The monstrous glaciers of your innocence
Are more than I can climb
“SONNET XXXVI,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Along with my divorce decree that had arrived from Bill’s attorney across the pond, summer arrived with rains so unceasing that London announced 1954 as the wettest summer in almost fifty years. The earth was soaked and spongy beneath my feet, the flowers outrageous in their glory, raindrops settling in the cups of their raised faces. It was cold too. I was still wearing my wool socks and sweater when Jack came to visit me at the Avoco House that June afternoon.
This had been happening for months now, ever since our last visit when we discussed Cambridge—Jack now came to London for no other reason but to see me. Surely he fabricated other reasons, but they were only excuses. We’d pore over the pages of his biography and spread the papers across my little desk, rework and rearrange. We’d walk to the pub for a drink or stroll into Blackwell’s Bookshop to wander aimless and content. Any second I half expected him to reach over and touch me, pull me close. But it never happened, consistently leaving me expectant and yearning, and mostly confused.
What was happening was happening to us both—we missed the other when we were gone from each other. More and more I wanted and sometimes needed to show or tell him what I’d perceived or accomplished in that moment or during that day. I wanted, as did he, to share every moment and thought. Did this describe love? And if so, what kind?
“Do you believe love fits neatly into your categories?” I’d asked during a wild thunderstorm while we huddled in the shared kitchen and I cooked mutton and vegetable soup.
“Fits neatly?” He shook his head and leaned casually against the counter, sloughing off his jacket to toss it over a kitchen chair. “I don’t believe anything fits neatly into anything, but we must at least try, or what else is language for?”
It was true—we had to try, but I very well knew that our love was a fog or wind that could be more felt than seen, slipping in and out of the cracks of Jack’s Greek-word categories. There was no pinning it down, and if I forced him to define it, or us, I was afraid I would lose the magic altogether. I reveled in the unfolding, and I kept guard as well I could over my own heart, watching carefully for the interlopers of fantasy, for the thieves of obsession and possession.
That afternoon the weather had lifted and we sat in my tiny garden, the tulips I’d planted months before bent and subdued by the morning rain. I’d wiped off the two metal garden chairs with a kitchen towel, and we sat with tea.
“To be outside again,” I said. “It might be the cure for all ills.”
“Quite possibly.” Jack pointed to a folded rectangle of paper in my hand. “Is that for me?”
“Well, it’s not for you, but I want you to read it.”
“Ah, I thought it more corrections to my work. I’m not sure I could stand much more of them.”
“Cat’s whiskers, Jack, I don’t correct but improve. Part of me is worried that I was meant to be your Max Perkins instead of an author myself.”
“Foolishness,” he said and held out his hand. “A poem?” He took the folded paper from me.
A quick-flash image of offering him my sonnets set me back; my breath caught in my chest.
“No,” I said. “It’s far from a poem, but maybe a grand piece of fiction.”
Jack opened the folded paper, which had arrived days before from Miami—where Bill had moved to be with Renee—to Belsize Park, London. It’s one thing to know of one’s divorce—agreed upon with full custody for me and visitation for him, along with sixty dollars a week in alimony and child support—and another to see a sheet of paper that reads vinculo matrimonii (dissolved marriage). Bill and I had written to each other, agreed upon the terms, and yet the accusations inside the decree were disgusting and heartbreaking. I hadn’t expected them, and all the more it socked me in the gut.
Jack read slowly, adjusting his spectacles, and once in a bit his eyebrows rose above his glasses. Every line or two he would burst out with a sentence.
“‘The plaintiff alleges the defendant has been engaged in literary efforts and has a desire to be an author or writer and is overwhelmingly ambitious and desirous of furthering herself in this field.’” He seemed to spit the words, Bill’s words, into the air. “Is he writing a complaint or spewing envy? Hogwash.”
He continued reading, and then his head lifted with moist eyes. “Joy, this is rubbish.” He glanced down again to read out loud. “‘She continually and continuously indulges in alleged excitable and ungovernable displays of temperament and apparently lives in an artistic dream world.’”
