Becoming Mrs. Lewis

by Patti Callahan

  Jack:

  I’m sorry you’re having trouble with your new work on the Ten Commandments. Do remember, Joy, that what does not deeply concern you will not interest your reader.

  Joy:

  Oh, Jack, it does concern me deeply. I am just finding theology more difficult to write about than I’d anticipated. Maybe I wasn’t ready. But sometimes we must do what we aren’t quite ready to do.

  The rain was incessant, but I knew friends in New York were burdened under the heat, and there I was with foggy mornings and steaming soil. The earth was so soaked that the weeds grew almost overnight and yet the tomatoes never seemed to ripen. Thunderheads gathered like gray armies on the horizon, and the storms were both foreboding and magical.

  I’d heard talk in town of people blaming the clouds and boomers on the atom bomb. “The end of the world,” they murmured. I wrote and told Jack he could find quite the storyline in the American gossip of end days.

  It was a moonless evening, the electricity shut off by a storm, when Bill, Chad, Eva, and I again talked about writing and publication. Eva said, “Oh, Joy, tell us how Weeping Bay is doing.”

  I cringed, and yet knew she asked from love. “False gods of all kinds are revealed in Weeping Bay, but that doesn’t matter because it has not done well, my friend.” I took a long swallow of wine. “A quite fervid Catholic boy in the sales department found my book offensive and buried it. You can hardly find it now. You can’t know what it’s like to pour your heart into a novel and have it discarded for its merits.”

  “What about its debits?” Bill asked in the Southern accent he turned on and off at will. He was right, the novel hadn’t done well, and the reviews had been tough. “‘Marred by obscenities and blasphemies,’” he quoted from the harshest critique of them all.

  “Bill!” Eva’s voice rang out. “I’m sure it’s awful enough for her.”

  I clapped my hand against my leg. “Bill, why would you attack my work?”

  “Ah, is this where you remind me that you have two college degrees and I have none?”

  “I’ve never done that, Bill. You’re the only one who brings that up.” I looked at Chad and Eva. “But he’s right about the book,” I allowed. “Some of the reviews were wonderful, but others declared that the shortcomings of one main character fractured the story beyond repair. They’re not wrong, but I wrote the story the way I wanted. The way I needed to write it.” I pointed at Bill. “And one of my favorite characters, the whiskey-drinking preacher, is your contribution, so maybe be sweet about it.” I tried to smile at him. How I wanted us to be sweet to each other.

  Damaris, the Walshes’ eldest daughter, called out from the children’s rooms. “You are so loud out there!”

  We all laughed and Eva rose to help settle her. She glanced at me with warmth as she left the room. “You worked on that novel for years, Joy. I can imagine how hurtful it must be to hear the negative feedback.”

  “Yes. I started it at MacDowell all those years ago. Before kids. Before Bill and marriage and articles written for money. Back when writing was done for the magic of putting sentences one after the other and making a story that made sense to my soul.” I settled back into my chair, feeling melancholy bloom.

  “Fiction must carry so much,” Chad said. “I don’t know how you do it.”

  “Jack and I have written about that.”

  Candlelight flickered across Chad’s face, catching on his eyeglasses. He was a studious-looking man, appearing just the way a college professor might be imagined, yet his easy smile burst through the serious demeanor.

  I leaned forward. “And how the gospels are not fiction. You see, fiction is always in a straight line, congruent if you will. But life isn’t. This is how we know the gospels are real; they don’t read like fiction.”

  “I’ve heard Lewis say the same,” Chad said.

  “Joy,” Bill said in a quiet voice. “What do you mean? I thought we were talking about your work.”

  “I am talking about my work, and what fiction can do.”

  Chad nodded, his glasses falling down his nose in agreement.

  Bill smashed out his cigarette on his piecrust. The ash melted with a soft hiss in the dessert I’d made that morning from freshly picked apples.

  “I think I’m done for the evening.” He stood and walked away, leaving Chad and me at the table where the leftover stench of cigarette settled between us.

