Our summer hours with the Walshes were garrulous and inspiring. We walked and talked philosophy. We played card games and Scrabble. We discussed Bill’s thoughts on Buddhism, and we both admitted that we’d had to scramble for money by writing articles and books we didn’t always want to write. We talked about the atom bomb and how it might change our world.
Sometimes during those bright and truth-filled debates I felt the freedom and intellectual stimulation I had experienced during my four summers at the MacDowell Colony. In that community of artists and writers in New Hampshire, on acres of pristine woodlands, the combination of quiet for writing and the conviviality of peers had offered the creative backdrop for my best work. That was back when writing was all I did and all I talked or thought about.
Jack:
I’m sorry you’re having trouble with your new work on the Ten Commandments. Do remember, Joy, that what does not deeply concern you will not interest your reader.
Joy:
Oh, Jack, it does concern me deeply. I am just finding theology more difficult to write about than I’d anticipated. Maybe I wasn’t ready. But sometimes we must do what we aren’t quite ready to do.
The rain was incessant, but I knew friends in New York were burdened under the heat, and there I was with foggy mornings and steaming soil. The earth was so soaked that the weeds grew almost overnight and yet the tomatoes never seemed to ripen. Thunderheads gathered like gray armies on the horizon, and the storms were both foreboding and magical.
I’d heard talk in town of people blaming the clouds and boomers on the atom bomb. “The end of the world,” they murmured. I wrote and told Jack he could find quite the storyline in the American gossip of end days.
It was a moonless evening, the electricity shut off by a storm, when Bill, Chad, Eva, and I again talked about writing and publication. Eva said, “Oh, Joy, tell us how Weeping Bay is doing.”
I cringed, and yet knew she asked from love. “False gods of all kinds are revealed in Weeping Bay, but that doesn’t matter because it has not done well, my friend.” I took a long swallow of wine. “A quite fervid Catholic boy in the sales department found my book offensive and buried it. You can hardly find it now. You can’t know what it’s like to pour your heart into a novel and have it discarded for its merits.”
“What about its debits?” Bill asked in the Southern accent he turned on and off at will. He was right, the novel hadn’t done well, and the reviews had been tough. “‘Marred by obscenities and blasphemies,’” he quoted from the harshest critique of them all.
“Bill!” Eva’s voice rang out. “I’m sure it’s awful enough for her.”
I clapped my hand against my leg. “Bill, why would you attack my work?”
“Ah, is this where you remind me that you have two college degrees and I have none?”
“I’ve never done that, Bill. You’re the only one who brings that up.” I looked at Chad and Eva. “But he’s right about the book,” I allowed. “Some of the reviews were wonderful, but others declared that the shortcomings of one main character fractured the story beyond repair. They’re not wrong, but I wrote the story the way I wanted. The way I needed to write it.” I pointed at Bill. “And one of my favorite characters, the whiskey-drinking preacher, is your contribution, so maybe be sweet about it.” I tried to smile at him. How I wanted us to be sweet to each other.
Damaris, the Walshes’ eldest daughter, called out from the children’s rooms. “You are so loud out there!”
We all laughed and Eva rose to help settle her. She glanced at me with warmth as she left the room. “You worked on that novel for years, Joy. I can imagine how hurtful it must be to hear the negative feedback.”
“Yes. I started it at MacDowell all those years ago. Before kids. Before Bill and marriage and articles written for money. Back when writing was done for the magic of putting sentences one after the other and making a story that made sense to my soul.” I settled back into my chair, feeling melancholy bloom.
“Fiction must carry so much,” Chad said. “I don’t know how you do it.”
“Jack and I have written about that.”
Candlelight flickered across Chad’s face, catching on his eyeglasses. He was a studious-looking man, appearing just the way a college professor might be imagined, yet his easy smile burst through the serious demeanor.
I leaned forward. “And how the gospels are not fiction. You see, fiction is always in a straight line, congruent if you will. But life isn’t. This is how we know the gospels are real; they don’t read like fiction.”
“I’ve heard Lewis say the same,” Chad said.
“Joy,” Bill said in a quiet voice. “What do you mean? I thought we were talking about your work.”
“I am talking about my work, and what fiction can do.”
Chad nodded, his glasses falling down his nose in agreement.
Bill smashed out his cigarette on his piecrust. The ash melted with a soft hiss in the dessert I’d made that morning from freshly picked apples.
“I think I’m done for the evening.” He stood and walked away, leaving Chad and me at the table where the leftover stench of cigarette settled between us.
Jack:
Warnie and I are planning our annual summer pilgrimage to Ireland for a month. Although we love the Kilns, we long every summer for our childhood land. It is there I visit my dearest friend, Arthur Greeves, my comrade since childhood. Back to the land of undulating green hills and the mountain views that remind me of some of the happiest days of my life.
Joy:
Ireland. Oh, how I would love to see that land one day, as well as Oxford of course. It seems these lands have shaped your internal landscape. For me, it has always been New York, except for the one soul-stealing year of screenwriting in Hollywood. Your descriptions are so lucid that when I close my eyes I can almost see the Kilns. I wonder if it is possible for you to send a photo from Ireland?
Yours, Joy
“You’ve become quite enamored of Jack,” Chad said carefully.
I didn’t answer at first, weighing my words with caution as the buzzy rivers of wine flowed through me. Chad knew Jack in a way that I never would—he’d stayed six weeks in his home in Oxford. He knew his routine. He’d seen Jack when he woke and when he worked and when he went to retire. He’d seen him teach and attend church and partake in the Eucharist.
“Yes,” I finally said. “I’m enamored of his mind. He’s become my teacher and mentor, as well as friend. Bill doesn’t care so much anymore about God, and we don’t always see eye to eye. I don’t think one could ever get to the end of Jack, or to the bottom of his views at all.”
“I think Lewis would tell you to follow Christ, not him,” Chad said with a sly smile.
“Ah, but can’t I follow both?” I paused before finding what I meant to say. “I’m not as traditional as Jack is, but then again he’s not as traditional as others believe him to be.” I let the next words settle on my tongue before I spoke them. “I wish I could visit him as you did. I can almost feel the cool green English world. The quiet. The libraries and cathedrals hushed with sublime beauty.”