PROLOGUE
“You would not have called to me unless I had been calling to you.”
ASLAN, THE SILVER CHAIR, C. S. LEWIS
1926
Bronx, New York
From the very beginning it was the Great Lion who brought us together. I see that now. The fierce and tender beast drew us to each other, slowly, inexorably, across time, beyond an ocean, and against the obdurate bulwarks of our lives. He wouldn’t make it easy for us—that’s not his way.
It was the summer of 1926. My little brother, Howie, was seven years old and I was eleven. I knelt next to his bed and gently shook his shoulder.
“Let’s go,” I whispered. “They’re asleep now.”
That day I’d come home with my report card, and among the long column of As there was the indelible stamp of a single B denting the cotton paper.
“Father.” I’d tapped his shoulder, and he’d glanced away from the papers he was grading, his red pencil marking students’ work. “Here’s my report card.”
His eyes scanned the card, the glasses perched on the end of his nose an echo of the photos of his Ukranian ancestors. He’d arrived in America as a child, and at Ellis Island his name was changed from Yosef to Joseph. He stood now to face me and lifted his hand. I could have backed away; I knew what came next in a family where assimilation and achievement were the priorities.
His open palm flew across the space between us—a space brimful with my shimmering expectation of acceptance and praise—and slapped my left cheek with the clap of skin on skin, a sound I knew well. My face jolted to the right. The sting lasted as it always did, long enough to stand for the verbal lashing that came after. “There is no place for slipshod work in this family.”
No, there was no place for it at all. By the time I was eleven I was a sophomore in high school. I must try harder, be better, abide all disgrace until I found a way to succeed and prove my worth.
But at night Howie and I had our secrets. In the darkness of his bedroom he rose, his little sneakers tangling in the sheet. He smiled at me. “I’ve already got my shoes on. I’m ready.”
I suppressed a laugh and took his hand. We stood stone-still and listened for any breaths but our own. Nothing.
“Let’s go,” I said, and he laid his small hand in mine: a trust.
We crept from the brownstone and onto the empty Bronx streets, the wet garbage odor of the city as pungent as the inside of the subway. The sidewalks dark rivers, the streetlights small moons, and the looming buildings protection from the outside world. The city was silent and deceptively safe in the midnight hours. Howie and I were on a quest to visit other animals caged and forced to act civil in a world they didn’t understand: the residents of the Bronx Zoo.
Within minutes we arrived at the Fordham Road gate and paused, as we always did, to stare silently at the Rockefeller Fountain—three tiers of carved marble children sitting in seashells, mermaids supporting them on raised arms or sturdy heads, the great snake trailing up the center pillar, his mouth open to devour. The water slipped down with a rainfall-din that subdued our footfalls and whispers. We reached the small hole in the far side of the fence and slipped through.
We cherished our secret journeys to the midnight zoo—the parrot house with the multicolored creatures inside; the hippo, Peter the Great; a flying fox; the reptile house slithering with creatures both unnatural and frightening. Sneaking out was both our reward for enduring family life and our invisible rebellion. The Bronx River flowed right through the zoo’s land; the snake of dark water seemed another living animal, brought from the outside to divide the acreage in half and then escape, as the water knew its way out.
And then there was the lions’ den, a dark caged and forested area. I was drawn there as if those beasts belonged to me, or I to them.
“Sultan.” My voice was resonant in the night. “Boudin Maid.”
The pair of Barbary lions ambled forward, placing their great paws on the earth, muscles dangerous and rippling beneath their fur as they approached the bars. A great grace surrounded them, as if they had come to understand their fate and accept it with roaring dignity. Their manes were deep and tangled as a forest. I fell into the endless universe of their large amber eyes as they allowed, even invited, me to reach through the iron and wind my fingers into their fur. They’d been tamed beyond their wild nature, and I felt a kinship with them that caused a trembling in my chest.
They indulged me with a return gaze, their warm weight pressed into my palm, and I knew that capture had damaged their souls.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered every time. “We were meant to be free.”
PART I
AMERICA
To defeat the darkness out there, you must defeat the darkness in yourself.
ASLAN, THE VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, C. S. LEWIS
CHAPTER 1
Begin again, must I begin again
Who have begun so many loves in fire
“SONNET I,” JOY DAVIDMAN
1946
Ossining, New York
There are countless ways to fall in love, and I’d begun my ash-destined affairs in myriad manners. This time, it was marriage.
The world, it changes in an instant. I’ve seen it over and over, the way in which people forge through the days believing they have it all figured out, protected inside a safe life. Yet there is no figuring life out, or not in any way that protects us from the tragedies of the heart. I should have known this by now; I should have been prepared.
“Joy.” Bill’s voice through the telephone line came so shaky I thought he might have been in a car wreck or worse. “I’m coming undone again and I don’t know what to do. I don’t know where to go.”
“Bill.” I hugged the black plastic phone against my ear and shoulder, the thick cord dangling, as I bounced our baby son, Douglas, against my chest. “Take a deep breath. You’re fine. It’s just the old fear. You’re not in the war. You’re safe.”
“I’m not fine, Joy. I can’t take it anymore.” Panic broke his voice into fragments, but I understood. I could talk him off this ledge as I had other nights. He might get drunk before it was all over, but I could calm him.
“Come home, Poogle. Come on home.” I used the nickname we had for each other and our children, like a birdcall.
“I’m not coming home, Joy. I’m not sure I ever will.”
“Bill!” I thought he might have hung up, but then I heard his labored breathing, in and out as if someone were squeezing the life out of him. And then the long, shrill, disconnected buzz vibrated like a tuning fork in my ear and down to my heart, where my own fear sat coiled and ready to strike.
“No!” I shouted into the empty line.
I knew Bill’s office number by heart and I called him back again and again, but it rang endlessly while I mumbled a mantra: “Answer answer answer.” As if I had any control from where I stood in our kitchen, my back pressed against the lime-green linoleum counter. Finally I gave up. There was nothing left for me to do. I couldn’t leave our babies and go look for him. He’d taken the car and I didn’t have help. I had no idea where he might be other than a bar, and in New York City there were hundreds.