  Jack:

  Warnie and I are planning our annual summer pilgrimage to Ireland for a month. Although we love the Kilns, we long every summer for our childhood land. It is there I visit my dearest friend, Arthur Greeves, my comrade since childhood. Back to the land of undulating green hills and the mountain views that remind me of some of the happiest days of my life.

  Joy:

  Ireland. Oh, how I would love to see that land one day, as well as Oxford of course. It seems these lands have shaped your internal landscape. For me, it has always been New York, except for the one soul-stealing year of screenwriting in Hollywood. Your descriptions are so lucid that when I close my eyes I can almost see the Kilns. I wonder if it is possible for you to send a photo from Ireland?

  Yours, Joy

  “You’ve become quite enamored of Jack,” Chad said carefully.

  I didn’t answer at first, weighing my words with caution as the buzzy rivers of wine flowed through me. Chad knew Jack in a way that I never would—he’d stayed six weeks in his home in Oxford. He knew his routine. He’d seen Jack when he woke and when he worked and when he went to retire. He’d seen him teach and attend church and partake in the Eucharist.

  “Yes,” I finally said. “I’m enamored of his mind. He’s become my teacher and mentor, as well as friend. Bill doesn’t care so much anymore about God, and we don’t always see eye to eye. I don’t think one could ever get to the end of Jack, or to the bottom of his views at all.”

  “I think Lewis would tell you to follow Christ, not him,” Chad said with a sly smile.

  “Ah, but can’t I follow both?” I paused before finding what I meant to say. “I’m not as traditional as Jack is, but then again he’s not as traditional as others believe him to be.” I let the next words settle on my tongue before I spoke them. “I wish I could visit him as you did. I can almost feel the cool green English world. The quiet. The libraries and cathedrals hushed with sublime beauty.”

  Chad clasped his hands together and tented his fingers under his chin, nodded. “It was profound, I’ll give you that. Maybe there will come a day when you can do the same.”

  “It’s easier for men,” I said. “It’s not fair, but it’s true. Wives and mothers can’t just up and go to England to research and write and interview. You can go for two months and study, leave your four children with your wife, but there’s some invisible and unstated law that I can’t do the same.”

  Chad’s gentle smile told me he understood. “Maybe one day, Joy. Maybe one day.”

  “Jesus tells us not to worry about tomorrow. Do we believe him?”

  “What ever do you mean?” Chad rubbed the bridge of his nose as if his glasses were too heavy.

  “What if,” I said and leaned closer, my voice lowering. “What if I trust that command? What on earth would become of me if I should ever grow brave?”

  Chad nodded his head. “Indeed, Joy. What would become of any of us if we were to become so brave as to believe his words?”

  We were quiet for a few moments until Eva’s voice called for him, and he rose to leave. I sat alone as the storm raged.

  After a while, with the house quiet, I slipped into the bedroom where Bill snored, in search of a sheaf of paper. I took it back to the kitchen, where I sat and vibrated with the thunder and began another sonnet. Although I no longer wrote poetry for publication, I could create for my spirit. Feelings that could not be acknowledged in the light of day or with the sound of voice—the ache of stifling desires, the pain of rejecting needs because they were unacceptable, the frustration of respon
sibility that hemmed me in as a woman—found their way out through the gateway of poetry.

  I wrote in a tight script, and the first line of a sonnet appeared.

  Shut your teeth upon your need.

  CHAPTER 6

  Coinsilver, moonsilver, buy me a tear;

  I lost of all of mine in a bygone year

  “FOR DAVY WHO WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT ASTRONOMY,” JOY DAVIDMAN

  Winter 1952

  “The moon goddess is Selene,” I told Davy one dark winter night with a full moon hovering above. Six months had passed since Vermont, and the peace of that trip had fallen away like a waterfall, down a river far gone. My elder son and I lay still on a blanket bundled in coats and staring at the dome of sky above us, naming constellations. He wore glasses by then—my genetic gift of poor eyesight—and his eyes seemed to grow beneath the round lenses.

  “I wrote a poem about her once,” I told him. “About the moon. I imagined her dripping liquid silver.”

