Becoming Mrs. Lewis(73)
I let them be and settled down at the tiny kitchen table, where I started a letter to Bill. I had agreed to rent this annex, but I also knew the facts: I didn’t have enough money to make it if he didn’t send money or I didn’t make some myself. We’d made it this far: the house sold, the divorce moving forward, the ocean crossing with my boys, and now a place to live. One step and then another and then another.
I would be brave enough; I must.
Dear Bill,
You cannot do this to your boys. You must not deprive them of your money to punish me. I’ve decided that they must go to public school here . . .
I lifted my pen as a rustling came from the front room.
“Mommy?” Davy’s voice called out.
As I jumped up, a shot of pain from my left hip sent me crashing into the table. I shook it off and ran to his voice.
“Yes, my dear?” I asked as I entered, the late-afternoon sun rushing into the room in the evening of foggy London, all muted and gray flannel.
“Where am I?” He sat in his little bed, rubbing at his face.
Douglas, in the bed next to him, stirred also and sat, looking around. “We’re in our new room in London.”
“Yes.” Davy dropped back onto his pillow. “I just forgot.”
I hopped onto Davy’s bed. He snuggled into my softness. How had I left them for even a moment? The curdling conscience and anxiety I’d had last year had not been for missing Bill. It was for my children.
Douglas thumped down from his bed and wandered to the window, pulling aside the damask curtain to stare out at the streetscape. “Does it stay foggy all the time?”
The disappointment in his voice made my heart squeeze tight.
“No, darling. In fact, I only saw it once when I was here last time. When it clears, and spring arrives, you will think you are in a land of fairies. It is the most beautiful country in all the world.”
“You can’t know that,” Douglas said and turned to me, dropping the curtain to fall back over the window.
“Oh yes, I can.” I laughed and jumped from the bed to hug him close. “Just you wait and see.”
“Mr. Lewis’s house will be like that too,” Davy said.
“Yes, yes, it will,” I agreed.
Douglas walked toward us and rubbed his stomach. “I’m hungry.”
“Well then, I have some mulligatawny soup. We can heat it on our new gas circle.”
“I don’t like that stuff,” Davy said in a defiant voice. “I heard you tell Mrs. Bagley that we don’t have money and you can’t get a job yet. Do we have enough money for something else?”
“The money will come, Davy. We will find a way. We always find a way. God is with us; I know that.”
“How can you know that?” His face tightened.
I closed my eyes; I reached inside for the calm, centered space—around the corner from my ego, bypassing my grasping need and fear, and then opened my eyes to look directly at my son. “I can’t know, not like that. But I trust.”
CHAPTER 33
Saying I must not love him any more;
But now at last I learn to disobey
“SONNET VIII” (PREVIOUSLY TITLED “SONNET OF MISUNDERSTANDINGS”), JOY DAVIDMAN
December 17, 1953
The small courtyard at Avoco House was but a miniature and dirty replacement for the gardens and land outside our Staatsburg house, but it was better than concrete. That December morning my sons played a game of their own making outside the open door while I packed for our first outing to visit Jack. I placed sandwiches in a basket, a thermos of hot tea, and blankets.
It had been a year since I’d seen Jack and Warnie; anticipation swooped in my chest, down and under, up again. A year since I’d written the “Sonnet of Misunderstanding” on the RMS Franconia as I returned to America—all about leaving Jack and what he must believe about my feelings, how he seemed to send me away with an indirect command not to love him in any other way but philia.
“Boys,” I called out to the courtyard, “I’m getting dressed, and to catch the train we must leave in an hour. Please don’t destroy your outfits.”
“Okay, Mommy.” Davy didn’t glance toward me at all but continued in his invisible sword fight with Douglas.
My heart swelled. I was in London with my sons. Starting a new life was never easy, I reminded myself. There would be bumps along the way.
I’d decided on Dane Court school for the boys—only a half hour away by train, and it allowed parents to visit as much as possible. As soon as the boys settled there in January, I would find a job and start writing again. A life could and would be built.
My courage couldn’t flag now.
“It’s odd,” I’d told Michal over drinks the previous night. “One would believe that being a Christian would keep me in my marriage, but it is the trust in God that allowed me to start a new life.”
She’d laughed and shaken those soft curls. “Being a Christian isn’t what most think it is—all rules and regulations.” She clinked her glass with the red lipstick stain on the rim against mine. “It is all trust and surrender and transformation, at its best.”
In my bedroom, three outfits were spread across my bed. The tweed dress with the cinched waist that showed off my best assets. The flannel trousers with a wool jacket and a white collar. And a gray wool skirt with a matching jacket. I shivered in the cold and snatched up the dress, packing the remaining two outfits in the valise.