Bill had wanted a Southern home. He wanted to pretend he was a modern-day Rhett Butler. Well then, I could pretend to be a modern-day Scarlett O’Hara. I would think about what to do . . . tomorrow. Tomorrow was another day.
I rolled over and picked up The Screwtape Letters, which still sat on my bedside table, and opened to a random page. Suspicion often creates what it suspects.
I slammed shut the book. Words weren’t going to help as they once had; they weren’t going to cure me. A book wasn’t going to save me, and neither was its author.
I needed to save myself.
Yes, God saved my soul—was drawing me slowly out of my self-centered world view—but only I could pack up my things and leave, only I could protect my heart and my sons.
I rose to place my things in their spots as if I’d never left. I hung my dresses and thought of each place I’d worn them with Jack. I set my books out, one by one, on the dresser where Renee’s beauty creams had been only moments ago.
Soon the front door slammed, and the sweet and familiar voice of my younger son rang through the house. “Mommy?”
I bolted from the room, charged down the stairs, and answered that call, the one I hadn’t been able to heed in months, the call of being a mother.
Davy and Douglas stood in the hallway, their books in their arms. Davy straightened his glasses as if making sure it was truly me, then dropped his books with a resounding thump. His little body slammed into me, setting me off balance. Douglas was close behind, and I laughed and dropped to my knees, taking them both in my arms with a cry of pure delight. Their bodies against mine, breathing them in; the aroma of snow and earth from their walk home, their damp hair smelling of soap, and their chapped cheeks waiting for my kisses filled my senses.
“My poogles,” I said, drawing back to look at their faces. “I want you to show me everything right now. I want to meet Mr. Nichols the snake and see your schoolwork and all of your Christmas presents.”
“Mommy,” Davy said and touched my face as if making sure it was real.
“Yes, my love?”
“Are you staying?”
“I will never leave you again. I missed you with all my heart.”
“Me too,” Davy said.
I stood. “Now let me take a closer look at you.” I took a step back. “Douglas, you have grown a hundred feet tall. And you, Davy, you look like a grown man about to go to your job in the city.” I playfully yanked at his buttoned coat.
“Renee fixed all my clothes.”
“Well, good for her,” I said, and yet I smiled. “Let’s go for a walk through the acres. I have missed my gardens and our creek and my orchards.”
“But nothing is growing now, Mommy,” Davy said in the mature, concerned voice of the older child.
“I don’t care what is or isn’t growing. It’s all hidden under there waiting to come out.” I held out both my hands. “Let’s go and see.”
I donned my coat and scarf, yanked on my mittens, and ignored Renee, who had come into the foyer with a dishcloth in her hands. With precision, my boys grabbed each of my hands and we walked into the bright winter sun.
Right there, I began to reclaim my life.
I couldn’t know what might happen next, but I could take one step at a time with my work and my sons by my side.
CHAPTER 29
The best of me is merely commonplace,
And I am tired, and I am growing old
“SONNET XII,” JOY DAVIDMAN
The train to Manhattan smelled like rotten fruit, a stench that permeated the car. I stood unsteadily and moved to another car as the train rocked toward New York City. I found a seat, closed my eyes, and imagined that I was sitting with Phyl on an entirely different train from Paddington Station to Oxford. But it was no use.
It was February, and winter held us in its grip. The house was filled with misery. Renee hid and wept in the extra room where she’d moved. The children were confused and anxious and tiptoed around the house. Rosemary and Bobby acted like skittering mice, afraid to be stepped upon.
Sometimes I felt as if my anguished prayers of uncertainty were received into the hands of great Love, and other times I sensed that they hit the ceiling and landed flat in my lap, dusty, withered, and useless. I started to see that faith was something akin to understanding that it didn’t matter so much how I felt but was closer to what I believed.
Meanwhile, Bill and I fought as if our lives depended on the next ill-mannered word. If I held these times in my mind against Oxford, against the smoke-filled peace of the common room at the Kilns or the ivy-draped stones of Headington or the silver-birch-lined lane to Jack’s house, a despondency swept over me that felt both complete and irreversible.