  “You write poems about everything,” Davy said and shifted closer to me on the blanket. “Maybe you’ll write one about me.”

  “I will do exactly that,” I told him.

  Davy was enchanted with astronomy. We scoured the library for books on the celestial objects. I felt closer to him in this desire than any he’d had in his short life. I could feel bits of myself pulsing in his small, frenetic body. As a child I’d also been enchanted by the sky and the stars. The firmament demanded nothing of me, yet offered everything. As with Davy, in the rare moments when he was not thrashing his way through the world.

  Meanwhile, Douglas was immersed in the earthly world, whether in a fort he’d made or in the mud he’d plunged into at Crum Elbow Creek, which sliced through our property over moss-covered rocks and silver pebbles. Topsy, our rescued mutt, followed Douglas everywhere as he roamed our acreage, and it was there, in the natural world, that I found my connection with my younger son. He dug his hands into the dirt of my garden and roamed the orchard I’d planted. He seemed to be as I had been as a child—a loner, yet quite happy with his lot.

  At night I knelt at the edges of my sons’ beds to say prayers, tuck them under the blankets, and kiss their smooth cheeks. My precious boys, now seven and nine years of age.

  Time fell away from me in the mundane dailiness of survival as I wrote and took care of them. “I love you,” I always said as I shut off the light. “Sleep tight.”

  We spent the days together reading or playing outside. Color TV had come to our part of the world, but we didn’t have the money for such luxuries even if we’d wanted them. As I read fairy tales and mysteries to my children, the dream of visiting England, of meeting my friend Jack, grew.

  We were two years into our pen-friendship, and I looked forward to his letters as I did to the arrival of spring. I was hungry for them. Sometimes desperate.

  Jack:

  Waiting for the garden to burst forth here—the birch trees sprouting green above our heads. I believe spring comes later for us than it does for you. I hope this season brings you back to your poetry, as I know you miss it. Oh, and have you heard—Queen Elizabeth will now succeed to the throne at only twenty-four years old. At that age I didn’t know my bum from my nose, and she will be the Queen of England.

  Joy:

  The primrose is poking above ground, red and yellow and shy. The tomatoes are so rich they burst through the skin as if impatient. Some day I hope to see England, to see your garden. Yes, I’ve returned to my poetry, and I’m even trying my hand at sonnets. Oh, poor Elizabeth. At that age, I was a resounding atheist. I was active in the Communist party and the League of American Writers, writing my first book of poetry (Letter to a Comrade)—not exactly a queen.

  I didn’t hold back with Jack, and because of that I knew he truly saw me, even through the sharing of my most embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, my most humiliating reviews and blunders.

  Late one January afternoon, bent over my typewriter, a torrid cough ripping a hole in my chest, I attempted to start a short story. The allergy medicine kept me jittery and awake, but still useless. I had dropped my head to the table when Bill appeared with a letter in his hand.

  “Here is another delivery for Mrs. Gresham,” he said. “From Oxford, England.”

  “At least it’s not another bill.” I tried to smile.

  Bill dropped the letter on the table and paused. “What are we doing about dinner tonight?”

  I glanced at him, weary to death of it all. “I don’t know.”

  He walked out without a word, and I tore open the envelope that had traveled across the ocean from England.

  Jack:

  It is only in the giving up of ourselves that we find our real self. Giving up the rage, your favorite desires and wishes.

  Joy:

  Oh, how is that possible? I want to know.

  My mother always wanted me to be someone else, comparing me to my cousin Renee and to the beautiful women on the streets. My father, well, I’d never be good enough for him, much less be understood. My parents believed criticism was a show of love. And Bill? He wants from me the kind of wife I cannot be no matter how hard I pray or try. These hurts don’t melt easily even under the “giving up” of a false self to find the real self.

  Winter continued in its usual way in upstate New York, and the infection that had started in my lungs burrowed deep into my kidneys. Eventually the fever, jaundice, and vomiting sent me to the hospital for a few days. When I was finally sent home, it was straight to bed with doctor’s orders to rest.

