Becoming Mrs. Lewis

by Patti Callahan

  “Bill,” Renee said in her sweet voice, “you know Dr. Cohen said she needed something like this.”

  Bill glanced at Renee and then to me. “Are you feeling sick again?”

  “You know how I feel. My body hurts. Everything in me hurts. But that’s not the only reason. I love you both and I love the boys, I know I do, but I feel numb to it, and lost.”

  “And how will you live?” His voice sank lower, the Southern accent nowhere to be found.

  “I have the articles, and a royalty check coming from Macmillan any day now, and I’ll finish or work on at least two books while I’m there.” I shifted on the couch, took in a breath, set forth the words I’d practiced. “When I close my eyes, I see the deep green of it all. It’s a place where we have friends I can stay with—Phyl is in London now.” I looked at Renee. “She stayed with us last winter during a crisis in her life, and she’s made it clear that I have a place to stay. And we also have a friend who might have some answers to help us all.”

  “Mr. Lewis,” Bill said.

  “Yes.” I hesitated. This was where I could lose my balance. “I’ve started the novel on King Charles II, and I think it could be a real moneymaker. But I need to go to Edinburgh to the library there for research. I could also complete the Ten Commandments articles, which might make an appealing book, all compiled. And to boot, England’s medical care is practically free. They don’t stop tourists from using it when on holiday. I could finally get all my teeth fixed and some checkups I’ve been putting off because—”

  “We don’t have the money here,” Bill interrupted, but then softened, moving closer to me and taking my hands. “Joy, we want you to get better, and I know we can’t afford the medical care here. Do what you need to do. If you feel going abroad might help you, then you should do it.”

  “Whatever you need to be healthy,” Renee agreed.

  “I’m doing this for all of us,” I said. “I can barely stand to think of leaving my boys, but I know they will have both of you. Everything will be better when I return. It’s no different from one of your business trips,” I said to Bill. “Whenever you come back, it’s like you never left.”

  Bill kissed the inside of my palm. “We will be fine.” He stood and sauntered off as if we’d just decided to have sloppy joes for dinner.

  Renee also stood. She picked up a plastic dog-chew toy shaped like a bone from the floor and threw it into a basket under the coffee table. “We’ll be dandy, cookie. Just fine. You’ve saved us, and I will do the same for you.” She reached for my hand. “You get well so you can return ready for anything.”

  “Yes, ready for anything.”

  Jack:

  Warnie and I look forward to finally meeting our pen-friend. Please keep us apprised of your travel plans. Looking forward.

  Joy:

  I sail from New York the second week of August and will arrive in Southampton on the 13th. I shall be staying with an old friend in London and will let you know when I arrive and have settled.

  During those weeks before I left, my insides felt torn open in places that had felt numb for years, as if the decision itself had awakened the soul inside of me. I told my sons where I was going and what a grand adventure it would be. We made up stories of what England might look like. Davy drew pictures, and Douglas wondered if the forests were denser or greener. No one could count how many times I told them how much I would miss them, how the idea of being gone made me ache for them even as they sat by my side.

  “Boys,” I said when I tucked them in a week before my leaving, “I love you so much. As big as the universe.”

  “The universe can’t be measured,” Davy said with his new celestial wisdom.

  “Exactly,” I said.

  “When you come back, will you bring us presents?” Douglas asked.

  “Loads of them.”

  “Do you think Mr. Lewis will be as nice as the professor in his book?”

  “Even nicer,” I said. “I will write to you and tell you everything about him.”

  They fell asleep as easily as exhausted children can, and I stood over them, tears running down my face and into the corners of my lips.

  When we arrived at the pier of the Hudson River docks that August morning, Bill stood tall and stiff as the dock’s pilings. “Safe travels, Joy.” He offered a weak hug.

  I took his hands. “This is a trip for all of us. It will be a return to health, more stable finances, and vitality for our family. You see that, don’t you, Poogle?”

  He turned away, and Renee came to me. She held me longer, her hug tighter. She stepped back in her red sundress and wide-brimmed straw hat and smiled. “I will miss you, cookie. Come home safely and quickly.” She kissed my cheek, and I knew there would be a bright-red mark from her lipstick.

