The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
“Uh-oh.” I sat down on one of the chilly stone steps, trying to control my sudden dread. If Kate was right about Ernest, I didn’t know if I could bear it.
“Not that kind of girl. Ancient history. I told you about being wounded at Fossalta?”
I nodded.
“When they sent me to Milan to recover, I fell in love with my night nurse there. Isn’t that a gas? Me and ten thousand other poor saps.”
It wasn’t a new story, but I could tell by watching his face that it was the only story for him.
“Her name was Agnes. We were all set to marry when they shipped me back to the States. If I’d had money then, I would have stayed and made her marry me. She wanted to wait. Women are always so damned sensible. Why is that?”
I didn’t half know what to say. “You were just eighteen then?”
“Eighteen or a hundred,” he said. “My legs were full of metal. They took twenty-eight pieces of shrapnel out of me. Hundreds more were too deep to reach, and none of that was as bad as the letter that finally came from Ag. She fell in love with someone else, a dashing Italian lieutenant.” He sneered, his face contorting. “She said she hoped I’d forgive her someday.”
“You haven’t.”
“No. Not really.”
After we’d passed several minutes in silence, I said, “You shouldn’t get married for a long while. That kind of blow is like a long illness. You need time to recuperate or you’ll never be one hundred percent.”
“Is that your prescription, then, doctor? A rest cure?” He had gradually moved toward me as he spoke, and now he reached for one of my gloved hands. Rubbing the wool pile first one way, then the other, he seemed calmer. “I like your directness,” he said after a while. “You listen to me and tell me just what you’re thinking.”
“I suppose I do,” I said, but in truth I was thrown. He had obviously been hopelessly in love with this woman, and likely still was. How could I ever compete with a ghost—me, who knew so very little and nothing good about love?
“Do you think we can ever leave the past behind?” he said.
“I don’t know. I hope so.”
“Sometimes I think if Agnes vanished, this could, too.”
I nodded. I’d had the very same anxiety.
“Maybe she didn’t vanish at all. Maybe she never loved me.” He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, the tip flaring an angry red. “Isn’t love a beautiful goddamn liar?”
His voice was so charged with bitterness, I had a hard time meeting his eyes, but he peered at me closely and intensely, saying, “Now I’ve scared you.”
“Only a little.” I tried to smile for him.
“I think we should go back upstairs and dance until morning.”
“Oh, Nesto. I’m awfully tired. Maybe we should just turn in.”
“Please,” he said. “I think it would help.”
“All right then.” I gave him my hand.
Back upstairs the party had mostly dispersed. Ernest slowly rolled the rug to one side and cranked the Victrola. Nora Bayes’s voice quavered into the room—Make believe you are glad when you’re sorry.
“That’s my favorite song,” I said to Ernest. “Are you clairvoyant?”
“No, just smart about how to get a girl to stand closer.”
I don’t know how long we danced that night, back and forth across the living room in a long slow ellipse. Every time the recording ended, Ernest shuffled away from me briefly to start it again. Back in my arms, he buried his face in my neck, his hands clasped low on my back. Three minutes of magic suspended and restrung. Maybe happiness was an hourglass already running out, the grains tipping, sifting past each other. Maybe it was a state of mind—as Nora Bayes insisted—a country you could sculpt out of air and then dance into.
“I’ll never lie to you,” I said.
He nodded into my hair. “Let’s always tell each other the truth. We can choose that, can’t we?”
He swept me around and around, slow and strong. The song ended, the needle clicked, whispered, shushed into silence. And we kept dancing, rocking past the window and back again.
SEVEN
hen I returned home to St. Louis, Fonnie had a long string of questions and warnings. Just who was this Ernest Hemingway, anyway? What were his prospects? What could he offer me? She’d no sooner finish this line of questioning than begin her rant about my own shortcomings. Did Hemingway know about my nervous attacks and history with weakness? You’d have thought she was talking about a lame horse, but I wasn’t overtroubled. I knew Fonnie’s tactics by heart and could turn her voice off almost entirely. My own voice was harder to control, unfortunately. When I was with Ernest in Chicago I’d felt strong and capable of weathering uncertainty about the future. But outside the circle of his arms, well beyond his range and powerful physical effect on me, I was struggling.
