“How?”
The list was egregious—leg surgery, removal of the ovaries, breast surgery, radiation. Rehabilitation. Months and months of it all, unless of course I died in the middle of the torture meant to save me.
When the room was empty, the doctors departed, and Jack gone to check on Warnie and bring me some things from home, I turned my thoughts to Jack and his pain, as mine was numbed by medicine. He had lost his mother in this same way, the greatest grief of his life buried fathoms deep in his psyche. All his life he’d avoided looking directly at that great anguish, and here I lay, making him relive it. Was it the reason he’d hesitated to love from the very beginning—the ghost of loss looming behind us, a menace of death?
“God,” I said out loud to the empty room, “how could you be so cruel to those you love? You demand too much of us.” I closed my eyes, and my weeping was silent as I allowed the knowledge to wash over me.
Jack loved me.
And I was dying.
CHAPTER 51
Love was the water,
Loneliness the thirst
“SONNET VIII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
“Mummy?”
I jolted awake, a mother’s reflex, pain shattering my consciousness. Douglas stood next to my hospital bed, and I held out my arms. “My poogles,” I said and looked to Davy also, Jack at his side. “Come here.”
They hesitated, still in their school uniforms and looking as scared as the day we’d landed port in England. My sons, who usually ran into me full throttle, who tossed themselves into my arms, hesitated.
“It’s okay. I’m still me. Just don’t hit the old lady’s broken leg.”
Douglas came to me first and then Davy. I held them close. “It’s going to be all right.”
Douglas touched the tented blanket above my leg. “Does it hurt?”
“Yes,” I told him. “But they give me medicine. They’re going to do some surgeries and then I’m coming home to you. God has enough grace for all of us.”
“Jack says we can move into the Kilns now,” Davy said. “Today.” His voice shook with uncertainty, and I wanted to spring from bed, assure him of what I could not—that soon I would be well.
“Then you shall,” I replied. “And I’ll join you soon. We’ll be a family.” I stared at Davy with great intent, noticing right then how much he looked like Bill—that pointed chin and high forehead, his glasses on the perch of his nose. I almost saw a moustache that would some day appear. Would they grow up without me? Oh God. No! I’d moved to England to save them, not abandon them.
Jack came to join us, wrapping an arm around a shoulder of each of my sons and pulling them near.
“Tell me everything about school,” I said. “I want to hear.”
“Not now.” The nurse had arrived without my knowing, her white hat pointing east and west, her red lipstick bleeding into the lines around her mouth. “You must rest. Surgery is tomorrow, and the doctors need to see you.” She held a syringe in her hand, and the boys withdrew in horror.
“Go be good little poogles,” I said. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And soon we’ll plant pole beans in the garden with Paxford and fish for perch in the pond. We’ll fly a kite or go punting in the Cherwell.”
Jack’s face tightened against these statements, grief-stricken, and it hurt more than the shattered bones in my leg. It was his countenance that told me those things might never happen.
“I’m going to pray for you, Mummy,” Douglas said with his shoulders back and a serious, grown-up look on his face. “I’m going to pray for God to heal you.”
“Please do, my love.”
Douglas ran from the room in a movement so swift that the curtains fluttered as if the window had been opened. Davy followed, fear coiled tight in his body and his fists at his sides.
I stared at the empty space where my boys had just stood, but now all I saw was the bedside table with a vomit bucket and a glass of tepid water. I spoke without looking at Jack. “You told them everything, right?”
“I did.”
“Jack, no matter what happens, you must promise me you will never let my boys move back to America. You must make sure Bill never gets custody. Before I even go into surgery, I must make sure of this. I want papers drawn, a will that gives you full rights.”
“Joy.” Jack came to me and kissed me, as if this were the way we’d always been—a kiss before a comment or conversation. I closed my eyes to the sheer pleasure of it. “We have plenty of time to deal with that.”