Becoming Mrs. Lewis(82)

The boys awoke without my prodding, and soon they came running into the hallway, their traveling clothes buttoned and ready. Sambo flew from my lap, and Davy tripped, landing flat on his bottom. Douglas roared with laughter, staying on his feet with a deft move.

“Stupid cat,” Davy screamed, and Sambo was off, hiding beneath the couch.

“I’m ready, Mommy,” Douglas said, and his voice contained the tiniest hint of an English accent, the mommy sounding a bit like mummy.

“Douglas, my poogle. You’re starting to sound like a proper English boy,” I said.

“I’m practicing,” he said. “American accents can get you beat up, you see. Other boys can go barmy with it.”

“Barmy?” My voice held restrained laughter.

“It means crazy.”

“I know what it means, Douglas. It sounds quite proper coming from you. I like it.” I placed my forefinger on his chin and tilted his face to mine. “Are you getting beat up?”

“No, Mommy.” He glared at Davy. “And neither is Davy.”

Davy stood by quietly, back on his feet with an angry look.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.” Douglas stood taller.

“Well then, are you both ready to go to the Kilns?” I asked.

“Very,” Douglas said. “I wish we could just live there. Let Mr. Lewis teach us instead of going back to that school.”

Davy poked at Douglas with a closed fist against his arm. “It ain’t so bad.” He glared at his brother.

Douglas beamed then. “I’m going to help Paxford plant some fir trees and new green bean stalks.”

“Then we best be going to Paddington Station,” I said.

We arrived at the welcoming green door and pressed the same thumb latch to be greeted by the same Mrs. Miller. The same bellowing voices came as Jack and Warnie arrived in the back hallway.

Without the need of coats and bundling, we were off into the springtime land of the Kilns before our suitcases were even unpacked. The boys ran into the woods and out of sight, leaving me to stand in the newly sprouted garden with Jack and Warnie. I touched the very tip of a tomato plant, its tiny frond just sprouting from the earth. “The earth is waking up.”

Warnie laughed and dug his foot deeper into the damp soil as if planting himself. “I think Paxford is trying to show off for you. On your last visit you gave him advice and now he wants to prove that his garden is worthy.”

“Worthy? Cat’s whiskers indeed. This land could go without a man to tend it. What rich soil.” I bent down and scooped a handful into my palm, allowed the dirt to run through my fingers. Looking up, I approached the next subject gingerly, with care.

“Jack, when you describe joy in your biography, I realize that sometimes I can’t feel that emotion, as if it’s left me for good. But right now, with the garden just about to burst wide open, and the boys laughing out there in the woods, hearing them and knowing they’re here, I believe I feel it again.”

Warnie let out a sound very close to a sigh. “Jack’s first taste of joy was in a little garden.”

Jack nodded, and he too bent down and picked up a handful of dirt, cupped his other hand overtop and shook it before releasing it to the ground. “Yes,” he said. “Have you come to that part yet? When I was sick as a child and couldn’t leave the bed, Warnie went outside and made me a little box, a little fairy garden as it were. Inside a biscuit tin he set twigs and moss, tiny flowers and grass, even pebbles. It was a veritable world as small as a hand. And I felt it, the simplest joy. It was a mystical quality, and I’ve spent most of my life looking for it ever since.” He smiled. “It is a feeling that jumps up under one’s ribs.”

“And here you have it,” I said. “Joy.” I pointed at myself in jest; a great smile spread across my face.

“Yes, indeed we do.” Jack released that laughter I loved.

“But honestly,” I said, “the way you describe it is palpable. It’s a word that barely has a description, but you find a way—how it is a reminder.”

“And isn’t it odd,” Warnie said and slapped his walking stick to the ground, “how he states that misery feels much the same as joy at first feels?”

I nodded.

“Quite,” was all Jack said. He seemed embarrassed that we talked of his work as he stood there. He fell silent and ambled a few feet ahead of us, swinging his walking stick. We traipsed along the soggy path toward the pond, where the boys’ cheers echoed. The air smelled of lost rain and fetid earth, of green and of birth. I inhaled deeply.

When I drew closer to Jack he looked from the ground to my eyes. “And what have you thought of it so far?”

I touched his coat sleeve and smiled at him. “When I type your words and read your work, I know this: our experience is alike, from the surprising mystical quality of nature to open our hearts to the reluctant conversion. How could I have anything but wonderful things to report?”

He nodded.

“And I think you’re right about the misery,” I said. “There’s a certain pleasure in the acuteness of that agony, in the piercing of the heart. It’s not the same as joy, but isn’t it?” I paused. “As you wrote, ‘joy is different than happiness or pleasure and it is never in our power.’”