The Paris Wife

TWENTY-EIGHT

While Bumby napped at home under the care of Marie Cocotte, who’d been enthusiastic about returning to work for us, even with the additional nanny duties, I took to meeting Kitty once a week. We’d have tea somewhere or pop into antique stores when she had time. I loved to look at the jewelry, particularly the cloisonné earrings that were popular just then, and though Ernest and I had no money to spare for such indulgences, I enjoyed watching Kitty move through the shops and hearing her appreciative remarks. She had an eye and seemed to know, instinctively, what would hold its value and what was lovely but temporary. Sometimes she tried to press a gift on me, and I would feel pangs about declining. She really was just being nice, but Ernest had his pride, and I didn’t want to risk stirring anything up.

Try as I might to convince Ernest of Kitty’s virtues, he was intent on disliking her. She was too decorative, he said, and bent on her own comfort, but I wondered if he was actually threatened by her independence. She had a job as a fashion and dance correspondent for several magazines in the States, and though Harold paid for her charming apartment on the rue de Monttessuy, it was because he insisted on their having separate living quarters, and he was dripping with family money on both sides. Kitty had inherited money, too, and could have supported herself. She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn’t need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile. She knew it for herself, and that kind of self-possession unsettled Ernest.

I fought for my afternoons with Kitty, even though this created tension at home, because it was the first time since St. Louis that I’d gained a friend who was exclusively mine. Gertrude and Sylvia had always belonged to Ernest. He was unapologetically territorial about them. With Alice and Maggie Strater and even Shakespear, I couldn’t quite seem to move beyond the realm of artist’s wife. Kitty was connected to Harold, whom Ernest now saw often, but she also very much had her own life. And she had sought me out.

“You’re a very American girl, aren’t you?” she had said on one of our first outings.

“What? You’re American, too,” I said.

“Not like you. It’s in everything you say, how direct and simple you are.”

“Egads,” I said. “You’re just finding a polite way to notice how I don’t fit here in Paris.”

“You don’t,” she said. “But that’s good. We need your sort around to tell us the truth about ourselves.”

Besides Ernest’s grumbling, the only difficulty in my friendship with Kitty was the way she continued to offer me gifts, even after I tried, at length, to explain the complexities of Ernest’s pride.

“It’s just a trifle,” she pressed. “Why would he mind?”

“He simply would. I’m sorry.”

“It sounds like caveman stuff to me. If he keeps you in animal skins, tending the cook fire, no other man will see you, let alone want you.”

“It’s nothing so brutish as all that. We have to economize. It’s not such a great sacrifice.”

“All right, I understand. But that’s my beef with marriage. You suffer for his career. What do you get in the end?”

“The satisfaction of knowing he couldn’t do it without me.”

She turned from the beaded handbag she was admiring and fixed her pale blue eyes on me. “I adore you, you know. Don’t change a whit.”

It was shockingly unmodern-and likely naïve, too-but I did believe any sacrifices and difficulties in our life were worth it for Ernest’s career. It was why we’d come to Paris after all. But it wasn’t easy to watch my clothes falling to threads and not feel embarrassed, particularly since women were dressed so chicly just then. But I honestly don’t think I could have kept up with them, even if we hadn’t been strapped.

Our apartment was cold and damp, and I often had a dull ache in my sinuses. We kept Bumby’s crib in the warmest corner, but he fell ill anyway. We passed a crouping cough back and forth for weeks that spring, which troubled his sleep. He woke crying, wanting to nurse. Feeding him could be a joy in the daylight when I was well rested, but at night it drained my energy away. It was at these times I most needed my outings with Kitty, or walks in the thin sunshine with Stella Bowen and Julie, who were also becoming good companions.

I also tried to slip out of the house for at least an hour each day to practice piano. We couldn’t afford to buy or even rent one as we had before, so I played a badly tuned upright in the damp cellar of a music shop nearby. I had to light a candle to see the sheet music, and my fingers often cramped with cold. Sometimes it didn’t seem worth the effort, but I kept it up anyway, because I wasn’t ready to let this part of myself go.

In the meantime, Ernest was working better than ever. The pressure he felt after escaping Toronto for Paris seemed to have been absolutely essential in stirring him, because he was writing strongly and fluidly, with almost no second-guessing. The stories were coming so well he could barely keep up with them.

He continued to do editing work at the Transatlantic, and though he was still full of criticism for his boss, Ford went on championing Ernest’s work just the same. When Ernest told Ford he was worried it would take years and years to get his name established, Ford told him that was nonsense.

