The days dragged as I fought not to believe Bill’s threats and insults. I knew by then I didn’t have to stay and tolerate the abuse. I had a choice; there were other ways to live. And those were choices I would make, as difficult and awful as they might be. Maybe by the rules and laws of Leviticus, I was drowning in sin, but in the same way God was with me that night in my sons’ nursery, he was with me in the agony—not fixing it but always near.
By April I’d gone to the lawyer and filed for a legal separation. On my way home I stopped for a checkup with our family doctor, Fritz Cohen.
I told him of our woes.
“I believe he’s a psychopath, Joy.” This is what the doctor who had known us for years told me.
“I think, Dr. Cohen, that he’s merely a louse. But it doesn’t matter; I just want my freedom.”
The checkup showed me healthier than when I’d left, but still with low thyroid and aches the doctor claimed were middle age.
“Middle age is thirty-eight?” I asked with a sad smile.
He patted my leg. “Please take care of yourself, Joy. Your living situation is most likely adding to your ill health.”
The time passed in slow motion, and I saved money. Bill eventually took a job that carried him out of town for most of the week—traveling with a PR firm as a press agent. When he was home he endured the days with sleeping pills and tantrums. His fits now ended in crying jags, and I often felt like I was taking care of an adolescent trying to decide what he wanted to be when he grew up.
In May and June, my two articles in Presbyterian Life came out back to back, while Chad Walsh advised me on what publisher might be best to bring out the entire series of articles as a book. I was close to having enough money for tickets across the sea.
Although I missed Jack and anticipated a reunion, the decision wasn’t about him. I wasn’t leaving for him, because there was no going to him. I was leaving for my soul and for the souls of my children.
Joy:
Dear Jack,
I have filed for separation. It’s been a living hell and sometimes I believe I have ruined our lives. But courage will carry me forward now.
Jack:
You will get over this, Joy, for you are strong. You can’t go on loving someone you don’t respect. Do not think of yourself but of the boys. Do not believe that you’ve ruined your life. You are but a spring chicken at only thirty-three years. Life is ahead.
But ah, I was thirty-eight years old by that time. I didn’t correct him.
“Life is ahead,” I said to Davy and Douglas when I told them of our impending move to England.
Life is ahead, I told myself.
Life is ahead, I mumbled inside my mind as Bill berated and blustered and bellowed and slammed doors.
By July Bill started traveling with a carnival. Without him in the house, my nerves calmed and I began to think straight again. I slowly shifted from terror to pity. Although he’d taken the car and I had to hitchhike into Poughkeepsie for errands, the peace we found without him in the house was worth being stranded.
I held Douglas and Davy close in those days, reading books at night, mainly the three Narnian chronicles already out, The Wizard of Oz, and Charlotte’s Web. I tried to take them into the fantasy that might sustain them until our new life started.
When Bill came home for the weekends I made myself scarce.
One August afternoon while he was gone, together my sons and I hung the FOR SALE sign, nailing the black-and-white placard to a post.
“So that’s that,” I said, taking their hands in mine. We stood in a line staring at that sign as if it had grown from the earth.
“Do you think someone will buy it?” Davy asked.
“Of course they will,” Douglas said, as if he were the older and wiser. “It’s the best house.”
“If it’s the best, why are we leaving it?” Davy released my hand and pushed at his brother.
I squatted down and took Davy’s face in my hands. “Because we are going to have a grand adventure in England. A brand-new life.”
“I like this life,” Davy said.
I’d run out of assurances and promises, so I took him in my arms and hugged as tightly as I could for as long as he let me.
Through the next weeks we watched as couples and families roamed through what had once been my dream. The farmhouse sold quickly, and the furniture with it. We owed so much in back taxes and mortgage payments that most of the money went straight to the treasury department.
It was a lovely couple who bought the house—Sara and Wade, and I could never remember their last name. They roamed the grounds with their two young daughters and fell in love with all I had once fallen in love with: Crum Elbow Creek, the orchard and wild flowers, the plotted garden, and the front porch that seemed to offer lazy afternoons sipping a cold lemonade while the perfect family ran through the yard with glee. For me it had been real, even when it had become an illusion. Losing it hurt as any death would.