, you're even dumber than I think you are.”
“You think I'm dumb?”
“I know it.”
“I'm in the top group in my grade.”
“That doesn't prove a thing. You're so dumb you couldn't think of anything to do to help Mother.”
“Oh, couldn't I?” I said. “I'll let the air out of the upstairs radiators, that's what I'll do. They were knocking last night and Mother said this morning she'd have to let the air out of them.”
“Has she ever let you do it before?”
“She's never said I couldn't. Why shouldn't I?”
“It's on your own head,” John said. “Go ahead, if you think you're so smart.” And he pushed his face into the pillow and burrowed under the covers again.
Maybe I should explain about the radiators. We have hot-water heat. The hot water circulates through the radiators, and when air gets in with the hot water it keeps the hot water from circulating properly, and the radiators don't give off as much heat, and they make noises. We keep the upstairs thermostat lower than the downstairs one because we like to sleep in cool rooms and it saves oil, so the upstairs radiators seem to get air in them more often than the downstairs ones, where the water is constantly circulating most of the winter. Each radiator has a sort of little valve, and you take a key that looks like a very small roller-skate key and turn the valve, and hold a glass under the outlet. The air hisses out and you hold the glass there until a little stream of water flows into it, and then you know the air
is out of the radiator. Mother keeps the upstairs key on her dressing table so it won't get lost, and I went and got it.
First I let the air out of the radiators in John's room, to annoy him. Then I did Mother's and Daddy's room, and then Suzy and Maggy's, and then Rob's and mine. I was doing the radiator by the north window and all of a sudden I felt the radiator key just turning and turning and I couldn't get it to shut off the valve at all. I took it out and a tiny sort of screw came out, and water came pouring out of the valve place and the outlet place, shooting out at the wall and the ceiling. There was absolutely nothing to do to stem the wild stream except put my fingers over the two places and hold. I was afraid the water might scald me, but I guess the little holes were so tiny that it didn't, because it didn't seem particularly hot, only very uncomfortable. I felt exactly like the Dutch boy with his finger in the dike.
“John!” I yelled. “John!”
“I'm trying to sleep,” he yelled back. “Leave me alone.”
“But a screw came out of the radiator!”
“I told you you'd make a mess of it. Go tell Mother.”
“I can't! If I take my fingers away from the two little holes the water shoots all over the place.”
“Serves you right,” John said.
“Please call her for me,” I begged.
“Call her yourself,” he said. “I'm sick.”
“But I can't! I can't move!”
 
Downstairs in the study the little ones had TV on, louder than Mother likes us to have it. I yelled and yelled and stamped and stamped for about five minutes before I could attract their attention.
Finally Suzy came up to see what the matter was, and I told her, and told her to go tell Mother, quickly.
Well, she went back downstairs, and she says she meant to tell Mother right away, but she stopped off for a moment to look at TV and she got caught up in an exciting part of the story and just stayed there. And Mother didn't come and didn't come and finally I realized that Suzy couldn't have told her. So I began stamping and yelling again. It was the most awful feeling, being stuck to the radiator and not able to move. And I kept feeling more and more like the boy at the dike. I yelled at John again but he just laughed nastily.
Finally Mother came, and I was furious with John and furious with Suzy, and furious with Maggy and Rob, too, because they'd had the TV on so loud and been making so much noise, and I was furious with Mother for not having heard me and come sooner. I took my fingers away and the water came spouting out and Mother said, “Hold it again, Vic, while I phone Mr. Calahan,” and she hurried off to her room and I heard her talking to Mr. Calahan, the plumber. Then she came back and said, “All right, Vic. Mr. Calahan will be over as soon as he can get here. Rescue us for a few minutes more, will you? Mr. Calahan says that if I get a potato and ram it up against the two little points where the water's coming out, it'll be a lot easier to hold the potato than the radiator itself. I'll go get a potato and then take over for you.”
“John's a beast,” I said. “He knew what was happening and he wouldn't call you for me.”
“John's sick in bed,” Mother said, “and I told him not to get out.”

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