Coinsilver, moonsilver, buy me a tear;
I lost of all of mine in a bygone year
“FOR DAVY WHO WANTS TO KNOW ABOUT ASTRONOMY,” JOY DAVIDMAN
Winter 1952
“The moon goddess is Selene,” I told Davy one dark winter night with a full moon hovering above. Six months had passed since Vermont, and the peace of that trip had fallen away like a waterfall, down a river far gone. My elder son and I lay still on a blanket bundled in coats and staring at the dome of sky above us, naming constellations. He wore glasses by then—my genetic gift of poor eyesight—and his eyes seemed to grow beneath the round lenses.
“I wrote a poem about her once,” I told him. “About the moon. I imagined her dripping liquid silver.”
“You write poems about everything,” Davy said and shifted closer to me on the blanket. “Maybe you’ll write one about me.”
“I will do exactly that,” I told him.
Davy was enchanted with astronomy. We scoured the library for books on the celestial objects. I felt closer to him in this desire than any he’d had in his short life. I could feel bits of myself pulsing in his small, frenetic body. As a child I’d also been enchanted by the sky and the stars. The firmament demanded nothing of me, yet offered everything. As with Davy, in the rare moments when he was not thrashing his way through the world.
Meanwhile, Douglas was immersed in the earthly world, whether in a fort he’d made or in the mud he’d plunged into at Crum Elbow Creek, which sliced through our property over moss-covered rocks and silver pebbles. Topsy, our rescued mutt, followed Douglas everywhere as he roamed our acreage, and it was there, in the natural world, that I found my connection with my younger son. He dug his hands into the dirt of my garden and roamed the orchard I’d planted. He seemed to be as I had been as a child—a loner, yet quite happy with his lot.
At night I knelt at the edges of my sons’ beds to say prayers, tuck them under the blankets, and kiss their smooth cheeks. My precious boys, now seven and nine years of age.
Time fell away from me in the mundane dailiness of survival as I wrote and took care of them. “I love you,” I always said as I shut off the light. “Sleep tight.”
We spent the days together reading or playing outside. Color TV had come to our part of the world, but we didn’t have the money for such luxuries even if we’d wanted them. As I read fairy tales and mysteries to my children, the dream of visiting England, of meeting my friend Jack, grew.
We were two years into our pen-friendship, and I looked forward to his letters as I did to the arrival of spring. I was hungry for them. Sometimes desperate.
Jack:
Waiting for the garden to burst forth here—the birch trees sprouting green above our heads. I believe spring comes later for us than it does for you. I hope this season brings you back to your poetry, as I know you miss it. Oh, and have you heard—Queen Elizabeth will now succeed to the throne at only twenty-four years old. At that age I didn’t know my bum from my nose, and she will be the Queen of England.
Joy:
The primrose is poking above ground, red and yellow and shy. The tomatoes are so rich they burst through the skin as if impatient. Some day I hope to see England, to see your garden. Yes, I’ve returned to my poetry, and I’m even trying my hand at sonnets. Oh, poor Elizabeth. At that age, I was a resounding atheist. I was active in the Communist party and the League of American Writers, writing my first book of poetry (Letter to a Comrade)—not exactly a queen.
I didn’t hold back with Jack, and because of that I knew he truly saw me, even through the sharing of my most embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, my most humiliating reviews and blunders.
Late one January afternoon, bent over my typewriter, a torrid cough ripping a hole in my chest, I attempted to start a short story. The allergy medicine kept me jittery and awake, but still useless. I had dropped my head to the table when Bill appeared with a letter in his hand.
“Here is another delivery for Mrs. Gresham,” he said. “From Oxford, England.”
“At least it’s not another bill.” I tried to smile.
Bill dropped the letter on the table and paused. “What are we doing about dinner tonight?”
I glanced at him, weary to death of it all. “I don’t know.”
He walked out without a word, and I tore open the envelope that had traveled across the ocean from England.
Jack:
It is only in the giving up of ourselves that we find our real self. Giving up the rage, your favorite desires and wishes.
Joy:
Oh, how is that possible? I want to know.
My mother always wanted me to be someone else, comparing me to my cousin Renee and to the beautiful women on the streets. My father, well, I’d never be good enough for him, much less be understood. My parents believed criticism was a show of love. And Bill? He wants from me the kind of wife I cannot be no matter how hard I pray or try. These hurts don’t melt easily even under the “giving up” of a false self to find the real self.
