A Live Coal in the Sea Part 2

'I don't know anything about football.'

'Relax. It's okay. Our Red Grange, the professor, is a topnotch teacher, andif he wants to call himself Red I don't suppose it does any harm.'

-Naive, she thought. -I was unpardonably naive.

She left Luisa's room, and climbed the final flight of stairs to her own room and closed the door, leaning against it with a sigh of relief. She loved her room, a cubbyhole under the eaves, one of the few singles in the house, with dormer windows, and the bed pushed against the slant of the roof. Luisa had called it an Emily Bronte room.

She undressed, took towel and robe, and went to the washroom with its long rows of basins and showers and, thank heavens, one ancient tub. She lay back in the water, relaxing until she was pink except where her knees rose above the surface, suddenly surprised because the face of the young man wound. 'I'm going to take a bath.' Camilla fled. She could get away from Luisa.

She could not get away from her mother.

And that, it seemed, was true for all her life, Rose's shadow thrown darkly across it, even after her death. Even now, Camilla thought as she sat in the pleasant living room of her campus house with Raffi, even now Rose's presence was there. Genetically she was visible in neither Camilla nor Raffi. Camilla's hair had been black, her skin clear and very fair; Rafferty d.i.c.kinson had had some Welsh forebears. Raffi looked like Raffi. Perhaps her triangular face with high cheekbones came from her mother, Thessaly, but her bright hair and eyes were uniquely her own. Her eyes were hidden now as she took her fork and ran it idly around her empty plate.

Camilla said, "My mother was so beautiful artists kept wanting to paint her."

"Some did, didn't they?" Raffi asked. "Isn't there one by Carroll at MoMA?"

Camilla nodded.

"She was-what's that word I just came across in a novel? She was-ravishing."

"Yes. And, as far as she knew, that's all she was. That was her only sense of herself."

Raffi scowled. "At least I don't have that problem." "Most of us don't,"

Camilla said. "And believe me, it is a problem. She believed that when her beauty went she would be nothing. She needed constant affirmation."

"That could be a bore," Raffi said.

"For my mother, ordinary affirmation wasn't enough. She needed the affirmation of many men. She had an affair with one of my favorite professors when I was in college."

"Ugly." Raffi looked sharply at her grandmother.

"Very ugly. But it's also how I met your grandfather." Camilla took their plates out to the kitchen, gently remov Madeleine L'Engle22 who had taken her in out of the cold and given her coffee (undrinkable but hot) had for a moment superimposed itself over her mother and Professor Grantley Grange. She shivered, determined to keep her mother's present infidelity from Luisa. She was so angry that she was completely caught up in her own head and could not get outside it, as had happened once when she'd had a bad case of flu and was nothing but a ma.s.s of aching bones and burning fever. That was similar to the present psychic pain in which she was trapped.If this was not her mother's first affair, it was the first one in which Rose had encroached on Camilla's own territory. Camilla was, or had been, Professor Grantley Grange's favor ite student. Now she never wanted to see him again, even while she knew she would be in her place when he taught his next afternoon's cla.s.s.

The door to the bath cubicle was pushed open and Luisa stuck her head in.

'Oh, good, it's you.' Of course she hadn't knocked.

'Go away, Lu, I'm relaxing.'

'You won't relax until you wave your mother off. She been making waves again?'

'She's always making waves.'

'Thank G.o.d my mother never comes to visit, and if she did, she wouldn't be taken for my sister. The school of hard knocks shows in her face. Something's up. I haven't seen you this tense in a long time.'

'I'm always tense when my mother's here.' 'Not this tense.'

'Get off my back, Luisa.'

Luisa perched on an old stool, once white but now with much of the surface paint chipped off, revealing layers of blue and green underneath. 'Listen, old pal, I.

care about you, that's all.'

'I know. Thanks, Lu.' She lay back in the tub and closed her eyes.

23.Luisa was not central to the story Raffi wanted Camilla to tell. Neither was she peripheral. Luisa had been part of Camilla's life it seemed forever, an irritant, like that grain of sand in the oyster sh.e.l.l. Camilla pulled herself back from the past of her own college days to the present, to her comfortable house, to Raffi sitting opposite her at the marble-topped table, to Raffi's unexpected and disturbing questions. "You know my friend Luisa Rowan?"

"Dr. Rowan, the shrink. Sure, I like her a lot. Does she have something to, do with all this?"

