Becoming Mrs. Lewis(61)

Jack and Warnie were bumbling about in the back of the house; I heard their footsteps and the water running fierce through the pipes.

The kitchen was empty. The copper pots hung clean from their hooks where Mrs. Miller had put them, but there was no leftover evidence of our frivolity or deep conversations. When I left, the house would resume its natural rhythms.

I’d become at home in the kitchen, and I took a frying pan from the hook. It clattered as it hit the stove: iron on iron. The black market eggs huddled in a bowl on the counter. I took one and cracked it open against a white porcelain bowl. The yoke remained whole and floated in the globular whites. I lifted a fork and punctured that yellow dome, watching it spread and stain before I stirred it. Somewhere in the back of the house Warnie called Jack’s name, and then there was laughter and a closing door, shuffled footsteps.

I dropped a dab of butter into the warming pan and inhaled the comforting aroma as the butter spread and melted, sliding to the edges of the pan. The lump of fear about going home lodged beneath my throat. I poured the eggs into the hot pan and began to stir them as they cooked. A sprinkle of salt, and I whisked the eggs to finish.

“Good morning, Joy.” Jack’s voice startled me, and the spatula clattered to the floor.

“Jack.” I turned and pasted on the smile, lifted the utensil from the ground, and wiped it off on a towel.

“Today you leave us.” He brushed his hand across his unshaven cheeks, staring out the wide windows to the garden outside.

“Yes, today,” I said. I placed my scrambled eggs on a plate and sat at the kitchen table. Jack joined me. “I have a story I want to tell you.”

“Please!” He leaned back in his lounging clothes and worn slippers.

“When I was a child,” I said quietly, “my brother, Howie, and I would sneak out at night to go to the zoo. We’d slink through the dark streets of the Bronx, holding our hands so tightly together it hurt. We’d slip through a hole in the fence, and the first thing I would do was run to the lions’ cages.”

“You as a child.” Jack smiled tenderly. “I would have loved to have known that little girl.”

“Oh, you do,” I said and laughed. “She’s here also.”

He folded his arms across his chest, his eyebrows raised in curiosity. “Go on.”

“I would call their names, Sultan and Boudin Maid. They were Barbary lions, and they would come to me. To me. Sometimes I would feed them small bites of meat and always bury, if only for a moment, my hands in their manes. Those golden eyes, I don’t know how to describe those eyes. It was like falling and falling into another world where anything was possible. Time stood still. It was forever and not long enough. It was everything to me when that animal paused and let me touch him.”

“Ah, the magnificent beasts,” he said. “You weren’t afraid?”

“Yes, I was.”

“But you touched them anyway.”

“I had to. There didn’t seem to be a choice.”

“What absolute wonder,” he said, shaking his head.

I continued because I knew where I wanted to take Jack, what I needed him to see and feel in the cold morning of my leaving. I wanted to understand what we might be becoming; I wanted to hear his heart.

“It was a wonder, Jack. Years later, I opened The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, and again dug my hands into the mane of a great lion. I felt that Sultan had followed me through all of my life, gone to visit you and then returned to me.”

Jack’s gentle eyes were moist, and his eyebrows fell down into a V. He leaned closer to me. “That’s a lovely analogy. A graceful way to see the past.”

“It’s not an analogy, Jack. Can’t you see? It’s grace, the kind that hunts us down and doesn’t let us go. It brought us together. The grace that keeps planets in their orbits and causes lilies to open their faces to the sun.” I dared to meet his eyes with mine. “It’s love.”

He folded his hands in his lap. “Philia, yes. We must love that way. It grows not once but over and over and then again over. I value ours beyond measure.”

“Real philia,” I echoed, my eggs now cold and congealed on the plate. Yes, that is what he thought of us; this vibrating connection and kindness was nothing more than deep friendship. Then why did it feel more than that one word? Why was I confused?

He took a raspy breath and continued. “It is difficult for Warnie and me to think of you heading home into that mess. We hurt for you. I do wish there was some way to help you, something more we could do than send you on your way with our prayers. If you decide to return, we will be here. We will always be here for you.”

But like the lion behind a cage, I couldn’t free myself to offer what I was in no position to give—my freedom to be with him.

“These have been some of the happiest days of my life,” I said.

“These have been happy days for us also, Joy.”

“Thank you for taking me in and allowing me to spend Christmas with you. Thank you for my gifts, and for the warm nights, the games, the long walks, and the conversation.”

Underneath all of this simmered so many unsaid words, so much unexpressed emotion. How was I to leave them?

Warnie entered the kitchen, coughing into his palm to shake off the cold morning. His eyes were red and his cheeks thick with three days of stubble. “Well, good morning,” he said upon seeing us.