Winter continued in its usual way in upstate New York, and the infection that had started in my lungs burrowed deep into my kidneys. Eventually the fever, jaundice, and vomiting sent me to the hospital for a few days. When I was finally sent home, it was straight to bed with doctor’s orders to rest.
Illness had followed me all the days of my life, but always I’d rebounded. As a child I’d had everything from a radium collar for low thyroid to liver pills for fatigue. This last blow, however, left me bereft. In the bed, I stared at the ceiling as the walls closed in and the doors felt locked tight. No escape. I ran my fingers along the lump in my left breast—at least the doctor had said that was of no concern.
Dr. Cohen, the gray-haired family doctor with glasses as thick as windshields, visited the house one afternoon and sat at my bedside with his stethoscope dangling and his weedy eyebrows bending toward each other. He directed his words to Bill as if the illnesses had left me invisible. “Your wife must get some rest.”
His wife. My definition now. I was the object of someone’s life instead of the subject of my own.
A sudden thump emanated from the hallway, and then Topsy’s bark and Davy’s scream. Bill bolted from my bedside to the door.
“Bill,” Dr. Cohen said firmly.
“Yes?” He turned with his hand on the doorknob, ready for escape.
“I’m very serious. Your wife will not recover from the next blow. It’s too much. You both must find a way to get her some rest, even if it means going somewhere else for a while. I don’t care where—but somewhere where she can heal. Her body cannot sustain any more illness in this state. Do you understand the seriousness of what I’m telling you?”
Bill nodded. “I do.”
Douglas burst through the bedroom door with Davy fast at his heels, fists flailing, and Bill just as quickly ushered them out, slamming the door shut.
Dr. Cohen and I heard him shouting, “Both of you straight to your rooms and wait for the spanking. I’ve had enough of this.”
I closed my eyes and spiraled into despair. What could be done? My body had betrayed me.
Hopelessness was my companion and fantasy my escape.
Jack:
Oh, my dear friend. If your husband is both drinking and being unfaithful, what choices do you have? Adultery is a monstrosity, a man attempting to isolate one kind of union from the sacred one. But sometimes, Joy, divorce is a surgery that must be done to save a life. Are the boys safe? Is it possible for you to take a holiday and come to visit England? We are praying for you, as always.
Joy:
Thank you for the kindness of your sentiments. I agree with your view and yet being gobsmacked in the middle of it all, it is hard to gain perspective.
Oh, Jack, a holiday? Yes, I dream of coming to England. I dream of so much.
The days were long and crammed with pain, the pills barely easing the throbbing in my kidneys. One terrible night there was a winter storm shrouding the windows in translucent ice, and Bill still had not come home. Memories of previous disappearances appeared as taunting ghosts. Finally, in the middle of that sleepless night, I heard him arrive. First his steps on the stairway, the click-snap of the old doorknobs inside their mechanisms, and then he stood in our bedroom.
His shadow fell long beside the bed, and his shape bent over to kiss me on the forehead. “Poogle, your fever appears to be gone.”
The sticky, primordial aroma of sex overwhelmed my senses, making me dizzy. If only the pain meds could dull the pain of betrayal. “Where have you been?” My voice rose, exhausted but steady.
“Hey,” he said softly, “don’t be angry. This has nothing to do with how much I love you, Poogle. Can’t you see that? A man’s needs must be met, and you’re in no condition to meet those needs. I’m just trying to be kind, give you a chance to heal while I recharge my batteries.”
“Who was it this time?” My question was a whisper, a last breath.
“Oh, Joy, my love. Don’t ask me what you don’t want to know.” He stood and backed away as if he had just realized his own scent.
Jack:
God of course does speak to us in our pains—his megaphone to reach us.
Joy:
If only I could hear what he says; usually that megaphone of pain drowns out all other noise and I can’t understand anything else. In my moment of greatest weakness—my novel tanked, my health in disrepair—Bill decided that fulfilling his own needs would help.
“Oh, Joy,” Bill said with that false Southern lilt in his voice. He lay down beside me, his body stretching long and his leg flopped over mine in a motion of love and familiarity. His breath smelled of rancid whiskey and cigars. “Rest. And heal. And when you do, we’ll be better. Just you wait and see.”
But I knew this would not get better. If I did not leave, I would die. I felt this as surely as knowing soon it would be spring, then summer, then fall, and then the cursed-iced winter again.
God, I prayed in desperation, please help me. I don’t know what to do.