Becoming Mrs. Lewis(59)

I took the package from Jack, and then sat in the ragged chair I’d come to think of as mine and opened it slowly. It was a copy of The Great Divorce. I opened the cover to find a quote written in Jack’s now-familiar tight cursive handwriting, the fountain pen ink bleeding into the cotton paper.

There are three images in my mind I must continually forsake and replace by better ones; the false image of god, the false image of my neighbors, and the false image of myself. And then his signature, C. S. Lewis.

I held the book to my chest. “I cannot tell you how much this means to me,” I said. “Where is that quote from?”

“A chapter I never included,” he said with a nod.

“There’s more,” Warnie announced.

“Wait, it’s my turn to give.” I placed my new book on a side table.

From under the tree I brought out gifts for the men. For Jack, The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury. Inside I had written a line from G. K. Chesterton’s The Ballad of the White Horse, but slightly altered for my own influence on the line: And men grow weary of green wine and sick of crimson seas.

For Warnie, a new book of French history from Blackwell’s Bookshop. To Warnie, With great love, Joy.

There aren’t two men who would be more content with such gifts. They perused the books immediately and thanked me as if I’d given them a second home in Oxford.

After a long moment, Jack handed me another gift. This time it was not his own work but Diary of an Old Soul by George MacDonald—the author we’d both loved in childhood. I stared at the red cover with calligraphy letters spelling out the title, and tears welled in my eyes. I reached under my glasses and wiped them away before opening the cover to see that George MacDonald had signed his name on April 27, 1885. Below George’s signature Jack had written Later: from C. S. Lewis to Joy Davidman. Christmas 1952.

He had gifted me his personal signed MacDonald and signed it to Davidman. Not Gresham.

A flood of gratitude poured through me, settling into the cracks of my pain. I might have been reading signs where signs weren’t meant to be, like the ancient Greeks who believed that the Nine Muses hidden behind the golden cloud influenced their writing and creation. But read the signs I did.

I took a chance I had not yet taken and I went to Jack, put my arms around him, and hugged him tightly. I held to him for longer than he did me and then drew slightly back to look at him, my hands on his shoulders. His eyes, wet with unshed tears, felt like they bore right into my soul.

“Jack, I don’t know how to thank you.”

“You’re welcome, Joy.”

I let my arms drop to my sides but kept my eyes fixed on his. “You are precious to me. You are a gift.”

He smiled and touched my arm for just a moment. “As you are to me.”

I turned to look at Warnie. “And you too, Warnie. I don’t want to leave you or this place.”

“Don’t think about that now,” Warnie said. “It’s Christmas. There’s much to celebrate.”

Jack flicked ash off his trouser legs and straightened his jacket. “Let’s gather our things and begin the walk to Trinity,” he said. “The Christmas Eucharist begins in thirty minutes.”

I clutched MacDonald’s book to my chest and sent a prayer for my family at home. I felt it rise to the heavens. Then I opened my eyes to Jack and Warnie and all the day might hold.

It was after we returned from church that Jack stopped me in the hallway. “Joy, I must tell you how much your edits and work on O.H.E.L. have meant to me. I’ll be dedicating the book to you.”

“To me?”

He nodded and smiled as if he’d just offered the most beautiful Christmas gift—frankincense or myrrh. And he was right. It was a gift of immeasurable value.

When the men had wandered off for their nap, I found myself alone in the common room. I walked about, picking up framed photos in an effort to glimpse the Jack-of-the-past: the boy, the adolescent, the soldier, the atheist, the man. Seventeen of his years had occurred before I even entered the dingy world of the “Jewish ghetto” in New York City.

There he was—a boy wearing knickers and knee-high black socks, a dress shirt with a triangular white collar, a white whistle lanyard looping down and into his top left pocket. I picked up the photo, ran my finger along the grainy black-and-white of the boy with a mother who loved him and had not yet fallen ill. Then there was another—a young boy, maybe eight years old, standing with his brother in the Irish countryside, both in suits and knotted ties, holding onto their bicycles, staring almost blankly at the camera. Then the soldier with a pipe in his mouth, a roguish smile on his face as if he knew he would survive and that God was fast on his heels. The posed photo of a man of maybe twenty, sitting in a three-piece suit with a book on his lap, gave me quite the thrill. Goodness, he struck such a handsome pose, so trim as he looked directly into the camera, his grin the same, impish and ready for trouble. I loved that young man I never knew. A far-reaching yearning bled backward in time, to a world that existed with Jack in it while I was still young and an ocean away. I pined for the time lost, something and someone I never could have had even then.

I set the past aside and entered the kitchen. I’d volunteered to cook Christmas dinner and half expected the men to retire to the common room or their offices while I bustled about the kitchen. Instead they planted themselves at the wooden kitchen table, regaling me with stories as I basted the turkey and simmered the cranberries, as I lit the stove and chopped the potatoes.