  A humid breeze carrying the pungent stench of smoke and gasoline washed over us as I held out my arms to my sons. Behind me the grand ocean liner waited, a mountain of a ship I would soon board. “Davy, Douglas. Come to me.”

  One son under each arm, I drew them in a tight circle and kissed their faces, every little inch. “I will be home soon. I love you so much.” My voice snagged on the tears clogged in my throat.

  “Don’t cry, Mommy.” Douglas patted my cheek. “You can bring us presents from England.”

  Davy buried his head in my shoulder and began to cry softly, his glasses falling to the ground. I lifted his face and held his chin in my hand to see his deep brown eyes fixed on mine. “Look at the moon and know that I’ll be looking at it too. We will be under the same stars and the same sky. And it will carry me home. I promise you.”

  We clung to each other until Bill announced, “Let’s not make this worse than it is. You must go now.”

  With two more kisses on my sons’ cheeks, I watched as Bill took their hands and the foursome walked away toward Bobby and Rosemary, who stood waiting at the end of the sidewalk. It was only Douglas who looked back and waved. I didn’t move one step until they were gone from sight, and then slowly I lifted my eyes to the ocean liner. She held firm to the docks with ropes as thick as trees, and she didn’t move in the choppy waters, although all around her the water swayed, danced, and slapped against her hull. Tall white letters along her smooth ribs declared: SS United States.

  Onboard, the wind was warm, and I could almost taste the sweet-salt middle of the ocean, where the heat would dissipate. I stood on the aft deck, my dress flapping like a bird that couldn’t get off the ground, and I stayed there until the Statue of Liberty was as small as a toy in a gift shop, until the last of land faded from view and the vast sea was all that remained.

  PART II

  ENGLAND

  “. . . you can’t keep him; it’s not as if he were a tame lion.”

  THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, C. S. LEWIS

  CHAPTER 9

  Love is this and that and always present

  “SONNET III,” JOY DAVIDMAN

  August 1952

  I stepped off the SS United States onto the Southhampton docks, squinting through my glasses at the unfamiliar country shrouded in fog and coal dust. The land, and what lush green glory it held for me, rested somewhere beyond.

  I dragged my luggage, a sight I’m sure for all to see, because even with the smog and dirt, I had a feeling of such lightness and gaiety that the malaise I’d been carrying for years fell off like shed skin. I wouldn’t have been surprised if someone had chased me down and bellowed, “You dropped something back there!”

  I had left my family in America, and I knew there were neighbors and friends who didn’t understand. Our church community scowled. Other women talked about me. And yet must not their souls die inside? Did they not feel the anxiety that comes when the inner light rises and cries out, “Let me live”?

  Perhaps our Maker had stitched us each together in such a way that this was not true of all women. I could have kept on the way I was going, empty and jaundiced, sick and desolate of soul. I could have tried even harder to erase the
stench of whiskey from my alcoholic husband, to scrub the floors cleaner, to quiet my troubled heart. Of course I could have, but what would it have cost me?

  A complicated musical composition of accents—from Cockney and melodic Irish to sophisticated Queen’s English—carried me along the sidewalk as if it had been written for my very arrival. I boarded a train and then disembarked in London to hail a cab. The city passed by with beauty: cobbled streets and red double-decker buses, lampposts arching over the sidewalks so majestically they seemed to guard the city. Men in suits riding bicycles, women in smart, waist-cinched dresses tottering on high heels along the sidewalks. Cathedrals with spires reaching toward the sky. Cherry-colored phone booths on the corners, the doors often swung open like a secret invitation. The taxi arrived at Phyl’s flat on 11 Elsworthy Road, a road lined with silver birch and sycamore trees that beckoned like a secret passageway.

  My sea legs swaying beneath me, I stood on the brownstone steps and knocked with the confident hope of a new beginning. Phyl threw open the door, and for a moment I didn’t recognize her. The last I’d seen her had been at my house in Staatsburg, where she’d been suicidal and wan—but there she was, her cheeks flushed and her smile wide, full of vitality with a boisterous greeting and a grand hug. “You’re here!”

