The Paris Wife

THIRTY-THREE

At the tail end of August, Paris was virtually deserted. Anyone who could be anywhere else was, but Pauline Pfeiffer and Kitty had both remained in town for work. The three of us often met for dinner, sometimes with Bumby in tow and sometimes only after he was tucked into bed with Marie Cocotte to watch him. Although I initially felt uneasy around Pauline and Kitty as a pair-these fashionable, independent, and decidedly modern girls-at bottom they were both wonderfully frank and unfussy. That was why they liked me, too, they insisted, and I began to trust it.

Occasionally Pauline’s sister Jinny met us out in the cafés, and I found the two sisters quite funny together, as if they were a very chic vaudeville act with a shorthand of dark little jokes. They held their liquor well and didn’t embarrass themselves or others and always had interesting things to say. Jinny was unattached, but if Kitty was right about her preferring women, that made sense. It was harder to see why Pauline hadn’t yet married.

“It was all but settled with my cousin Matt Herold,” she said one day when I pressed her for more details. “I’d even modeled dresses and tasted half a dozen cakes.” She shuddered. “They all tasted like cake, of course.”

“Did something terrible happen between you?” I asked.

“No. That might have made some things easier, actually. I just didn’t think I loved him enough. I liked him. He would have been a wonderful provider, and a good father, too. I could see the whole thing, but never felt it. Not really. I wanted something grand and sweeping.”

“The kind of love you find in novels?”

“Maybe. That makes me incredibly stupid, I suppose.”

“Not at all. I love romance. Women these days seem too advanced for it.”

“It’s very confusing, knowing what you want when there are so many choices. Sometimes I think I’d just as soon ditch marriage and work. I want to be useful.” She paused and laughed at herself. “I think I read that in a novel somewhere, too.”

“Maybe you can have everything you want. You seem very clever to me.”

“We’ll see,” she said. “And in the meantime we’ll be two bachelor girls.”

“Swimmingly free?”

“Why not?”

It was funny to think of myself this way. Ernest most certainly wouldn’t approve, and I wondered what he’d say about my spending so much time with Pauline. If Kitty was too decorative, Pauline would be as well. She was the type of professional beauty he generally despised. Not only did she talk endlessly about fashion, she was always maneuvering her way toward the most interesting people and sizing them up to see how they might be of use to her, her dark eyes snapping, her mind’s wheels turning shrewdly. There never seemed to be any spontaneity with Pauline. If she saw you, she meant to. If she spoke to you, she’d already planned what to say so it came out sharply and perfectly. I admired her confidence and was a little in awe of it, maybe. She had that sense of effortlessness that took, in the end, a great deal of effort. And though I never knew quite what to say around other women like her-Zelda, for instance-under Pauline’s fine clothes and good haircut, she was candid and sensible, too. I knew she wouldn’t unravel on me at any moment and quickly came to feel I could count on her.

In the middle of September, Ernest came home from Madrid looking exhausted and triumphant all at once. I watched him unpacking his cases and couldn’t help but feel astonished at what he’d accomplished. There were seven full notebooks, hundreds and hundreds of pages, all done in six weeks.

“Are you finished then, Tatie?”

“Nearly. I’m so close I almost can’t make myself write the end of it. Does that make sense?”

“Can I read it now?”

“Soon,” he said. He drew me toward him in a long crushing embrace. “I feel like I could sleep forever.”

“Sleep, then,” I said, but he pulled me toward the bed and began to tug at my clothes, his hands everywhere at once.

“I thought you were tired,” I said, but he kissed me roughly, and I didn’t say anything more.

A week later, he’d completed the first draft, and we went to the Quarter to celebrate with friends. We met at the Nègre de Toulouse, and everyone was in high spirits. Scott and Zelda turned up, as did Ford and Stella, Don Stewart, and Harold and Kitty. There were a few moments of awkwardness as everyone waited to see what was what. Pamplona had ended so painfully, but after the drinks came and several glasses were downed quickly, medicinally, the party loosened up. Ernest had more whiskey than he should have, but behaved himself until the very end of the evening when we met Kitty on the way out the door.

“Good show on your book, Hem.”

