Knew, in the lonely midnight afterward,
The terrible third between us like a sword
“SONNET II,” JOY DAVIDMAN
February 1952
The mug of tea beside my Underwood had gone cold, yet still I took a sip, distracted by the Ten Commandments article I was writing. He is the source of all pleasures; he is fun and light and laughter. I was moving fast now, nearing the seventh commandment.
Downstairs lay a pile of sewing and mending for the boys. I would get to it soon. All the while I was slowly healing and sleeping better as I’d moved out of Bill’s bedroom and into my own.
I wanted to leave him, how I wanted to leave Bill, but I saw no way out. And God help me, I did love him. Love doesn’t disappear when it’s supposed to leave; it doesn’t shimmy away at the slightest provocation. If only it would.
There I was, writing about God’s will, and at the same time contemplating divorce. Yet we didn’t have enough money to split; there were sons to protect. And now, to add to the constraints, my cousin Renee and her two children were arriving. This little family would move in with us while Renee escaped her alcoholic husband in Mobile, Alabama. It had been a secret plan that involved my parents and hers plotting a pretend crisis in New York City, but instead she’d come to me, where her husband could not find her.
With a start, I heard the sound of a car door slamming. Were they here already? It felt as if Bill had just driven away to fetch them from Grand Central. I glanced out the window to see the three souls who would change my life: Renee and the little ones, Bobby and Rosemary. She was a moving picture of elegance as she emerged from the passenger side, touching a gloved hand to her black hat. I’d almost forgotten how arresting she was. A blue wool double-breasted coat hugged her lovely silhouette, and her long, dark hair fell over her shoulders in a shimmering cascade. Her children, ages six and eight, spilled out from the back of the car looking stunned and submissive. I rose to make my way downstairs and greet them.
Jack:
It is true, that if we are free to be good then we are also free to be bad. Yet this choice is what makes possible the love and joy and goodness worth savoring.
Joy:
Free to be bad. Oh, how I’d like to argue with God about this choice. But how could I? When I choose it all the time, and when I want the choice to be mine to make.
How odd, I thought as I descended the stairs to the front door, that Renee and I had both married alcoholics. And now she was running to me for safety, when she’d always been set forth as the example of the “good one”—a yardstick my mother had used to measure my inadequacies as a young girl when Renee lived with us.
Davy and Douglas had already opened the front door, and I stood in the entryway, shivering and running my hands up and down my arms. Snow fell in a haze of fat white flakes, luminescent. Bill was bundled in his long black coat, looking gallant as he eased the luggage from the back of the car and placed it on the snow-covered driveway. Renee leaned in to place her hand on my husband’s and say something I couldn’t hear. She smiled; he laughed. Indeed he was charming, and at his best, kind.
When they reached the base of the steps, Renee’s gaze caught mine, and she smiled so widely and gratefully that I almost ran through the snow in my socks. This was my cousin, my blood, and my dear friend. Davy and Douglas stood behind me, quiet and watching.
She rushed up the steps and we hugged. I brushed the snow from the soft shoulders of her coat. “Get in here,” I said. “I’m so happy to see you.”
“Oh, Joy, how can I ever thank you?” She placed one hand gently on top of each child’s head. I looked down at them. Bobby with cropped brown hair squashed under a cap speckled in snow. Rosemary, a dark-haired child with wide eyes, dressed as if for church, her patent leather shoes so shiny I saw a brief reflection of the porch light.
“Get inside, Joy,” Bill said as he stepped onto the porch, stomping the snow from his boots and weighed down by luggage. “It’s bitter out here.”
“Come in, come in,” I said. And then I felt it as a tremor under my ribs: the subtle shift beneath the foundation of our home, the change that arrived with these three stranded souls.
We settled around the table in the warm kitchen, and I served them tea and grilled cheese sandwiches. I fussed over them and made small talk. Renee had draped her woolen coat over the ladder-back chair, and she pulled pins from her hair, unfastening the snow-sprinkled hat and placing it on the sideboard. Her tweed dress had crept up, and I caught a glimpse of the black nylons covering her legs. Sitting beside her, I was a reverse image in my men’s corduroy pants and a button-down shirt.
I looked at my cousin’s familiar face, nearing thirty-five but with something close to ancient clouding her eyes. It was pain one should only carry after war, an agony I saw in my husband’s eyes. Yet there she was, a woman on the run, and her cat’s-eye liner and mascara were intact: the perfect image of the fifties housewife in an Electrolux advertisement. She’d always pulsed with an inclination toward beauty, and in spite of whatever battles she’d fought, that hadn’t left her. I tucked a stray hair into my bun and started chattering self-consciously.
