Paula McLain - The Paris Wife

When he went home to his wife, he’d felt like a terrible shit for doing it and swore to himself that it wouldn’t happen again. And then, when it did, over and over, more and more planned and deliberate all the time, he wondered how he’d ever get out of the mess he’d made. If Hadley knew it would kill her twice, once for each of them betraying her. But if she didn’t, well, that was almost worse. It wasn’t even quite true, that way, because she was his life and nothing meant anything if she didn’t know it .

He loved them both and that’s where the pain came in. He carried it in his head like a fever and made himself sick thinking about it. And sometimes, after hours lying awake, it came to him clearly that he only had to change his life to match his circumstances. Pound had managed it. He had Shakespear and Olga both and no one doubted he loved them. He didn’t have to lie; everyone knew everything and it all worked because he’d kept pushing and hadn’t compromised or become someone else .

That was the trick, wasn’t it? Ford was almost as old as his own father, but he had done it, too. When his first wife wouldn’t divorce him, he simply changed his name and married Stella, who was very beautiful and true and also never enough. He took up with Jean Rhys, moving her right into the house where Stella painted in one room and the baby cried in another, and in yet another he edited Jean’s books and bedded her, too. Everyone called Jean “Ford’s girl” and Stella “Ford’s wife,” and that made everything plain enough apparently .

Why couldn’t Pfife be his girl? The arrangement might be deadly, but couldn’t marriage also be, if it banked the coals in you? You could grow very quiet in marriage. A new girl got you talking, and telling her everything made it fresh again. She called you out of your head and stopped the feeling that the best part of you was being shaved away, inch by inch. You owed her for that. No matter what else happened, however terrible, you wouldn’t forget it .

Let me just go and see about her,” Jinny said, and followed Pauline to the edge of the garden, where a small green berm stood surrounded by willow trees. I couldn’t hear anything they said, but saw Pauline burying her head in her hands and shaking it back and forth. That’s when it struck me that Pauline was being very brave about me, about inviting me to be near her for days on end when she was very much in love with my husband. As soon as the thought formed in my mind I knew I wasn’t being a jealous wife. It was true and couldn’t be managed or changed. She had walked through the garden and felt it speaking to her of all she couldn’t have of happiness. Ernest and I were the garden, and we could only destroy her, and it was already happening.

On the berm, Jinny bent near her and whispered something tender, and Pauline seemed calmer. But when Jinny tried to lead her back to where I stood, she resisted. Finally, Jinny came back alone.

“I don’t know what to say. She’s a Pandora’s box of moodiness, always has been, really. Ever since we were girls.”

“Jinny, please be straight with me. Is Ernest involved in this? Has Pauline fallen in love with him?”

Jinny looked at me with surprise. Her eyes were very brown and very clear under the sharp fringe of her dark bangs. “I think they care for each other.”

That’s when I saw the part I hadn’t seen before and I felt very strange and stupid for missing it. “Oh,” I said, and then could think of nothing more to say.

The rest of the trip was a blur for me. There was another interminable day, and I passed it painfully. I couldn’t rally and pretend things were fine. I could barely speak to Pauline and Jinny civilly. It was too striking that once Pauline’s secret was out, both of the women were easier and seemed to enjoy themselves. I began to think that they had engineered the trip specifically to let me know, in one way or another, about the affair.

Driving back the way we’d come, we saw many of the same châteaux in the distance, struck by sunlight or floating in mists as if they were made of helium. But I couldn’t feel the beauty of any of it now. My head was floating also, well above my body as I wondered how far things had gotten between Ernest and Pauline and how far things might yet go for all of us. Had they become lovers in Paris, as Ernest was coming and going from New York, or even before, at Schruns? It made me sick to think of them together there. That was our garden. Our best and favorite place. But maybe nothing was safe anymore.

Back in Paris, Jinny and Pauline drove me to the sawmill and dropped me there. They didn’t ask to come up and I didn’t offer. If Pauline wanted to look up at the windows on the second floor to see if Ernest was looking down at her, she resisted. She sat and stared straight ahead in a very pale gray hat, and we said our good-byes like near strangers.

Upstairs, Ernest was reading in bed, and the baby was out with Marie Cocotte. He put his book down when I came in and watched with growing recognition as I stood there shaking, unable to take off my hat and coat.

“You’re in love with Pauline.” I made myself meet his eyes as I said it.

His shoulders stiffened and then fell. He clenched his hands and then unclenched them, but stayed silent.

“Well?”

“Well what? I can’t answer you. I won’t.”

“Why not if it’s true?” My breath was shallow, and it was getting harder and harder to look at him, to stare him down and pretend that I was in control of anything.

“Who gives a damn what’s true? There are things you shouldn’t say.”

“What about the things you shouldn’t do?” My voice was arch and very high. “What about the promises you’ve made?”

“Guilt won’t do it, you know. If you think you can make me feel worse than I’ve made myself feel, you’ll have to try much harder.”

“Goddamn you.”

“Yes, well. That much is guaranteed, I’d wager.” And then, as I watched him, my face fallen, my mouth open like an idiot’s, he grabbed his coat and hat and went off to walk the streets in the rain.

I was stunned. All the long drive back to Paris I’d thought of what to say that would draw Ernest out and make him tell me plainly what was going on. If there was something terrible to know, I wanted it straight out and clean with no waffling or evasion. But what on earth was I supposed to do with this? His silence was as much as an admission that he was in love with her, but somehow he’d turned it all back on me so that the affair wasn’t the worst thing, but that I’d had the very bad taste to mention it.

When Marie Cocotte came in with Bumby, I was crying so hard they were both alarmed. Marie stayed and helped me feed Bumby and put him to bed, as I was clearly useless. As she left, she said, “Please, madame, is there something I can do?”

I shook my head.

“Try not to be so sad, yes?”

“I’ll try.”

Outside, the gray rain fell and fell. Where had spring gone? When I’d left for the Loire Valley, the leaves had been out on the trees, and the flowers were beginning to bloom, but now everything was drenched and drowned. It had been a false spring, a lie like all the other lies, and I found myself wondering if it would ever really come.

It was well past midnight when Ernest came home drunk. I was still awake and had moved from sad to angry many times over.

“I don’t want you here,” I said when he sat down on the bed to remove his shoes. “Go home to your lover if that’s what you want.”

“She’s headed to Bologna,” he said. “And how would you know what I want?”

I sat up quickly and slapped him as hard as I could, and then did it again.