“Thanks,” he said. “It’s full of action and drama and everyone’s in it.” He gestured toward Bill and Harold. “I’m ripping those bastards all to hell, but not you, Kitty. You’re a swell girl.”

His voice was so cold and cutting, Kitty’s face went white. I pulled him out the door by his arm, feeling mortified.

“What?” he said. “What did I do?”

“You’re drunk,” I said, “let’s talk about it tomorrow.”

“I plan on getting drunk tomorrow, too,” he said.

I simply kept marching him toward home, knowing there would be remorse in the morning, along with a titanic headache.

I was right.

“Don’t be hurt by what I told Kitty,” he said when he finally woke near lunchtime, looking green. “I’m an ass.”

“It was a big night. You should get some dispensation.”

“Whatever I said, the book’s the book. It’s not life.”

“I know,” I said, but when he gave me the pages to read, it took me no time at all to realize that everything was just as it had happened in Spain, every sordid conversation and tense encounter. It was all nearly verbatim, except for one thing-I wasn’t in it at all.

Duff was the heroine. I’d known and expected this, but it was troubling just the same to see her name over and over. He hadn’t changed it yet to Lady Brett. Duff was Duff, and Harold was Harold, and Pat was a drunken sot, and everyone was in bad form except the bullfighters. Kitty was in the book, too-he’d lied about that-in a very unflattering role. Ernest had made himself into Jake Barnes and made Jake impotent, and what was I supposed to think of that? Was that how he saw his own morality or cowardice or good sense or whatever it was that had kept him from sleeping with Duff-as impotence?

But if I could step away from these doubts and questions even slightly, I could see how remarkable the work was, more exciting and alive than anything he’d ever written. He’d seen the good story in Pamplona when I’d felt only disaster and human messiness. He’d shaped it and made it something more; something that would last forever. I was incredibly proud of him and also felt hurt and shut out by the book. These feelings existed in a difficult tangle, but neither was truer than the other.

I read the pages in a state of anticipation and dread and often had to stop and set down the manuscript and right myself again. Ernest had been working so intently and in such solitude that any delay in getting an opinion was killing him.

“Is it any good?” Ernest said when I’d finally finished. “I have to know.”

“It’s more than good, Tatie. There’s nothing like it anywhere.”

He smiled with relief and elation and then let out a small whoop. “I’ll be damned,” he said. Bumby was on the floor nearby, chewing on a hand-carved toy locomotive that Alice and Gertrude had given him. Ernest swooped him up and lifted him toward the ceiling, and Bumby squealed happily, his apple cheeks filling with air.

“Papa,” he said. It had been his first word, and he loved to say it as often as possible. Ernest liked this, too.

“Papa has written an awfully good book,” Ernest said, smiling up at Bumby, who was growing pinker by the moment.

“Give Papa a kiss,” I said, and Bumby, who was now down in Ernest’s arms squirming happily, slathered his papa’s face.

It was such a fine moment, the three of us perfectly aligned, gazing at the same bright star, but later that night, when I was lying in bed trying desperately to sleep, my worries circled around again and wouldn’t let me rest. I’d been edited out of the book from page one, word one. Why didn’t Ernest seem concerned that I’d be hurt or made jealous? Did he assume I understood the story needed a compelling heroine, and that wasn’t me? He certainly didn’t follow me around with a notebook, jotting down every clever thing I said the way he did with Duff. Art was art, but what did Ernest tell himself? I needed to know.

“Tatie,” I said in the dark, half hoping he was sound asleep. “Was I ever in the book?”

Several seconds passed in silence and then, ever so quietly, he said, “No, Tatie. I’m sorry if that hurts you.”

“Can you tell me why?”

“Not exactly. The ideas come to me, not the other way around. But I think it might be that you were never down in the muck. You weren’t really there in the story, if that makes sense, but above it somehow, better and finer than the rest of us.”

“That’s not how it felt to me, but it’s a nice thought. I want to believe it.”

“Then do.” He turned over on his side, his open eyes searching for mine. “I love you, Tatie. You’re what’s best about me.”

I sighed into his words, feeling only the smallest sting of doubt. “I love you, too.”