The children stared quietly at one another, their shy looks flitting from one to the other like confused butterflies. As soon as they were full of food and thoroughly warm, they ran off to the playroom, Douglas at the forefront with his game ideas and unquenchable desire for more fun.
Jack:
The stories of your life: your cousin’s arrival, your animals, and the farm amuse both Warnie and me. Oh, and Davy trying to catch a wild snake to keep as a pet. Please keep sharing with us.
Joy:
I doubt I could stop now.
Later, upstairs, Renee and I were finally alone, and I told her. “We’ll share a bedroom,” I said. “Just like the old days.”
“You don’t sleep with Bill?” She dropped her large black purse onto the wooden dresser and turned to me with wide eyes. “Even when things were at their worst at home, Claude would’ve never permitted me to sleep in another room.”
“Well, that’s the difference,” I said. “Bill doesn’t permit or not permit me anything. His last foray with another woman almost did me in.” I wiped my hand through the air. “And look at you—you didn’t just leave Claude’s bed; you left him!” I winked at her.
Renee sighed as if she’d been holding her breath for years and sat on the single bed across from mine. “Thank you so much for letting us come here,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t. I promise not to be a bother. I’ll pull my weight.”
“Stop that, cookie. We’re family. We’ll get through this together. And frankly, I’m thrilled for the company, for a girlfriend to talk to. I’ve been very . . . confused. It will be wonderful to have you close again.” I brushed stray hair from my eyes. “Even if Mother did always say, ‘Why can’t you be more like Renee?’”
“Oh, Joy, she never meant that.” Tears brimmed like snow on the windowsill. “I’m glad to be here. It’s just been awful. We need something steady. All of us do.”
“I know.” I reached across the space between the beds and took her hands in mine. “Let’s get you settled. We can talk later.”
Joy:
Must the most awful parts of childhood always turn into unconscious urges that influence our life for all time? Why is it hard to overcome the past and fall into Greater Love, where our True Self can guide our life? It seems this should be the easiest thing in life. But ah, we return again and again to that word—surrender.
Jack:
And how do we feel about discovering we are not our own Master? Just when we believe we want our life to be our very own, we discover we can only have our life by surrendering our life to that Greater Love to which you refer.
After dinner, settling the children in bed, a round of Chinese checkers, and a few glasses of rum, Renee and I reclined in our single beds.
I sank onto the pillows, slightly buzzed and sleepy. I shifted my hands behind my head, knitting them together as my elbows splayed wide. “How did we come to this, Renee? How did we both fall in love with and marry alcoholics?”
“I’ve asked myself that many times, Joy. We did what was expected of us. And now look at this mess. Was it something in our childhood? Something we were unconsciously taught? I don’t know.”
“I think somewhat. We were taught to dim our light so the men might shine, or at the very least look good. We were trained to appease, to please, to dance to the tune of their needs. We were held hostage by my father’s rage and expectations of perfection, always scared to be who we were, to be ourselves. And now—how could we have done any differently with our own men?”
“We will do differently now, Joy. We must.”
“Yes.” I sat and looked across the dark space between us. “There must be another way to live a woman’s life—make it our own. I want to find out who I am beyond all these expectations that fold us into a neat box. I want to unfold. How do we do that?”
“I don’t have any answers. I’m just trying to survive—and thanks to you, I might.”
“It’s not much better here, cookie. Bill is still on and off the drink. He wants me to be who I cannot be: a housewife, maid, and submissive spouse. He knew me when he married me. Now he wants someone different, as if marriage would turn me into a compliant doll. I don’t want to make you hate him, but he has said and done terrible things.”
“Has he hit you?” she asked in a whisper.
“No. It’s not like that. He hits other things—like the time he smashed his favorite guitar over a chair or threw his rifle across the room. Usually it’s just the screaming. The yelling. The irrational rage.” I stopped. “Renee, he told a friend that he’s not as successful as he could be because a writer needs two things, a typewriter and a wife—and they should both be in working order.”
“What an asinine thing to say.”
“I shouldn’t complain. It’s not as awful as your situation. My children are safe. No one is dying or ill. It’s not all that bad, it just feels like it sometimes.”
“I don’t compare, Joy. There are many ways to be miserable in a marriage. Claude hit us and threatened to kill us. He threw us around and almost drank himself to death. But there are other things that can happen to make you feel like you’re dying. At least you have your passion for writing. I have nothing.”
“It does help,” I said. “But, my dearest, now you have us, and your children have mine.”
“Yes, I’m here now,” she said.
As if she’d come to save us, and not the other way around.