The Paris Wife (34 page)

That was the trick, wasn’t it? Ford was almost as old as his own father, but he had done it, too. When his first wife wouldn’t divorce him, he simply changed his name and married Stella, who was very beautiful and true and also never enough. He took up with Jean Rhys, moving her right into the house where Stella painted in one room and the baby cried in another, and in yet another he edited Jean’s books and bedded her, too. Everyone called Jean “Ford’s girl” and Stella “Ford’s wife,” and that made everything plain enough apparently
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Why couldn’t Pfife be his girl? The arrangement might be deadly, but couldn’t marriage also be, if it banked the coals in you? You could grow very quiet in marriage. A new girl got you talking, and telling her everything made it fresh again. She called you out of your head and stopped the feeling that the best part of you was being shaved away, inch by inch. You owed her for that. No matter what else happened, however terrible, you wouldn’t forget it
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“Let me just go and see about her,” Jinny said, and followed Pauline to the edge of the garden, where a small green berm stood surrounded by willow trees. I couldn’t hear anything they said, but saw Pauline burying her head in her hands and shaking it back and forth. That’s when it struck me that Pauline was being very brave about me, about inviting me to be near her for days on end when she was very much in love with my husband. As soon as the thought formed in my mind I knew I wasn’t being a jealous wife. It was true and couldn’t be managed or changed. She had walked through the garden and felt it speaking to her of all she couldn’t have of happiness. Ernest and I were the garden, and we could only destroy her, and it was already happening.

On the berm, Jinny bent near her and whispered something tender, and Pauline seemed calmer. But when Jinny tried to lead her back to where I stood, she resisted. Finally, Jinny came back alone.

“I don’t know what to say. She’s a Pandora’s box of moodiness, always has been, really. Ever since we were girls.”

“Jinny, please be straight with me. Is Ernest involved in this? Has Pauline fallen in love with him?”

Jinny looked at me with surprise. Her eyes were very brown and very clear under the sharp fringe of her dark bangs. “I think they care for each other.”

That’s when I saw the part I hadn’t seen before and I felt very strange and stupid for missing it. “Oh,” I said, and then could think of nothing more to say.

The rest of the trip was a blur for me. There was another interminable day, and I passed it painfully. I couldn’t rally and pretend things were fine. I could barely speak to Pauline and Jinny civilly. It was too striking that once Pauline’s secret was out, both of the women were easier and seemed to enjoy themselves. I began to think that they had engineered the trip specifically to let me know, in one way or another, about the affair.

Driving back the way we’d come, we saw many of the same châteaux in the distance, struck by sunlight or floating in mists as if they were made of helium. But I couldn’t feel the beauty of any of it now. My head was floating also, well above my body as I wondered how far things had gotten between Ernest and Pauline and how far things might yet go for all of us. Had they become lovers in Paris, as Ernest was coming and going from New York, or even before, at Schruns? It made me sick to think of them together there. That was our garden. Our best and favorite place. But maybe nothing was safe anymore.

Back in Paris, Jinny and Pauline drove me to the sawmill and dropped me there. They didn’t ask to come up and I didn’t offer. If Pauline wanted to look up at the windows on the second floor to see if Ernest was looking down at her, she resisted. She sat and stared straight ahead in a very pale gray hat, and we said our good-byes like near strangers.

Upstairs, Ernest was reading in bed, and the baby was out with Marie Cocotte. He put his book down when I came in and watched with growing recognition as I stood there shaking, unable to take off my hat and coat.

“You’re in love with Pauline.” I made myself meet his eyes as I said it.

His shoulders stiffened and then fell. He clenched his hands and then unclenched them, but stayed silent.

“Well?”

“Well what? I can’t answer you. I won’t.”

“Why not if it’s true?” My breath was shallow, and it was getting harder and harder to look at him, to stare him down and pretend that I was in control of anything.

“Who gives a damn what’s true? There are things you shouldn’t say.”

“What about the things you shouldn’t do?” My voice was arch and very high. “What about the promises you’ve made?”

“Guilt won’t do it, you know. If you think you can make me feel worse than I’ve made myself feel, you’ll have to try much harder.”

“Goddamn you.”

