A Live Coal in the Sea Part 20

Art leaned back in his chair. 'Rafferty told me of this request. It is not to be considered lightly, and it is not to be considered at all, daughter, until you have had your baby.'

Mac had dropped his bags by the door. When they left the table he went to them, picked them up, turned toward the door, then back, taking his cases to the foot of the stairs and setting them down. A statement. A statement that he had come home.

Gravely, adding no advice, Art and Olivia left after break fast.

Mac said, 'Camilla, I have to go into the church. I have to pray. Do you want to come with me?V 'Of course.' Mac never pushed her. He let her move in her own direction, at her own pace.

She did not know how to pray. She was not knew how to be with Mac. They had made love fore, wonderful love, during which time had no they were free of its tragedies. But night was over. She walked beside Mac to the church into the dim interior of the old building. The stained-gla.s.s windows were dull and needed cleaning. The woodwork, the pews, were brown. The walls had once been sure she even the night bemeaning and A Live Coal in the Sea,179 cream-colored but had darkened so that they blended into the brownness of the wood. It was comforting, rather than depressing. The church's interior seemed to enfold them maternally. Mac was trying to raise money for fresh paint, and while Camilla knew that it was long overdue, she liked the warmth and coziness which seemed to hold all the prayers that had been lifted to G.o.d over the centuries.

The ceiling was high, with fans stirring the air, and the heat was tolerable.

She sat beside Mac in the front row, looking at the simple, unadorned cross above the altar.

Mac looked at the cross as he asked, 'Is naming the baby after Papa a way to pressure us into taking him?'

'Father's grateful to Papa. It was amazingly wonderful of him to drop everything and go to Paris to be there with Father.' Mac buried his face in his hands, then looked up at the cross again. 'I wonder what Papa thinks of the baby being named Artaxias?'

'He hasn't said no.'

'It's asking more than should be asked.!'I know. But haven't I heard you say that this is what G.o.d does?'

'It's your father who's asking this. What is he thinking of?' 'Himself. He's not thinking of us. He's hardly thinking of the baby. He's like a wounded bear, striking out. He did say that it would be easier for him, for the baby, if people thought he was ours.!

'In Corinth, Georgia?'

'Mac, I'm very confused. But we're not going to be here forever.'

'People aren't exactly beating a path to my door. I don't have any better mousetraps.'

'You're making this place work. I don't know much about church, but I know that much. In spite of everything, people are kinder to each other than they used to be.'

'And we have to be kind, too?'

Madeleine L'Engle180 Mercy. 'Oh. Mac, I'm so confused. I don't know anything.' 'Oh, G.o.d.' He groaned.

'Let's pray.' He turned to her, put his arms around her, holding her close, quietly, wordlessly. Finally he shouted at the cross, 'G.o.d, what do you want?'

For a moment it seemed that the fans stopped moving. The branches of an azalea bush that had been scratching at one of the windows were stilled.

Then Mac said, 'I don't see what else we can do. Your father can't handle it.

The poor little thing's an orphan, no mother to love and hold, none of the early touching and cud dling that's so important. I swear I remember Mama holding me and rubbing me between my shoulders to make me burp.' 'Mac, are you sure?'

'About Mama burping me?' 'No, no, about the baby-'

'Of course I'm not sure. It's just that the intolerable.'

Camilla's him-'

'Aren't we?'

'He'll have to be our child. As much as our own baby. Mac, is that possible?V 'I don't know.'

Camilla looked at the plain wood of the cross, then at the round, dusty stained-gla.s.s window above it. 'The whole thingMother's death. I don't want to blame a stupid accident on G.o.d.'

'No,' Mac said. 'I don't, either.'

'We've left the Newtonian world of a predetermined universe, everything being acted out according to an ordained, predestined plan.'

'Okay,' Mac said, 'I agree about that. I don't want a predetermined universe, either. You've taught me that much about particle physics, and it makes total theological sense to me. G.o.d doesn't plan the horrors. They happen. But G.o.d can come into them.'

voice alternatives seem was tentative. 'If we're going to take A Live Coal in the Sea181 'When Mrs. Lee arrived, bearing lilies, and talked about its being G.o.d's will, I.

nearly stuffed the lilies down her throat.'

'At least she didn't say it was G.o.d's punishment.' 'If she'd known my mother, she would have.'

