WHEN Meg woke to the jangling of her alarm clock the wind was still blowing but the sun was shining; the worst of the storm was over. She sat up in bed, shaking her head to clear it.
It must have been a dream. She’d been frightened by the storm and worried about the tramp so she’d just dreamed about going down to the kitchen and seeing Mrs Whatsit and having her mother get all frightened and upset by that word – what was it? Tess – tess something.
She dressed hurriedly, picked up the kitten still curled up on the bed, and dumped it unceremoniously on the floor. The kitten yawned, stretched, gave a piteous miaow, trotted out of the attic and down the stairs. Meg made her bed and hurried after it. In the kitchen her mother was making French toast and the twins were already at the table. The kitten was lapping milk out of a saucer.
‘Where’s Charles?’ Meg asked.
‘Still asleep. We had rather an interrupted night, if you remember.’
‘I hoped it was a dream,’ Meg said.
Her mother carefully turned over four slices of French toast, then said in a steady voice, ‘No, Meg. Don’t hope it was a dream. I don’t understand it any more than you do, but one thing I’ve learned is that you don’t have to understand things for them to be. I’m sorry I showed you I was upset. Your father and I used to have a joke about the tesseract.’
‘What is a tesseract?’ Meg asked.
‘It’s a concept.’ Mrs Murry handed the twins the syrup. ‘I’ll try to explain it to you later. There isn’t time before school.’
‘I don’t see why you didn’t wake us up,’ Dennys said. ‘It’s a gyp we missed out on all the fun.’
‘You’ll be a lot more awake in school today than I will.’ Meg took her French toast to the table.
‘Who cares,’ Sandy said. ‘If you’re going to let old tramps come into the house in the middle of the night, Mother, you ought to have Den and me around to protect you.’
‘After all, father would expect us to,’ Dennys added.
‘We know you have a great mind and all, Mother,’ Sandy said, ‘but you don’t have much sense. And certainly Meg and Charles don’t.’
‘I know. We’re morons.’ Meg was bitter.
‘I wish you wouldn’t be such a dope, Meg. Syrup, please.’ Sandy reached across the table. ‘You don’t have to take everything so personally. Use a happy medium, for heaven’s sake. You just goof around in school and look out the window and don’t pay any attention.’
‘You just make things harder for yourself,’ Dennys said. ‘And Charles Wallace is going to have an awful time. We know he’s bright, but he’s so funny when he’s around other people, and they’re so used to thinking he’s dumb, I don’t know what’s going to happen to him. Sandy and I’ll sock anybody who picks on him, but that’s about all we can do.’
‘Let’s not worry about next year till we get through this one,’ Mrs Murry said. ‘More French toast, boys?’
At school Meg was tired and her eyelids sagged and her mind wandered. In social studies she was asked to name the principal imports and exports of Nicaragua, and though she had looked them up dutifully the evening before, now she could remember none of them. The teacher was sarcastic, the rest of the class laughed, and she flung herself down in her seat in a fury. ‘Who cares about the imports and exports of Nicaragua, anyhow?’ she muttered.
‘If you’re going to be rude, Margaret, you may leave the room,’ the teacher said.
‘Okay, I will.’ Meg flounced out.
During study hall the principal sent for her. ‘What seems to be the problem now, Meg?’ he asked, pleasantly enough.
Meg looked sulkily down at the floor. ‘Nothing, Mr Jenkins.’
‘Miss Porter tells me you were inexcusably rude.’
Meg shrugged.
‘Don’t you realize that you just make everything harder for yourself by your attitude?’ the principal asked. ‘Now, Meg, I’m convinced that you can do the work and keep up with your grade if you will apply yourself, but some of your teachers are not. You’re going to have to do something about yourself. Nobody can do it for you.’ Meg was silent. ‘Well? What about it, Meg?’
‘I don’t know what to do,’ Meg said.
‘You could do your homework, for one thing. Wouldn’t your mother help you?’
‘If I asked her to.’
‘Meg, is something troubling you? Are you unhappy at home?’ Mr Jenkins asked.
At last Meg looked at him, pushing at her glasses in a characteristic gesture. ‘Everything’s fine at home.’
‘I’m glad to hear it. But I know it must be hard on you to have your father away.’
Meg eyed the principal warily, and ran her tongue over the barbed line of her brace.
‘Have you had any news from him lately?’
Meg was sure it was not only imagination that made her feel that behind Mr Jenkins’ surface concern was a gleam of avid curiosity. – Wouldn’t he like to know! she thought. – And if I knew anything he’s the last person I’d tell. Well, one of the last.
The postmistress must know that it was almost a year now since the last letter, and heaven knows how many people she’d told, or what unkind guesses she’d made about the reason for the long silence.
Mr Jenkins waited for an answer, but Meg only shrugged.
‘Just what was your father’s line of business?’ Mr Jenkins asked. ‘Some kind of scientist, wasn’t he?’
‘He is a physicist.’ Meg bared her teeth to reveal the two ferocious lines of her brace.
‘Meg, don’t you think you’d make a better adjustment to life if you faced facts?’
‘I do face facts,’ Meg said. ‘They’re lots easier to face than people, I can tell you.’
‘Then why don’t you face facts about your father?’
‘You leave my father out of it!’ Meg shouted.
‘Stop bellowing,’ Mr Jenkins said sharply. ‘Do you want the entire school to hear you?’
‘So what?’ Meg demanded. ‘I’m not ashamed of anything I’m saying. Are you?’
Mr Jenkins sighed. ‘Do you enjoy being the most belligerent, uncooperative child in school?’
Meg ignored this. She leaned over the desk towards the principal. ‘Mr Jenkins, you’ve met my mother, haven’t you? You can’t accuse her of not facing facts, can you? She’s a scientist. She has doctors’ degrees in both biology and bacteriology. Her business is facts. When she tells me that my father isn’t coming home, I’ll believe it. As long as she says father is coming home, then I’ll believe that.’
Mr Jenkins sighed again. ‘No doubt your mother wants to believe that your father is coming home, Meg. Very well, I can’t do anything else with you. Go on back to study hall. Try to be a little less antagonistic. Maybe your work would improve if your general attitude were more tractable.’
When Meg got home from school her mother was in the lab, the twins were at basketball, and Charles Wallace, the kitten and Fortinbras were waiting for her. Fortinbras jumped up, put his front paws on her shoulders, and gave her a kiss, and the kitten rushed to his empty saucer and mewed loudly.