The Paris Wife

FIVE

Everything all right, miss?” the cabdriver asked.

“It will have to be,” I said, and opened the door.

I was back in St. Louis after a long day on the train, a day that had been stretched further by the feeling that I’d failed at something in Chicago. Now here I was again, back at Fonnie and Roland’s house on Cates Avenue. It was all I could do to pay the man and get out of the car.

Outside, the air was crisp and chill. The driver walked behind me, delivering my bags to the porch; our footfalls rang hollowly on the flagstones. Inside, I dropped my luggage at the bottom of the steps and went up to my apartment, which had a cold, unlived-in feel. Though it was late and I was exhausted, I lit the lamps and built a fire to warm myself. I sat on the pink settee and wrapped my own arms around my shoulders and wondered if some part of my mother was still there in the room, swaddled in an afghan, maybe, and looking at me pitifully: Poor Hadley. Poor hen.

The next morning I slept later than usual, and when I came downstairs, Fonnie was waiting for me in the dining room. “Well? I want to hear everything. What did you do? What kind of people did you meet?”

I told her all about the parties and games and the interesting people who moved through Kenley’s apartment in swells-but I didn’t tell her about Ernest. What was there to tell? I wasn’t sure where we stood at all, even as friends.

As Fonnie and I talked, Roland came into the room, fastening his cuffs, moving in a cloud of soap and piney hair tonic. He sat down and Fonnie eased her chair ever so subtly away from his so that she didn’t have to see him eat. That’s how they were at this point. Their marriage was a disaster and always had been and it made me feel badly for them both.

“Well,” Roland said. “Was Chi-Town everything you imagined?”

I nodded, spreading marmalade on toast.

“And did you conquer dozens of new beaux?”

Fonnie made an almost inaudible huffing noise, but said nothing.

“I wouldn’t say dozens,” I said.

“You must have made at least one conquest. This letter just arrived for you.” He pulled a crumpled-looking artifact from his suit pocket. “Special delivery,” he said. “It must be serious.” He smiled and handed over the letter.

“What’s that?” Fonnie said.

“Special delivery,” I repeated in a kind of trance. Ernest’s name was on the envelope, scrawled but clear enough. He must have mailed it just after he put me on the train, paying the extra ten cents to make sure it arrived first thing. I’ll write to you. I’ll write you. I fingered the envelope, half afraid to open it.

“What’s your fellow’s name?” Roland asked.

“I wouldn’t call him my fellow, but his name is Ernest Hemingway.”

“Hemingway?” Fonnie said. “What kind of name is that?”

“I have no idea,” I said, and carried the letter out of the room to open it. It was as clutched and creased as if it had spent days in his pocket-and I already loved that, no matter what the letter held. I found a quiet corner in the sitting room near my piano and discovered that inside the pages were rumpled, too, and scratched at with dark ink. Dear Hasovitch-it began-You on the train and me here and everything emptier now you’re gone. Tell me are you real?

I put the letter down because I almost couldn’t bear the feeling that he’d crawled into my head. Are you real? I wondered exactly the same about him-and had more right, too, I thought, particularly after Kate’s warning. I was as solid as the ground he walked on, too solid probably. But what about him? His attentions to me had never faltered during my visit, but that didn’t mean he was reliable, only that for the time being he thought I was worth pursuing. The truth was I didn’t know what to think about him, and so I kept reading, devouring the rest of his letter very quickly, all he had to say about what he was doing and wanted to do, his work, his thoughts. He said there might be a job for him at a monthly magazine called the Co-operative Commonwealth if he’d give in to doing the whole thing himself-as writer, reporter, editor, the whole ball of wax. Not crazy about the terms but will probably take it, he wrote. Though there was a good deal of unquiet chatter in my mind about him, I couldn’t help liking his voice and vibrancy and how his words on paper sounded like the Ernest who invented reasons to pop into my room in Chicago. His letter was doing that now, bringing Ernest into the sitting room that had been dark and airless a moment before.

“Well?” Fonnie said, coming into the room with a swish of her somber wool skirt. “What does he have to say?”

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” I said, but of course that wasn’t true. Everything about Ernest Hemingway was out of the ordinary.

“Well, it’s nice to have new friends, anyway. I’m happy you’ve found a pleasant distraction.” She sat and took up her lacework.

“Are you?”

“Of course. I want you to be happy.”

That was probably true, but only if happy meant I was locked upstairs for the rest of my life, the lonely maiden aunt.

“Thank you, Fonnie,” I said, and then excused myself to my room, where I started in on my answer. I didn’t want to be too enthusiastic. I didn’t want to make my reply mean more than it did-but I found that I liked writing to him. I made my reply last all day, putting things down as they happened, wanting to be sure he could picture me moving from room to room, practicing the piano, sitting down to a perfect cup of ginger tea with my friend Alice Hunt, watching our gardener prune the rosebushes and swaddle them in burlap for winter. I miss the lake tonight, I wrote. Lots of other things too. Do you want to meet me in the kitchen for a smoke?

My mother had kept a snapshot of me in a bathing suit, splashing knee-deep in the Meramec River with Alice, both of us happy and washed over with sunshine. This version of Hadley hardly ever made an appearance these days, it was true, but I thought Ernest would like her open face and anything-goes smile. I tucked the photo into an envelope with my letter, and then, before I could have second thoughts about anything, walked down the street to the letter box at the corner. It was dark out, and as I walked, I looked into houses as if they were glowing bowls. Everything glowed faintly-and for a moment I could imagine light speeding over all the knobby cornfields and sleeping barns between St. Louis and Chicago. When I arrived at the box, I gripped my letter, kissed it on impulse, and then pushed it into the slot and let it go.