Becoming Mrs. Lewis(34)

Eventually I lifted my own pen. Some had journals; I had sonnets.

I’d been writing them for years—it wasn’t a new way to release my pent-up emotions. Through those many years the faces of “love” had changed—the sonnets weren’t meant for one man, but for the amorphous feeling of being loved and loving in return, for that moment of connection and intimacy. And yet, that night in Victoria’s guest room, the sonnets began to pulse their sentiments, like a heartbeat that had quickened, toward Jack.

Even as I wrote about the commandments, the beast in the heart is always the self and how God was a being who demanded your whole heart, I knew to protect my heart. The monster that seduced me to break the very commandments I wrote about lived and seethed inside of me. And there was no Wormwood to cast my blame upon.

“No,” I said out loud to the empty room. I would not descend into that impossible fantasy of being with Jack.

Yet reason and emotion never wedded well in me. As Blaise Pascal stated, “The heart has reasons that reason knows nothing of.”





CHAPTER 15


Or fill your eyes and ears with any loud

Mere thanks—until I am no longer proud!

“BREAD-AND-BUTTER SESTINA,” JOY DAVIDMAN



The sights and sounds of Oxford during those ten days soaked into my skin and settled into my bones. I walked for miles, ignoring the dull ache in my hips. I crafted sonnets about longing, but for what? I wasn’t sure, but understood it had something to do with Oxford and how I felt a kind of freedom I’d never felt before.

I wrote letters to Bill and Renee and the littlest poogles while ignoring the nagging sensation that something was amiss at home. It was probably irritation that I was still gone, too many kids underfoot with too little money in hand. I would make up for it when I returned home.

That last afternoon I sat in Jack’s rooms after he’d given me some pages of O.H.E.L. to read on my journey to Worcester. I’d handed him the rough draft of the “Day of Rejoicing,” and there we sat, each other’s work in hand. I eased slowly to stand and walked to the window, looked west to the deer park where elm trees shed the very last of their gold. The croquet lawn was empty of players that day, but I could imagine how it looked when the weather warmed and it was full. “Let’s walk along the river?” I asked.

“Yes.” He stood quickly and his pipe fell to the ground, ash scattering across the carpet. He brushed his trousers but didn’t even register the mess on the floor, which only made me smile.

I tucked the pages he’d given me into my bag while he plucked his hat from a hook on the wall and settled it on his head. It landed crooked, and all the more charming. With a swoop of his hand he retrieved the smooth walking stick that had been leaning against the wall and then locked his office door behind us. “Shall we?”

We wound our way along the pathways of Addison’s Walk to the river’s edge as the sun burst through a cloud. My breath caught in my throat. “This,” I said. “This is the place you wrote to me about—where you walked all night with Tolkien and Dyson. This is the place you came to believe.”

“Yes.” He tipped his hat in response.

“It’s like walking into one of your stories, to see a place once only imagined. To see where you were convinced of the one true myth.”

“That God is the storyteller and Providence is his own storyline.” He stopped and exhaled.

“I wish I’d been here for that discussion, to have someone like you to talk to, or have just listened in.”

“Ah.” Jack laughed and leaned on his walking stick with that twinkle in his eye. “You think you could have just listened?”

I smiled and shook my head. “I’d like to think so . . .”

“It would have been a better conversation were you included.”

“It’s odd, isn’t it? One minute we don’t believe at all. In fact, we are a bit snobbish about those who do believe. And then we know it’s true. We just know.”

He stared at me so intently I almost looked away. “It seemed sudden, didn’t it? But we know it’s not. It had been creeping up on both of us all of our lives.”

“Yes,” I said, and a tremor rumbled under my chest—to be seen like this by a man, to know he felt and sensed all that I did.

He began walking again. “Yet even as I believed in God, I wasn’t sure if I believed in Christ.”

“When did that happen? Here also?” I imagined the air remembering, the trees and the flowers and all the company of heaven remembering the conversation Jack Lewis had on this very walkway, the one that changed his life.

“No.” He laughed. “I was in the side car of Warnie’s motorcycle on the way to the zoo. Somewhere between the Kilns and the zoo, I believed in Christ. I don’t know where it happened on that ride, but it did.”

“In a side car on the way to the zoo. God does have a sense of humor.” I fell silent a moment, watching the flow of the river. “I can see why God would reveal himself here. It’s achingly beautiful. I would come here every day if I could.”

“I do.”

With each dropperful of our lives that we dripped into our conversation, the closer we became. It was a quick flutter inside my belly that told me to be careful. I’d ruined more than one friendship with the wrong kind of love. This was a friendship I would never sacrifice.