Camilla sighed, then stood up as the doorbell rang. "Here comes my gang."

"You can't stop now."

"I can't go on, with a room full of students." "When, then?"

Camilla sighed again. "Tomorrow. I don't have anything on tomorrow evening.

Come and we'll eat together." Why did it seem that opening old wounds, old but never completely healed, would be easier over food?

"I'll go out the back door," Raffi said. "I still look like h.e.l.l."

Raffi let herself out the kitchen door and went across the campus to her dorm.

She was in one of the old Victorian brick buildings, six storeys high.

In the lobby she paused at the mailboxes, though she was not expecting any messages. But there was something in her box. She pulled it out, a copy of the new TV Guide. On the cover was a picture of her father. Taxi. He did not use his last name, not too surprising with a name like Xanthakos. Her grandmother, too, used her maiden name, d.i.c.kinson, professionally. Someone had put a note in the magazine, with the scrawled message, 'Thought you might like to see this super Madeleine L'Engle24 picture of your dad. Stick it in my box when you're through. Dorry.'Raffi looked for Dorry's box and shoved the magazine in. Dorry meant well, she knew that. But Raffi did not like being known as a TV star's daughter, rather than as Raffi Xantha kos, with her own personality, and her own gifts, whatever they were.

"Raffi! Taxi is your father!" "G.o.d, he's gorgeous!"

"What's it like having Taxi for your dad?" "I absolutely adore him!"

"Why doesn't he have a last name?"

To that, she would reply, "With a name like Xanthakos?" "I think it's chic, being known as Taxi. Is that his real name?"

"Artaxias," she would explain, not amused at their laugh ter.

"Weirdo." "Cute." "Some Greek G.o.d or something?"

Raffi would tell them, "Artaxias was one of the generals of Antiochus the Great.

He revolted and became an independent sovereign."

More delighted laughter. "Sovereign! That's Taxi!"

"And you, Raffi? Are you named after an archangel? Rafael?"

Raffi would smile. "I'm named Rose Rafferty after my dad's grandparents."

"Cute!"

"What a super family, Raf." "And your mother's a dancer?"

She lifted her shoulders slightly. "Till after I was born. A dancer's life is pretty short" -but not that short. Mom could have gone on dancing. Dad wanted her to quit.

A Live Coal in the Sea,25 She turned back to her friends, found herself overexplaining, "The New York ballet season's pretty short, and my dad didn't want her away on those long tours."

"If I was married to Taxi I wouldn't mind staying home." What Raffi thought about her father was not coherent. She loved him pa.s.sionately, and she was afraid of him. She was never sure what his reactions would be, and when he spoke to her with scorn, something inside her withered.

-I'm like a dog, she thought, -never knowing whether my master is going to stroke me or kick me. How does Mom manage to be so calm, so casual about it all?

Raffi's mother was Taxi's third wife. He had married at eighteen, divorced at nineteen, married again, quickly divorced. Somehow Raffi's mother hung in, disregarding his vol atile temper. "I'm like a duck," she told Raffi. "I let it slide off me. It's just Taxi's way. It doesn't mean anything."

Didn't it? Raffi didn't like unpredictability, didn't like irrational anger directed at her mother, or herself.

She climbed the stairs, calling out greetings as she pa.s.sed her friends. If Taxi could act, so could Raffi, always making everybody think everything was all right. Nothing ever bothers Raffi. Raffi's always okay.

Yay.

She could act in real life; she could act in all the school plays, and loved doing it, until, as always happened, her father managed to put her down. Why?

She would put her tail be tween her legs, as it were, and swear she'd never try out for a play again, but when the time came she was always there, happy and excited, tail wagging hopefully.

She went into her room and shut the door. What had she expected her grandmother to tell her? Not a long-winded story about how she had met Raffi's grandfather.

What did that have to do with it?Something. Raffi trusted her grandmother.

On her bookcase were several framed photographs, one of Madeleine L'Engle,26 Camilla and Mac standing under a large pine tree, with two small children beside them, Raffi's father, Taxi, and her Aunt Frankie. Beautiful little kids, not scrawny and freckled and skinny as Raffi had been at their age.

Another frame held a wedding picture of Raffi's parents. Her mother was, Raffi thought, serenely beautiful. A small gold tiara held a flutter of veil. She could have danced Cin derella at the ball, and Taxi was spectacular as the prince, even though the ballet prince's costume would not have been a tuxedo.

