The Paris Wife

in Italy-they were going to marry after all-but more than that, I tried not to think about. It made me too anxious to wonder if I could satisfy him, so I pushed that thought aside and focused on how making love would be a way of knowing him, in all the ways that were possible, with no obstacles or barriers. It wouldn’t matter that I was inexperienced. He would feel me loving all of him and holding nothing back. How could he not?

Ernest seemed prepared to wait for our wedding night-he’d certainly never pushed me in any way-but on the night of our visit to Oak Park, after a lingering kiss good night at Kenley’s door, he told me he wasn’t heading off to Don Wright’s place to sleep that night after all. “I’m camping out.”

“What?”

“C’mon. I’ll show you.”

I followed him up the fire escape to the rooftop, expecting it to be freezing up there-it was March, and weeks away from true spring in Chicago-but tucked into a sheltered corner, Ernest had piled up quilts and blankets to cozy effect.

“You’ve made quite a little kingdom here, haven’t you?”

“That’s the idea. Do you want some wine?” He reached into his nest and pulled out a corked bottle and a teacup.

“What else have you got hidden in there?”

“Come in and find out.” His voice was light and teasing, but when I was lying beside him on the quilt, and he reached to wrap a blanket around my shoulders, I felt his hands shaking.

“You’re nervous,” I said.

“I don’t know why.”

“You’ve been with plenty of girls, haven’t you?”

“None like you.”

“Well, that’s the perfect thing to say.”

We tented the blankets around us and kissed for a long while, cocooned and warm and separate from the rest of the world. And then, without even knowing that I was going to do it beforehand, I took off my jacket and blouse, then lay down beside him, not minding the scratching of his wool jacket on my bare skin or the way he pulled back to look at me.

I didn’t feel as shy or exposed as I thought I might. His eyes were soft and his hands were, too. They moved over my breasts and I was surprised at the charge his touch sent running through me. I arched automatically into his body and everything happened very quickly after that, my hands searching for his urgently, his mouth on my eyelids, my neck, everywhere at once. It was all new, but natural and right feeling, somehow, even when there was pain.

When I was a teenager, my mother had published an article in the New Republic saying that a wife who enjoyed sexual activity wasn’t any better than a prostitute. Submission was required for children, of course, but the final goal for women could only be a strict and blissful celibacy. I didn’t know what to think about sex or what to expect but discomfort. As I grew older and more curious, I scanned excerpts of Havelock Ellis’s Psychology of Sex in Roland’s Literary Digest for much- needed information. But there were things I had a hard time thinking too specifically about-such as where our bodies would meet, and how that would actually feel. I don’t know if I was repressed or just dense, but in my fantasies about our wedding night, Ernest carried me across some flower-strewn threshold and my white dress dissolved. Then, after some sweetly vague tussling, I was a woman.

On the rooftop, all the veils fell away, and when there wasn’t a diaphanous scrap of fantasy left, I think I was most surprised by my own desire, how ready I was to have him, the absolute reality of skin and heat. I wanted him, and nothing-not the awkward jarring of knees and elbows as we struggled to get closer, not the sharp jolting sensation when he moved into me-could change that. When his weight was on me fully, and I could feel every bump and contour of the roof against my shoulders and hips through the blankets, there were moments of pure crushing happiness I knew I’d never forget. It was as if we’d pressed ourselves together until his bones passed through mine and we were the same person, ever so briefly.

Afterward, we lay back on the blankets and watched the stars, which were very bright everywhere above us.

“I feel like I’m your pet,” he said, his voice warm and soft. “You’re mine, too, my small perfect cat.”

“Did you ever think it could be like this? The way we’re happening to each other?”

“I can do anything if I have you with me,” he said. “I think I can write a book. I mean, I want to, but the thing is it could all be stupid or useless.”

“Of course you can do it, and it will be wonderful. I’m sure of it. Young and fresh and strong just like you are. It will be you.”

“I want my characters to be like us, just people trying to live simply and say what they really mean.”

“We say what we mean, but it’s hard, isn’t it? It might be the hardest thing of all, being really honest.”

“Kenley says we’re rushing things. He doesn’t understand why I’d want to move in the marriage direction when single life suits me so well.”

“That’s his prerogative.”

“Yes, but it’s not just him. Horney’s worried I’m going to gum up my career. Jim Gamble thinks I’m going to forget the whole point of Italy once we’re hitched. Kate’s not speaking to either of us.”

“Let’s don’t bring her up, please. Not now.”

“All right,” he said. “I’m just saying that no one seems to get that I need this. I need you.” He sat up then and looked into my face until I thought I might dissolve from it. “I hope we’ll get lucky enough to grow old together. You see them on the street, those couples who’ve been married so long you can’t tell them apart. How’d that be?”

“I’d love to look like you,” I said. “I’d love to be you.”

I’d never said anything truer. I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night, because I believed that was what love meant. Hadn’t I just felt us collapsing into one another, until there was no difference between us?

It would be the hardest lesson of my marriage, discovering the flaw in this thinking. I couldn’t reach into every part of Ernest and he didn’t want me to. He needed me to make him feel safe and backed up, yes, the same way I needed him. But he also liked that he could disappear into his work, away from me. And return when he wanted to.

NINE

Ernest pushed off, suspending his body over the lake before he punched through. Coming to the surface again, he treaded water and faced the dock where Dutch and Luman sat and passed a bottle of rotgut back and forth, their voices carrying clearly over the water.

“Good form, Wem,” Dutch called out. “Can you teach me to dive like that?”

“No,” he called back. “I can’t teach anyone anything.”

“Do you have to be so stingy about it?” Dutch said with a snort, but Ernest didn’t feel like answering, so he balled himself up like a rock and let himself sink, falling through the lake until he bumped the mossy bottom and drifted there, the moss cool and strange against his toes.

Was it just last summer that Kate and Edgar had been on the dock eating stolen cherries and spitting the meaty pits at him as he bobbed nearby? Kate. Dear old Katy with the cat-green eyes and the smooth strong legs all the way to her rib cage. One night she had said, “You’re the doctor, examine me,” and he’d done it, counting each of her ribs with his hands, following the curve all the way around from her spine. She didn’t flinch or even laugh. When he reached her breast, she pushed the top of her bathing suit down while looking at him. He stopped moving his hands and tried to breathe.

“What are you thinking, Wemedge?”

“Nothing,” he said, working to keep his voice steady. Her nipple was perfect and he wanted to put his hand on it and then his mouth. He wanted to fall through Kate the way he liked to fall through the lake, but there were voices coming down the sandy path toward them. Kate straightened her suit. He stood up quickly and