  Illness had followed me all the days of my life, but always I’d rebounded. As a child I’d had everything from a radium collar for low thyroid to liver pills for fatigue. This last blow, however, left me bereft. In the bed, I stared at the ceiling as the walls closed in and the doors felt locked tight. No escape. I ran my fingers along the lump in my left breast—at least the doctor had said that was of no concern.

  Dr. Cohen, the gray-haired family doctor with glasses as thick as windshields, visited the house one afternoon and sat at my bedside with his stethoscope dangling and his weedy eyebrows bending toward each other. He directed his words to Bill as if the illnesses had left me invisible. “Your wife must get some rest.”

  His wife. My definition now. I was the object of someone’s life instead of the subject of my own.

  A sudden thump emanated from the hallway, and then Topsy’s bark and Davy’s scream. Bill bolted from my bedside to the door.

  “Bill,” Dr. Cohen said firmly.

  “Yes?” He turned with his hand on the doorknob, ready for escape.

  “I’m very serious. Your wife will not recover from the next blow. It’s too much. You both must find a way to get her some rest, even if it means going somewhere else for a while. I don’t care where—but somewhere where she can heal. Her body cannot sustain any more illness in this state. Do you understand the seriousness of what I’m telling you?”

  Bill nodded. “I do.”

  Douglas burst through the bedroom door with Davy fast at his heels, fists flailing, and Bill just as quickly ushered them out, slamming the door shut.

  Dr. Cohen and I heard him shouting, “Both of you straight to your rooms and wait for the spanking. I’ve had enough of this.”

  I closed my eyes and spiraled into despair. What could be done? My body had betrayed me.

  Hopelessness was my companion and fantasy my escape.

  Jack:

  Oh, my dear friend. If your husband is both drinking and being unfaithful, what choices do you have? Adultery is a monstrosity, a man attempting to isolate one kind of union from the sacred one. But sometimes, Joy, divorce is a surgery that must be done to save a life. Are the boys safe? Is it possible for you to take a holiday and come to visit England? We are praying for you, as always.

  Joy:

  Thank you for the kindness of your sentiments. I agree with your view and yet being gobsmacked in the middle of it all, it is hard to gain perspective.

 
Oh, Jack, a holiday? Yes, I dream of coming to England. I dream of so much.

  The days were long and crammed with pain, the pills barely easing the throbbing in my kidneys. One terrible night there was a winter storm shrouding the windows in translucent ice, and Bill still had not come home. Memories of previous disappearances appeared as taunting ghosts. Finally, in the middle of that sleepless night, I heard him arrive. First his steps on the stairway, the click-snap of the old doorknobs inside their mechanisms, and then he stood in our bedroom.

  His shadow fell long beside the bed, and his shape bent over to kiss me on the forehead. “Poogle, your fever appears to be gone.”

  The sticky, primordial aroma of sex overwhelmed my senses, making me dizzy. If only the pain meds could dull the pain of betrayal. “Where have you been?” My voice rose, exhausted but steady.

  “Hey,” he said softly, “don’t be angry. This has nothing to do with how much I love you, Poogle. Can’t you see that? A man’s needs must be met, and you’re in no condition to meet those needs. I’m just trying to be kind, give you a chance to heal while I recharge my batteries.”

  “Who was it this time?” My question was a whisper, a last breath.

  “Oh, Joy, my love. Don’t ask me what you don’t want to know.” He stood and backed away as if he had just realized his own scent.

  Jack:

  God of course does speak to us in our pains—his megaphone to reach us.

  Joy:

  If only I could hear what he says; usually that megaphone of pain drowns out all other noise and I can’t understand anything else. In my moment of greatest weakness—my novel tanked, my health in disrepair—Bill decided that fulfilling his own needs would help.

  “Oh, Joy,” Bill said with that false Southern lilt in his voice. He lay down beside me, his body stretching long and his leg flopped over mine in a motion of love and familiarity. His breath smelled of rancid whiskey and cigars. “Rest. And heal. And when you do, we’ll be better. Just you wait and see.”