The Paris Wife: A Novel

by Paula McLain

  “Maybe it’s where the ladies were corseted up and kept quiet,” Jinny said. “While the men were over in their castle entertaining whores and chewing on great sides of beef.”

  I laughed. “One would think you didn’t like men at all.”

  “Oh, they have their uses.”

  “I should say so,” Pauline said.

  We were traveling in the Loire Valley, in château country. I’d never been before, but Jinny and Pauline knew just where to stay and which restaurants to visit and what to order. We’d had potted minced pork in Tours, wild boar and quail and buttery veal cutlets, white asparagus and mushrooms that melted on your tongue, and seven kinds of chèvre. Everywhere we went there was a different regional wine to try, and at night we slept awfully well in the best inns. At first I felt strange about letting the girls foot the bill for everything, but they kept insisting that I was their guest and that the whole trip had been invented because they wanted to treat me.

  Ernest generally hated for me to accept charity, but when Pauline and Jinny proposed the Loire scheme, not long after we returned to Paris in April, he’d surprised me by encouraging me to go.

  “Marie Cocotte will come around every day and feed us,” he said. “The book’s done. I’ll take Mr. Bumby to the bicycle races every day and park him in the sun for long naps. We’ll be a fine team, and you’ve earned your break.”

  I had, I thought. In the last few weeks at Schruns I’d spent every spare moment preparing my concert pieces, afraid I wouldn’t be ready. We’d told everyone we knew, and the hall was already nearly sold out. That alone was a maddening thought, but I stuck to the work at hand, each piece, phrase, and nuance, trusting that when the time came, I could rely on habit if everything else failed. Meanwhile, Ernest had been throwing everything he had into finishing up Sun, which he’d been rewriting at a clip of several chapters a day. Now he was preparing to mail the manuscript to Maxwell Perkins.

  “I’m thinking of dedicating it to Mr. Bumby,” he said, “and including something about the book being full of instructive anecdotes.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Of course not. It’s meant to be ironic. Scott says I shouldn’t do it, but I think it’s fine. Bumby will know that I really mean don’t ever live this way, like these poor lost savages.”

  “When he can read, you mean,” I said, laughing.

  “Yes, of course.”

  “It’s not easy to know how to live, is it? He’s lucky to have you as a papa, and someday he’ll be so proud.”

  “I hope you mean it.”

  “Of course, Tatie. Why wouldn’t I?”

  “Because it’s not always easy to know how to live.”

  As I packed for my trip, I had to admit that I was relieved to have our Paris routine back and Pauline well in it. As soon as we’d returned, she had come around to the sawmill immediately and was wonderfully herself, laughing and joking with both of us, calling us her “two dearest men.”

  “God, I’ve missed you, Pfife,” I said, and meant it all through.

  As we started our trip, both sisters were in the merriest of spirits. For two days, we stopped at every château starred on the map, each of which seemed grander and more exquisite than the last. But as time passed, Pauline’s mood seemed to shift.

  At the Château d’Azay-le-Rideau, a stronghold of white stone that appeared to be floating up out of the lily pond that bounded it, she looked at everything with eyes darkened and sad. “Please let’s go,” she said. “I don’t want to see anything.”

  “You’re just hungry, ducks,” Jinny said. “We’ll have lunch right after.”

  “The carpets are supposed to be Persian splendor,” I said looking at the guidebook Pauline had passed to me.

  “Oh, shut up, will you, Hadley?”

  “Pauline!” Jinny said sharply.

  Pauline looked shocked that she’d actually said what she’d said, and she walked quickly toward the car. For my part, I was so stung I felt the blood leave my face.

  “Please don’t mind her,” Jinny said. “I don’t think she’s sleeping well. She’s always been sensitive that way.”

  “What is it really? Does she not want me here?”

  “Don’t be silly. It was all her idea. Just give her a little space and she’ll come around.”

  Jinny and I spent the better part of an hour walking through the park around the château, and when we got back to the car, Pauline was more than halfway through a bottle of white wine that had been chilling on ice in the boot. “Please forgive me, Hadley. I’m such a daft ass.”

  “That a girl,” Jinny said.

  “It’s all right,” I said. “We all have our moods.”

  But she drank too much and seemed to be simmering just under the surface of our good time, no matter what we ate or saw or did. No matter what I or anyone else said.

  Late in the afternoon we had stopped and were walking through the Jardin de Villandry on the Loire River. The whole thing was perfection and splendor. The garden stood on three levels, with the first level rising out of the river plateau and surrounded by flowering linden trees. The other levels were terraced in pleasing geometries, curving around paths of small pink stones. There was an herb garden, a music garden, and then one called the Garden of Love, where Pauline walked ever more slowly. She finally stopped still near a patch of love-lies-bleeding and then, inexplicably, started to cry.

  “Please stop, darling,” Jinny said. “Please be happy.”

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into me.” She wiped her tears with a pressed linen handkerchief, but couldn’t stop them coming. “I’m sorry,” she said, with a small choke in her voice, and then ran, her good shoes tripping on the pink stones.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  hen he saw Pfife on the street in her good-looking coat, she was always so fresh and full of life. She cocked her head to one side when he talked to her and squinted her eyes and listened. She listened with everything she had and talked that way, too. When she said things about his work, he had the feeling that she understood what he was trying to do and why it mattered. He liked all of this, but hadn’t meant to do anything about it. Then one night she’d been at the sawmill until very late. Hadley had gone to bed with a raw throat and they’d stayed up talking. When it came time for Pfife to go, instead of putting her in a taxi, he walked her home. It was three miles at least, but they covered the distance in a kind of trance, smiling strangely at one another, their steps ringing on the cobblestones. They walked ever more slowly as they approached her door, but finally there was nowhere else to go.

  She turned to him and said, “You can kiss me.”

  “All right,” he said, and kissed her deeply on the lips. Then he walked home alone, desire buzzing through him, wondering if Hadley would suspect anything.

  A few days later they met by chance at the Dingo. It had been chance for him in any case. They’d each had a glass of Pernod and then she said, “If we stay here some of our friends will eventually turn up and then we’ll have to stay for good.”

  “Where should we go?”

  She’d given him a serious look and paid the check herself, and then they’d walked quickly to her apartment on the rue Picot. Her sister was out for the evening and they hadn’t even turned on the lights or pretended they were there for anything else. He’d been surprised by her intensity—she was very Catholic, after all, and he’d guessed she’d be timid and full of guilt. But the guilt came much later. For the moment, there was only the totally convincing and wonderful strangeness of her. Her narrow hips and very long white legs were nothing like his wife’s. Her breasts were like the small tight halves of peaches and she was a new country, and he was very happy to be with her as long as he didn’t think about what it stood for.

  When he went home to his wife, he’d felt like a terrible shit for doing it and swore to himself that it wouldn’t happen again. And then, when it did, over and over, more and more planned and deliberate all the time, he wondered how
he’d ever get out of the mess he’d made. If Hadley knew it would kill her twice, once for each of them betraying her. But if she didn’t, well, that was almost worse. It wasn’t even quite true, that way, because she was his life and nothing meant anything if she didn’t know it.

  He loved them both and that’s where the pain came in. He carried it in his head like a fever and made himself sick thinking about it. And sometimes, after hours lying awake, it came to him clearly that he only had to change his life to match his circumstances. Pound had managed it. He had Shakespear and Olga both and no one doubted he loved them. He didn’t have to lie; everyone knew everything and it all worked because he’d kept pushing and hadn’t compromised or become someone else.

  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.

  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.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  et 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.”