The Paris Wife

Rapallo and were living there nearly year-round now. Gertrude and Ernest had begun to quarrel about things small and large. He seemed flummoxed about why, but I think he was changing too fast for her comfort.

“Alice has never liked me,” he said one evening when we were leaving their salon. “And now she’s trying to turn Stein around to her thinking.”

“Nonsense. Alice loves you.”

“Then she has a fine way of showing it. She all but called me a careerist tonight. My head’s growing too fast apparently.”

“Gertrude loves you, too. She’s just worried.”

“I don’t need her chastising, and why is she the great teacher anyway? I mean, what has she done really?”

It made me sad to think about the professional wedge growing between these two very good friends, and I wasn’t sure what it meant for me. The new set was made up of very wealthy artists who were utterly focused on living well, having the very best of everything. We were still squeezing by on less than three thousand a year, and although it seemed to me we had nothing in common with these people, they were interested in us, or in Ernest at least.

Pauline Pfeiffer was one of these. She was a working girl, ostensibly, drawing a paycheck from Vogue-but she had a trust fund on top of this, and it no doubt helped to keep her in the clothes she wore so well. This was Chanel’s heyday and Pauline had written about her new collection for Vogue with a fervency that bordered on obsession.

“Chanel has changed the silhouette for good, you know,” she said to a group of us one night at the Deux Magots. “We’ll never be the same.”

All the other women at the table nodded as if Pauline had predicted the Second Coming, but I was left cold by fashion. My clothes never behaved, and I felt that no one could change my silhouette unless I stopped eating altogether.

Kitty had known Pauline for ages and was very keen for us to be friends. I didn’t think we’d have the slightest thing in common, but the first time Kitty brought her over to our apartment, I was pleasantly surprised to find that she was awfully bright and funny. She also seemed eager for me to like her.

“Kate Smith has said lovely things about you for years,” she said. “It’s so good to finally meet you.”

“When did you and Kate meet?”

“At the University of Missouri. We both majored in journalism.”

“I’m afraid Kate had her hooks into me far earlier,” I said. “When we were nine she got me sick to the gills on stolen cigarettes.”

“Sounds like my girl. She would have been hard pressed to find ways to corrupt me. I was pretty far gone already.”

As we laughed I heard Ernest clear his throat from the bedroom. I was embarrassed that he wouldn’t join us and tried to make excuses for him.

Pauline frowned a little at the door. It was only slightly ajar, but he was visible on the bed-not indisposed at all, just disinterested in joining our party. “I know all about husbands,” she said. “I’ve studied them from afar for years.”

“No near brushes yourself?” I said.

“Very near, actually,” Kitty piped in.

“It doesn’t matter. I’m free now,” she said. “Swimmingly free, and it’s lovely.”

“Don’t talk to Hadley about freedom.” Kitty laughed. “She has all sorts of theories and lectures prepared.”

I flushed and tried to explain myself, but Pauline changed the subject quickly and easily. “Kitty says you’re a whiz on the piano,” she said. “Don’t you have one here you could play for us?”

“Sadly, no,” I said. “I’m not a professional.”

“What does professional mean except that you play for others instead of yourself? Have you given concerts?”

“Not since I was in my twenties, and I didn’t have the stomach for it even then.”

“It’s important to test your nerve occasionally,” she said. “It keeps you young.”

“You should play a concert,” Kitty said. “It would be awfully good for you. Everyone would come.”

“I could get ill just thinking about it,” I said, laughing the idea off. But later that night, when we were lying in bed just before sleep, I told Ernest that I wanted a piano of my own. “I didn’t think I’d miss it so much,” I said. “But I do.”

“I know, Cat. I’d love for you to have one. Maybe when the advance comes.”

“That’s such a fine word, isn’t it?”

“Yes, and ‘royalty’ is another one, but don’t go spending either just yet.”

“No, Tatie, I won’t.” But I went to sleep happy just the same.

• • •

On a night in early May, Ernest and I were having a night out on our own at the Dingo when Scott Fitzgerald came over from the bar and introduced himself to us.

“You’re Hemingway,” Fitzgerald said. “Ford showed me a story of yours a few weeks back and I said, ‘Well there it is, isn’t it? He’s the real article.’ ”

“I’m sorry I haven’t read any of your books,” Ernest said.

“That’s all right. I’m not sure I write them anymore. Since my wife and I have come to Paris it’s been a thousand parties and no work at all.”

Ernest squinted at him through the dim light. “You can’t finish anything that way.”

“Don’t I know it? But Zelda loves to dance. You should meet her. She’s spectacular.” His eyes turned to the dance floor where several couples were in the midst of a sinuous-looking tango. “I do have a novel just out. The Great Gatsby.”

“I’ll look for it,” Ernest said. “How are you holding up, waiting for the notices?”

“That’s not so difficult for me. Not near as tricky as getting it down in the first place. And once I have it all, I can’t seem to move on. Like this Gatsby. I know him so well, it’s as if he’s my child. He’s dead and I’m still worried about him. Isn’t that funny?”

“You’re not working on anything now?” I asked, wondering if I could drum up the nerve to tell him I’d read one of his books. “Apart from the dancing, that is?”

He flashed his lovely teeth at me. “No, but I will if you promise to admire every word extravagantly. Tell me, what do you think of me so far?”

An hour or so later, Ernest and I poured Scott into a taxi.

“I don’t like a man who can’t hold his liquor,” he said when the car had pulled away. “I thought he might pass out on the table.”

“He did look very green, didn’t he? And he asked the most alarming personal questions. Did you hear him ask if I’d ever been in love with my father?”

“He asked me that, too, and whether or not I was afraid of water, and if we’d slept together before the wedding. He’s very odd, isn’t he?”

He was odd, and that might have been our last meeting with Fitzgerald if he hadn’t thought to hunt down our address and send a copy of The Great Gatsby as a gift. Ernest simply stowed it on a shelf after opening the package, and it might have been forgotten there if I hadn’t been so curious to read it. It wasn’t too bleak, at least not at first. And when things did get very dire very quickly, I was already completely absorbed by the story.

After I devoured it, awfully impressed, I told Ernest to read it, too. He finished it in one afternoon, declaring it a damned fine novel, then sent a note saying as much to Fitzgerald. We all met up a few nights later, at the Negre de Toulouse. Fitzgerald and Zelda were there when we arrived and were well into a second bottle of champagne. Her edges were already blurred when she stood to shake our hands, and she looked as if she cultivated that-a fine blurriness. Her dress was a pale sheath of filmy layers, one over the next, and they shifted dreamily around her as she sat. Her skin was fair and so was her waved hair, and all of her seemed to be the same color except for her mouth, which was painted very dark red, and cut a straight hard line.