Over the coming weeks, Ernest continued to work on the novel, tightening the language, scratching whole scenes out. It was all he thought about, and because he was so distracted, I was very happy to have friends around to keep me company. In the end, he didn’t seem to mind Pauline, and I was grateful for that.

“She chatters on about Chanel too much,” he admitted, “but she’s smart about books. She knows what she likes, and more than that, she knows why. That’s very rare, particularly these days, when everyone’s more and more full of hot air. You never know who to trust.”

With Ernest’s endorsement, Pauline began coming by the sawmill in the afternoons to keep me company. We’d have tea while Bumby played or napped, and sometimes she went with me to the music shop when I practiced at my borrowed piano.

“You really do play beautifully,” she said one day when I’d finished. “Especially the Busoni. I thought I was going to cry. Why is it you never played, really?”

“I couldn’t break through. I just wasn’t good enough.”

“You could still. You should.”

“You’re very dear, but it’s not true.” I stretched my fingers and then closed my music book. “This is my life now, anyway. I wouldn’t want another.”

“No, I wouldn’t either if I were you,” she said, but later, when we were walking home from the shop, the scheme was still on her mind. “You might not have to give anything up to take music more seriously,” she said. “A concert wouldn’t have to be terribly traumatic. Everyone loves you. They want to see you succeed.”

“It would take so much more time and effort,” I said. “And I’d need my own piano.”

“You should have your own anyway. Surely Hem knows that. I can talk to him if you’d like.”

“We’ll see,” I said. “I’ll give it some thought.”

The rush of anxiety about performing in front of others never diminished much, but more and more I began to wonder if a concert might be good for me after all-particularly now, when Ernest was so absorbed by his novel. The book blotted out every other thought and crept in even when we were making love. I could feel him there one moment, with me, inside me, but then gone the next, simply vanished into the world he was making.

My playing wouldn’t change anything about his habits-I wasn’t naïve enough to think that-but I thought it might give me my own focus and outlet, beyond the details of Bumby’s feeding schedule and exercise regimen. I loved being his mother, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t have other interests. Stella managed it beautifully. In fact, she was the new model of a wife, and I was the outdated, provincial variety.

It was ironic to think that nearly all of the women I knew now were direct benefactors of the suffragette work my mother did decades ago, right in our own parlor, while I curled up with a book and tried to be invisible. It was possible that I was never going to catch up with the truly modern woman, but did I have to hide my head so willfully? Couldn’t I experiment just a little to see what else might feel right, especially when I had good friends who loved me, as Pauline had pointed out, and wanted me to succeed?

In time, Pauline introduced us to many of her finer, Right Bank crowd, like Gerald and Sara Murphy. Gerald was a painter, but more than this, he was an icon of good taste and the good life. He and Sara had come to Paris in 1921, and though they had a beautiful apartment on the Quai des Grands-Augustins, they were gradually migrating to the South of France, where they were building an estate on the Riviera, at Antibes. Gerald had studied architecture and the estate, Villa America, would be the Murphys’ joint opus, the most beautiful thing they could imagine and afford-and they could afford a great deal. Pauline also introduced us to the poet Archibald MacLeish and his lovely wife, Ada, who sang well, professionally even, and wore the most beautifully beaded dresses I’d ever seen.

I was surprised at how tolerant Ernest seemed of these new acquaintances. In private he snidely called them “the rich,” but he couldn’t help but respond to the attention he got from them just the same. In Our Time came out in the States in early October, and not long after, copies could be found at bookshops all over town. The reviews were all tremendously positive, calling Ernest the young writer to watch. His prospects seemed brighter and brighter, but these new friends weren’t simply hangers-on. They wouldn’t be content warming their hands at the edge of Ernest’s success; they wanted to fan the fire.

In the meantime, Pauline began coming to the sawmill for dinner several nights a week, and sometimes Ernest would meet her in one or other of the cafés. I was so relieved that the relationship felt natural and mutual. I’d never liked fighting with Ernest about Kitty, but he wouldn’t budge. She was and would always be “that gold-plated bitch” to him, but Pauline brought out his kinder, more fraternal side. He began to call her Pfife, and so did I. To Bumby, she was Tante Pfife and she had nicknames for us, too. Ernest was Papa or Drum, and I was Hash or Dulla. Together we were her adorables, her cherishables.

