Paula McLain - The Paris Wife

“It wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t have the energy for more than half an hour at the piano,” I said to Ernest over breakfast one morning. “We were up until three last night, and here I am bright-eyed and chipper at eight. I used to be so tired-and not a little sad, too. What’s happened to me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I can vouch for the bright eyes.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “We’re talking about a major transformation.”

“Don’t you believe in change?”

“I do. But sometimes I don’t even recognize myself. It’s like those stories where the elves come and take one body away and leave another-a changeling.”

“For what it’s worth, I like you this way, Hash.”

“Thanks. I like me this way, too.”

The next evening was my last and I was determined to enjoy every minute of it. I wasn’t sure when or if Ernest and I would see each other again. He hadn’t mentioned Jim Gamble or Italy after that first day, but he also wasn’t spinning any other story about the future. When I asked if he might visit me sometime in St. Louis, he said, “Sure I will, kid,” light as air, with no promise attached, no hint of intention. I didn’t bring it up again. Clutching and clawing wasn’t the way to hold a man like Ernest-if there was a way. I would simply have to wait it out, and see my hand through.

The night went characteristically, with buckets of drink and plenty of song, all of us smoking like paper mills. Ernest asked me to play Rachmaninoff and I was happy to oblige. He came and sat on the bench, like the night of our first meeting, and I felt more than a twinge of nostalgia as my fingers flew over the keys. But in the middle of the piece, he got up and circled the room, rocking back and forth on his heels, jumpy as a thoroughbred at the gate. By the time I finished the piece he’d left the room. When I finally found him, he was out on the stoop smoking a cigarette.

“Was I that bad?” I said.

“I’m sorry. It’s not you.” He cleared his throat and looked up into the cold night sky, which was dizzy with stars. “I’ve been wanting to tell you about a girl.”

“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.

When 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?