It didn’t help that the stream of letters from him was growing moodier and more intermittent. He hated his job and was fighting with Kenley about an increase in his room and board. Kenley knows full well how I’m trying to save every last seed for Rome but insists on twisting my arm anyway, he wrote. Some friend. I wanted to commiserate, but was selfishly grateful for any delay in his plans.
I had quite a cache of letters by that point, well over a hundred, which I kept squirreled neatly away on a shelf in my closet upstairs. I took the box down and reread them on days I got no beautifully crumpled special, which happened more and more. They cost a dime in postage and he was saving those dimes for lire. It disturbed me to know he was prioritizing Jim Gamble, adventure, and his work. I also couldn’t forget how much younger he was than me. Nine years might not feel like much if we ever got to middle age together, but Ernest could be so very youthful and exuberant and full of plans I had a hard time imagining him in middle age at all. He was a light-footed lad on a Grecian urn chasing truth and beauty. Where did I fit in exactly?
“I think I’m too old to fall in love sometimes,” I said to Ruth one afternoon. We sat in my room on the bed, a plate of tea biscuits between us, while outside it snowed like it might never stop.
“You’re too old—or he’s too young?”
“Both,” I said. “In a way he’s lived more than I have, and he’s certainly had more excitement. But he can be awfully romantic and naïve too. Like this business with Agnes. She did break his heart, I believe that full well, but he carries it around like a wounded child.”
“That’s not very fair, Hadley. You suffered over Harrison Williams, didn’t you?”
“I did. Oh, Ruth.” I put my head in my hands. “I don’t know what’s gotten into me. I think I’m just afraid.”
“Of course you are,” she said gently. “If you honestly think he’s too young for you, all right then, make your decision and stick to it.”
“Do you think I’ll stop worrying when I know he loves me for sure?”
“Just listen to yourself.”
“There’s so much to lose.”
“There always is,” she said.
I sighed and reached for another biscuit. “Are you always this wise, Ruth?”
“Only when it comes to other people’s lives.”
The next day there was no letter from Ernest, and the next day also none, and the next as well. It seemed clearer and clearer that he was either forgetting me or consciously pushing me to the side, choosing Rome and the hope of making a go with his writing instead. I was hurt, but also terribly jealous. He had something real to pin his hopes on, something to apply his life to. My dreams were plainer and, quite frankly, more and more tied to him. I wanted a simple house somewhere with Ernest coming up the walk whistling, his hat in his hand. Nothing he’d ever done or said suggested any such thing could ever happen. So just who was naïve and romantic?
“If it’s over, I can be brave,” I told Ruth and Bertha on the evening of the third day, feeling a heavy knot clench and dissolve at the back of my throat. “I’ll roll up my sleeves and find someone else.”
After we went to bed, I tossed and turned for hours before falling into a light sleep sometime after two. The next morning, still feeling foggy-headed and quite low, I checked the letter box. It was too early for the mail to have arrived, but I did it anyway—I couldn’t help myself. There, in the box, was not one letter but two, both of them fat and promising. Rationally, I knew the mail boy must have come by with them the evening before, catching me unawares, but part of me wanted to believe that I had conjured the letters there with my longing. Either way, Ernest’s silence had finally broken. I leaned against the doorjamb, my eyes blurring with tears of relief.
Back upstairs, I tore open the letters greedily. The first spilled the usual news of work and fun at Kenley’s place, lately referred to as “the Domicile.” There had been a boxing match in the living room the night before, with Ernest playing the role of John L. Sullivan, ducking and weaving in long underwear and a brown silk sash. I laughed to think of him this way and was still laughing when I began reading the second letter. Still thinking about Rome, it began, but what if you came along—as wife?