As fall turned to winter, and the Paris damp seeped in through the windows and under the doors, Ernest made a decision to put the Pamplona novel away.

“I can’t see it at all anymore. I don’t know what’s good or where I’m failing. It has to simmer on its own awhile.” He sighed and scratched his mustache, which had gotten thick and unruly lately, handsomely uncivilized. “I’ve been thinking about starting something wholly different. Something funny.”

“Funny seems to suit Don and Harold, but I’m not sure it’s the thing for you.”

“The first thing you ever saw of mine was funny. You’re saying that wasn’t any good?”

“Not at all. Only that your work has more of a spark when it’s dramatic.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, and began working immediately. I had no idea what he really had in mind, or how quickly he would cast it off. Within two weeks he had an entire draft of The Torrents of Spring, a parody-satire of Sherwood Anderson’s latest book, Dark Laughter. But having written the thing didn’t make the next step any easier. He wasn’t sure what he had or whom to let in on it. Someone might get the wrong idea and think it mean-spirited.

“I’d love to read it,” I said. “I can keep an open mind.”

“Sorry, Tatie. I’m not sure you can.”

“Is it that bad?”

“I can’t say. I’m going to show it to Scott and maybe Dos, too.”

Unfortunately, they weren’t at all keen on the project and told him to leave well enough alone. Anderson’s book might well be silly and sentimental, they agreed, but he was a great talent and had done so much to secure Ernest’s future, it wouldn’t be fair to lambaste the man. What would be the point?

“The point,” Ernest said, “is that his book is rotten and deserves to be harpooned, and if someone’s going to do it, why not a friend?”

“That’s a damned funny way to see it,” Scott said. “I tell you, lay off.”

Undeterred, Ernest had taken the manuscript over to the Murphys’ apartment and read it aloud while Gerald tried very hard not to be shocked, and Sara fell asleep sitting straight up on the sofa in a pale silk dressing gown. I listened with slow-growing dread. When Ernest finished, Gerald cleared his throat several times and, ever the diplomat, said, “It’s not for me, but someone might think it’s just the thing.”

“You’re killing me,” Ernest said.

Gerald turned to me. “What do you think, Hadley? You’ve a good head on your shoulders.”

“Well,” I hedged. “It’s not entirely kind.”

“Right,” Gerald said.

“It’s not meant to be kind,” Ernest said. “It’s meant to be funny.”

“Right,” Gerald said again.

I had a secret theory that Ernest had really written the book to distance himself from Sherwood and come out from under his shadow. Friends and reviewers both were often comparing Ernest’s prose to Anderson’s, and this made Ernest crazy. He didn’t want to be lined up against anyone, especially not a good friend and champion of his work. He was grateful for Sherwood’s help, he swore he was, but not indebted to him. Not indentured. His work was his own, and he would prove it once and for all.

Desperate to get someone to agree with him about The Torrents of Spring, Ernest finally went to Gertrude, but things hadn’t been good with those two for some time and this was the last straw. When he told me how it had gone, I felt heartbroken. She nearly threw him out of her flat, saying, “It’s detestable, Hem, and you should know better.”

“Should I?” He tried to laugh it off.

“I thought so once. You used to be committed to your craft. Now you’re mean and hard and only care about positioning yourself and about money.”

“Don’t be such a hypocrite. You’d love to be rich.”

“I’d love to be rich,” she agreed. “But I won’t do all the things it takes to get that way.”

“Like cutting down your friends, you mean?”

She was silent then.

“I get it. You’ve painted a real nice picture of me here.”

He stormed out, and when he came home he wouldn’t even talk about it at first. But he shut the book away in a drawer and I was relieved to see him done with it.

It was nearly Christmas by this time. We were preparing to return to Schruns and stay through until spring, and Ernest put all his energy into making plans.

“Why don’t we ask Pauline to join us,” he suggested. “It will be so much nicer for you if she’s there.”

“I’d love that. Aren’t you sweet to think of me?”

We invited Jinny, too, because the two sisters often came as a matched set, but Pauline assured us that Jinny would go to Nîmes with other friends. She herself was delighted to come. She couldn’t wait.