“There is so much to live for now. So much,” I said and closed my eyes, shook off the dread.
“It does seem fate designs a great need and then frustrates it.”
I smiled at him. “Now tell me how the boys are doing. Give me news from outside this cellblock of a room.”
“I’ve restored the old falling-down guesthouse for them,” he said with a grand smile. “Now they have a place all their own to play and hide. And guess what they found in there.”
“Dead animals?” I asked.
“Your ham! On a top shelf. There it was. I used the guesthouse for storage during the rations.”
I laughed so heartily that Jack wiped tears from my eyes. “I remember sending that to you.”
“They ate it,” Jack said with his own laughter. “They took it right back to the house, and Mrs. Miller opened that tin and it was still good.” Then he grew serious. “I cleaned that little house because I think they need to get away as best they can.”
“Or you need to be away from them.” I kissed his hand, which held mine. “It must be a burden, Jack. I am so sorry.”
“It’s not a burden, Joy. I love them. But they do bloody well fight.” He paused. “I don’t believe Warnie and I ever brawled like that. Douglas often takes off into the woods leaving a roaring Davy behind; I found him one midnight skating on the pond under a full moon.”
“They have been knitted together so differently.”
“Yes. And that clashes. But also they worry. They worry about you. And they don’t know what to do with those emotions.”
“It breaks my heart in more places than my moth-eaten leg. If only we could promise them answered prayers.” Immense weariness settled on me again, as it often did without warning. “Read to me, please. It takes away the pain.” I closed my eyes. “Anything at all, Jack.”
It was Shakespeare he chose that day, and I dozed, slipping in and out of the cadence of his words. It was only when I opened my eyes to see why he’d stopped that I realized he hadn’t been reading at all, but quoting from memory.
Whenever I believed I could not love him more, I did.
CHAPTER 53
Could you listen to your devoted lover?
Listen just a while, it will soon be over
“ACROSTIC IN HENDECASYLLABICS,” JOY DAVIDMAN
It was a Thursday, March 21, the spring equinox, the time I’d told Jack at our first meeting was a signal of new beginnings. He’d believed new beginnings were heralded by autumn. But it looked like I was right, for this was our wedding day. A real one.
My hospital room, now so familiar I could see it with my eyes closed, was cluttered with books and papers, with my typewriter and notepads. Newspapers and even a Scrabble game were scattered on the rolling table across from my bed, yet it would become a sacred cathedral in the next moments.
Plaster held my leg in place and my foot was propped high in traction, metal poles overhead, pulleys and gears, as I lay supine in the bed. Pillows were stuffed behind my back and shoulders to prop me. A clean white blanket was tented over my raised leg. My hair, brushed and clean with the help of the orderly, fell over my shoulders. From the wife of a patient down the hall, I’d borrowed a tube of red lipstick and swiped it across my lips.
Warnie came to my bedside first. “Joy, I have loved you like a sister, and now you will be my sister.” His sober eyes were clear and yet filled with tears. “I have never loved you more.”
“Warnie, look at us, loving each other and loving the same man.”
He placed his hand in mine. “I pray for you every day.”
Warnie moved away as Jack leaned close so only I could hear him, his lips soft against my ear, his voice filling me. “You have allowed me to become my true self with you. I hide nothing. Now let us become as one.”
I took Jack’s face in mine and kissed him, not as ardently as I’d have liked, for next to me stood the priest, Peter Bide, a former student of Jack’s, his white collar a comma against his throat and his black robes swishing like smoke with every move.
“Are you ready, Joy?” Peter asked in such a serious tone that I wondered if he’d practiced.
“I believe I’ve been ready for this moment all my life,” I said.
Jack squeezed my hand. “How is it that my heart is breaking and yet I’ve never been so happy?”
A ward sister in a prim habit stood with Warnie, who wore a suit pressed so straight he looked frightened to move. He smiled at me and held his hands clasped behind his back as if hiding something. Sober, his cheeks red with health, he stated to all present, “I love Joy as a sister, and now we will make it official.”