Free Camilla by Madeleine L'Engle Page B

looked at his coffee and said nothing. We have known him for a long time. When I first remember him he was thin with a lot of thick brown hair. Now he has quite a large stomach and not so much hair.
    I sat there and watched him put sugar and cream into his coffee and waited for him to speak; and while I waited I felt almost peaceful because before this moment it had seemed to me that I ought to be able to do something about everything, and now he had taken all responsibility away from me. He seemed serious and when he looked up at me his eyes were probing.
    â€œCamilla,” he said at last, “you’re going to be a very beautiful woman someday.”
    This was not at all what I had expected him to say, and I looked so startled that he laughed.
    Then he said, “Beauty carries with it a great responsibility, Camilla. A beautiful person should also be a strong person, but many people use their beauty as an excuse for weakness. I’ve known you since you were small, Camilla, and I think that you can be strong if you want to, and I hope you’ll want to.”
    â€œI’d like to be strong,” I said, though I didn’t know what he was driving at.
    Perhaps he didn’t either, for he said suddenly, “Sometimes when things get too much for people they try to solve their problems by trying to get out of everything altogether. It’s not a very good way and fortunately it doesn’t always work. Camilla, I think you’re old enough and strong enough to face facts. Your mother tried to take her own life tonight.”
    Sitting there in the steam-heated drugstore, with my navy blue coat still buttoned, I began to shiver. I put my hands on my lap and clenched them to try to stop their shaking, but my body shivered and under the table my legs trembled.
    â€œLet’s walk a little,” Dr. Wallace said. He put some money on the counter and we left the drugstore and began to walk down Madison Avenue.
    â€œYour mother’s really still a child,” Dr. Wallace said as he walked. “She’s loved and adored you, but you’ve been more like a wonderful doll than a child to her. You know that marvelous doll that you’re giving to your friend Luisa? Your mother would have loved that doll.”
    â€œHow did you know about the doll?” I asked.
    â€œIt’s odd, the things a person will talk about when she’s hysterical and overwrought. Your mother talked about the doll tonight. Camilla, I wish I could pretend for you that nothing has happened, but I can’t. You must just thank God that your father came home when he did, and that I was already on my way to your apartment. Go home to her and love her and be very strong, because she needs strength, and strength, like fear, is contagious.”
    We turned around then and walked home and Dr. Wallace took me up in the elevator. The elevator boy grinned at me and I wondered if he knew that anything had happened. Dr. Wallace left me at the apartment door and I went in alone. I walked through the apartment until I got to my mother’s room. The lamp by the bed was on and she was lying there, asleep. My father sat on a low chair by the bed and his head, dark as an ink stain, was down on the blanket close to Mother, and he was asleep too. Mother looked very white and both her wrists were bandaged in neat white bandages. I stood looking at them for a moment, and then I started to tiptoe out of the room; but, as I turned, my mother opened her eyes and held out her arms to me, and I ran to her and she hugged me and said, “Oh, Camilla, Camilla darling, forgive me,” and my father woke up then and the three of us were a tangle of arms and we were full of love and close, close, and I thought, Nothing can ever push us apart again.
    I kissed them and I went into my room and undressed and fell into a deep sleep black as velvet and when I woke up it was daylight and I ran into my parents’ room and they were lying