Becoming Mrs. Lewis(47)
Of course I was able to sympathize. “Why is it we are often left at the wayside of their creative lives?”
Together we lifted a glass to our own imaginations and creations.
If the old anxieties laid claim to my heart, which sometimes they did, I walked through London to absorb the medicine of the roses and chrysanthemums, the iris in full bloom, the winter jasmine vines with their yellow flowers hanging from wrought iron flower boxes along the sidewalks.
It was time to set out for Oxford. I poured water into the flowerpots and made my bed. I straightened the small piles of work next to the typewriter on the kitchen table and then locked the door behind me.
With my purse clutched to my chest, I waited at the Victoria Coach Station on Buckingham Palace Road, a name that sounded so regal for a place that was just another station, dirty and thick with smoke.
Yet for the gladness of it all, still my belly churned with disturbance. Bill’s letters still weren’t arriving as they once had, and even when they did, he never addressed anything I’d written to him or answered my questions. Had he received the boys’ Narnian book? Could he send some copies of Weeping Bay? His cool tone startled me, and yet what more could I expect? There I was in England, and there he was with four children and Renee, both doing the very best they could.
But soon I’d go home—I’d finally scraped together enough money between a few dollars that Bill had finally sent and a small royalty check to make a stop at the travel agency and book my journey home on the RMS Franconia—a six-day journey departing on January 3. The ship wouldn’t be as lovely, fast, or as well appointed as the SS United States, but she would take me back to America.
Even with the expectation of hearing Jack’s lecture, I couldn’t shake the deep dread of Bill’s lack of communication and cold tone. The bus was delayed, and I found an iron bench where I sat and dug into my bag for stationery. I began, with a surge of pent-up emotion, to write in a furious scribble.
Joy:
Dearest Poogabill,
You have always known how to hurt me by omission, by leaving off what matters so that I must guess at your feelings. Maybe I have done the opposite, been too forthright with my opinions.
In loopy and desperate handwriting I filled six pages. I found myself needing to connect with him, with my family, and to do this I felt I must repent of my own sins and not focus on his. I admitted that I’d wounded his ego by leaving, and that I understood it must be difficult to forgive me. It wasn’t his fault that I had tried to be Superwoman and had failed miserably, and then blamed him. And I missed my sons as if part of my body had been amputated. The healthier I had become, the more I missed them.
Joy:
I will never be without my boys again. That much I know. No power from heaven or earth will keep me from them.
Just as the red double-decker coach pulled to the curb, its somnolent smoke trailing behind, I shoved the letter into an envelope and placed a stamp on it. I needed these sentiments to fly across the ocean to my family.
As if the words had emptied me of energy, I slept on the bus ride and only awoke as it rattled to a stop. Bleary-eyed, I glanced out the window at Oxford with its now familiar scenery: bikers, the lampposts and brick streets, the limestone buildings and bustling walkers. I spied Victoria waiting on a bench, bundled in her coat and scarf, her long brown hair hidden inside a blue wool cap. I knocked on the window but she didn’t look.
I blew out the door of the bus, and she jumped from the bench and hugged me.
“You’re back!”
“Are you not tired of me yet?” I asked.
“Not yet.” She smiled coyly. “You are, after all, taking me to hear the great C. S. Lewis.”
I looped my arm through hers. “Onward,” I said.
The few minutes’ stroll down High Street was familiar enough to make me feel as if I almost belonged.
“Does Mr. Lewis know you’re coming?”
“I told him.” I squeezed her arm tighter. “We’ll see. He might be too busy to even notice us.”
“How many people could possibly come to hear a lecture on Hooker?”
“With Jack as the speaker, I suspect many.”
We strolled down the leaf-strewn pathways to one of the other colleges in Oxford—Christ Church, fondly called “The House.” We only had to ask two students where the Senior Common Room was before we found it—a cozy, dark room where the dons went to smoke. By the time we arrived we realized we wouldn’t be able to see Jack. There wasn’t enough space even to enter. Disappointment swamped me.
Victoria stood on her tiptoes to peek and then nudged at all five feet two of me, who couldn’t see over anything or anyone. “Guess I was wrong about how many people want to hear this,” she said.
It was then that the crowd, like a wave, began to move toward us. “Excuse me,” a short bald man in a black robe said. “We’re moving to the lecture hall.”
Buoyed then, Victoria and I trailed behind the crowd into a larger room with a pulpit at the very front. I felt like a student, and rather liked it. We found seats in the back row and settled in next to each other. Murmurs filled the room, conversation rising and falling until Jack appeared.
It was difficult to see him beyond the group of large, bearded men in front of us, but Jack’s image was with me, everything from his smile to the glimmer in his eyes to the tap-tap-swing of his walking stick to the jacket with the worn elbow patches.