“It will happen for you very quickly. When Pound showed me your work, I knew right away that I’d publish anything of yours. Everything.”

Ernest took the compliment rather abashedly and tried to be kinder about Ford, particularly since he was trying to get him to publish The Making of Americans, a novel of Gertrude’s, which had been languishing in her desk since 1911. Ford finally agreed to publish the thing serially, and Gertrude was ecstatic. The review was gradually becoming more important and widely read among their set, and it would be her first major publication. In the April issue, her work would appear alongside a selection from Joyce’s new work in progress, the book that would later become Finnegans Wake, several pieces from Tristan Tzara, and a new story of Ernest’s called “Indian Camp,” which gruesomely detailed a woman giving birth and her coward husband slitting his own throat because he couldn’t stand hearing her cries. He was very pleased with it because he’d been able to take a memory from his childhood, like watching his father deliver an Indian woman’s baby, and stitch it to another thing he’d seen, the refugee couple on the Karagatch Road, and make a single powerful story.

“Joyce knows this trick,” he said to me late one afternoon after returning from work on the issue. “He made Bloom up, and Bloom’s the best there is. You have to digest life. You have to chew it up and love it all through. You have to live it with your eyes, really.”

“You talk about it so well.”

“Yes, but you can talk and talk and not get it right. You have to do it.”

The April issue also contained the first important reviews of his Three Stories and Ten Poems, which were generally rapturous about Ernest’s talent and style. He was inventing something new, they said, and was a writer to watch. I was so happy to see his reputation growing finally. Everywhere we went it seemed people wanted to be near him. Walking the boulevard with him at night, past the thrum of talk and tinny music, we would hear someone call out his name and we’d have to stop and have a friendly drink before moving on to another café where the same thing would happen. Everyone had a joke for him or some bit of news, and our circle of acquaintances was increasing day by day.

John Dos Passos, whom Ernest had met just after he began working for the Red Cross in Italy, was back in Paris, riding the wave of his literary success and always ready for a good time. Donald Stewart showed up around this time, too. He was a humorist who would one day go on to be famous for screenplays like The Philadelphia Story, but for the time being, he was just a funny guy standing near the bar in a very smart cream-colored suit. Ernest was proud of his slovenly writer’s uniform, but I could occasionally be caught admiring crisply pressed trousers. Don’s were perfect. He was also nice looking in a boyish, clean-shaven way, with clear blue eyes that became very animated when he laughed.

When Ernest introduced us, Don was wonderfully familiar with me right away. “You have beautiful hair,” he said. “What an unusual color.”

“Thank you. You have beautiful clothes.”

“My mother liked clothes. And etiquette.”

“And ironing boards?”

“I have a mean way with an iron, I must admit.”

We talked a bit more, and I was having such a pleasant time, it took me a good half an hour to realize that Ernest had settled himself at a table nearby. I didn’t recognize anyone he was with, including the beautiful woman sitting by his side. She was slender and lovely, with very close-cropped dark-blond hair. Her body seemed slim and boyish under a long sweater, but somehow her hair passed her beyond boyishness, making her all the more feminine. The instant I saw her, I felt a sharp chill run through me-even before Ernest leaned over and whispered something to her. She laughed throatily, arching her long pale neck.

“Are you quite all right?” Don said. “You’ve gone white.”

“Oh. Quite fine, thanks.”

He’d followed my eyes to Ernest and the woman. I’m sure everything was quite plain to him, but he smoothly deflected the moment. “That’s Duff Twysden,” he said. “Lady Twysden, actually. They say she married some British count. Count or viscount or lord twice removed. I can’t keep royalty straight.”

“Yes, well. Who can?”

I looked over at Ernest just as his eyes came up. The briefest crackling of suspicion passed between us, and then he got up and came over.

“ ’Scuse me, Don. I see you’ve met my wife.”

“Charmed,” Don said, before Ernest took my elbow and led me to the table where Duff sat expectantly.

“Lady Twysden,” he said, making the introductions. “Or do you prefer Smurthwaite these days?”

“Doesn’t matter as long as it’s Duff.” She half stood, extending a hand. “How d’you do?”

I was just collecting myself to say something pleasant when Kitty appeared out of the crowd. “God, I’m glad to see you,” she said. “Come let’s get a drink.”

Harold was just behind her and looking not at all well. He was pale and his upper lip was damp.

“Has something happened?” I asked, when we were nearer the bar.

“Harold’s leaving me.”

“You’re joking.”

