A Live Coal in the Sea Part 13

'But-'

His arms went around her. 'Darling, this is our wedding, and you're not like your mother, except that you have the very best parts of her, her enthusiasm, her joie de vivre, plus the stability and intelligence of your father, plus all the little lovelinesses that are yours alone.' Then his mouth was against hers.

Finally he stopped long enough to say, 'If your mother hasn't been the best example in the world for you in her marriage, if your parents' problems are still unresolved, then look at my parents. Their problems are resolved, by some strange grace, but what they had to overcome to get to where they are makes Mount Everest look like an anthill.'Camilla reached for his mouth again, first saying, 'I just hope Luisa will be tactful.'

Luisa and Frank were to arrive the day before the wedding, Frank coming all the way from Turkey and meeting Luisa in New York so they could fly down together.

Once it had become apparent to Luisa that Camilla and Mac were indeed going to get married, she had dropped her dire fore-' bodings and had become, instead, loyally supportive.

A Live Coal in the Sea115 While they were waiting for Mac to bring Luisa and Frank in from the airport, and Rose and Rafferty were resting before changing for dinner, Camilla and Olivia sat out on the screened porch. The fan droned quietly overhead, stirring the breeze. Camilla loved the porch, which was more room than porch, with white wicker furniture covered in green-and-blue chintz with touches of yellow, so that there was an effect of water and sky and suns.h.i.+ne.

Olivia said, 'Your mother is very lovely, my dear, and your father treasures her.'

Yes, Rose had been at her most charming with Olivia and Mac; with their friends, giving no hint of the willful child. Camilla looked over at Olivia, at her slight smile, tolerant eyes. 'My father has been incredibly patient. My mother-'

Her voice choked and she broke off.

Olivia nodded. 'Poor thing. It's a sad affliction when it's uncontrolled.'

'Can it be controlled?'

Olivia's mouth tightened. 'Yes, my dear. It is not easy, but it can.'

Olivia was on the chaise longue, her legs crossed at her slim ankles, her small feet in comfortable sandals. She wore tan khaki shorts and a blue s.h.i.+rt, an outfit Rose would never have been found in. Camilla said, 'There are times when she makes me terribly angry.'

'That's understandable. She's your mother. The biological bond can keep us from seeing clearly. It's easier for me, from my distance, to be objective, to feel compa.s.sion for her.'

Camilla leaned forward.' 'Mac says that in the very early days of human beings, when the earth was spa.r.s.ely populated and the tribes truly didn't know whether there would be more births than deaths, whether the human race would make it, people had to have a lot of aggression built into them, and a very strong s.e.x drive, in order to survive.' She laughed. 'I do sound like an academic.

Sorry.

All I'm trying to say is that my Madeleine L'Engle116 mother didn't get the aggression, but she did get the s.e.x drive, all out of proportion.'

'I'm glad she has your father to take care of her,' Olivia said.

'He does the best he can, without giving up his own work, and the doctor says he shouldn't do that.'

'I'm sure that's wise.'

'Being my mother's husband often seems to me to be the biggest part of hiswork.

I hope I'll never hurt Mac.' As she said it, she laughed at how unrealistic her words were.

'Oh, my dear, of course you will. Human beings hurt each other. That's part of our humanness. But you won't hurt him the way your mother has hurt your father, so don't worry about that.'

'I do. I took a sociology course soph.o.m.ore year in college. Children who have been abused often end up as abusive parents. Children of alcoholics usually swear they'll never touch a drink and yet, statistically, many of them become alcoholics.' Olivia remarked dispa.s.sionately, 'You show no latent tendency to be like your mother. You have, I think, your father's capacity for fidelity, and also the capacity for enjoyment your mother would have had if she'd been able to grow up.'

'You're so kind to me...'

'My dear, I love you, and so does Art. We're grateful beyond words that Mac has you in his life.' Tiny Olivia, like her son, had a way of making people feel enfolded in love. She reached out to put her hand lightly over Camilla's, her fingertip delicately brus.h.i.+ng over the ancient ring. 'Do you know how happy it makes me that you want my mother's rings?' 'I'm happy, too.'