“Yes,” I said and sipped my tea. “I obviously live in an artistic dream world as I raise our children, write, and work.” I pointed at the paper. “It gets worse, if you can believe it.”
“I don’t know if it can.” His eyes shifted down to the paper.
While Jack read my divorce decree, I watched two red robins settle on my bird feeder and peck away at the seeds.
“And then there’s this.” Jack’s free hand slapped the edge of the chair. “‘The defendant feels that her artistic career is much more important than her domestic career, life, and duty to her husband and family.’” His hand was so tight on the document it began to crumple beneath his fingers. “How did you live with this? It is degrading.”
“Yes, it is and it was. But I’m here now, Jack. Right here.”
His cheeks grew redder, his mouth tighter. “Joy. He states here that he begged you to live happily with him and the children but that you refused to do so.”
“Well then, there it is,” I said, lifting my teacup. “Now who lives in a dream world?”
“This is such drivel and so smarmy. All wind and piss.”
I leaned forward, my hands on my knees. “I should have done the filing, and then I could have lodged my complaints. But I know he’s missing his sons, and I’m sure he’s lashing out at me.” I exhaled and felt the tension twist below my belly. “I don’t think I can trust his child support and alimony unless I hire my own lawyer to ensure he makes good on it.”
“Then you must.” Jack lifted his teacup, a dainty flowered one I’d found at the flea market, but he didn’t take a sip before setting it back down. A swallow spun above him as if circling in curiosity and then flew off.
“And these accusations,” I said. “It’s all because I was once such a submissive and acquiescing wife.” I tapped my finger on the divorce decree. “He doesn’t think I have it in me to fight, or he’s forgotten. But I won’t buckle under his rhetoric. I’ve done it for far too long. I feel as if I’ve jumped into a time machine and I’m back there, and Bill is drunk and the boys are cowering. I feel myself shriveling and scared, nervous and hopeless. I never want to feel that way again.”
“You shan’t,” he said and almost, God help me, almost took my hand. But he didn’t. He leaned back and lit his cigarette, a motion so familiar. “You have the strength, Joy. You always have. I don’t know anyone stronger.” His words carried such force that I believed him. He folded the divorce decree and handed it back to me. “As I said, rubbish.”
“Yes,” I said. “But freedom . . . a blessed release.”
“Freedom,” he echoed, and beamed at me as if we’d just decided to jump into the pond on the first day of spring, a mischievous look. “Think of your new life, Joy. Courage has brought you to a new place.”
“My sons and me.”
“Speaking of your sons, talk to me about Davy and Douglas. How was your visit to Surrey yesterday?”
A new energy rushed through me. “Simply wonderful,” I said. “I saw them play cricket and I met some more of their teachers. Davy is getting personal tutoring in math. It’s honestly more than I could have hoped for. Someday I’ll pay you back.”
Jack stood and held out his hand to lift me to stand. “Let’s take a walk. A slow bimble to the park? It’s finally warming.”
I allowed him to pull me to stand, and then he released my hand. The dull ache in my left hip sent me to quickly sit again. It was one of my favorite things to do—walk with him, ambling slowly through gardens, but I couldn’t. “Jack, I’m so sorry. My hips are acting up again. I have no idea why. Rheumatism, they say. I’m hoping it will clear whenever the everlasting rain leaves us.”
“There is no need for apology.” He smiled. “It’s nice to sit still for a while.”
“I’ll make us more tea and bring out the stories we started to read yesterday.”
“No need for stories today, Joy. If we want to read some jolly good fiction we could just reread the divorce decree.” He laughed that hearty laugh and patted his breast before removing his pipe.
I laughed in return so fully that we both bent forward to clasp our knees, leaning toward each other face-to-face. It was there we paused, close, only inches. It would only take one of us to close the gap, and finally our lips would touch. But for now, it was only our smiles that met across the inches of space between us.
How, I wondered, does one make oneself not fall in love? Not destroy the most sublime philia?
As usual, I didn’t have the answer.