“I wish I were.” She lit a cigarette and stared at the tip for a moment before inhaling in short stabs of breath. “Some restlessness has come in and taken him over. We always said we’d give each other every freedom. Funny, though, when it comes you don’t want it.”

“Is it someone else?”

“Isn’t it always?” She sighed. “It’s probably the new book, too. He wants to reinvent everything. I’m going to London soon. I wanted you to know.”

“Oh, Kitty, really? Is it as bad as all that?”

“Looks like it,” she said. “I have some things for you I can’t bear to pack. I’ll come over to the house.”

“I don’t care about the dresses. I don’t need them.”

“Nonsense.”

“You know what Ernest will say.”

She huffed, blowing out smoke. “Yes, but he hasn’t a clue how hard it is to be a woman.” She tossed her head in Duff’s direction. “It’s brutal out here, isn’t it? The competition isn’t just younger. They care more. They throw everything they’ve got into it.”

I didn’t quite know what to say. Kitty was one of the most poised and self-confident women I’d ever known, and here she was knocked off her feet and set spinning. It made me want to break Harold’s neck.

“Do you want to go home?” I asked.

“I can’t wither like a schoolgirl and have everyone feeling sorry for me. I’d die first. Let’s have champagne,” she said, putting on her bravest face. “Lots and lots of champagne.”

I stayed by Kitty’s side for the rest of the evening, but kept one eye on Ernest, too. This Duff character was just too lovely and too familiar. She and Ernest talked so freely you’d think they’d known each other for years, and I felt newly vulnerable after hearing Kitty’s news. The worst events always have the thrust of accidents, as if they come out of nowhere. But that’s just lack of perspective. Kitty was blindsided, but Harold had likely been plotting his escape for months. I couldn’t help but wonder if this could happen to me, too. Just how long had Duff been in the picture, anyway?

Sometime after midnight, when I just couldn’t stay awake another moment, I excused myself from Kitty and got Ernest’s attention. “It’s time to get your poor wife to bed,” I said. “I’m nearly falling over.”

“Poor Cat,” he said. “Go on home, then. Do you want me to find someone to walk with you?”

“You want to stay?” I asked sharply. Duff turned politely away.

“Of course. What’s the matter? I’m not the one who’s beat, right?”

My voice left me altogether, then, but Kitty appeared to save me. “I’ll mind your wife, Hem. You stay and have a good time.” She challenged him with a steely look, but he didn’t bite.

“That’s a good chap, Kitty. Thanks.” He stood and squeezed my arm in a brotherly way. “Get some rest.”

I nodded in a kind of trance while Kitty grabbed me firmly by the arm and led me away. When we were outside, I started to cry quietly. “I’m so embarrassed,” I said.

Kitty gave me a firm, buck-up sort of embrace. “He’s the one who should be embarrassed, darling. Her, too. They say she has to keep scores of men around because she can’t pay her own bills.”

“Duff,” I said. “Who calls themselves such a thing?”

“Exactly. I’d bet good money that even someone with as little sense as Hem wouldn’t leave a woman like you for that number. C’mon. Chin up.”

“You’ve been so good to me, Kitty. I can’t tell you how much I’ll miss you.”

“I know. I’m going to miss you, too, but what choice do I have? All I can do is run off to London and hope Harold chases me.”

“Will he?”

“I honestly don’t know.”

When I got home, Bumby was awake and gumming tearfully on a small rubber ring.

Marie looked at me apologetically. “He had a terrible dream, I think. Poor dear. He wouldn’t let me soothe him.”

“Thank you for staying so late, Marie.” When she’d gone I tried to settle Bumby, but he was whiny and fitful. It took me more than an hour to get him back to sleep, and by the time I fell into bed myself, I was so tired I felt delirious-but I couldn’t rest. I’d been feeling so strong and content with our life, but Kitty was right. The competition was getting fiercer all the time. Paris was filled with enticing women. They sat in the cafés with their fresh faces and long lovely legs and waited for something outrageous to happen. Meanwhile, my body had changed with motherhood. Ernest claimed to love my fleshier hips and breasts, but with so much else to look at, he could easily lose interest in me. Maybe he already had-and what could I do about it? What did anyone do?

When Ernest came home some time later, I was still awake and so tired I began to cry. I couldn’t help myself.

“Poor Mummy,” he said, climbing into bed beside me and holding me close. “I didn’t know you were so worn down. Let’s get you a nice long break.”

“God yes,” I said, feeling a flood of relief. “Someplace very far from here.”