Wife. The word stopped me cold. I hadn’t met his mother or any of his family. He hadn’t even been to St. Louis to sit in the front parlor and bear Fonnie’s disapproving gaze. Still, he might be serious. It was just the way he’d propose, off the cuff, following a joke about boxing. I wrote back later that morning: If you’re ready to make the mad dash I’m game.
Rome. Together. It was an extraordinary thought. When I let myself fantasize about marrying Ernest, we lived in St. Louis or Chicago, in a place very like the Domicile, full of fun and good talk at any hour. Living with Ernest in Italy was a thrilling and terrifying and completely revolutionary idea. When I was seventeen, I took a trip to Florence and Rome with my mother and two sisters. The whole thing went miserably, and I remembered very little beauty—only heat and fainting spells and mosquitoes. Being in Rome with Ernest had to be different. I would be different there. How could I not be? I could see us walking the Tiber arm in arm, crossing all the bridges one by one. Let’s go, I wrote blithely, flushed with anticipation. I’m already packed.
Then I walked outside without coat or scarf. The sky was low and gray, spilling fat wide flakes. I looked up into it and opened my mouth, tasting the snow.
EIGHT
wo weeks after Ernest’s proposal, I made the necessary trip to Chicago to greet an entire contingent of Hemingways. I was so nervous I drank the better part of a bottle of wine first, pacing the living room at the Domicile, while Ernest tried to reassure me as best he could. It didn’t help that Kate had finally turned up that afternoon. Ernest was at work and she found me at Kenley’s alone.
“You’re not really going to marry Wem? That’s ridiculous.” Her voice was shrill. She had stomped in without taking off her hat and coat.
“Kate, please sit down and be reasonable.”
“You’re going to regret this. You know you will. He’s so young and impulsive.”
“And I’m what? A sedate little spinster?”
“No, just naïve. You give him too much credit.”
“Honestly, Kate. You’re supposed to be his friend. What did he do to turn you against him?”
She stopped ranting suddenly and sat down heavily on the davenport. “Nothing.”
“Then why all this?” I lowered my voice and moved to sit near her. “Please tell me what’s going on.”
“I can’t.” She shook her head slowly. Her eyes were clear and sad. “I don’t want things to get any uglier, and neither do you. I’ll be happy for you, I swear I will.”
I felt a roaring in my ears then that wouldn’t quiet for the rest of the afternoon. When Ernest came home from work, I was still so upset I nearly ambushed him at the door. “Is there anything you want to tell me about Kate? I think she’s quite in love with you.” I was surprised to hear myself say it out loud, but Ernest took it with a strange calmness.
“Maybe,” he said. “But it’s no fault of mine. I didn’t encourage her.”
“Didn’t you? I think she’s very hurt by something.”
“Listen. Kate is Kate. That’s all behind us now. Do you really want to know everything?”
“I do. I want to know all of it. Everyone you’ve ever kissed or imagined yourself in love with for even two minutes.”
“That’s crazy. Why?”
“So you can tell me how much they don’t matter and how you love me more.”
“That’s what I am telling you. Aren’t you listening at all?”
“How can we get married if there are secrets between us?”
“You don’t want to get married?”
“Do you?”
“Of course. You’re making much too much of this, Hash. Please be reasonable.”
“That’s what Kate said.”
He looked at me with such exasperation I couldn’t help bursting into tears.
“Oh, come here, little cat. Everything’s going to be fine. You’ll see.”
I nodded and dried my eyes. And then asked for a drink.
We borrowed Kenley’s car to drive out to the big family house in Oak Park. The closer we got to Kenilworth Avenue, the more agitated Ernest became.
“Don’t you think they’ll like me?” I asked.
“They’ll adore you. They’re not crazy about me is the thing.”
“They love you. They have to.”
“They love me like a pack of wolves,” he said bitterly. “Why do you suppose I board with Kenley when my family’s just fifteen miles away?”