  Transformation. Yes! That was what I sought. To name something was to make it mine—transformation of my heart and body.

  And it would all begin here in London.

  Today I will meet Jack.

  The thought awoke me with a smile in the guest bedroom at Phyl’s. I’d been in England for a month already—wanting to become strong and ready to meet my pen-friend, as well as enjoy the peace and rest I needed. Today was the day.

  I rose slowly to the whistle of a teapot.

  In the past days I’d been seduced by England, and time had flown by with proof that it is relevant, that it moves quicker in happiness, fleeing away from me like water from the highest fall. I’d explored London with an awakened desire to learn and see everything I could in the nine-hundred-square-mile regal city. This journey, these days away from my little boys, must be worth the absence, and I set forth to make it so. As Phyl and I ambled through Trafalgar Square, she huffed, out of breath. “You’ve walked all of this city, I’m sure. Aren’t you tired of it?”

  “Tired of it?” I spread my arms wide and laughed. “Walking has always allowed me to slough off the darker parts of myself. And I’m stunned by this city’s beauty.” I sat on the edge of the fountain and motioned for her to do the same. “What’s fascinating is the way I see the world now. It’s as if in believing in God I was given new eyes—the world is full of possibility and fascination. It’s no longer just nature, or just beauty—it’s revelation.”

  She squinted into the sun and jostled me. “Looks the same to me.”

  “Oh, Phyl!” I held my hands to the sky. “Can’t you see now that anything is possible? Anything. The world changes when you understand the Love behind it, over it, and under it.”

  “You love life by the fistfuls, my dear.” She patted my knee.

  We made our way home, and for the remaining weeks I was poked and prodded by the dentists and doctors I visited—healing was paramount in this journey. I also filled my days with reading and research, writing and traveling, meeting new friends and finding a writing group.

  Loads of letters flew back and forth between Bill, the kids, Renee, and me. I wanted to tell them every detail of my journey.

  Joy:

  Oh Renee, how I wish you’d been with me at Trafalgar Square where I found a Spanish restaurant you would have adored. But I’ve realized this: Londoners must be half duck. If not for the crepe-soled shoes I’d have swum through the streets.

  Bill:

  I’m very glad to hear that all is “beer and skittles” for you, and that you are marvelously happy, but we are having a hard time here. Money is tight. Forgive me for not sending more this time.

  Joy:

  Dearest Poogle,

  I am sorry money is tight. I will do what I can here to write and sell, to pinch the shillings. I think of you often—I wish you could have been with me when I went to an open-air theater where a huge thunderstorm shook the tent as if we were still in Vermont! I also took a trip to Hampstead Heath, where I bought three pieces of art for cheap-cheap, a watercolor for only thirty-five shillings. It’s a wonderful place and full of all sorts of artists and writers. Maybe we should sell the house and move here. Love all around, Joy.

  P.S. to Davy: The aquarium here has a five-foot grand salamander from Japan!!

  Davy had written to me of the snake Bill had finally let him get—Mr. Nichols, he named him. I thought of my boys continuously, and when I went to the London Zoo I missed them fiercely and bought souvenirs to send.

  I visited Madam Tussauds Museum and every chapel or cathedral or art studio open to me. Then there was my solo journey to Canterbury, which felt like entering a book I’d read as a child. I’d never seen a land that echoed my dreams—the seductive, rolling green hills in their variegated greens, lined with stone walls and dotted with cottony sheep.

  I fell in love with England again and again. The shape of my soul was changing with every view; I wanted to be strong and steady before I met Jack in person.

  I traveled through Kent, a country of short-horn cows and undulating golden hills. I tried to describe it in my letters, but how could I do it justice? Miles and miles of apple and pear and plum trees. Hazel thickets and rowan trees with red berries flaming like fire that didn’t consume. Chestnut trees and fields of hops flew past like Renoirs. I filled myself with the views. The WWII bombed-out spaces revealed ancient Roman pavement and walls below—there was a story everywhere I looked. Oh, how America seemed provincial and boring in comparison.