“Yes, well. That much is guaranteed, I’d wager.” And then, as I watched him, my face fallen, my mouth open like an idiot’s, he grabbed his coat and hat and went off to walk the streets in the rain.

I was stunned. All the long drive back to Paris I’d thought of what to say that would draw Ernest out and make him tell me plainly what was going on. If there was something terrible to know, I wanted it straight out and clean with no waffling or evasion. But what on earth was I supposed to do with this? His silence was as much as an admission that he was in love with her, but somehow he’d turned it all back on me so that the affair wasn’t the worst thing, but that I’d had the very bad taste to mention it.

When Marie Cocotte came in with Bumby, I was crying so hard they were both alarmed. Marie stayed and helped me feed Bumby and put him to bed, as I was clearly useless. As she left, she said, “Please, madame, is there something I can do?”

I shook my head.

“Try not to be so sad, yes?”

“I’ll try.”

Outside, the gray rain fell and fell. Where had spring gone? When I’d left for the Loire Valley, the leaves had been out on the trees, and the flowers were beginning to bloom, but now everything was drenched and drowned. It had been a false spring, a lie like all the other lies, and I found myself wondering if it would ever really come.

It was well past midnight when Ernest came home drunk. I was still awake and had moved from sad to angry many times over.

“I don’t want you here,” I said when he sat down on the bed to remove his shoes. “Go home to your lover if that’s what you want.”

“She’s headed to Bologna,” he said. “And how would you know what I want?”

I sat up quickly and slapped him as hard as I could, and then did it again.

He barely flinched. “Play the victim if you want, but no one’s a victim here. You should have kept your goddamned mouth shut. Now it’s all shot to hell.”

“Are you telling me you would have been perfectly happy to just go on this way, in love with her, saying nothing about it?”

“Something like that,” he said.

“I can’t believe you,” I said, and began to cry. “I can’t believe any of this.”

Just then, the baby woke in the next room and whimpered.

“Perfect,” he said, staring at the wall. “Now I guess he’ll start wailing, too.” He left the room and went into the kitchen, and a few minutes later when I came out in my robe to check on Bumby, he had already poured himself a whiskey and was reaching for the siphon.

Ernest never came to bed that night, and in the morning, when I got up to make breakfast, he had already left the apartment. Late in the afternoon he came home, and when he took off his coat and emptied his notebook and pencils from his pocket, I was surprised to see them, on this of all days.

“You worked today?”

“Like the devil,” he said. “I got a draft of a new story. It came out whole as a fish.”

I could only shake my head as I put some cold meat, cheese, and bread on a plate. Bumby came over as Ernest ate and sat on his knee and shared nibbles of his bread. I watched them for a time and then said, “What happens now?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t written this. I haven’t any idea what comes next.”

“Will you still go to Spain?”

“Why not? The plans are all made. I’m leaving on the twelfth. Not a day later if I don’t want to miss the corrida in Madrid. I’ll be back for your concert, of course. That won’t be a problem.”

“I can’t do it now,” I said. I’d all but forgotten about the performance. How could I possibly give it without dissolving into tears in front of everyone we knew?

“Why the hell not? The theater’s booked. You can’t back out.”

“I can and I will.”

“Everyone will talk, you know.”

“They’re probably doing that now. I wouldn’t be surprised if the cafés aren’t burning with this gossip.”

“To hell with them. Nothing hurts if you don’t let it.”

“You don’t really believe that?”

“I have to,” he said.

“Have you told Pauline?”

“That you know? Not yet.”

“Well, let’s ask her how we go on from here. I’m sure she has some brilliant plan.”

“Careful there.”

“Why? Are you afraid I’m becoming a bitch? If I am, we know who’s to blame.”

He got up and came back with a bottle of brandy and two glasses. “Drink this,” he said, filling the tumbler and passing it across the table. “You could use it.”

“Yes, let’s get stinking drunk.”

“All right. We’ve always been good at that.”

The next few days were so strained and so full of quarrels, even in daylight, on the street, that Ernest packed a bag and left for Madrid early. It was easier to have him gone. I didn’t know what the future held, but I needed some rest and time to think.

