Becoming Mrs. Lewis(72)

Mrs. Bagley’s downcast eyes filled with understanding. “I have been in your spot.” She rubbed her face as if the memory itched. “Almost thirty years ago I was alone with a young daughter and baby son. I’m here to tell you that it was most awful, but we rose from those ashes and were better for it.” She punctuated her remarks with another firm nod. “Listen, Mrs. Gresham, I have a townhome annex for twelve guineas a month. Would you like to see if it is satisfactory for you?” She smiled at Davy and Douglas, who moved closer to my side.

I calculated in my mind: that was thirty-six dollars. It was less than what I paid now and a tad more than I could afford. But I could find a job. Bill had finally sent sixty dollars, and if I stretched I could make it work.

“Yes,” I said. “Please. I have searched, but no one wants to take in a boarder with two young boys.”

“I know,” she said. “I do know.”

The brief walk to the annex was cold and rainy, an omen I ignored. But when Mrs. Bagley opened the doorway to the rooms, I was flooded with relief. I remembered, with such remorse and melancholy, the first time Bill and I had walked into our house in Staatsburg, chock-full of dreams with our babies and our money and our optimism. But as I walked through the front door of the Avoco House annex, my dreams had tapered down to the most simple: peace, safety, and rest in God.

I walked through the front door and into the square living area with high molded plaster ceilings, a room the same size as our living room in Staatsburg. And it was furnished! There was a woman, short and bundled in a coat, her hat pulled low over a weary face with a broad smile, standing at the far end of the room. I startled and jumped back before I ripped into laughter. I pointed. “I thought that was someone in the house.” The image pointed back at me from a floor-to-ceiling built-in mirror surrounded by ornate trim.

Mrs. Bagley laughed also. “Yes, that has happened before.”

“This is a beautiful duplex.” I exhaled in relief.

“Well, let’s show you around.”

We walked to the far side of the room, and my attention shifted as my hand flew over my mouth, stifling my cry. “A grand piano.”

“Yes,” Mrs. Bagley said. “We can have it removed if you’d like.”

I didn’t answer but went straight to it, lifted its cover, and ran a quick scale, the out-of-tune instrument rising to life beneath my hands. “No,” I said. “Please leave it here.”

“We will have music,” Davy said to Douglas, serious and sure.

Mrs. Bagley smiled. As we walked down the hall she told us, “It’s heated by gas. No shoveling coal here.”

“What a relief that will be,” I said quietly.

“There is daily housekeeping from the inn with linens and bed making. Breakfast and lunch are across the street at the main, and you have a small kitchen, which you share with the other residents.” She pointed to a door. “Down there—that’s where the shared bathrooms are as well.”

Off the side of the living room sat a small table and a counter with a gas ring for light cooking if I didn’t want to venture to the kitchen. There were two bedrooms, one for the boys at the front of the house and mine in the back. Davy walked into their room first, running to the high bed and turning to me with laughter. “How does a boy get into this bed?”

“Why, I think he has to jump.” I feigned a crouched position.

With a laugh, Davy jumped onto one of the wooden four-poster single beds with its cream bedspread and single pillow.

In one fell swoop, I imagined our life in that house. I saw the boys’ clothes and books scattered around the bedroom with its high ceilings and windows facing out to the street. I heard the piano music and laughter. I saw us cuddled together reading and talking.

“This way to your room,” Mrs. Bagley said.

Davy jumped from the bed and Douglas followed, down the hallway with its white paint and detailed moldings. I walked into a bedroom where a queen-size bed dominated the center of the room. A brass chandelier surrounded by an ornate and gilded medallion was lit by only one bulb; the other four were out. There was a dark wooden dresser with six drawers and a cracked mirror hanging over it. I imagined framed photos of our new little family, of London and Oxford, sitting on it along with my hairbrush and bottles of cosmetics. I was already living in the bedroom I hadn’t yet moved into.

Back in the main room, I spied the French doors that opened to the backyard, or what might pass for a backyard but was merely a courtyard of dried and deadened plants. But that didn’t matter. I knew how to plant a garden; I knew how to make it more than it appeared. I turned around to face Mrs. Bagley with tears puddling in my eyes. I reached to take a swipe, knocking my tortoiseshell glasses off my face and onto the floor. Davy picked them up and handed them to me.

“I don’t know how to thank you,” I said. “This is a home. And we three most desperately need a home.”

She took both my hands and held them in hers. “You are welcome,” she said. “I once needed the same, and we must all help one another.”

The boys and I moved in the next morning. We unpacked our things and then settled into our bedrooms for naps. We all fell into a sleep so deep and dreamless it was as if we’d been waiting for it. When I awoke, the boys were still facedown in their clothes with the roar and honk of London traffic outside their windows.