Paula McLain - The Paris Wife

“Why?” Jinny asked.

“It doesn’t say why. Maybe because it’s the grandest lady around.”

“Maybe it’s where the ladies were corseted up and kept quiet,” Jinny said. “While the men were over in their castle entertaining whores and chewing on great sides of beef.”

I laughed. “One would think you didn’t like men at all.”

“Oh, they have their uses.”

“I should say so,” Pauline said.

We were traveling in the Loire Valley, in château country. I’d never been before, but Jinny and Pauline knew just where to stay and which restaurants to visit and what to order. We’d had potted minced pork in Tours, wild boar and quail and buttery veal cutlets, white asparagus and mushrooms that melted on your tongue, and seven kinds of chèvre. Everywhere we went there was a different regional wine to try, and at night we slept awfully well in the best inns. At first I felt strange about letting the girls foot the bill for everything, but they kept insisting that I was their guest and that the whole trip had been invented because they wanted to treat me.

Ernest generally hated for me to accept charity, but when Pauline and Jinny proposed the Loire scheme, not long after we returned to Paris in April, he’d surprised me by encouraging me to go.

“Marie Cocotte will come around every day and feed us,” he said. “The book’s done. I’ll take Mr. Bumby to the bicycle races every day and park him in the sun for long naps. We’ll be a fine team, and you’ve earned your break.”

I had, I thought. In the last few weeks at Schruns I’d spent every spare moment preparing my concert pieces, afraid I wouldn’t be ready. We’d told everyone we knew, and the hall was already nearly sold out. That alone was a maddening thought, but I stuck to the work at hand, each piece, phrase, and nuance, trusting that when the time came, I could rely on habit if everything else failed. Meanwhile, Ernest had been throwing everything he had into finishing up Sun , which he’d been rewriting at a clip of several chapters a day. Now he was preparing to mail the manuscript to Maxwell Perkins.

“I’m thinking of dedicating it to Mr. Bumby,” he said, “and including something about the book being full of instructive anecdotes.”

“Are you serious?”

“Of course not. It’s meant to be ironic. Scott says I shouldn’t do it, but I think it’s fine. Bumby will know that I really mean don’t ever live this way, like these poor lost savages.”

“When he can read, you mean,” I said, laughing.

“Yes, of course.”

“It’s not easy to know how to live, is it? He’s lucky to have you as a papa, and someday he’ll be so proud.”

“I hope you mean it.”

“Of course, Tatie. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Because it’s not always easy to know how to live.”

As I packed for my trip, I had to admit that I was relieved to have our Paris routine back and Pauline well in it. As soon as we’d returned, she had come around to the sawmill immediately and was wonderfully herself, laughing and joking with both of us, calling us her “two dearest men.”

“God, I’ve missed you, Pfife,” I said, and meant it all through.

As we started our trip, both sisters were in the merriest of spirits. For two days, we stopped at every château starred on the map, each of which seemed grander and more exquisite than the last. But as time passed, Pauline’s mood seemed to shift.

At the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau, a stronghold of white stone that appeared to be floating up out of the lily pond that bounded it, she looked at everything with eyes darkened and sad. “Please let’s go,” she said. “I don’t want to see anything.”

“You’re just hungry, ducks,” Jinny said. “We’ll have lunch right after.”

“The carpets are supposed to be Persian splendor,” I said looking at the guidebook Pauline had passed to me.

“Oh, shut up, will you, Hadley?”

“Pauline!” Jinny said sharply.

Pauline looked shocked that she’d actually said what she’d said, and she walked quickly toward the car. For my part, I was so stung I felt the blood leave my face.

“Please don’t mind her,” Jinny said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping well. She’s always been sensitive that way.”

“What is it really? Does she not want me here?”

“Don’t be silly. It was all her idea. Just give her a little space and she’ll come around.”

Jinny and I spent the better part of an hour walking through the park around the château, and when we got back to the car, Pauline was more than halfway through a bottle of white wine that had been chilling on ice in the boot. “Please forgive me, Hadley. I’m such a daft ass.”

“That a girl,” Jinny said.

“It’s all right,” I said. “We all have our moods.”

But she drank too much and seemed to be simmering just under the surface of our good time, no matter what we ate or saw or did. No matter what I or anyone else said.

Late in the afternoon we had stopped and were walking through the Jardin de Villandry on the Loire River. The whole thing was perfection and splendor. The garden stood on three levels, with the first level rising out of the river plateau and surrounded by flowering linden trees. The other levels were terraced in pleasing geometries, curving around paths of small pink stones. There was an herb garden, a music garden, and then one called the Garden of Love, where Pauline walked ever more slowly. She finally stopped still near a patch of love-lies-bleeding and then, inexplicably, started to cry.

“Please stop, darling,” Jinny said. “Please be happy.”

“I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She wiped her tears with a pressed linen handkerchief, but couldn’t stop them coming. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a small choke in her voice, and then ran, her good shoes tripping on the pink stones.

W hen he saw Pfife on the street in her good-looking coat, she was always so fresh and full of life. She cocked her head to one side when he talked to her and squinted her eyes and listened. She listened with everything she had and talked that way, too. When she said things about his work, he had the feeling that she understood what he was trying to do and why it mattered. He liked all of this, but hadn’t meant to do anything about it. Then one night she’d been at the sawmill until very late. Hadley had gone to bed with a raw throat and they’d stayed up talking. When it came time for Pfife to go, instead of putting her in a taxi, he walked her home. It was three miles at least, but they covered the distance in a kind of trance, smiling strangely at one another, their steps ringing on the cobblestones. They walked ever more slowly as they approached her door, but finally there was nowhere else to go .

She turned to him and said, “You can kiss me. ”

“ All right,” he said, and kissed her deeply on the lips. Then he walked home alone, desire buzzing through him, wondering if Hadley would suspect anything .

A few days later they met by chance at the Dingo. It had been chance for him in any case. They’d each had a glass of Pernod and then she said, “If we stay here some of our friends will eventually turn up and then we’ll have to stay for good. ”

“ Where should we go? ”

She’d given him a serious look and paid the check herself, and then they’d walked quickly to her apartment on the rue Picot. Her sister was out for the evening and they hadn’t even turned on the lights or pretended they were there for anything else. He’d been surprised by her intensity-she was very Catholic, after all, and he’d guessed she’d be timid and full of guilt. But the guilt came much later. For the moment, there was only the totally convincing and wonderful strangeness of her. Her narrow hips and very long white legs were nothing like his wife’s. Her breasts were like the small tight halves of peaches and she was a new country, and he was very happy to be with her as long as he didn’t think about what it stood for .