The Paris Wife

and it wasn’t. You could get condoms at the chemist’s or the barbershop, but these were thick and coarse, made of rubber cement-uncomfortable at best and sometimes riddled with holes.

When we first arrived in Paris, Gertrude, who could be wonderfully frank this way, asked if we knew about the diaphragm. Without too much trouble, we found a doctor and got me fitted for one, and this is what we’d used ever since. Ernest knew better than I did which were safe and which weren’t. About a week into our time in Chamby, he reminded me we’d come to the end of our window.

“Could you make the necessary arrangements?” he said when we were in bed one night. This was his usual code. My role was to say, “Yes sir,” as if I were his secretary, and he’d just asked me to make a lunch reservation or send a telegram. But this particular night, I didn’t laugh and didn’t get up to search my stocking drawer for the case. Instead, I said, “Oh dear.”

“Don’t tell me you’ve left it in Paris.”

I could only nod.

“Your timing stinks.” His face was red. I could tell he was very angry.

“I meant to tell you in Lausanne, as soon as I realized, but that was hardly the time either.”

“What else are you keeping from me?”

“Nothing. I’m sorry. I should have told you.”

“I’ll say.” He threw back the bedclothes, then got up and began to pace the room in his underwear, fuming. “Sometimes I wonder who I married exactly.”

“Please be fair, Tatie. It’s not as if I meant to forget it.”

“No?”

“Of course not.” I crossed the room and stood near enough to see his face in the dim. “I didn’t. And yet I’d also be lying if I said I don’t think a baby would be a wonderful idea.”

“Now it comes out. I knew it. We’ve always said I’d get a really good start on things before we’d even talk about a baby. We agreed.”

“I know we did,” I said.

“I’m just finally getting going. Do you really want to ruin it for me?”

“Of course not,” I said. “But I have worries, too. I’m thirty-one.”

“Just. And you’ve never been crazy about children. You don’t care at all for other people’s.”

“It’s different to want one of your own. I don’t have all the time in the world.”

“I don’t either. Life doesn’t often give you more than one shot. I want to take mine now.” His eyes were clear and challenging, the way they always were when he was asking for loyalty. “Are you for me?”

“Of course I am.” I put my arms around his neck and kissed him, but his lips didn’t soften under mine. His eyes, just a few inches from mine, were open and questioning.

“I suppose you think I’m going to lie down with you now.”

“Ernest! I’m not trying to trap you!”

He said nothing.

“Tatie?”

“I need a drink.” He headed for the door, grabbing his robe as he went.

“Please stay so we can talk about this.”

“Go to sleep,” he said, and left the room.

I couldn’t sleep, though, for all my fretting. He didn’t come to bed at all, and in the morning, I dressed and went down to look for him. He was in the dining room having his morning coffee, already wearing his skiing togs.

“Can we please make up, Tatie?” I said, going to him. “I’m just sick about everything.”

“I know you are,” he said, and sighed. “Listen. We have to be together on this. If we’re not, then nothing’s any good. You see that, don’t you?”

I nodded and leaned into his shoulder.

“If you really want a baby, the time will be right someday.”

“But not now.”

“No, little cat. Not now.”

Chink came into the room, saying good morning. Then he stopped, eyeing us carefully for a moment. “Is everything all right then?”

“Hadley’s under the weather.”

“Poor Mrs. Popplethwaite,” Chink said tenderly. “You should be in bed.”

“Yes. Go and try to get some rest,” Ernest agreed. “We’ll be up to check on you at lunch.”

They went off to ski alone while I did my best to find some peace. I put on some nice thick socks and my Alpine slippers and then curled up in a chair by the fire to read The Beautiful and Damned. “Fitzgerald’s a poet,” Shakespear had said when she recommended it, just before she and Pound left for several months in Italy. The writing was exquisite, I had to admit, but it was making me sad to read about Gloria and Anthony. They talked prettily and had nice things, but their lives were hollow. I didn’t have the stomach for such a dire picture of marriage, not just now.

I’d put the novel down and climbed into bed to try for a nap when Ernest came in. His hair was damp and crushed from his wool hat, and his face was pink from the cold. He sat on the bed near me and I saw that his eyes had softened considerably. Time away with Chink had done him some good.

“You look very warm,” he said. “Do you mind if I share your cocoon?”

“Of course. If you think that’s a good idea.”

“I stopped at the chemist’s in the village,” he said, and took the little tin of condoms out of his trouser pocket.

“I’m surprised. You always say you hate them.”

“Not as much as being away from you.”

I looked at his trim belly and flanks as he undressed. “You’re very beautiful,” I said.

“So are you, Tatie.”

As he climbed into bed, his skin chilly against mine, it began to snow outside. We pressed ourselves together in a crush on the featherbed, his hands wonderfully rough, his hip bones sharp against my thighs. Later I would see plum-colored bruises there, and the skin on my face and breasts would be chapped and pink from where he hadn’t shaved, but for now there was only wordless desire and a feeling of return. He’d left me for a time. He’d doubted me, but now he was mine again and I wanted to keep him here in a tangle of limbs and bedsheets until I’d quieted every last voice and we were only right again.

After three weeks at Chamby, when we were well fed and sun chapped and had parted ways with Chink, we headed off to Rapallo, on the Italian Riviera, where the Pounds had a rented villa.

“Ezra thinks he’s discovered the place,” Ernest said on the train. “Though Wordsworth and Keats had a go at it before him.”

“Ezra thinks he’s discovered trees and the sky.”

“You have to admire the guy anyway, though, don’t you?”

“I don’t have to, but I will, I guess. For you.”

After traveling south for a full day and more, we were finally near Genoa, where the countryside grew ever more springlike and lovely.

“This is heaven,” I said. “I had no idea it would be so beautiful.” Through our window I caught glimpses of the sea, quick bursts of frothed blue, then dark rock again, then the sea. “Aren’t we lucky to be so happy, Tiny?” I said, just as we entered a mountain tunnel.

“Sure we are,” he said and kissed me. The sound of the train bounced against black rock, roaring in our ears.

When we arrived at Rapallo, I thought the town was charming, with its pale pink and yellow hotels on the shoreline, its quiet empty harbor. Ernest disliked it on sight.

“There’s no one here,” he said when we got to our hotel.

“Who should be?”

“I don’t know. It just doesn’t seem to have any life, this place.” He stood at the window in our room that faced the shore. “Doesn’t the sea seem a bit spineless to you?”

“It looks like the sea,” I said, and came up behind him and put my arms around him tightly. I knew it wasn’t the place that was troubling him. During our last week at Chamby, I had woken several mornings to find him at the