'You're a deeply loving young woman, despite all your parents have put you through. It has made you strong.' Olivia paused, looking steadily at Camilla.

'Mac did good work in Kenya, but he went for the wrong reasons. You should know this, my dear, because it may happen again.'

A Live Coal in the Sea117 Camilla looked her unasked question at Olivia. She did not want it to happen again. She did not know how to prevent Mac from retreating.

'Enough,' Olivia said. 'We should be concentrating on joy, not sorrow. A good, long-term marriage does not come easily. G.o.d knows it didn't for Art and me.

But it's worth all the struggle.' Suddenly her blue eyes were bright with tears.

Rose wept tears of pleasure, of loss, at the small dinner party at the rectory the night before the wedding. After dinner Luisa, who had barely had time to change clothes because the plane was an hour late, pulled Camilla aside.

'I won't get a chance to talk to you tomorrow. Are you all right?V 'I'm fine.'

'You're really happy about marrying Mac?V 'Yes.'

'Have you-oh, s.h.i.+t, Camilla, are you still a virgin?' Camilla turned away. 'I know, I know, that's how it's supposed to be, but it doesn't necessarily make for a good wedding night.' 'Let me worry about that.'

'At least Mac's not a virgin. That will help. There was one girl while he was in seminary I thought he- but she suddenly married someone else.'

'Luisa,' Camilla started to protest.

'I just want things to be good for you,' Luisa said. 'You're such a nice girl, Camilla, I mean that in the best sense of the word, I don't want you to be shocked or surprised or-'

'Hey, Luisa, I do know the facts of life.'

'Be happy,' Luisa said. 'You're not like your mother; you'll enjoy withoutgoing overboard, and you're better wife material than I am.'

Frank came after them then and drew them back into the living room. 'Don't hog Camilla, Lu. People are begin- Madeleine L'Engle118 ning to ask where she is, and it's nearly time for the party to break up.'

When the guests left, Rose put her arms around Camilla and begged, 'Come back to the hotel with me, baby. Please. If you stay here you'll sit up all night and talk to Luisa. That girl's changed. She was really very nice to me. But I want my baby to be with me.'

It seemed the least Camilla could do. Her father stayed at the rectory, and Camilla went with her mother. While Rose was undressing, smoothing creams onto her face, her body, Camilla washed her hair in the shower, then got into a hot tub. When she went back into the room, Rose was sitting up in bed, wearing a fluffy bed jacket.

'Rafferty and I-' Rose started. 'Things have been good with us since your engagement to Mac. I don't know why it should have made such a difference, but it has.'

'That's good.'

'We've been-we hadn't been sleeping together. But now we are again, and I like that. I don't like being celibate.' Camilla took her mother's outstretched hands with a flash of understanding. Sleeping with other men did not const.i.tute the breaking of celibacy for Rose. If she was not making love with her husband, she was being celibate.

'It's easier for me to be good,' Rose went on, 'when it's like this, when your father and I-when I feel that he loves me.' 'You know he loves you, Mother,'

Camilla said. She could not add, He wouldn't have put up with you otherwise, because that was something Rose would not understand.

'You'll be a good wife for Mac,' Rose said. 'He's a nice lad. It's too bad he's a minister, he'll never make much money. But your father and I'll see to it that you'll never want.'

'We'll manage,' Camilla said. 'We'll be fine. We don't need , much.' Then, feeling ungracious, she added, 'Thanks for everything you've given me, all the lovely clothes.'

'I'm sick that you aren't going to have a proper honey A Live Coal in the Sea119 moon, just a couple of nights. Your father and I would have been glad to-'

'I know. Thank you both. But I have to finish the semester. And Mac has to get to his job.'

She lay awake beside her mother for a long time. Wondering. Uncertain. She could not speak to her mother of her doubts. Something else her mother would not understand. To her mother, marriage was still all-important, and in her mind Camilla was almost old enough to be an old maid.

She felt very cold. Understood why Mac might flee when things got too much for him. She was ready to get out of bed, get, somehow, to the airport, back to college, to safety, to certainty.

