Becoming Mrs. Lewis

by Patti Callahan

  It had only been two months since I’d left the summer enclave of Jack’s rooms, the pureness of those sacred hours alone working while my boys ran through the woods and took a kayak Jack had bought them out on the pond and ran through Whipsnade Zoo. We’d cooked together and gathered plums, apples, and beans. When we’d departed, they’d voiced what I felt: Why can’t we just stay here? But I was back in London now, and they were back at Dane Court.

  “Darling?” Mother’s voice called out.

  “In here,” I answered.

  She smiled as she entered the room and went straight to the window to look out over my tiny garden. “Not quite the acres of vegetables you had on the farm, but you’ve made this your own.” She turned to me, and for one moment I thought there might be tears in her eyes. “Your garden outside and bright fabrics and paintings inside. You’ve made yourself a home.”

  I laughed. “Did you think I was living in a bloody hole?”

  “I didn’t know, darling. I just didn’t know.” She squinted at me. “And aren’t you quite the anglophile now, with your little words like cuppa and bloody. Next thing I know you’ll have an accent.”

  “Maybe I’m just trying to fit in,” I said, “but yes, one does pick up these things quickly. I’m the only American around far as I can tell.”

  Father’s cough caused us both to turn to him. “You very well could have been living in a hole, for all the support you’ve received from that no-good ex-husband of yours.”

  “Oh, he’s not so bad, Father. He does what he can; it’s just that he can’t do very much. I took his sons across an entire ocean, and he misses them. He lost his house also, and he can’t seem to hold down a job. It’s not like he’s living it up and stiffing me.”

  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.”

  “We understand, dear,” she said.

  “There,” I said and felt a settling of my buzzing nerves. I pointed to Jack as he walked into the dining room, his eyes searching for me, finding me, and then his smile breaking wide as it had that day at the Oxford Hooker speech, all those years ago.

  He approached us with long, wide strides and immediately held out his hand to my father and introduced himself, and then to my mother.

  “Thank you for inviting me,” he said, and together we all sat.

  For inviting him? Urp. I’d almost begged him. Please come satisfy my parents’ curiosity, they won’t leave this alone. You never have to see them again.

  He was here for one reason only: because he cared enough about our friendship to satisfy my request. The talk and tea were smooth, if also a wee bit awkward, until Father talked of Prohibition and how ardently he’d believed in its mandates all those years ago. “There is right and wrong,” he always said, and said again. “No gray. No in-between, right, Mr. Lewis?” He d
irected his question across the little table full of teacups and biscuits on flowered plates.

  “Father.” I bristled at his harsh self-righteousness. “You believed in Prohibition for everyone but yourself. Don’t you remember when I poured your apricot brandy down the drain because I thought I was being helpful? Not wanting you to go against your very own beliefs?”

  Father attempted to laugh and yet looked to Jack. “Impetuous, this one. She would as soon throw out her father’s brandy and get smacked than just leave it be.”

  “See?” I said. “That’s the very thing. I thought I was right when all along I was wrong. And smacked to boot.”

  The joke, if it was a joke at all, fell flat. The table sat silent.

  “I shall just stop trying to be funny,” I said. “I always think I can pull it off and then I don’t.”

  “Dear, you’re very funny when you’re not being rude,” Mother said.

  Jack leaned close to me, whispered so near my ear I felt his breath. “I’m doing my best here.”

  Under the table I nudged him with my foot and suppressed a laugh.

  “Mr. Lewis.” Father lowered his voice as if about to lecture. “Our daughter has told us that you are moving your career to Cambridge, leaving Oxford.”

  “I am. I shall start there in the new year.” Jack glanced at me. “It is Douglas who is quite upset that I’m giving up the nobility of an Oxford man. It seems I’d done my job convincing him that it was of the highest order. I have outdone myself to my own debit.”

  “But isn’t that the case?” Father looked down his long nose to Jack.

  “Father!” I spat his name. “This new job is an honor. They have created a position for Jack’s expertise.”

  “As you say.” Father picked up his teacup and leaned back in his chair as if posing.

  We allowed Father to talk all he wanted after that, not bothering to add or intervene. I longed to reach under the table and hold Jack’s hand, allow him to be the balance in this wobbly world.

  When we’d finished, Jack stood first. “I can’t be late for my debate. Ms. Sayers and I will debate Kathleen Nott, and I must prepare. She can rattle. It was a pleasure to meet you both. Would you like to join me for lunch at Magdalen one day next week?”

  “Jack, no, you don’t—” I started, but Mother interrupted.

  “We would be honored. Yes, that sounds lovely. Better than all the sightseeing my daughter has been trying to plan. I’d rather shop and see Oxford than traipse into a cathedral or museum.”

  As I bid Jack good-bye, I whispered, “By golly, are you aiming for a halo?” He only smiled in return.

  As he walked away, I looked to my parents with slightly altered eyes. All of a sudden their approval didn’t mean quite as much. I didn’t need them to understand my life or why I chose it. I didn’t need them to soothe or placate me—something they had never been able to do anyway.

  “I’m tired,” I said. “I might go back to the house and rest while you two go shopping on Regent Square. Tomorrow we’ll visit the boys at Dane Court.”

  “Go on, Joy,” Mother stated with closed lips. “Your father and I will get along fine and see you soon.”

  I stood, and Father did also to face me. “That Mr. Lewis is quite the friend to you, isn’t he?”

  At last we could agree on something. “Yes,” I said. “He is.”

