“Yes.”
Jack pressed his hands together as if in prayer and shook his head. “You’re right. This is jealousy speaking. You are here standing in my garden, after answering my correspondence and editing my work. You are right here with me and we are heading to town for a beer. Tonight we will read and play Scrabble and Davy will beat me at chess. Douglas will fall asleep talking a mile a minute.” He paused.
I took in a long breath. “I see when my ego takes charge. I’ve come to realize how my past affects me now—criticism and cruelty mingled with attachment have proffered a neurosis I’ll spend the rest of my life overcoming.” I paused. “I can’t get this Christian thing right. How does one get it right at all?” I slapped my hands together in frustration.
“Get it right?” he asked quietly. “What exactly is getting it right?”
“Sometimes I forget to turn to him, and then the woman I have been for all of my life rises up and is no less damaging than she was before.”
“God is no magician, Joy.”
“Oh, how I could use some magic—it might take all of my life, what remains of it, to surrender fully.”
“All of this life, Joy, and maybe most of the next.” He winked but then drew closer. “As with our art, we must surrender and get ourselves out of the way if any good is to come.”
“Must I surrender again and again?” I paused for effect. “And again?”
“I believe all of us must.”
Our basket was full by then, the vegetables enough for dinner, when I told him, “The truth is I was already on edge—you see, I might not be here for long.”
His eyes widened. “What do you mean? Whyever not?”
“The British Home Office won’t renew my paperwork again. I’ll have to take the boys back to the States.”
“Joy, I’ll not let you be sent back home. We’ll find a way to make sure you stay.”
“There is only one way to stay, Jack. And that’s marriage. So unless I take myself over to the Globe Tavern and pick myself a good Englishman to seduce, it looks as if I will be packing for America.”
“You can’t leave,” he said. “I will not let you return to that terrible place.” He took my face in his hands. I dropped the basket, tomatoes and green beans scattering to the earth.
I placed my hands on top of his. “You don’t want me to go?”
Our faces were close now, his lips near mine, his eyes shadowed by sadness.
“No. I would miss you too terribly. I have come to depend on you, Joy.” He dropped his hands and placed them on my shoulders, drawing back a step.
My body trembled with the need for him, and I could feel the same from him—a thrumming below the words and the touch. He pulled me close and held to me, and I rested my head on his shoulder.
“You musn’t leave.”
CHAPTER 46
Now, having said the words that can be said,
Having set down for any man to see
“SONNET XLIV,” JOY DAVIDMAN
“I have something I want to show you.” Jack stopped on the Oxford sidewalk next to one of the ubiquitous red phone booths. August heat pressed upon us, and a woman pushing a pram strolled past, smiling at Jack in recognition.
“You do?” I asked, redirecting his attention to me.
It was only the day before that I’d told him about the British Home Office. He hadn’t said another word and I was nervous, reticent to bring it up again. Davy browsed through Blackwell’s, and Douglas ran off to find some friends to punt with at the Cherwell.
“I do.” He waved his hand. “Follow me.”
We moved a few blocks down the road, and he stopped in front of a split brick house, 10 Old High Street.
“This is for sale,” he said and pointed.
“That’s nice.” I continued to walk forward. Noticing the goings-on in town during our daily walks was as much a part of our routine as his morning correspondence.
He placed his hand on my shoulder, stayed me. “I can help you buy it if you’d move to Oxford,” he said.
Then the strangest thing happened—I had nothing to say, no fanciful retort, no witty comment. I stared at the little house, the dark red color of the geraniums planted in window boxes all around the city. The house was split with exact mirror images of two thin front doors set next to each other—a duplex. There were two upstairs windows, two down. A brick wall ran across the front of the house and pruned shrubbery hid the bottom half of the lower windows.