The Paris Wife

THIRTY-SIX

At Chenonceaux the château stood, reflected perfectly in the Cher River. It looked as if it was there because I’d imagined it, that it had come out of my dream and would hover until I turned away and it dissolved. My eyes were drawn over and over to the doubled string of arches until I couldn’t tell which was the real and which was the still mirror.

“It’s called the Ladies’ Castle,” Pauline said, reading from her guidebook.

“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.