  The remainder of my parents’ visit was as hurried as it was frenetic. Mother needed to go to Woolworths every other day and somehow needed at least six trips to the laundry. There were outings to the neighborhood shops, and even at night we needed to walk the streets to see how the shops appeared in the dark. Oh my, there were the promenades up and down Regent Street. Mother absolutely needed to see the hairdresser and the doctor (imagined illnesses). There was the cleaner and the chemist and the green grocers. I tried as desperately as I could to get them to sightsee, but alas, not much.

  When we visited Dane Court, my prig of a father eyed the entire thing with an eagle eye bent toward insult. I at once thought of the many insulting editorial letters he used to send to the local paper, and how he raged when they didn’t publish them, because you see—he knew how to fix everything. If everyone in the world would only listen to him, all would be well and good and true. I thought of how Mother often reminded me that my birth was so difficult that she had to leave and recover at a dude ranch for months. Maybe that was where we went wrong—it all started with difficulty.

  There were also dinners and gifts and the time they told me that Renee and Bill’s marriage had caused a great rift in the family at home—everyone had taken a side. I told them that my side was here in London and no one had to choose another.

  When they departed, they offered me enough money to get through a few months without worry. I was gifted a warm winter coat, and the boys new clothes along with bikes. I hugged them with tears in my eyes. I wasn’t sure if the tears were happy or shameful.

  “I never wanted to have to take your money or gifts,” I told them. “But I’m very grateful.” I hugged the heavy coat close and buried my fingers in the thick wool.

  Mother hugged me tightly, more so than she had since I was a little girl. “You are going to be okay, Joy. We will stop and see you on the way back to the States.”

  Father, who did not hug, offered a swift good-bye.

  As soon as they were gone, I collapsed on my bed. But instead of sleep coming as I’d planned on that autumn afternoon, I stared at the cracked plaster ceiling. What a whirlwind it had been. All that energy in my quiet house, all those embers of memories of childhood ignited by a comment or a look.

  I couldn’t have gotten through those weeks with as much peace as I had without Jack. Twice Mother and Father had visited with him. When my father uttered an idiocy that bothered Jack, I saw his pain for me in a twitch or eye movement so subtle no other man or woman would have known. When my parents were gone for an hour or more, I would call him on the rickety phone just to hear his voice across the lines. But mostly we wrote—back and forth about what we did during the day, and how and why and what it made us think about.

  The Underwood sat on my desk, a clean sheet of paper rolled into its belly. I set my fingers to the keys, wanting to write a sonnet about these past days, about my gratitude for him, but nothing came. I was full of gladness but empty of the need to write another pain-filled line of poetry. Something unalterable had shifted within me during my parents’ visit. We’d been a team, Jack and I, and this luxury was more than I had ever thought possible all those years ago when I sent that six-page letter to Oxford, England.

  I sat back in the chair and twisted my neck to look out the window at the trees like charcoal drawings against a blue sky, and as clear as that firmament I understood that I would not wrench one more love-starved sonnet from my soul.

  They were complete.

  CHAPTER 42

  The shadow of pain is lifted from my eyes

  And I see how gold you are

  “SONNET XLII,” JOY DAVIDMAN

  New Year’s Eve, 1954

  The parties had begun all around Cambridge that New Year’s Eve. Men and women walked the streets in their finery, the holiday lights strung twinkling on the lampposts.

  The year had ended with Britain’s removal of military force from the Suez Canal, Winston Churchill’s eightieth birthday, and an air disaster of a Boeing 377 crashing at Prestwick airport. Neither Jack nor I had ever boarded an airplane, and now together we vowed we never would. “What a terrible way to die,” we’d said in unison. In America, Ellis Island’s immigration port had closed, and the Red Scare and the Cold War continued. But we were there, in Jack’s new Cambridge rooms, surrounded by warmth and safety as the crazy world spun.

  “Cambridge is so quaint,” I said as we stood surrounded by boxes.

  “It is.” He stared absently at the mess I was there to help him unpack and organize. He didn’t like chaos, or any disarray other than that of his own making. “It’s a perfect
tiny college, so unlike the cynical Magdalen.” He glanced at me. “But that does not make it feel anything like home.”

  “It will.”

  “Oh, Joy, what have I done? I had a job I loved, and perfectly nice rooms, and now I’ve gone and upended it all.” He frowned when he spoke, attempting levity, but I heard the distress creeping below like the ivy on the stone walls outside.

  “Oh, Jack, I do believe you’ve ruined your life. Why would you do this to yourself? Three times the pay for half the work. And you can return to Oxford every Friday to Tuesday.” I shook my head. “Terrible. Just hideously awful.”

  His laughter filled the room, echoing off the walls. He sat on a box labeled Books. “What an exhausting and exciting way to end 1954,” he said. “Starting here as the new year begins.”

  I sat on a box across from him. “Let’s get some of these unpacked so we can find out what we need to buy for your rooms.”

  He shook his head. “Do you realize they give only one glass of port at dinner? One!”

  “What did they give at Oxford?”

  “Three,” he said.

  “Oh, the misery!”

  He loosened his tie before a quick glance my way. “Wait, have I said thank you for coming to my inaugural address, Joy? Or have I been a delinquent and unworthy friend by not saying it out loud?”

  “Even though I wasn’t invited?”

  He blushed, his cheeks dark red.

  “Oh, I’m joking, Jack. Don’t look piqued. It was stupendous. You should have heard everyone talking about it as they came out of the room. I guarantee they’ll be forever quoting the line about medievalists—‘Use your specimens while you can. There are not going to be many more dinosaurs.’ The room was packed with so many robes and hats I could barely see you there, but I did listen.”