For it wasn’t love; it was obsession. The compulsion to own him along with a clawing need to prove I was worthy of such notice. I’d wanted him to sacrifice his life, his wife, to be with me—proof that he loved me. I was as much acting against my father as I was for myself.
Then the next love—a writer at MacDowell Colony. Four summers I’d spent there, the balm of my early writing years. I’d found another writer; he too was older. And I had pursued him as if he were a savior of my own making, proving a fool of myself as I banged on his door in the starry night or waited outside his cottage to see if he’d emerge, seeking me. Was that love? Or avoidance of my own work with obsession? I’d tangled him together with MacDowell, confused the feelings for the place with my feelings for him.
I’d sought lovers to still the spinning sadness inside. I’d sought lovers to quell my pain. I’d sought lovers to fix what could not be fixed. Even when I found solace in another body, even when I’d conquered, still my soul cried out in loneliness. It was never enough to fill me. And still I’d pursued men with embarrassing voracity.
Then there was the movie star—the worst of all embarrassments. Oh, it had been anything but love during those lonely, miserable months in California, trying to be someone I could never be. How I’d pursued him, even as he ran. When he was cast in a show and moved to New York, I stalked him, once even boarding the train he took home to his family merely to catch a glimpse of him.
Obsession and possession again confused with love.
Then, of course, there was my husband. How desperately I’d been trying to verify my worthiness to him, and how long he’d been telling me I wasn’t worthy. I never would be. And still I tried, over and over, expectantly, as if I were bringing Father my report card.
All of my loves had been lost causes, and yet some wrecked part of me kept reaching for more.
My pattern of pining came into view as if I’d stared at the stars until the astrological signs were clear as drawings. My design needed men who could not and would not have me, especially older men.
Who was this needy false self who believed that a man could fix the gaping wound inside my soul? What terrible dance was this? This fox-trot of straining with the inevitable result of failing? Was Jack just another man who couldn’t love me no matter how charming, smart, or witty I was?
I had to stop caring or I had to stop trying. I could never stay Bill’s drinking or his rages or his affairs. I could be near perfect and still it wouldn’t stop. But could I love him as he was? Just exactly as he was? Was acceptance the answer?
This I knew—I could not take this decayed form of loving to Jack. I would indulge in our philia without the push for more.
God was now meant to be my primary relationship. On my knees that night in my children’s nursery, I’d promised him so. But there I was, repeating a prototype that had begun the day I wanted my father’s love and didn’t attain it.
Perform, Joy. Do better. Be smarter.
As the years passed, those commands had changed. Now it was Seduce.
Anything for love.
With Britain’s countryside flashing by the windows, my mislaid lovers hovered like a banshee warning of death. How could I ache for something I knew nothing of but only read about in stories?
What a fool I was.
Throughout these doomed affairs, I’d poured my brokenness into poetry—from passionate to melancholy to possessive; it had become the vessel holding all need and unmet desire.
I felt empty as any woman who takes stock and sees the futility of chasing love she can never catch.
CHAPTER 18
Instead you put my hunger on a ration
Of charitable words, and bade me live
“SONNET XXVII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Cold bit to the core of me, soaking through my coat and boots. Northern England was a land of moors and limestone, stone abodes and quaint churches, a place where kings rose and fell. I wanted to engross myself in 1651, in the catastrophes of King Charles II instead of my own, so there I stood on Powick Bridge overlooking the muddy and sluggish water of the River Teme. This was the location where my king had wanted to avenge his father’s execution, and at first he’d watched the battle from the safety of Worcester tower before running into battle with his men. His Royalists lost this last battle in the English Civil War, and Charles eluded capture to escape and hide in Normandy. I stood on the bridge of his failure, with the imagined smell of musket smoke, the thud of running feet, and the stomping of horses’ hooves.
Yet it was present time, and the triple-arched bridge over the Teme felt more like a place for Jack’s creatures than for a battle. Ivy clung along the edges in a thick mat that rustled in the wind like rain. The banks of the river were brown with winter and didn’t offer even a hint of the white flowers that would burst open in spring. Far off the Worcester Cathedral was almost a mirror of Magdalen College tower, its spires reaching to the sky. I took some notes in a damp notebook, wanting to remember the particulars of the land. Crossing the bridge, I walked into the thicker forest to the very place Charles had fought, and the thud of sadness came clear: I wanted Jack with me. I wanted to talk to him and show him all of this.