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!”