'I'm not certain,' she said to Mac, standing before him in the skimpy lace nightgown her mother had bought.

'Hey,' Mac said, 'don't worry. We won't rush anything.' He picked her up and put her on the mattress of the canopied four-poster bed in the old inn where they were staying for two nights. The foreplay in which they had often indulged had delighted Camilla but 'Oh, Mac, my motherI've been so repressed-maybe I'm frigid.'

Mac laughed. 'Not you, my love.!

'Yeah, but what's terrified me most about s.e.x is that I've been so afraid I'd like it, and if I did, I'd become like my mother, in bed with whoever was stroking her ego-'

'Sweetie, shut up,' Mac said, and put his mouth over hers.

When she had her first o.r.g.a.s.m she ascended like Elijah in a chariot of fire.

C o x I N T x w n s an inferno of heat when she joined Mae in the early summer.

She had never felt such steamy humidity, even in New York, but she had seldom been in the city for the hot summer months.

The old rectory had the blessing of high ceilings and a shaded veranda, a Southern house built for shade and breeze in the summer. It had been furnished largely by the parish ioners. Camilla had sent down the furniture from her little college apartment, and Mac had a few odd pieces, plus an old leather chair discarded by Art when his congregation gave him a new one. With pictures and flowers Camilla made it into their home.

Sometimes, after Mae was asleep, after their lovemaking when they were slippery with sweat, she would lie awake in bed, looking at her rings, and feeling that she had moved to a distant planet, and only the old gold circlet that had belonged to Olivia's mother was holding her together. A small parish in a Southern town was a jolting transition from a college campus in New England.

She loved the beauty of the old white pillared houses, the great magnolia trees with their s.h.i.+ny leaves, for A Live Coal in the Sea.,121 which Corinth was famous. But it was alien. Women still wore white gloves to church. She was expected to help with the Altar Guild, with potluck suppers, but Camilla had gone immediately to Athens, to the university, and introduced herself to Dr. Edith Edison. Had Professor Grange hinted that perhaps he and this woman had had an affair? Dr. Edison was considerably older, a striking-looking woman with snow-white hair with one black streak, and black eyebrows over near-black eyes. She welcomed Camilla with enthusiasm, and quickly arranged a teaching fellows.h.i.+p. Camilla's life was more in Athens than in Corinth, and this was resented by the paris.h.i.+oners.

'Don't fret,' Mae said. 'The idea that the rector's wife should be nothing but an appendage of the rector is long gone. I'm proud of you. Maybe you can help with the youth group. That's mainly Sunday evenings, and we work well together with kids.' Yes, they were good with kids, these Southern kids who asked mostof the same questions they had heard in the old Church House. 'If G.o.d is good, why is there wares' And some newer ones which she found more disturbing. 'My father says that Negroes have a lower IQ than we do. She let Southern Mac struggle with the racial questions, did better with the seemingly more impossible questions, such as the balance between human free will and divine omnipotence.

She also found out through those Sunday-evening meetings who the big wheels in the parish were. Freddy Lee's mother was the president of the Altar Guild; his father was a champion golfer and as far as she knew lived on inherited money.

Two of their favorites were Pinky and Wiz Morrison. Their mother was president of the ECW ('The Episcopal Church Women,' Mac explained), and their father was the town's most prominent lawyer.

Gordie Byrd was plump and pimply and always had a candy bar in his hand if not in his mouth. His mother was Mrs. Lee's sidekick in the Altar Guild, and Gordon, his father, was Madeleine L'Engle-122 the town banker. It also was soon clear that Mrs. Lee and Mrs. Byrd were sisters.

'Basically,' Mac warned, 'you can't say anything about anybody, because they're all related some way or other.' Camilla said ruefully, 'I'll try to hold my tongue. I get along better with the kids than I do with the parents.'

Mac smiled at her. 'You've never had to cope with parents before, have you?

You'll be fine. They'll love you.'

Mac was unduly optimistic, she thought. One by one the women of the parish came to call, accepting gla.s.ses of iced tea, looking around the rectory to see what Camilla had done to it.

