You don’t know how lucky you are to be loved.

This has been the most impossible, the most confusing afternoon of my life, [Meg] thought, yet I don’t feel confused or upset anymore; I only feel happy. Why?

“Maybe we weren’t meant to meet before this,” Calvin said. “I mean, I knew who you were in school and everything, but I didn’t know you. But I’m glad we’ve met now, Meg. We’re going to be friends, you know.”

“I’m glad, too,” Meg whispered, and they were silent again.

It’s a little annoying how hard she’s telegraphing that these two are gonna get together (they literally get married when they grow up), but to be fair, sci-fi/fantasy as a genre was typically uninterested in romance back then (recall that there was only one, maybe two of the Narnia books that ever touched on romance, and LOTR had a single romance developed within the books themselves).

Anyhow, once Calvin meets Mrs. Murry, he asks to use their phone to make sure his mom knows where he’s at (because that’s what you did before cell phones).

“I don’t know why I call her when I don’t come home,” Calvin said, his voice bitter. “She wouldn’t notice.” He sighed and dialed. “Ma?” he said. “Oh, Hinky. Tell Ma I won’t be home till late. Now don’t forget. I don’t want to be locked out again.” He hung up, looked at Meg. “Do you know how lucky you are?”

She smiled rather wryly. “Not most of the time.”

“A mother like that! A house like this! Gee, your mother’s gorgeous! You should see my mother. She had all her upper teeth out and Pop got her a plate but she won’t wear it, and most days she doesn’t even comb her hair. Not that it makes much difference when she does.” He clenched his fists. “But I love her. That’s the funny part of it. I love them all, and they don’t give a hoot about me. Maybe that’s why I call when I’m not going to be home. Because I care. Nobody else does. You don’t know how lucky you are to be loved.”

Meg said in a startled way, “I guess I never thought of that. I guess I just took it for granted.”

Honestly, I relate more to Calvin than Meg, but both the Murrys and the O’Keefes serve a purpose in the narrative. If Calvin’s home life was just as good as Meg’s, there might not be anything to bring them together.

Then Mrs. Murry suggests they do homework while the stew finishes cooking, and that Meg could probably help Calvin with his math.

“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.”

I do share Meg’s fondness for math (and similar issues with shortcuts), and similarly enjoyed doing math several grade levels ahead (especially in elementary school, when my grade level was mostly long division and such). Meg’s school troubles are only compounded by bad handwriting (which I managed to avoid just because my mom made me practice my handwriting in school).

Then, after she’s done figuring his math homework, Calvin just starts quizzing her on random stuff just to see what other subjects she’s good at.

“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.”

The New York question is a bit of a trick question (it’s actually Albany), but he literally said the author of Life of Johnson (Boswell)! It seems that Meg has mostly set up these mental blocks for herself – she’s good with numbers and equations, but not geography or language (or handwriting, for that matter). Even when she does actually know things, she struggles to communicate that, partly because she believes that everyone else already thinks of her as a “moron”, and she thinks it’s too much work to convince them otherwise.

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 anymore! 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 everyone else, I can hold myself down, but it isn’t for me.”

I relate to Calvin more and more. I similarly was always well-liked and did well in school, but I never managed to forge meaningful relationships there. I, too, managed to appear “normal”.

They have dinner, and the twins are pleased to see Calvin (because they admire his basketball skills), and after dinner Calvin volunteers to read a bedtime story to Charles Wallace.

“Mother, are you upset?” [Meg] 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’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.”

I love the way L’Engle inserts philosophy into this story in a far subtler fashion than Lewis (much as I love them both). It’s not a strictly Christian philosophy (which we’ll get into more in later chapters), but certainly compatible.

Anyway, Calvin returns after reading to Charles from Genesis