The Paris Wife

he thought about the women he’d loved. He remembered trying to please his mother, and how awful that was. He called her Fweetee and invented songs for her, and when she took him to Boston on the train, alone, when he was ten years old, he remembered how proud he was to sit with her in the dining car and eat crab salad with a three- pronged silver fork, hushed white linens all around. But shortly after they returned home, another baby had come and then another, and he was too old to be so desperate for her anyway. He killed the desperation off slowly and deliberately by remembering how changeable and critical she was, under the tenderness, and how he couldn’t trust her.

This trick didn’t always work. Sometimes a woman stayed mysterious and unmanageable, like Kate, and sometimes she got down into the core of you and stayed there, no matter what. Hadley was the best woman he knew, and far too good for him. He’d always thought it and kept thinking it even when she lost the valise with his manuscripts. He tried never to let himself dwell on that day. It had been the most terrible thing he’d ever lived through. Being wounded was one thing. That had broken up his body and awakened him to fear and terror. It was still with him, like the shrapnel buried deep in the tissue of his muscles. But his work, that was him. When it was gone, he’d felt entirely empty, like he might simply recede and become air-a hurt place and a feeling around nothingness.

He still loved Hadley afterward. He couldn’t and wouldn’t stop loving her, maybe ever, but she’d killed something in him, too. He’d once felt so anchored and solid and safe with her, but now he wondered if he could ever trust anyone. That was the real question and he didn’t have an answer. Sometimes it felt as if there were a flawed keystone at the center of him, threatening everything invisibly. Pauline was his future. He’d made his promises and was committed to giving her all he had. But if he was honest with himself, he knew he didn’t trust her either. That part of love might be lost to him forever.

FORTY-SIX

In the middle of October, Ernest came around with a copy of The Sun Also Rises, which had just been published in the States. He made a great ceremony of unwrapping it from the brown paper and string and handing it to me shyly. Just inside the flyleaf, the book was dedicated to Bumby and to me. He’d changed it since we separated to include my name.

“Oh, Tatie. It really is a beautiful book and I’m so proud.”

“You like the dedication, then?”

“I love it. It’s just perfect.”

“Good, then. I wanted to do this much for you at least. I’ve made such a wreck of everything and there’s so much damage, now, all around.”

“Yes,” I said, very moved. “But look at this.” I held up the book. “Look what you can do. You made this.”

“It’s us. It’s our life.”

“No, it was you from the beginning. You must have known that, writing it.”

“Maybe so.” He looked at the book in my hands, and then turned away to the window.

I did my best to try to break out of old habits and see friends. There were a few people from the old days who wanted to help. Ada MacLeish called round to take me to dinner and get my mind off things. Gertrude and Alice invited me to tea, but I thought it would be a bad idea to rekindle that friendship and risk Ernest believing I was choosing Gertrude over him. Loyalty was a dicey game, and it was tough to know whom I could safely turn to. Kitty was torn. Pauline was her friend but so was I; she’d never liked Ernest at all and didn’t trust him. She came to the apartment a few times but asked me not to pass on to Ernest that I’d seen her.

“Caught behind enemy lines and all that,” she said.

“How is it I’m the enemy when she’s the other woman? That seems very unfair, doesn’t it?”

“When Harold and I split, you’d think I’d fallen into the pissoir for all people cared for me. It takes time. Things will shift back your way after a while. Just breathe through it, darling.”

One afternoon I thought Bumby was napping, but he must have heard me crying at the dining table, my head in my arms. I didn’t know he was in the room until I heard him ask, “What are you worrying about, Mama?”

“Oh, Schatz, I’m fine,” I said, drying my eyes on my sweater.

But I wasn’t fine. I was lower than I’d ever been and finding it harder and harder to rally. It was early November and fewer than sixty days into the hundred when I asked Ernest if he’d watch Bumby so I could go away for a bit to think. He agreed to give me the time, and at the eleventh hour, I asked Kitty to go with me. I had chosen Chartres and told her that, without her good company, I wouldn’t be able to appreciate the chateaux and the lovely countryside, but in truth I was afraid to be alone.

We checked into the Grand Hotel de France just before sunset, and though it was a little chilly, Kitty suggested we take a walk around the lake before dinner. The air was crisp and all the trees seemed sharply etched.

“I’ve been thinking a lot about my wedding vows,” I said to Kitty when we were halfway around. “I promised to love him for better or worse, didn’t I?”

“Worse has definitely arrived.” She frowned. “Honestly, I had a hard time choking down my own vows. The way I see it, how can you really say you’ll love a person longer than love lasts? And as for the obeying part, well, I just wouldn’t say it.”

“I didn’t say that part either, but strangely I’ve managed it anyway.”

“When I met Harold, he’d lost his faith in marriage, too, and so we made our own private pact. We would be partners and equals as long as things were good, but when love ended, we’d end, too.”

“It’s an admirable idea, but I can’t believe it can ever be that civilized. It wasn’t for you two.”

“No,” she said. “Lately I’ve wondered if maybe I’m not meant to have love-the lasting kind, I mean.”

“I’m not sure what I’m meant to have. Or be for that matter.”

“Maybe this break from Ernest will give you a chance to find out.”

“Maybe it will.” I looked up to find we’d made it all around the lake while we talked and now were back, exactly, at where we’d started.

After a week at Chartres, my head finally began to clear. One morning, I sent Kitty off to explore alone and wrote: Dearest Tatie, I love you now more than I ever have in some ways and though different people view their marriage vows differently, I meant mine to the death. I’m ready to be yours forever if you must know it, but since you’ve fallen in love and want to marry someone else, I feel I have no choice but to move aside and let you do that. The one hundred days are officially off. It was a terrible idea and it embarrasses me now. Tell Pauline whatever you choose. You can see Bumby as much as ever you like. He’s very much yours and loves and misses you. But please let’s only write about the divorce and not talk about it. I can’t quarrel with you anymore and I can’t see you much either, because it hurts too much. We’ll always be friends-delicate friends, and I’ll love you ’til I die, you know. Ever yours, the Cat.

I was crying hard when I mailed the letter, but felt lighter for it. I spent the rest of the morning staring into the fire in my room, and when Kitty came back from sightseeing alone, I was still in my pajamas and robe.

“You look different,” she said, and there was a great deal of kindness in her eyes. “Are you through with it, then?”

“I’m trying to be. Will you help me by opening us a very good Chateau Margaux?”

“I’m sure Hem’s been just as miserable waiting for a decision from you,” she said, uncorking the wine. “Although I don’t know how I could still have a stitch of sympathy for him after that damned novel of his. He was even crueler to Harold. He’s going to lose all his friends, you know.”

“He might very well,” I said. “I still don’t know why he needed to write it that way, stepping on bodies as he went, but you have to admit it’s a brilliant book.”

“Do I? You’re not in it at all. How do you forgive him that?”

“The same as always.”

“Right,” she said, and we lifted our glasses silently.

Kitty and I drove back to Paris several days later and it was there I received Ernest’s reply:

My dearest Hadley-I don’t know how to thank you for your very brave letter. I’ve been worried for you and for all of us because of this terrible deadlock. We’ve drawn things out so painfully, neither of us knowing how to move ahead without causing more damage. But if divorce is the next necessary step, then I trust that once