“Miss Davidman?”
“Yes?” I returned my attention to the phone.
“We have a question about page 32, where Mr. Lewis discusses his boarding school.”
I spent a half hour or more on the phone answering production questions before I rose to fetch the laundry from the line in the backyard. Jack and Davy toiled over Latin in Jack’s office, and I ambled outside. Sunshine had dried the clothes, and I took them down, burying my face in one of Douglas’s shirts, inhaling the sweet smell of summer and my son.
“Mommy?” Douglas bounded from around the bend, a fish flopped over and dead in his hand. “Will you give this perch to Mrs. Miller? Please? I’m going to Oxford with the boys.”
“I’m folding laundry, son. Take that fish to the kitchen.”
And off he went, running all hilter and such with a group of boys following.
“Have fun,” I said into the empty wind he’d left behind.
So different, my boys were—Davy tense and studious and Douglas gulping life by the mouthful. Still they sparred; after taking boxing classes at school they practiced with each other, ignoring my dissuading arguments that boxing was a disgusting sport. Davy was also studying magic, while Douglas studied the pond’s rich life.
Slowly I folded the clothes, setting them into the basket with great care. It had become these small things that nourished me. If I could have allowed this life to be enough in New York, could I have saved my marriage? Why had these tasks, the ones I now did with a happy heart, once been such drudgery, Sisyphean tasks that took me away from my writing?
I folded Jack’s shirt, a white button-down that needed mending, and I set it aside to remind myself to take a needle to the collar that evening.
No, it wasn’t entirely within my will.
What I had with Jack—the intimacy and understanding, the collaboration and laughter—transformed everything in its path: every chore, every moment suffused with great love.
I mused over how much had changed between Jack and me. Chad and Eva Walsh had come to visit us a few months before. Eva and I had taken a long walk alone, and she’d whispered to me, “Are you two in love?”
I told her the truth. “I believe I’m alone in that budding emotion.”
“I don’t believe that,” she said.
“Honestly, Eva.” We reached the end of the path and stood before the pond. “He has no interest in anything more than this deep friendship, what he calls philia.”
Eva had turned to me and shaded her eyes against the evening sun. “I see the way he looks at you. It’s like no one else exists and you have a secret language. He looks to you first when he says something, as if he’s checking with you.”
My chest filled with this hope that Eva’s words offered, but I knew the truth. “It is love, but a different kind to him. The man has been a philosopher since he was eight years old and he picked up Dante—it’s his medieval world view.” I shook my head with a smile. “His complete dedication to the virtues keeps him from falling into the kind of love that captures a heart. He knows how, after all these years, to guard his heart behind the moral goodness he’s practiced. He belongs to God and the church almost more than most priests I know.”
“But he’s not a priest, and you’re a woman, and a vibrant one to boot.” Eva drew closer to me and took my hands, one in each of her own. “Be patient, Joy. The heart has its own rhythm and timing.”
“I don’t think it’s a sense of timing, Eva. I must accept the golden friendship that we do have.” I paused. “And there’s more. His friends are suspicious of me—especially Tollers, who calls me ‘that woman,’ and he cares what Tollers thinks, cares a lot. I’m divorced. I have children. I’m a New Yorker. I have Jewish ancestry. There are reasons.” I glanced at the sky, thunderheads forming. “And the last time he loved wholly—his mother—he lost her in the most catastrophic way. He’s cautious. Temperate.”
“Joy, give him time.”
I shrugged and looked back to her dear smile. “These are only guesses, Eva. How could I know? I’ve come to know him better than anyone except Warnie, but still how could I truly know? He tells me he is too old to begin another love affair and that philia is our destiny.”
I hugged her as Chad approached from the far end of the pathway, calling his wife’s name.
As I folded the last of the pants, I reminded myself to tell Jack of the phone call from Dutton, scooped the basket under my arm, and ambled to the back door of the house. When I entered the common room, the sight of a woman in Jack’s chair startled me. It was too dim to make her out exactly, but she was definitely a woman, reading a book and curled comfortably with her shoes tossed to one side of the chair.