Becoming Mrs. Lewis(93)

They both stared at me with such surprise that it made me laugh. My mother’s large brown eyes, so like mine, didn’t blink.

“Surprising, isn’t it? To hear me defend him? I think I just rightly shocked myself,” I said. “But you’re right. Money managing has been a dismal failure of mine. I’d expected more from my writing, and more from Bill’s.”

“We can help you, Joy. I don’t know why you don’t ask us for assistance.” Father set his hat on the kitchen table and straightened his moustache, which did not need straightening.

“Well, Jack pays me for typing, and Bill is getting caught up with payments. I’m writing as fast and furiously as I can. I have some pieces out, and I’m hoping for more from my novels soon. If I accepted anything from you it would be for the boys.”

“What do they need?” Mother fiddled with her pearls. “We have money set aside, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know, but can we talk about this later?” I asked. “I want you to enjoy your first day without worry.”

Always with my parents there were two conversations: the one on top and the one beneath. Here’s what rested below. I would not tell them that I had crawled to the bank just two days before, and in that bank, while trying to sort through the disaster of an empty account, I’d wept before a man in a three-piece suit and bow tie who had taken pity on me and given me some grace with time to fill the account.

They sat at the table and I poured them tea, which they cradled in their hands as their critical gazes flitted from the window with its checkered red cloth curtain to the walls where I’d hung drawings the boys had made, and then again to the window.

“What would you like to do today?” I asked. “It’s your first day, and I know how tired you must be. Maybe just a walk in Trafalgar Square? A visit to Westminster Abbey and then a quiet dinner?”

“That sounds nice,” Mother said.

We sat for a long while around my table while they gave me news from home. “Howie is fine,” was all they told me about my brother.

“My grandsons,” Father asked. “How are they?”

“Oh, Father, just wonderful. We had three weeks here in London after a month in Oxford. They’ve made friends. You’ll see them when we visit their school in a few days.”

“They feel as if this is home now?” Mother asked.

“This is their home. They know their way around, and they are free here. Although Douglas scared the living daylights out of me last week before he left for school. We went to the park, and he saw kites—he is obsessed with kites after flying them on Shotover Hill—and he followed them to find a group of avid flyers. He spent so long talking to them that Davy and I believed we’d lost him. I was wrecked. We came home and I called the bobbies. Hours later he just ambled to the front door all sheepish and apologetic, claiming he lost track of time. Meanwhile I thought him kidnapped or worse. So, yes, this is home.”

“And it’s good that you’ve made friends with famous people.” Father sat straighter with the proclamation.

I ignored him and stood. “Let’s get some fresh air and I’ll show you around the neighborhood.” I smiled at them both, hopeful. “Autumn here is gold, all gold.”

“Dear,” Mother said and stood, “I do love your haircut. You look sweet and put together. And you’re wearing makeup. Are you in love?” She giggled like a child, and I cringed.

I patted my hair. “A woman can take care of herself for her own sake.”

“Well, it’s just that you never have.”

I stared at her impassive face for only a moment. “Let’s go, Mother. Let me show you my new city.”

“When do I meet Mr. Lewis?” She dabbed her lips with her pinky finger.

“Tomorrow,” I said. “You’ll meet him tomorrow.”




The next day the Piccadilly Restaurant glistened with crystal chandeliers and polished tabletops, cut-glass goblets and silverware polished to its ends. Mother stood next to me in the lobby. Pearls hung from her ears and surrounded her wrist in a bracelet. She wore a black suit with rhinestones. Rhinestones! A lacy pink shirt peeked from beneath her suit jacket.

“Did you see that man just look at me?” she whispered to Father and me. “Even in England the men aren’t polite enough not to stare at a beautiful woman.” She straightened her pink hat and blinked demurely.

Father, on her other side in a suit pressed to cardboard, took her arm. “Don’t let it bother you,” he said. “They like to admire. There’s no harm.”

I was uncharacteristically speechless. Mother still, all these years later, ambled around in her delusionary haze of beauty where all men wanted her, and Father was there to protect her from the sexualizing of her innocent glamour.

“I just hope Mr. Lewis likes me,” she said.

“Have you read any of his books, Mother?” I asked, glancing around the room for any sign of him.

“No, but I’ve read the articles written about him.”

I wanted to laugh at the absurdity of this entire afternoon—my parents meeting C. S. Lewis—but instead someone seemed to have kicked apart a bees’ nest in my gut. “Okay, just remember that we can’t monopolize his time, Mother. He’s in town for a debate with Dorothy Sayers. He can only have tea.”