The Paris Wife

our meals to arrive. “That’s the third time. If this doesn’t take off, I could spend my whole life writing junk copy or someone else’s story for magazines. I won’t do it.”

“You’re going to see your stuff in print,” I said. “It has to happen. It will.”

He looked at me levelly, and then raised the toe of his shoe to press it firmly against the inside of my calf. Holding it there, warm and insistent, he said, “Did you think you wouldn’t see me again?”

“Maybe.” I felt my smile fade. “I could be a real fool for you, Nesto.”

“I’d like it if you could love me for a little while at least.”

“Why a little while? Are you worried that you can’t stick it out for very long yourself?”

He shrugged, looking nervous. “You remember my talking about Jim Gamble, my Red Cross buddy? He thinks I should follow him to Rome. It’s cheap there, and if I saved enough beforehand, I could just write fiction for five or six months. This sort of shot might not come around again.”

Rome. I felt my chest contract. I’d just found him, and he was going to run off overseas? My head was spinning, but I knew with absolute certainty that to even try to hold him back would be a mistake. I swallowed hard and set each word down carefully. “If your work’s the thing that matters most, you should go.” I tried to meet his eyes squarely over the table. “But a girl would miss you.”

He nodded seriously but didn’t say anything.

The rest of the week of my visit was filled with concerts, plays, and parties, every evening finishing up in Kenley’s long living room with wine and cigarettes and heated conversations about great books and paintings. Everything was very much as it was in the fall, except that Kate was persistently absent.

Just before I left St. Louis, I put a letter in the mail to her. I wasn’t sure it would reach her before we ran into each other in Chicago, as we inevitably would, but I couldn’t not write and at least try to gently pave the way. Nesto and I have become quite close, I wrote. We’re truly good friends and you’re my good friend too, and I hate to think this could come between us. Please don’t be angry for long. Your lovingest, Hash.

Kenley insisted she was simply busy with work, saying, “You know Kate. She takes on too much and then can’t get free. I’m sure we’ll see her before too long.”

But we didn’t see her, and as the days passed, I wished more and more that I could talk about the situation with Ernest. It wasn’t like me to be duplicitous, but I’d painted myself into a corner by not ever divulging how Kate had warned me away from him. I had plenty of reasons not to. I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, for one, and also didn’t feel it was my place to step between them and create bad blood. As my visit drew to a close and Kate’s silence grew thicker, I wondered if any element of this lopsided triangle could end well. It was entirely possible she’d stop trusting me altogether. It was possible-even probable-that Ernest would go off to Rome to work on his fiction, leaving me in the lurch on two counts.

It was dangerous to leave my heart on the line with Ernest, but what real choice did I have? I was falling in love with him, and even if I didn’t feel at all brave about the future, my life had unquestionably changed for the better since I’d met him. I felt it at home in St. Louis and at Kenley’s, too. At the beginning of each evening, I was nervous and shy, worried that I had nothing to contribute to the group, but then I’d settle into my skin and my voice. By midnight, I would be part of things, ready to drink like a sailor and talk until morning. It was like being born over each night, the same process repeated, finding myself, losing myself, finding myself again.

“It wasn’t so long ago that I didn’t have the energy for more than half an hour at the piano,” I said to Ernest over breakfast one morning. “We were up until three last night, and here I am bright-eyed and chipper at eight. I used to be so tired-and not a little sad, too. What’s happened to me?”

“I don’t know,” he said, “but I can vouch for the bright eyes.”

“I’m serious,” I said. “We’re talking about a major transformation.”

“Don’t you believe in change?”

“I do. But sometimes I don’t even recognize myself. It’s like those stories where the elves come and take one body away and leave another-a changeling.”

“For what it’s worth, I like you this way, Hash.”

“Thanks. I like me this way, too.”

• • •

The next evening was my last and I was determined to enjoy every minute of it. I wasn’t sure when or if Ernest and I would see each other again. He hadn’t mentioned Jim Gamble or Italy after that first day, but he also wasn’t spinning any other story about the future. When I asked if he might visit me sometime in St. Louis, he said, “Sure I will, kid,” light as air, with no promise attached, no hint of intention. I didn’t bring it up again. Clutching and clawing wasn’t the way to hold a man like Ernest-if there was a way. I would simply have to wait it out, and see my hand through.

The night went characteristically, with buckets of drink and plenty of song, all of us smoking like paper mills. Ernest asked me to play Rachmaninoff and I was happy to oblige. He came and sat on the bench, like the night of our first meeting, and I felt more than a twinge of nostalgia as my fingers flew over the keys. But in the middle of the piece, he got up and circled the room, rocking back and forth on his heels, jumpy as a thoroughbred at the gate. By the time I finished the piece he’d left the room. When I finally found him, he was out on the stoop smoking a cigarette.

“Was I that bad?” I said.

“I’m sorry. It’s not you.” He cleared his throat and looked up into the cold night sky, which was dizzy with stars. “I’ve been wanting to tell you about a girl.”

“Uh-oh.” I sat down on one of the chilly stone steps, trying to control my sudden dread. If Kate was right about Ernest, I didn’t know if I could bear it.

“Not that kind of girl. Ancient history. I told you about being wounded at Fossalta?”

I nodded.

“When they sent me to Milan to recover, I fell in love with my night nurse there. Isn’t that a gas? Me and ten thousand other poor saps.”

It wasn’t a new story, but I could tell by watching his face that it was the only story for him.

“Her name was Agnes. We were all set to marry when they shipped me back to the States. If I’d had money then, I would have stayed and made her marry me. She wanted to wait. Women are always so damned sensible. Why is that?”

I didn’t half know what to say. “You were just eighteen then?”

“Eighteen or a hundred,” he said. “My legs were full of metal. They took twenty-eight pieces of shrapnel out of me. Hundreds more were too deep to reach, and none of that was as bad as the letter that finally came from Ag. She fell in love with someone else, a dashing Italian lieutenant.” He sneered, his face contorting. “She said she hoped I’d forgive her someday.”

“You haven’t.”

“No. Not really.”

After we’d passed several minutes in silence, I said, “You shouldn’t get married for a long while. That kind of blow is like a long illness. You need time to recuperate or you’ll never be one hundred percent.”

“Is that your prescription, then, doctor? A rest cure?” He had gradually moved toward me as he spoke, and now he reached for one of my gloved hands. Rubbing the wool pile first one way, then the other, he seemed calmer. “I like your directness,” he said after a while. “You listen to me and tell me just what you’re thinking.”

“I suppose I do,” I said, but in truth I was thrown. He had obviously been hopelessly in love with this woman, and likely still was. How could I ever compete with a ghost-me, who knew so very little and nothing good about love?

“Do you think we can ever leave the past behind?” he said.

“I don’t know. I hope so.”

“Sometimes I think if Agnes vanished, this could, too.”

I nodded. I’d had the very same anxiety.

“Maybe she didn’t vanish at all. Maybe she never loved me.” He lit another cigarette and inhaled deeply, the tip flaring an angry red. “Isn’t love a beautiful goddamn liar?”