  Then there were the friends I found. Two days into my trip, at Jack’s urging, I knocked on Florence Williams’s door. Her late husband, Charles Williams, had dubbed her his “Michal,” and although he was gone, the name had stuck. He’d been a poet, theologian, author, and an Inkling with Jack and J. R. R. Tolkien. And in a connection that made us both break into the laughter that binds friends, we discovered that Bill had written a foreword for one of her late husband’s books—The Greater Trumps. Not only did we become fast friends, but she also introduced me to an author’s crowd in London—a group of science fiction writers who gathered off Fleet Street on Thursday nights in a low-slung ceiling pub called the White Horse. They dubbed their group the “London Circle,” and I ducked into their cluster and drew that circle around me. Over thick beers and bangers their stories, debate, and publishing gossip swirled around me. It was community I’d been after and community I found, as though I’d washed up on an island after being lost at sea.

  Bill:

  It’s nice to hear you went to both the doctor and the dentist already. I hope you are healing. The boys are doing well but miss you more than they let on.

  Renee:

  Thank you for the Liberty scarf! I’ve been wearing it everywhere. Please forgive Bill for not sending much money; we are broke as we can be—sorry to be so down, but it’s just the gosh awful truth: Bill is having trouble selling anything at all.

  Joy:

  Dear Poogabill,

  I’m sorry you can’t send money and that you actually are “broke as can be.” I am writing every day and if I sell something, I will send some cash to you. Meanwhile I will scrape by—thank God for Phyl and a place to live. You’ll be thrilled to know that I’ve found a writing group. Most of them are sci-fi writers, and many of them know your work. And guess who I met? Arthur Clarke! You know, the famous author who is a member of the British Interplanetary. As for my health, I’ve never felt better. Just you wait, Sweetabill, when I come home I’m going to be the nicest poogle you’ve ever known me to be.

  “Joy!” Phyl’s voice called from the hallway. “We must leave or we’ll miss the train to Oxford.”

  I’d switched outfits and hats three tim
es; I had almost chosen the black Jaeger wool jersey I’d just bought but changed my mind when I saw it might look dreary. I’d put my hair up and then down, and then pinned again in my regular bun. It was Michal Williams who’d told me that Jack liked it when women made an effort in their dress.

  Phyl poked her head into the room and pressed her hands to her chest. “You look beautiful. I love that tartan dress.”

  “Oh, Phyl.” I pulled up my stockings and snapped them into the garter that dug into my thigh. “I wonder what we’ll all talk about. I’m not very good with new people. That’s Bill’s realm in the kingdom of our marriage—he’s engaging and charming, he laughs loud and tells jokes, he plays his guitar and participates in games. I usually find myself in a corner debating politics or religion or books.” I slid my glasses on and smiled at Phyl.

  “But you already know this man.”

  “I do, I believe. He’s bringing a friend, and there’ll be four of us.” I glanced in the mirror one more time, tucked my hair under the grosgrain hat with the blue ribbon. “Thank you for coming with me.”

  “It’s no trouble,” she assured me. “And I certainly want to meet him too. Plus Oxford—who doesn’t want to take a sojourn to Oxford? You think you like London? Just you wait. And you’ll adore Victoria’s little guest room, both convenient and cozy.”

  I fetched my bags and straightened my shoulders. “Let’s be on with it then.”

  Phyl and I sat side by side as the train lurched from the platform. She read a novel and I watched her face, her long eyelashes sweeping down and up, and a horrid memory flooded me: a terrible fight with Bill in December of last year. He’d taken Phyl in our old Chrysler to Pier 88 in Manhattan for her return trip to London. I’d been sick, miserable, cooped up, and suspicious after the previous nights of admitted infidelity, and I hadn’t been rational. When Bill called to say the car was sputtering with trouble and he would spend the night at Hotel Woodstock, I accused him of seducing Phyl. I screamed and cursed and embarrassed myself. He in turn raged at me. I didn’t remember the words that were said, but the gaping soul-wounds had cut deep and remained.