a little hair under one ear, and then the other.
He watched me and laughed curiously. “You’ve lost your mind, you know.”
“Maybe. Now you.” I went over and straddled his waist, then snipped away at the hair under his ears until it matched mine. Tucking the hair into my shirt pocket, I said, “Now we’re just the same.”
“You’re a strange one today.”
“You’re not in love with any actress in Paris, are you?”
“God, no.” He laughed.
“Violinist?”
“No one.”
“And you’ll stay with me always?”
“What is it, Kitty? Tell me.”
I met his eyes then. “I’m going to have a baby.”
“Now?” The alarm registered immediately.
“In the fall.”
“Please tell me it’s not true.”
“But it is. Be happy, Tiny. I want this.”
He sighed. “How long have you known?”
“Not long. A week, maybe.”
“I’m not ready for this, not nearly.”
“You might be by then. You might even be glad for it.”
“It’s been a hell of a few months.”
“You’ll work again. I know it’s coming.”
“Something’s coming,” he said darkly.
The next few days were tense and difficult for us. Some part of me had hoped that Ernest’s arguments against a baby only went so deep, and that as soon as he knew one was really coming, he’d be happy, or at least happy for
Then, in the midst of my brooding, a new guest arrived at the Pounds’ villa. His name was Edward O’Brien, and he was a writer and editor staying in the hills above the town, near the Albergo Montallegro monastery. Ezra had heard he was there and invited him down for lunch.
“O’Brien edits a collection of the year’s best stories,” Pound said, making the introductions out on the terrace near the tennis courts. “He’s been doing it since the war.” Turning to Ernest, he said, “Hemingway here writes a damned good story. He’s really very good.”
“I’m gathering material for the 1923 edition now,” O’Brien said to Ernest. “Do you have anything on hand?”
It was only luck that he did. Out of his satchel, he pulled a ragged copy of the jockey story, “My Old Man,” which Lincoln Steffens had since sent back. He handed it over to O’Brien, and then told an abbreviated story of how his work had been lost. “So this piece,” he said dramatically, “is all I have left. Just this last thing, like a small piece of the prow of a ship that’s rotting at the bottom of the sea.”
“Well, that’s very poetic,” O’Brien said, and he took the story up the hill to consider it.
When he’d left, I said to Ernest, as quietly as I could, “I wish you hadn’t talked that way to O’Brien. It makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Maybe that’s the baby, then.”
“Are you angry with me?”
“Why would I be?”
“You don’t think I’ve done this on purpose?”
“What, lost the manuscripts?”
I felt as if he’d slapped me. “No. Fallen pregnant.”
“It’s the same in the end, isn’t it?”
By that point, our whispering had gotten fierce, and it was clear to the other two couples that we were in the middle of a serious argument. They began to drift discreetly toward the house.
“I can’t believe you really mean that,” I said, my eyes hot with tears.
“I’ll tell you what Strater says. He says no other writer or even painter-no one who makes something with all their soul-could ever have left that valise on the train. Because they’d have known what it meant.”
“That’s cruel. I suffered for those pieces too.”
He sighed loudly and shut his eyes. When he opened them again he said, “I’m sorry. I’ve promised myself not to talk about it. It won’t do any good anyway.”
I stormed off in one direction and he went in another, and though by the time dinner was served everyone in our party seemed intent on pretending they’d overheard nothing, I knew perfectly well they had and thought it best to just come clean.
“We wanted you very fine people to be the first to know we’re having a baby,” I said, reaching for Ernest’s hand. He didn’t pull away.
“Well done,” Shakespear said, rising to embrace me warmly. “I thought you seemed more substantial,” she whispered into my ear.
“Damned good show,” Mike said.
“Yes, yes,” Pound said. “It’s the happy fate of the monkey.”
“Ezra!” Shakespear said sharply.
“Do I lie?”
“Congratulations,” Maggie Strater said and hugged me. “We monkeys have to stick together.”
The next afternoon, we watched the three men play tennis. Ernest was a terrible player, but this didn’t stop him from doing it with force. He swung his racket wide and hard around, like a golfer. Mike hit a lovely shot that skimmed the net and fell nearly at Ernest’s feet. He missed it anyway, and then cursed loudly and foully and threw his racket to the ground.
Maggie cringed. “He’ll get used to the idea of the baby eventually,” she said. “Mike did.”
“Of course he will,” Shakespear agreed. “His pride will take over at some point, and then he’ll believe it was all his idea.”
“I’m not so sure,” I said.
I actually had a terrible feeling about the way Ernest was tangling up the lost manuscripts with the coming baby in his mind. If he felt-even in his darkest, most remote recesses-that I was capable of trying to sabotage his work and his ambition, how would we ever recover? Broken trust could rarely be repaired, I knew, particularly for Ernest. Once you were tarnished for him, he could never see you any other way.
I felt very low indeed until Edward O’Brien drove down the hill full of extravagant praise for Ernest’s story. It was splendid and he wanted to publish it, even though it would break with the series’ tradition of selecting from pieces that had already been published in magazines. Not only that, he wanted to lead the edition with the story and include it in his introduction; he felt that strongly about it.
O’Brien’s timing couldn’t have been more perfect; he answered my prayers and Ernest’s too. His confidence, which had been sorely lacking, had a new boost and there was something solid to aim for and look forward to. Everyone who mattered would read his story when the collection was published. His name would mean something. He hadn’t, in fact, been toiling for nothing.
The next morning when I woke, Ernest was at the desk by the window and he was writing.
We had two more weeks in Rapallo and they passed fruitfully for both of us. Ernest seemed to be less threatened by the baby, probably because the words had come back, and he felt the pulse of them. I wasn’t as anxious about the future because Ernest was himself again, buoyed up by all he wanted to accomplish. I could finally be happy about the baby. The only thing that marred the experience at all was Ezra’s taking me to one side as we were leaving. “You know I’ve never been keen on children. That’s another matter. But in this case, with Hem, I think it would be a terrible mistake if you tried to utterly domesticate him.”
“I like him the way he is. Surely you believe me.”
“Of course. That’s how you feel now. But mark my words, this baby will change everything. They always do.