'I thought you said people were more loving?'

'They are. Truly. But I'm not sure what people like Mrs. Lee think about G.o.d.''All I know,' Mac said slowly, 'is that I believe G.o.d can come into the terrible things and redeem them.'

'Do you think it's G.o.d's will that we take Mother's baby?' 'I'm not sure about will. I think that it's what G.o.d is asking, and if that's a contradiction, I can't help it. It's a way of bringing some reason into what otherwise seems incomprehensible and irrational.'

'Like Mach's theory-remember when I shocked Mrs. Lee, who still thinks it's your theory? Everything connected. It's as though there are a lot of loose strands around us, and we have, somehow, to bring them together.'

'Cam, if we don't take the baby, what will happen to him?V 'Father won't consider adoption-except by us. He'd get nurses and governesses, and he'd never be able to be a father to the child because he knows he isn't the father, because-because once again Mother-'

'It's a h.e.l.l of a situation.' 'h.e.l.l is right.'

'But, my love, you listen to the singing of the trees. You go out at night and lie under the stars.'

'Okay. All right. When I listen to the trees' song, when I listen to the stars, then I can say G.o.d. I'm not sure what I mean by it, but I can say it.' She looked around the small, comfortable brownness of the church.

'Can you say it about taking this child?'

'I'm not sure. I can try. Oh, Mac, do all parents give their children terrible wounds?' She was thinking of Art and Olivia as much as her own parents.

Madeleine L'Engle,182 Art and Olivia called that night. Listened, as Mac outlined their conversation.

Art's voice was low. 'I agree with you. I do not think you have a choice.'

'They do!' Olivia cried. 'Why should they be drawn into this situation in which they have no part?V 'I do,' Camilla said. Her fingers tightened around Quantum, who stopped purring and jumped off her lap, then leapt onto the sideboard.

Olivia's voice quavered. 'Art feels drawn in.'

'I was there,' Art said, 'in Paris with Rafferty. Like it or not, I am drawn in.'

'Please,' Camilla begged, 'please don't let it make trouble between you, between us.'

'We shouldn't quarrel over the phone.' Olivia sounded ashamed.

The bishop said, 'What we must look for is G.o.d's mercy. G.o.d's mercy shown through our own.'

Olivia murmured, 'At the moment I'm not feeling that much mercy.'

'Olivia.' The bishop's voice was stern. 'Of all people, you know about mercy.'

'Yes.'

'You know that we are never outside G.o.d's mercy.' His voice choked.

'Never outside it, my darling,' Olivia said. 'I know that. I'm sorry. I just don't want to see our children walking into something that's going to bring them grief.'

In his grief, Rafferty called frequently, too frequently. 'But what can we expect?' Olivia said. 'Poor bereaved manbereaved of his wife, of his son.'

Rafferty said, 'The baby's name is officially Artaxias Xan A Live Coal in the Sea183thakos d.i.c.kinson. I have to do that much for him, give him my name, legitimize him.'

When the baby left the hospital, Rafferty wanted to come directly to Corinth, have them find him a hotel, an apartment, a nurse. To Camilla's relief, Olivia was with her when her father called, and vetoed this. 'Give me the phone, please. Now, Rafferty, this is _quite impossible. Corinth doesn't have a hotel.

The apartments for rent are rooms in people's homes and you wouldn't find them satisfactory at all, nor would anyone want to take in a middle-aged man with an infant. You have a place to live in Paris. Keep the baby in your apartment there ... You have a nurse to take care of the baby. If you need more help it's available ... No, Rafferty, not yet. You must wait until Camilla's baby is born.'

"Grandmother"-Raffi rolled her green wool socks into a ball-"you were wonderful, you and Grandfather, to take my dad like that."

"Not wonderful," Camilla said. "We just did what had to be done. We never thought it would be easy. But he gave us great joy. We believed that he was G.o.d's wondrous gift to us. He had that same ability to delight that he does today in his acting, that quality that makes him so loved."

"So what's he up to now?" Raffi threw the sock ball up into the air, caught it.

"Why did he suddenly tell me you might not be my grandmother?"

