“Not quite,” Meg said, going back into the kitchen.
“Then I’m sure Calvin won’t mind if you finish before dinner.”
“Sure, go ahead.” Calvin fished in his pocket and pulled out a wad of folded paper. “As a matter of fact I have some junk of mine to finish up. Math. That’s one thing I have a hard time keeping up in. I’m okay on anything to do with words, but I don’t do as well with numbers.”
Mrs. Murry smiled. “Why don’t you get Meg to help you?”
“But, see, I’m several grades above Meg.”
“Try asking her to help you with your math, anyhow,” Mrs. Murry suggested.
“Well, sure,” Calvin said. “Here. But it’s pretty complicated.”
Meg smoothed out the paper and studied it. “Do they care how you do it?” she asked. “I mean, can you work it out your own way?”
“Well, sure, as long as I understand and get the answers right.”
“Well, we have to do it their way. Now look, Calvin, don’t you see how much easier it would be if you did it this way?” Her pencil flew over the paper.
“Hey!” Calvin said. “Hey! I think I get it. Show me once more on another one.”
Again Meg’s pencil was busy. “All you have to remember is that every ordinary fraction can be converted into an infinite periodic decimal fraction. See? So 3/7 is 0.428571.”
“This is the craziest family.” Calvin grinned at her. “I suppose I should stop being surprised by now, but you’re supposed to be dumb in school, always being called up on the carpet.”
“Oh, I am.”
“The trouble with Meg and math,” Mrs. Murry said briskly, “is that Meg and her father used to play with numbers and Meg learned far too many short cuts. So when they want her to do problems the long way around at school she gets sullen and stubborn and sets up a fine mental block for herself.”
“Are there any more morons like Meg and Charles around?” Calvin asked. “If so, I should meet more of them.”
“It might also help if Meg’s handwriting were legible,” Mrs. Murry said. “With a good deal of difficulty I can usually decipher it, but I doubt very much if her teachers can, or are willing to take the time. I’m planning on giving her a typewriter for Christmas. That may be a help.”
“If I get anything right nobody’ll believe it’s me,” Meg said.
“What’s a megaparsec?” Calvin asked.
“One of Father’s nicknames for me,” Meg said. “It’s also 3.26 million light years.”
“What’s E=mc2?”
“Einstein’s equation.”
“What’s E stand for?”
“Energy.”
“m?”
“Mass.”
“c2?”
“The square of the velocity of light in centimeters per second.”
“By what countries is Peru bounded?”
“I haven’t the faintest idea. I think it’s in South America somewhere.”
“What’s the capital of New York?”
“Well, New York City, of course!”
“Who wrote Boswell’s Life of Johnson?”
“Oh, Calvin, I’m not any good at English.”
Calvin groaned and turned to Mrs. Murry. “I see what you mean. Her I wouldn’t want to teach.”
“She’s a little one-sided, I grant you,” Mrs. Murry said. “though I blame her father and myself for that. She still enjoys playing with her dolls’ house, though.”
“Mother!” Meg shrieked in agony.
“Oh, darling, I’m sorry,” Mrs. Murry said swiftly. “But I’m sure Calvin understands what I mean.”
With a sudden enthusiastic gesture Calvin flung his arms out wide, as though he were embracing Meg and her mother, the whole house. “How did all this happen? Isn’t it wonderful? I feel as though I were just being born! I’m not alone any more! Do you realize what that means to me?”
“But you’re good at basketball and things,” Meg protested. “You’re good in school. Everybody likes you.”
“For all the most unimportant reasons,” Calvin said. ‘There hasn’t been anybody, anybody in the world I could talk to. Sure, I can function on the same level as everybody else, lean hold myself down, but it isn’t me.”
Meg took a batch of forks from the drawer and turned them over and over, looking at them. “I’m all confused again.”
“Oh, so ‘m I,” Calvin said gaily. “But now at least I know we’re going somewhere.”
Meg was pleased and a little surprised when the twins were excited at having Calvin for supper. They knew more about his athletic record and were far more impressed by it than she. Calvin ate five bowls of stew, three saucers of Jello, and a dozen cookies, and then Charles Wallace insisted that Calvin take him up to bed and read to him. The twins, who had finished their homework, were allowed to watch half an hour of TV. Meg helped her mother with the dishes and then sat at the table and struggled with her homework. But she could not concentrate.
“Mother, are you upset?” she asked suddenly.
Mrs. Murry looked up from a copy of an English scientific magazine through which she was leafing. For a moment she did not speak. Then, “Yes.”
“Why?”
Again Mrs. Murry paused. She held her hands out and looked at them. They were long and strong and beautiful. She touched with the fingers of her right hand the broad gold band on the third finger of her left hand. “I’m still quite a young woman, you know,” she said finally, “though I realize that that’s difficult for you children to conceive. And I’m still very much in love with your father. I miss him quite dreadfully.”
“And you think all this has something to do with Father?”
“I think it must have.”
“But what?”
“That I don’t know. But it seems the only explanation.”
“Do you think things always have an explanation?”
“Yes. I believe that they do. But I think that with our human limitations we’re not always able to understand the explanations. But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”
“I like to understand things,” Meg said.
“We all do. But it isn’t always possible.”
“Charles Wallace understands more than the rest of us, doesn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“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 mold.”
“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, not flesh nor fowl nor good red herring.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” 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 tesserae!”
“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.”
Outdoors the grass was wet with dew. The moon was halfway 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.