Mrs. Lee came on a Monday, with the flowers that had been used in church the day before. 'This is not our best season for flowers, Mrs. Xanthakos,' she apologized, 'but we pride ourselves on using what we have.'

'They're lovely.' Camilla took the offering and put it on the sideboard.

'And if you'll return the container on Sunday.' 'Of course.'

'Now, dear Mrs. Xanthakos, we all know how brilliant you are, getting a Ph.D.

and all that, but you do have to be careful what you say to the children.'

'I try to be,' Camilla replied. 'Is there any problem?' 'Something about Mac's theory sounded a little to the left for a man of the cloth, if you know what I.

mean.'

Camilla didn't. Then it came to her. 'Oh! Mach's theory! It has nothing to do with my husband. It's named after a scientist named Mach, M-a-c-h. Macarios Xanthakos has nothing to do with it.'

'Oh?' Polite disbelief.

'When the youth group was over last night the dryer was going, as it so often is, and I asked them if they knew what it was about the dryer that dries the clothes.'

'Heat, of course.' The older woman sniffed.Camilla smiled. 'Your son knew Mach's theory. Freddy's a A Live Coal in the Sea123 very bright boy. He told us that the barrel in the dryer rotates, and that produces a centrifugal force which pulls the water out. Of course, Mrs. Lee, the heat does help,' she added, trying to be polite.

'I don't know what you're talking about,' Mrs. Lee said. 'It's really fascinating.' Camilla poured more tea into Mrs. Lee's gla.s.s, noticing Mrs.

Lee's eyes checking the silver pitcher, which had been a present from Art's paris.h.i.+oners in Nashville. 'Mach's theory is that a centrifugal force is relative to the fixed stars.'

'The what?V 'The fixed stars.' Camilla tried earnestly to explain. 'If the fixed stars weren't there, the centrifugal force wouldn't be there, either, because everything in the universe interacts with everything else. And the dryer wouldn't work and the clothes wouldn't dry.'

'This really sounds very-'

Camilla continued, her face eager, 'So the dryer in the kitchen in this one house in Corinth, Georgia, is interacting not only with the fixed stars but with the universe at large, even with the most distant stars and galaxies.'

'Dear Mrs. Xanthakos!' There was shock in the other woman's voice. 'Perhaps this is science, I gather you're quite scientific, but the young people are supposed to be given religion during their youth group meetings. I was shocked by what my nephew Gordie told me.'

'But don't you see,' Camilla urged, 'this is religion. It's an affirmation of the wonderful interdependence of the universe.' 'Mrs. Xanthakos, we expect the young people to study what is in the Bible.'

When Camilla told Mac of this conversation, he laughed heartily. 'Sweetheart, Mrs. Lee-it was Mrs. Lee, wasn't it?' She nodded. 'Mrs. Lee takes the Bible pretty literally. She doesn't get excited about the universe or Mach's theory, which Madeleine L'Engle 124.

A Live Coal in the Sea125 Mac reached for her, pulled up the skirt of her cotton dress, and she turned toward him, wriggling out of her clothes, just as the phone began to ring in the rectory.

Mac jerked, startled, said reluctantly, 'I'll get it. It might be important, some crisis-'

'You'd better run.' Camilla leaned up on one elbow, sniffing the rich odor of fallen pine needles, hoping Mac wouldn't be long. She closed her eyes, waiting, drifting, letting the breeze waft over her body.

Mac came toward her, calling, 'It's your mother.'

She pulled herself to her feet, rearranged her clothes. It was not unusual for Rose to call, paying no attention to either time zones or expense. She hurried into the house and into Mac's study, where the phone was, plopped down into the brown leather chair. 'Mother?'

'Darling! Are you all rightsV'Yes, of course, Mother. Is everything okays'

'Oh, darling baby, more than okay. I'm not in Paris, I'm in Chicago. We flew over to see my doctor and we're going back tomorrow. I had to call you.'

Camilla felt a surge of anxiety. 'Why did you need to see your doctors'