"I don't know. I don't know why he raised questions now that he was determined to keep unasked. It isnl like him. It contradicts everything he.. ." She went out to the kitchen to stir the sauce she was making over a low flame. Raffi, barefoot, followed her. "I'm sorry, Raffi. This is being a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. I've been going over the past in my mind, trying to make sense of it. It involves a lot of people who died before you were born."

Madelebae L'Eiayle184 "People I never had a chance to know," Raffi said, scowling, "but who still seem to be very much around. One when Dad was angry with Mom he compared mother. He called her a wh.o.r.e."

The blood drained from Camilla's rible thing for him to say."

"But was it true?"

"Of your mother? Of course not." "But yours-"

"My mother was not faithful to my father. It was a terrible word for Taxi to use, but it wasn't far from the truth. But your mother-"

"She sticks by Dad and sometimes I don't know why. She'd gone out to lunch with an old dancer friend. There wasn't anything to it. Dad wanted to hurt her, and he did."

She thought of Frankie's words. Could the lie with which they had all lived ever be redeemed?

her night to your face. "That was a ter Why was Taxi suddenly and deviously opening doors he had been adamant about keeping locked? Didn't he know Raffi would come to Camilla? What did heexpect or want her to tell her? "Raffi, your father was born after my mother-his mother-was killed in an accident, and the blood tests showed that my father was not his father." It was the truth, but a truth which explained little.

'I'm sorry,' Camilla said. 'Oh, Mac, I'm sorry. Sorry for Father. Sorry for the baby.'

'For your mother?'

She shook her head. 'I don't know. I don't know. All I want to think about is our baby.'

,Yes,' Mac said. 'Our baby.' He pressed the palm of his hand gently against her.

'Any day, now. Can you let everything else go?'

A Live Coal in the Sea-185 Perhaps not then, but definitely yes, when labor started. Corinth, Georgia, was ahead of some of the United States in one area. Camilla's obstetrician believed in having the father par tic.i.p.ate in the birth of his baby. Edith Edison provided a small but good tape recorder, a.s.sorted Bach fugues to help Camilla along during labor, and a blank tape to record the baby's first cry, and anything else they might want to put on it.

'I'm not horning in,' she said, 'but I do care. Please call me as soon as you start labor, and I'll stay quietly in the waiting room.

Camilla's labor was long and exhausting, but then came the incredible moment of push and rush and the doctor said, 'It's a little girl, a beautiful little girl.'

Frances. Frances, who shouted l.u.s.tily at the indignity of being born, and who weighed eight pounds and was nineteen inches long.

How much had Artaxias Xanthakos d.i.c.kinson weighed? Certainly less than Frances.

Dr. Edith reported to Camilla that when Mac came out to the waiting room and told her that Camilla had given birth to a little girl, he had looked disappointed. 'But only for a moment. He pulled himself together, and beamed.'

Camilla laughed. 'Thanks for the Bach. He was a big help. I don't think any other mother has timed her labor pains with fugues in this hospital before.'

She looked and felt drained, but Frances was in her arms, little lips making tasting noises.

'0 taste and see how lovely the Lord is,' Dr. Edith said, looking down at her.

'I gather Mrs. Bishop-as your youth group calls her-is coming to help out?ff 'Yes.'

'She's a delightful woman. I enjoy her.'

'She's terrific,' Camilla said. 'I love her.'-She and Papa love each other.

They are truly lovers. They are in love. Do I really understand that?

'And she loves you.' Dr. Edison nodded. 'There are some Madelehie L'E)agle186 lines of Blake's I've always liked and I think I have them memorized properly.

Listen: He who would do good to another must do it in minute particulars. General good is the plea of the scoundrel, hypocrite, and flatterer, for Art and Science cannot exist but in minutely organized particulars.'

-Particulars, Camilla thought. -Mac talks about "the scandal ofparticularity."

Frances is our particular baby. 'Yes, I think Blake's right.'

Dr. Edison said, 'I saw it as applied to physics when I first read it, but it does apply to people, too. I think your motherin-law understands particulars.

She's not a do-gooder, because most do-gooders deal in generalities. She never loses sight of the particular person, the unique human need.' She laughed.

'I'm moving into my lecturing mode, aren't I'dff 'It's okay,' Camilla said. 'I do it, too. It's an occupational hazard.'

'I'm glad you're nursing Frances. She's a lovely baby. When she is six weeks old I will come and show her the stars. It's not too young.'