Wrinkle in Time

‘Why?’

‘I suppose because he’s — well, because he’s different, Meg.’

‘Different how?’

‘I’m not quite sure. You know yourself he’s not like anybody else.’

‘No. And I wouldn’t want him to be,’ Meg said defensively.

‘Wanting doesn’t have anything to do with it. Charles Wallace is what he is. Different. New.’

‘New?’

‘Yes. That’s what your father and I feel.’

Meg twisted her pencil so hard that it broke. She laughed. ‘I’m sorry. I’m really not being destructive. I’m just trying to get things straight.’

‘I know.’

‘But Charles Wallace doesn’t look different from anybody else.’

‘No, Meg, but people are more than just the way they look. Charles Wallace’s difference isn’t physical. It’s in essence.’

Meg sighed heavily, took off her glasses and twirled them, put them back on again. ‘Well, I know Charles Wallace is different, and I know he’s something more. I guess I’ll just have to accept it without understanding it.’

Mrs Murry smiled at her. ‘Maybe that’s really the point I was trying to put across.’

‘Yah,’ Meg said dubiously.

Her mother smiled again. ‘Maybe that’s why our visitor last night didn’t surprise me. Maybe that’s why I’m able to have a — a willing suspension of disbelief. Because of Charles Wallace.’

‘Are you like Charles?’ Meg asked.

‘I? Heavens no. I’m blessed with more brains and opportunities than many people, but there’s nothing about me that breaks out of the ordinary mould.’

‘Your looks do,’ Meg said.

Mrs Murry laughed. ‘You just haven’t had enough basis for comparison, Meg. I’m very ordinary, really.’

Calvin O’Keefe, coming in then, said, ‘Ha ha.’

‘Charles all settled?’ Mrs Murry asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What did you read to him?’

‘Genesis. His choice. By the way, what kind of an experiment were you working on this afternoon, Mrs Murry?’

‘Oh, something my husband and I were cooking up together. I don’t want to be too far behind him when he gets back.’

‘Mother,’ Meg pursued. ‘Charles says I’m not one thing or the other, nor flesh nor fowl nor good red herring.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ Calvin said, ‘you’re Meg, aren’t you? Come on and let’s go for a walk.’

But Meg was still not satisfied. ‘And what do you make of Calvin?’ she demanded of her mother.

Mrs Murry laughed. ‘I don’t want to make anything of Calvin. I like him very much, and I’m delighted he’s found his way here.’

‘Mother, you were going to tell me about a tesseract.’

‘Yes.’ A troubled look came into Mrs Murry’s eyes. ‘But not now, Meg. Not now. Go on out for that walk with Calvin. I’m going up to kiss Charles and then I have to see that the twins get to bed.’

Out of doors the grass was wet with dew. The moon was half-way up and dimmed the stars for a great arc. Calvin reached out and took Meg’s hand with a gesture as simple and friendly as Charles Wallace’s. ‘Were you upsetting your mother?’ he asked gently.

‘I don’t think I was. But she’s upset.’

‘What about?’

‘Father.’

Calvin led Meg across the lawn. The shadows of the trees were long and twisted and there was a heavy, sweet, autumnal smell to the air. Meg stumbled as the land sloped suddenly downhill, but Calvin’s strong hand steadied her. They walked carefully across the vegetable garden, picking their way through rows of cabbages, beets, broccoli, pumpkins. Looming on their left were the tall stalks of maize. Ahead of them was a small apple orchard bounded by a stone wall, and beyond this the woods through which they had walked that afternoon. Calvin led the way to the wall, and then sat there, his red hair shining silver in the moonlight, his body dappled with patterns from the tangle of branches. He reached up, pulled an apple off a gnarled limb, handed it to Meg, then picked one for himself. ‘Tell me about your father.’

‘He’s a physicist.’

‘Sure, we all know that. And he’s supposed to have left your mother and gone off with some dame.’

Meg jerked up from the stone on which she was perched, but Calvin grabbed her by the wrist and pulled her back down. ‘Hold it, kid. I didn’t say anything you hadn’t heard already, did I?’

‘No,’ Meg said, but continued to pull away. ‘Let me go.’

‘Come on, calm down. You know it isn’t true, I know it isn’t true. And how anybody after one look at your mother could believe any man would leave her for another woman just shows how far jealousy will make people go. Right?’

‘I guess so,’ Meg said, but her happiness had fled and she was back in a morass of anger and resentment.

‘Look, dope,’ Calvin shook her gently. ‘I just want to get things straight, sort of sort out the fact from fiction. Your father’s a physicist. That’s a fact, yes?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’s a Ph.D. several times over.’

‘Yes.’

‘Most of the time he works alone but some of the time he was at the Institute for Higher Learning in Princeton and in England, at Cambridge. Correct?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then he did some work for the government, didn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘You take it from there. That’s all I know.’

‘That’s about all I know, too,’ Meg said. ‘Maybe mother knows more. I don’t know. What he did was — well, it was what they call Classified.’

‘Top Secret, you mean?’

‘That’s right.’

‘And you don’t even have any idea what it was about?’

Meg shook her head. ‘No. Not really. Just an idea because of where he was.’

‘Well, where?’

‘Out in New Mexico for a while; we were with him there; and then he was in Florida at Cape Canaveral, and we were with him there, too. And then he was going to be travelling a lot, so we came here.’

‘You’d always had this house?’

‘Yes. But we used to live in it just in the summer.’

‘And you don’t know where your father was sent?’

‘No. At first we got lots of letters. Mother and father always wrote to each other every day. I think mother still writes to him every night. Every once in a while the postmistress makes some kind of crack about all her letters.’

‘I suppose they think she’s pursuing him or something,’ Calvin said, rather bitterly. ‘They can’t understand plain, ordinary love when they see it. Well, go on. What happened next?’

‘Nothing happened,’ Meg said. ‘That’s the trouble.’

‘Well, what about your father’s letters?’

‘They just stopped coming.’