The Paris Wife

pretended to be gracious about how dark and tunnel-like our apartment was, I could see they were unaccustomed to common living. The baby was asleep in the next room, so we crowded around the kitchen table.

“I figure I’ll be done with this novel within a month,” Harold said, “and then I’m going for broke. I want an American publisher, an advance, and a slew of good notices.”

“You forgot dancing girls,” Ernest said, smirking.

“They’ll be in the contract,” Harold said. “Seriously, though, I’m shooting for Boni and Liveright. Ford says they’re the operation to watch in New York.”

“They publish Sherwood Anderson,” Ernest said. “They’ve treated him well, and he says they’re committed to contemporary American writers.”

“That’s me,” Harold said. “You, too.”

“You should send your stories, Tatie. Sherwood would put in a word for you,” I said.

“Maybe,” Ernest said. “I’ve thought about it.”

“Now that’s settled,” Kitty said, “please let’s talk about something interesting.”

“Like hats, Kitty dear?” Harold said.

“Maybe.” She turned to me. “I’d love to take you shopping. You could be my pet project.”

“Oh, brother,” Ernest said.

“What? Everyone likes nice things,” Kitty said. “I promise not to drape her in pearls or meringue.”

“I’d love to go,” I said. “Let’s set a date soon.” But after they’d gone, I saw it was a mistake to have accepted Kitty’s offer.

“She only wants to humiliate you, don’t you see?” Ernest said.

“She’s trying to be nice. I won’t take any charity, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“It’s not that. She wants to lure you in and make you think you’re being treated badly.”

“I’d never think that.”

“Just wait. If she keeps whispering in your ear, you’ll begin to hate me for how shabbily we live.”

“You’re being awfully extreme, Tatie. We’re talking about shopping, for heaven’s sake.”

“No, we’re not,” he said grimly, and went off to pour himself a drink.

TWENTY-EIGHT

While Bumby napped at home under the care of Marie Cocotte, who’d been enthusiastic about returning to work for us, even with the additional nanny duties, I took to meeting Kitty once a week. We’d have tea somewhere or pop into antique stores when she had time. I loved to look at the jewelry, particularly the cloisonne earrings that were popular just then, and though Ernest and I had no money to spare for such indulgences, I enjoyed watching Kitty move through the shops and hearing her appreciative remarks. She had an eye and seemed to know, instinctively, what would hold its value and what was lovely but temporary. Sometimes she tried to press a gift on me, and I would feel pangs about declining. She really was just being nice, but Ernest had his pride, and I didn’t want to risk stirring anything up.

Try as I might to convince Ernest of Kitty’s virtues, he was intent on disliking her. She was too decorative, he said, and bent on her own comfort, but I wondered if he was actually threatened by her independence. She had a job as a fashion and dance correspondent for several magazines in the States, and though Harold paid for her charming apartment on the rue de Monttessuy, it was because he insisted on their having separate living quarters, and he was dripping with family money on both sides. Kitty had inherited money, too, and could have supported herself. She was also incredibly confident, with a way of moving and talking that communicated that she didn’t need anyone to tell her she was beautiful or worthwhile. She knew it for herself, and that kind of self-possession unsettled Ernest.

I fought for my afternoons with Kitty, even though this created tension at home, because it was the first time since St. Louis that I’d gained a friend who was exclusively mine. Gertrude and Sylvia had always belonged to Ernest. He was unapologetically territorial about them. With Alice and Maggie Strater and even Shakespear, I couldn’t quite seem to move beyond the realm of artist’s wife. Kitty was connected to Harold, whom Ernest now saw often, but she also very much had her own life. And she had sought me out.

“You’re a very American girl, aren’t you?” she had said on one of our first outings.

“What? You’re American, too,” I said.

“Not like you. It’s in everything you say, how direct and simple you are.”

“Egads,” I said. “You’re just finding a polite way to notice how I don’t fit here in Paris.”

“You don’t,” she said. “But that’s good. We need your sort around to tell us the truth about ourselves.”

Besides Ernest’s grumbling, the only difficulty in my friendship with Kitty was the way she continued to offer me gifts, even after I tried, at length, to explain the complexities of Ernest’s pride.

“It’s just a trifle,” she pressed. “Why would he mind?”

“He simply would. I’m sorry.”

“It sounds like caveman stuff to me. If he keeps you in animal skins, tending the cook fire, no other man will see you, let alone want you.”

“It’s nothing so brutish as all that. We have to economize. It’s not such a great sacrifice.”

“All right, I understand. But that’s my beef with marriage. You suffer for his career. What do you get in the end?”

“The satisfaction of knowing he couldn’t do it without me.”

She turned from the beaded handbag she was admiring and fixed her pale blue eyes on me. “I adore you, you know. Don’t change a whit.”

It was shockingly unmodern-and likely naive, too-but I did believe any sacrifices and difficulties in our life were worth it for Ernest’s career. It was why we’d come to Paris after all. But it wasn’t easy to watch my clothes falling to threads and not feel embarrassed, particularly since women were dressed so chicly just then. But I honestly don’t think I could have kept up with them, even if we hadn’t been strapped.

Our apartment was cold and damp, and I often had a dull ache in my sinuses. We kept Bumby’s crib in the warmest corner, but he fell ill anyway. We passed a crouping cough back and forth for weeks that spring, which troubled his sleep. He woke crying, wanting to nurse. Feeding him could be a joy in the daylight when I was well rested, but at night it drained my energy away. It was at these times I most needed my outings with Kitty, or walks in the thin sunshine with Stella Bowen and Julie, who were also becoming good companions.

I also tried to slip out of the house for at least an hour each day to practice piano. We couldn’t afford to buy or even rent one as we had before, so I played a badly tuned upright in the damp cellar of a music shop nearby. I had to light a candle to see the sheet music, and my fingers often cramped with cold. Sometimes it didn’t seem worth the effort, but I kept it up anyway, because I wasn’t ready to let this part of myself go.

In the meantime, Ernest was working better than ever. The pressure he felt after escaping Toronto for Paris seemed to have been absolutely essential in stirring him, because he was writing strongly and fluidly, with almost no second-guessing. The stories were coming so well he could barely keep up with them.

He continued to do editing work at the Transatlantic, and though he was still full of criticism for his boss, Ford went on championing Ernest’s work just the same. When Ernest told Ford he was worried it would take years and years to get his name established, Ford told him that was nonsense.

“It will happen for you very quickly. When Pound showed me your work, I knew right away that I’d publish anything of yours. Everything.”

Ernest took the compliment rather abashedly and tried to be kinder about Ford, particularly since he was trying to get him to publish The Making of Americans, a novel of Gertrude’s, which had been languishing in her desk since 1911. Ford finally agreed to publish the thing serially, and Gertrude was ecstatic. The review was gradually becoming more important and widely read among their set, and it would be her first major publication. In the April issue, her work would appear alongside a selection from Joyce’s new work in progress, the book that would later become Finnegans Wake, several pieces from Tristan Tzara, and a new story of Ernest’s called “Indian Camp,” which gruesomely detailed a woman giving birth and her coward husband slitting his own throat because he couldn’t stand hearing her cries. He was very pleased with it because