I’d felt like a coward doing it, but I had followed through and canceled my performance. Now I had to deal with the awkwardness of making excuses to everyone. It felt terrible lying, blaming my nerves and lack of preparation—but not as terrible as going through with it, I thought. Particularly since news of the affair had spread, just as I’d suspected.

It was Kitty who told me. She came around just after Ernest left for Madrid and listened to everything in her stalwart way, letting me fall to pieces around her. Once I’d finished and only had tears left in me, she quietly said, “I’d like to say I’m surprised, but I’m not. I saw Pauline on the street just before she left for Schruns. She had her skis on her shoulders and was all loaded down with packages, and though she didn’t say anything, really, there was something about the way she talked about you two. An authority in her voice, as if you both belonged to her.”

“She has nerve. I’ll give her that.”

“Zelda said she and Scott were at the Rotonde when Pauline came in and started to go on about a letter she’d gotten from Hem, and how funny it was that he knew so much about women’s perfume, and did anyone else find that funny? She was obviously baiting. Luring suspicion.”

“Or maybe she couldn’t help herself. She’s in love with him.”

“Are you saying you have sympathy for her?” Kitty asked incredulously.

“Not at all. But love is love. It makes you do terribly stupid things.”

“I still love Pauline, God help me, but she’s very wrong in this. Freedom is one thing, but you draw the line at a friend’s husband. You have to.”

The weather turned glorious, with the creamy white horse chestnut blossoms choking the air with their sweetness—but I couldn’t get out and enjoy it. Bumby had fallen ill. It began with sniffles, but soon turned to fever. Now he was pale and listless, and fighting a terrible cough that only descended fully at night, waking us both. We kept to the apartment. I read him books and made up silly songs to distract him, but it was very difficult, for even several minutes together, to forget that my life was falling apart.

Every few days there would be a cable from Ernest. He was miserable in Madrid. The city was too cold and dusty, and the good corridas were far and few. The bulls were mysteriously weak and sick; he felt like a sick bull, too. There was no one to drink with. All his good friends were elsewhere, and he was very lonely. He was writing, though. In one Sunday afternoon, he’d finished three stories that he’d only had broken-up drafts of before, and the good energy seemed not to be slowing. He’d keep writing there and play it out. Were Bumby and I coming? If so, we should hurry up. He needed the company to keep from going crazy.

I wrote back saying that Bumby wasn’t well enough to travel. I wasn’t in any state either. I didn’t know where Ernest and I stood, and didn’t think I could bear waiting things out in a hotel room in Spain, particularly if I had to see cables arriving from Pauline every day. No, it was better to have this distance, and his writing was going all the stronger for it anyway. He always worked well during difficult times, as if pain helped him get to the bottom of something in himself and got the real machinery turning.

It also didn’t surprise me that he was feeling sorry for himself. There are men who love to be alone, but Ernest was not one of them. Solitude made him drink too much, and drinking kept him from sleeping, and not sleeping brought the bad voices and bad thoughts up from their depths, and then he drank more to try and silence them. And even if he didn’t admit it to me, I knew he was suffering because he’d hurt me badly with the affair. Knowing he was suffering pained me. That’s the way love tangles you up. I couldn’t stop loving him, and couldn’t shut off the feelings of wanting to care for him—but I also didn’t have to run to answer his letters. I was hurting, too, and no one was running to me.

Near the end of May, Bumby’s cough had rallied slightly, and I packed our bags and we went to Cap d’Antibes, to Gerald and Sara Murphy’s Villa America, where we had been invited to stay at the guesthouse. Many of our set were already there. Scott and Zelda were nearby at the Villa Paquita, in Juan-les-Pins, and Archie and Ada MacLeish were staying on a little cove a few miles up the beach. There would be plenty of sun and swimming and good food, and even though I knew it might be awkward for me, given that whispers had been circling for some time, I also wasn’t so provincial as to think our story would interest this group for long. Zelda had men dying for her, after all, and was proud to brag about it. Ours was barely a mouthful of gossip when you thought of it that way. Whatever the risks, I needed the break. Ernest would join us when he was through in Madrid, and by that time, I was hoping I felt enough like myself that I could face him.