I returned to my work, to the black-faced keys of the Underwood, blank paper in waiting. I had blocked that afternoon hour for my poetry: a gift to myself.
The fires are in my guts and you may light/A candle at them that will do no good.
I paused, sipped my tea, and tucked stray hair behind my ears. With eyes closed I searched in the depths of myself for the next lines. All my life I’d written from the knotted places inside me with a hope for the unknotting.
“Joy!” Bill’s voice shattered the stillness.
The line of poetry was blown away by his voice, a fragile dandelion pod now empty and scattered.
“Up here,” I called just as he appeared and leaned against the doorframe, a cigarette dangling from his lips.
“Not in the house.” My words would do no good, but still I said them.
“The boys are at school.” He inhaled a long drag and then exhaled two plumes of smoke from his nostrils before asking, “Didn’t you hear the phone ringing?”
I shook my head, drew my sweater closer.
“Brandt and Brandt called. They want to schedule your author shot with Macmillan for the back flap.”
My agent calling about my publisher.
“Thanks,” I said, slightly annoyed I’d missed them and it had been Bill who spoke with them. “I’ll call back.”
“Are you okay?” he asked, walking closer and dropping ash into the trash can by my desk.
“I’m restless. And I can’t find my words this afternoon, or at least not any that make sense.”
“Why don’t you call Belle to come for a visit from the city? She always cheers you up.”
“She’s busy with her family too. And we’re both writing as much as we can. Phone calls must do for now.”
“This path we’ve chosen,” he said and drew his cigarette near his lips. “Being writers. Maybe we should have chosen something easier.” He was joking; it was a kind moment.
“As if we could have chosen anything else.” I looked to him. “I miss my poetry, Bill. I miss it terribly.”
“We do what we have to do. You’ll return to it.” He kissed my forehead as he held the cigarette high in the air. “Now back to work.”
He clicked on my little space heater and then shut the door. These acts of kindness eased the tension, reminded me of feelings that now felt like mere memories. I faced the typewriter again. But instead of poetry, I wanted to answer Mr. Lewis. It had only been a day, and though I didn’t want to appear anxious, I certainly was.
C. S. Lewis:
Your spiritual search is much the same as mine has been. It’s quite stunning to be pursued by the great Hound of Heaven, is it not? My first reaction was rage and terror. I wonder if you felt the same. I believe I have spent my years since that moment attempting to make some sense of it all. But are we to make sense of it? I’m not quite sure that is the reason for our encounter. Yet, still we try. It sounds as if you are caught in the mesh of His net—you have not much chance of escape.
It seems that my friend Chad Walsh has told you much of my life, do tell me about yours. What is your history, Mr. and Mrs. Gresham?
I paused with a desire to take this slowly, thoughtfully, not rush into it as I did nearly everything else, stumbling and falling and getting back up.
My history—that is what he had asked for. It had been too long since anyone cared for more than what was for dinner or if the laundry was finished or the schoolwork done.
Dear Mr. Lewis,
How very wonderful to receive your letter during the frigid cold of the New Year here in New York.
So now? How does one begin to articulate what is only seen dimly by the person who lives it? All my life I’d been seeking the Truth, or at least my version of it. If there was anything I’d always done with single-minded intent, it was this—seek means to soothe my troubled heart.
I’d believed in so much and so little.
I’d ruined myself and saved myself.
This is Mrs. Gresham writing in return. Thank you for answering some of our questions. Most astoundingly, you have knocked the props right out of my argument about longing being something we must battle—your assertion that if we long for something more, then surely that something more must exist (God)—rings as true as the sky above me.
But, by cats and whiskers, you’re not asking me to argue or agree with you. You ask about my history.
I paused, took a breath.
Shouldn’t I be funny and witty? A pen-friend he’d want to answer and engage with in intellectual pursuits? Intelligence was the one thing that had sustained me through the years. As my parents reminded me (and anyone else who would listen), I was not fully bestowed with beauty, grace, or charm. My cousin Renee encompassed that particular set of attributes. She was the pretty one. And wasn’t I smart?
Masks are the hallmark of my life, my theme if you will, the history of Joy. The façade changes have been innumerable, but the aching and emptiness inside have remained steady, which I now believe is the longing that brought me to my knees.
Was this too serious?
No, he had asked.
It was my parents who gifted me with my first mask: a Jew. I was born Helen Joy Davidman. But I have always been called Joy.
I typed as if in a fugue state—pages dented with black ink, the staccato sounds of metal on rubber. When my sons’ calls let me know they’d returned home from school, I typed the last of it.
After the profound conversion experience that shook me from my firm atheist foundation, my soul will not let me rest until I find answers to some of my spiritual questions—questions that will not go away, questions that have every right to nag at me until I find peace. Who is this God I now believe in? What am I to do with this Truth? Was it real at all or have I deluded myself with another cure-all that cures nothing?
Yours,
Joy
When I finished, my heart stretched as if waking from a long and lazy slumber, and a secret hope fell over me. I smiled. Then I whisked the final page from the typewriter and folded the four pages into an envelope.
The winter afternoon howled with a coming storm; my sons played knights fighting for the maiden, my husband closed himself into his office, and I sealed a letter to C. S. Lewis, shedding all my masks.
I wanted him to know me. I wanted him to see me.
CHAPTER 4
And this is wisdom in a weary land;
ask nothing, shut your teeth upon your need
“SELVA OSCURA,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Nineteen months later
August 1951
August shimmered thick with heat and rain as our old Impala, choking on fumes, pulled into Chad and Eva Walsh’s Vermont summer property. After I’d contacted Chad about his article, we’d forged an intellectual and spiritual friendship through phone calls and letters, and then finally his wife and four daughters visited our farm in upstate New York. The Walshes had become dear friends.
Davy and Douglas bounced around the back seat, weary from the long drive and hungry, as they’d eaten all their well-packed snacks before we crossed the New York state line. Bill’s hands were tense on the silver steering wheel as we entered a lush landscape of craggy rocks and moss-crusted trees, of thick, wild fields and a crystalline lake winking in the sunlight.