Paula McLain: The Paris Wife

“Really?” There was the tone again. “He’s clearly over it now.”

I didn’t know what had come between these two old friends, but whatever it was, it was obviously complicated and well under wraps. I let it drop.

“I like to think I’m the kind of girl who’ll drink anything,” I said, “but maybe not from a shoe.”

“Right. Let’s hunt something up.” She smiled and flashed her green eyes at me, and became my Kate again, not grim at all, and off we went to get very drunk and very merry.

I found myself watching for Ernest the rest of the night, waiting for him to appear and stir things up, but he didn’t. He must have slipped away at some point. One by one nearly everyone did, so that by 3:00 a.m. the party had been reduced to dregs, with Little Fever as the tragic centerpiece. He was passed out on the davenport with long dark wool socks stretched over his face and his hat perched on his crossed feet.

“To bed, to bed,” Kate said with a yawn.

“Is that Shakespeare?”

“I don’t know. Is it?” She hiccuped, and then laughed. “I’m off to my own little hovel now. Will you be all right here?”

“Of course. Kenley’s made up a lovely room for me.” I walked her to the door, and as she sidled into her coat, we made a date for lunch the next day.

“You’ll have to tell me all about things at home. We haven’t had a moment to talk about your mother. It must have been awful for you, poor creatch.”

“Talking about it will only make me sad again,” I said. “But this is perfect. Thanks for begging me to come.”

“I worried you wouldn’t.”

“Me too. Fonnie said it was too soon.”

“Yes, well, she would say that. Your sister can be smart about some things, Hash, but about you, nearly never.”

I gave her a grateful smile and said good night. Kenley’s apartment was warrenlike and full of boarders, but he’d given me a large and very clean room, with a four-poster bed and a bureau. I changed into my nightdress then took down my hair and brushed it, sorting through the highlights of the evening. No matter how much fun I’d had with Kate or how good it was to see her after all these years, I had to admit that number one on my list of memorable events was dancing with Ernest Hemingway. I could still feel his brown eyes and his electric, electrifying energy-but what had his attentions meant? Was he babysitting me, as Kate’s old friend? Was he still gone on Kate? Was she in love with him? Would I even see him again?

My mind was suddenly such a hive of unanswerable questions that I had to smile at myself. Wasn’t this exactly what I had wanted coming to Chicago, something new to think about? I turned to face the mirror over the bureau. Hadley Richardson was still there, with her auburn waves and thin lips and pale round eyes-but there was something new, too, a glimmer of potential. It was just possible the sun was on its way. In the meantime, I would hum Nora Bayes and do my damnedest to make believe.

The next morning, I walked into the kitchen to find Ernest leaning lazily against the refrigerator, reading the morning newspaper and devouring half a loaf of bread.

“Did you sleep here?” I asked, unable to mask my surprise at seeing him.

“I’m boarding here. Just for a while, until things take off for me.”

“What do you mean to do?”

“Make literary history, I guess.”

“Gee,” I said, impressed all over again by his confidence and conviction. You couldn’t fake that. “What are you working on now?”

He pulled a face. “Now I’m writing trash copy for Firestone tires, but I mean to write important stories or a novel. Maybe a book of poetry.”

That threw me. “I thought poets were quiet and shrinking and afraid of sunlight,” I said, sitting down.

“Not this one.” He came over to join me at the table, turning his chair around to straddle it. “Who’s your favorite writer?”

“Henry James, I suppose. I seem to read him over and over.”

“Well, aren’t you sweetly square?”

“Am I? Who’s your favorite writer?”

“Ernest Hemingway.” He grinned. “Anyway, there’re lots of famous writers in Chicago. Kenley knows Sherwood Anderson. Heard of him?”

“Sure. He wrote Winesburg, Ohio. ”

“That’s the one.”

“Well, with your nerve, you can probably do anything at all.”

He looked at me seriously, as if he were trying to gauge whether I was teasing or placating him. I wasn’t. “How do you take your coffee, Hasovitch?” he finally said.

“Hot,” I said, and he grinned a grin that began in his eyes and went everywhere at once. It was devastating.

When Kate arrived for our lunch date, Ernest and I were still in the kitchen talking away. I hadn’t yet changed out of my dressing gown, and there she was sharp and fresh in a red wool hat and coat.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I won’t be a minute.”

“Take your time, you deserve a little indolence,” she said, but seemed impatient with me just the same.

I went off to dress, and when I came back, Kate was alone in the room.

“Where did Nesto run off to?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” Kate said. And then, because she clearly read disappointment in my face, “Should I have invited him along?”

“Don’t be silly. This is our day.”

In the end, we had a lovely afternoon. Out of all the girls in my class at Mary Institute, Kate was the boldest and most fearless, able to talk to anyone and make fun out of nothing at all. She was still that way and I felt bolder, too, walking along Michigan Avenue with her, and years younger. We had lunch at a restaurant across from the marble vastness of the Art Institute, where two regal lions presided over traffic and an ever-shifting sea of dark coats and hats. It was a chilly day, and after lunch, we huddled arm in arm along State Street, tucking into every interesting shop we came to. She tried to urge me to open up about things at home, but I didn’t want to lose my good mood. Instead, I got Kate talking about her summer up in Michigan, the fishing and swimming parties and general rambunctiousness. All of her stories seemed to involve rowboats and ukuleles, full moons and campfires and grog. I was desperately jealous.

“Why do you get all the young men?”

“They’re not mine, I’m just borrowing them.” She smiled. “It’s having brothers, I guess. And anyway, sometimes it’s a nuisance. I spent half the summer trying to encourage this one and discourage that one and all the signals got mixed and in the end no one even kissed anyone else. So there, see? Nothing to be envious of.”

“Is Carl Edgar still proposing to you regularly?”

“Ugh, I’m afraid so. Poor old Odgar. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if I actually said yes-as an experiment.”

“He’d fall over.”

“Or run away in terror, maybe. Some men seem to only want the girls beating a path in the other direction.”

“What about Ernest?”

“What about him?” Her eyes snapped to attention.

“Does he like his women on the run?”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“How young is he, anyway? Twenty-five?”

She smirked. “Twenty-one. A boy-o. I know you’re more sensible than that.”

“What do you mean?”

“I thought I saw some interest.” She gazed at me with intensity.

“I’m just bored,” I said. But I’d always been a terrible liar.

“How about a new hat instead?” she said, and pointed to something towering and feathery I couldn’t see myself standing beneath in a million years.

By the time we made it back to the apartment late that afternoon, the place was chock-full again. Kenley and his brother Bill, the youngest of the Smith clan, were trying to get together a card game. A fellow named Brummy was playing a ragtime tune on the piano while Ernest and another cohort, Don Wright, circled each other on the carpet in a spontaneous boxing match. They were stripped to the waist, bobbing and weaving with their fists up, while a group stood around egging them on. Everyone was laughing, and it looked like great fun until Ernest lit out with a right hook. Don managed to dodge most of it, and the match went on good-naturedly, but I’d seen the killer look on Ernest’s face when he threw the punch and knew it was all very serious to him. He wanted to win.