The Paris Wife by Paula McLain Read Free Book Online

of his revolver shaking the doors in their jambs—but no less final. While everyone else was downstairs sleeping, I looked at the face I’d hated sometimes and felt sorry for at other times. Her hands were curled to each side of her thin body, and I traced one with my fingertips, feeling a terrible and complex love for her. Then I went downstairs to wake Fonnie and Roland and call the doctor. I made breakfast and had a bath, and then sat with Fonnie in the parlor to see about the funeral arrangements. Mother’s body was still upstairs waiting for the coroner, and I could feel her there, still pressing on me. She’d always seemed to take pleasure in the quietness of my life, as if I’d become what she thought I would, which was not much of anything at all. This tugging was very old and powerful, and I knew I could easily give in to it, in to nothingness. Or I could push with everything I had the other way.

FIVE

    Everything all right, miss?” the cabdriver asked.
    “It will have to be,” I said, and opened the door.
    I was back in St. Louis after a long day on the train, a day that had been stretched further by the feeling that I’d failed at something in Chicago. Now here I was again, back at Fonnie and Roland’s house on Cates Avenue. It was all I could do to pay the man and get out of the car.
    Outside, the air was crisp and chill. The driver walked behind me, delivering my bags to the porch; our footfalls rang hollowly on the flagstones. Inside, I dropped my luggage at the bottom of the steps and went up to my apartment, which had a cold, unlived-in feel. Though it was late and I was exhausted, I lit the lamps and built a fire to warm myself. I sat on the pink settee and wrapped my own arms around my shoulders and wondered if some part of my mother was still there in the room, swaddled in an afghan, maybe, and looking at me pitifully:
Poor Hadley. Poor hen
.
    The next morning I slept later than usual, and when I came downstairs, Fonnie was waiting for me in the dining room. “Well? I want to hear everything. What did you do? What kind of people did you meet?”
    I told her all about the parties and games and the interesting people who moved through Kenley’s apartment in swells—but I didn’t tell her about Ernest. What was there to tell? I wasn’t sure where we stood at all, even as friends.
    As Fonnie and I talked, Roland came into the room, fastening his cuffs, moving in a cloud of soap and piney hair tonic. He sat down and Fonnie eased her chair ever so subtly away from his so that she didn’t have to see him eat. That’s how they were at this point. Their marriage was a disaster and always had been and it made me feel badly for them both.
    “Well,” Roland said. “Was Chi-Town everything you imagined?”
    I nodded, spreading marmalade on toast.
    “And did you conquer dozens of new beaux?”
    Fonnie made an almost inaudible huffing noise, but said nothing.
    “I wouldn’t say dozens,” I said.
    “You must have made at least one conquest. This letter just arrived for you.” He pulled a crumpled-looking artifact from his suit pocket. “Special delivery,” he said. “It must be serious.” He smiled and handed over the letter.
    “What’s that?” Fonnie said.
    “Special delivery,” I repeated in a kind of trance. Ernest’s name was on the envelope, scrawled but clear enough. He must have mailed it just after he put me on the train, paying the extra ten cents to make sure it arrived first thing.
I’ll write to you. I’ll write
you. I fingered the envelope, half afraid to open it.
    “What’s your fellow’s name?” Roland asked.
    “I wouldn’t call him my fellow, but his name is Ernest Hemingway.”
    “Hemingway?” Fonnie said. “What kind of name is that?”
    “I have no idea,” I said, and carried the letter out of the room to open it. It was as clutched and creased as if it had spent days in his pocket—and I already loved that, no matter what the letter held. I found a quiet