“Oh, dear. I never thought of it like that. Is it too late to turn around?”
“Much too late,” he said, and we pulled into the long, circular drive.
Ernest’s mother, Grace, met us at the door herself, literally pushing the servants to the side to do it. She was plump and plush, with a sheaf of graying hair piled on her head. I was barely over the threshold when she charged at me, swallowing my hand in hers, and even as I smiled and did my best to charm her, I could see why Ernest fought against her. She was bigger and louder than anything else around her, like my own mother. She changed the gravity in the room; she made everything happen.
In the parlor, there were fine sandwiches on finer plates and pink champagne. Ernest’s older sister, Marcelline, sat near me on a chaise, and although she seemed a pleasant enough girl, it was a bit unsettling that she looked so much like her brother. Ursula, too, had his looks, his smile to the letter, and his dimple. Sunny was sixteen and sweetly turned out in pale yellow chiffon. Little Leicester, only six, trailed Ernest like a puppy until he submitted to a round of shadowboxing in the dining room. Meanwhile, Grace had me pinned in the parlor, talking about the superiority of European lace, while Dr. Hemingway hovered with a plate of cheeses and beets he’d preserved himself, from his garden at Walloon Lake.
After dinner, Grace asked me to play the piano as she stood by it and sang an aria. Ernest was clearly mortified. Greater mortification arrived when Grace insisted on showing me a photo in an obviously much-cherished album of Marcelline and Ernest dressed alike, both in pink gingham dresses and wide-brimmed straw hats trimmed with flowers.
“Hadley doesn’t want to see any of that, Mother,” Ernest said from across the room.
“Of course she does.” Grace patted my hand. “Don’t you, dear?” She fingered the photograph in a proprietary way. “Wasn’t he a beautiful baby? I suppose it was silly of me to dress him like a girl, but I was indulging a whim. It didn’t hurt anyone.”
Ernest rolled his eyes. “That’s right, Mother. Nothing ever hurts anyone.”
She ignored him. “He always loved to tell stories, you know. About his rocking horse, Prince, and his nurse, Lillie Bear. And he was a terrible card, even as a baby. If he didn’t like something you’d done, he’d slap you hard, right where you stood, then come around for kisses later.”
“Mind you don’t do t
“She might go in for that,” Ursula said, flashing a smile.
“Ursula!” Dr. Hemingway snapped.
“Put the book away, Mother,” Ernest said.
“Oh, pooh,” Grace said, and flipped the page. “Here’s one of the cottage at Windemere. Beautiful Walloona.” And she was off again, rhapsodizing.
The evening went on and on. There was coffee and little thimblefuls of brandy and delicate cakes, and then more coffee. When we finally had permission to leave, Grace called out after us, inviting us to Sunday dinner.
“Fat chance,” Ernest said under his breath as he led me down the walk.
Once we were safely back in the car and on our way to Kenley’s, I said, “They were awfully civil to me, but I can see why you’d want to distance yourself.”
“I’m still a child to them, even to my father, and when I strain against that, I’m selfish or thoughtless or an ass, and they can’t trust me.”
“It wasn’t so different for me when my mother was alive. Our mothers are so alike. Do you suppose that’s why we’re attracted to each other?”
“Good God, I hope not,” he said.
With the onset of our engagement, new rules applied to our living situation at Kenley’s. I was still invited to stay in my usual room, but Ernest was asked to impose on other friends for the duration of my visit.
“I don’t know why Kenley’s acting so square suddenly,” Ernest said when he delivered the news. “He’s hardly pure as the driven snow.”
“It’s my reputation he’s protecting, not his own,” I said. “It’s rather gallant if you think about it.”
“It’s a pain in the neck. I want to see you first thing, just after your eyes open for the day. Is that too much to ask?”
“Only for now. As soon as we’re married, you can see me any way you like.”
“What a nice thought.” He smiled.
“The very nicest.”