Becoming Mrs. Lewis(48)
Another man in a robe (they were all beginning to look alike) stepped to the lectern to introduce C. S. Lewis and his subject: Hooker, the great Anglican theologian of the 1500s who had broken away from the theology of predestination.
Jack stood, as I’d now seen him do a few times, with his hands behind his back, where I was certain he would be worrying his thumbs back and forth. His bright eyes behind his rimless spectacles moved across the room as if taking it all in, one face at a time. I watched with fondness, marveling at his warm familiarity, at the sheer wonder of how we’d become friends. Who was he looking for? Then, with a great surge of delight, I knew for whom he searched—because when his sight rested on me, his smile burst into such a sunbeam that I felt its warmth. I gave him a little wave, and he nodded.
In that moment, all sense of rejection crumbled like ancient armor. Certain emotions can be hidden, but a smile like that can’t disguise a heart—he was as connected to me as I was to him—friendship of the highest order.
Victoria leaned over to me and whispered, “He was looking for you, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, I believe he was.”
She made a soft noise that sounded like a hum and squeezed my hand.
Jack stepped to the podium and cleared his throat. The lecture was informative and witty, and I hadn’t expected anything less. When Jack used his Oxford lecturing voice, I could almost forget he was a Belfast man. But then he turned on that charm, and the Irish in him was unmistakable as he captured the room.
When it was over, Victoria and I sat still, allowing the people to move past us. As the crowd thinned, Jack slowly wound his way to the back of the room to greet us. Our talk was pleasant, quick and interrupted by men who needed his attention. But it didn’t matter what he said; it was his smile I’d carry with me through the rest of the day.
Once back in the hazy, cold air of Oxford’s November, Victoria and I walked to town. It was always in the smallest moments that I understood larger truths, if I paid attention. And as we walked in rhythm side by side, the sunlight falling thin and straight through the naked branches, I burrowed into this happy feeling, asking myself what it really was about.
Acceptance.
The word winged its way toward me. And I realized that I could live a better life without the ill-rooted feelings of dismissal that slithered within me, without the curdled knowledge that I wasn’t or couldn’t ever be enough. Those were lies I believed. It was Jack’s smile that broke me free, if only for that moment, and I would carry the remembrance of it always. I would tack that brightness to my heart as a placard.
“You’re in an awfully good mood,” Victoria said as we ambled the sidewalks of High Street.
“I am.” I laughed as I pulled her into the Bird and Baby, where we drank whiskey, talked, and laughed until I needed to catch the bus back to London.
All would be well, I believed. As Jack’s favorite mystic Julian of Norwich told us: All will be well. All manner of things shall be well.
CHAPTER 22
I made my words the servants of my lust.
Now let me watch unwinking, as I must
“BLESSED ARE THE BITTER THINGS OF GOD,” JOY DAVIDMAN
December 1952
A rustle outside my Nottingham hotel room stirred me, and I rose from the kitchen table where I’d been working on edits in O.H.E.L. to see that a white envelope had been slipped under the doorway. I wrapped my robe tighter and shivered. The frigid air that felt as if it went bone deep was the only thing that caused me to shudder at England. I bent down to retrieve the paper: finally, a new letter from Bill. I smiled at the expectancy of a witty correspondence with news from home and maybe a little money to eat more than boiled potatoes and canned soup.
I put the kettle on, tipped a tea ball into the china cup, and opened the envelope. I glanced at the pile of other letters I’d received since arriving in England. Chad Walsh. Marian MacDowell. Belle Kauffman. My publisher, Macmillan, and my agency, Brandt and Brandt. My Davy and my Douglas. A life in letters, a stack of them wrapped with twine. Of course there was only one letter from Mother. I had expected nothing more, but hope dies hard. Alongside the letters sat the mound of my work—both my own writing and Jack’s—as if all my life were made of words typed on a page.
I sat to read.
Bill:
Dear Joy,
I admit to my cool tone.
Ah, I wasn’t crazy.
Then he wrote of money troubles, but how much he’d been working through it with Renee’s help in the house. The kids, they missed me but were doing well—neighborhood parties and outdoor activities.
Then the proclamations were set down, one after the other in quick and unrelenting succession.
I must tell you the truth of our lives here also—Renee and I are in earthshaking love. We are blissfully happy and feel that we are more married than in our marriages. I know this must come as a hurt and a shock, but you and I both know that willpower cannot make you love me or me love you. Being writing partners and having a companionable friendship does not make a marriage work.
And to state the obvious, Poogle, you don’t much want to be a wife. You will never be anything but a writer. Renee cares about the things I do—making a home, taking care of all the children and her man. You could promise to try harder or attempt to be more like Renee, but we both know you would go insane.