If it had been hard for Camilla's mother to be beautiful, were his amazing looks hard on Raffi's father?

"Thank G.o.d I'm ugly," she said aloud, and knew she was lying to herself. If she was not beautiful, she was far from ugly. She had filled out. Her eyes were like c.h.i.n.ks of emerald in a gamine's face. She was attractive in her own rather unconventional way, and she had as many dates as she wanted, though she didn't take them seriously. Time for seriousness later. Time now to ask why she lied to herself so often.

Did her grandmother know that Raffi went regularly to Luisa, Dr. Rowan, the shrink, and was helped? Even now in college she still went to her, taking the train down to New York and back again the same day. But Dr. Rowan had left for Switzerland for a conference right after the Maria Mitch.e.l.l ceremony, so had not been in New York when Taxi played that silly song and made his odd remarks.

If Dr. Rowan had been available, Raffi might not have questioned her grandmother.

She looked out the window. Many of the trees were already bare. Lights were on all across the campus, shedding comfortable warmth.

What had her father been hinting at? What was the hidden message behind that silly song? He had been brooding, simmering, all the way down to the city from the college after her grandmother's reception, barely listening as Frankie talked about Seattle, and how popular Taxi's show was with all A Live Coal in the Sea27 her friends. He was not satisfied with being 'merely' a successful television personality, Raffi thought; it was not enough. He was the star of his soap opera, was a frequent guest on the nighttime shows, did an occasional Broadway play, an occasional movie. But enough was not enough. He was not happy with himself.

When had she begun to realize that?

Who was Red Grange that her mother had slapped her father, struck him across the face, because of him?

Red Grange, a football star in the twenties, because of the borrowing of his nickname, had affected Camilla in college, blasted her again after her marriage, and now, all these years later, was rising to upset Raffi.

Surely the old football hero did not know how widely his influence extended.

-I don't give a hoot about football.

Raffi scowled, and plunked herself down at her desk and opened her notebook.Who was Red Grange, anyhow?

-Red Grange was a stupid nickname, Camilla thought, but maybe not for those who set far more importance on sports than she did.

After her group of seniors left, she banked the fire, turned out the lights, went upstairs. She had left on the reading light by her bed and it reflected brightly against the bra.s.s, picked out the delicate colors in the flowered wallpaper, the cushions on the chaise longue.

The phone rang, and Camilla leaned across the bed, reaching for it. "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mom, it's Frankie."

"Darling, h.e.l.lo, it's good to hear from you. Everything okay?"

Madeleine L'Engle28 "Fine. That was a terrific bash the college gave you. Ben's really sorry he couldn't get away."

"I am, too. But you were there, and that was wonderful." "We're proud of you, Mom."

Camilla laughed. "Darling Frankie, it really wasn't that big a deal."

"It was, to us. You did enjoy it, didn't you?"

"Of course I did. It warmed the c.o.c.kles of my heart." "My niece Raffi's a really nice girl," Frankie said. "She's a love. Bright and inquiring and brave."

"She'd need to be brave with Taxi for a father. Sorry, Mom, that wasn't nice of me. I guess Taxi has a right to be difficult. Thank G.o.d for Thessaly. She not only puts up with him, she loves him. And mostly she can manage him. I really like my sister-in-law."

"I wish you saw more of each other."

"We're all too busy. Even you, Mom, you hardly ever get out to Seattle. When are you going to retire?"

"When the college decides it's time, I suppose. Not for a while yet. I love my work."

"And I love mine. I'm doing more painting now, and less book ill.u.s.trating.

We're lucky to enjoy what we do, aren't we?" "Very.

"Good night, Mom. I'll call again in a few days."

After she'd said goodbye to Frankie, Camilla drew a hot tub, then pulled the phone on its long cord into the bathroom with her. No matter when she bathed, it seemed that this was always the time for someone to call her, and she hated heaving out of the tub and hastening, dripping, into the bedroom for the phone.

-Why are we so compulsive about phones? Because there have been too many traumas, too many urgent calls. The more people we love, the more vulnerable we are, and the more likely to rush to answer the phone ...

It rang. Taxi.

A Live Coal in the Sea29 "Mom, who am I?" This was not unlike Taxi, cosmic questions out of the blue.