Mrs. Hemingway (7 page)

“Very pretty,” Bumby agrees.

“Kiss her good night.”

Hadley bends over to feel her son's lips on her cheek. “Good night, darling.” Bumby gives her the red rose and she puts it in the perfume bottle by the mirror. She takes her shawl and wraps it around her.

“Ready?” Ernest asks, by the door, looking at her.

“Yes.” And she follows him out into the night.

They arrive at the party later than they would have liked; Scott is already very drunk, as is Zelda. They greet everyone to reassuring murmurings: they are so pleased Bumby is through the
coqueluche
, what a strong boy he is, et cetera. Their friends say how much they have missed them, but they look tanned and golden, and Hadley suspects this might not be quite the truth. Dinner has already been eaten: claws and shells are the leftovers of a bouilla-baisse. Sara and Gerald's kids are evidently still closeted away, just in case the infection has been carried on the Hemingways' coattails.

Fife is nowhere to be seen.

“We had to eat with the kids before they went to bed,” Sara says. “You have already eaten, haven't you?”

Ernest says yes, even though they haven't. Hadley gives her husband a look, which is meant to say:
I'm starving, even if you aren't
. This performance shouldn't be done on an empty stomach.

Sara wears so many pearls she looks positively bandaged. Most people—and most of the people here—prefer Sara to her husband, but Hadley has always preferred Gerald. Ernest thinks him a poseur, but it's precisely this that appeals to her. Both she and Gerald seem miscast for their roles, while the others are pitch-perfect, delivering their lines pat. He is a mortal, like her, among the gods.

It had been Gerald who had laughed warmly when Hadley, at a café session in Paris, had gaily declared Ernest to be the first American killed in Italy. “Amazing news that the man himself lives and breathes next to you, eh, Hash?” She realized her mistake and blushed. “Wounded,” she'd said quietly. “I meant wounded.” She caught Sara giving Fife one of those looks. But she was thankful it was Gerald who had been on hand to deliver the gentler riposte.

 • • • 

Everybody is sitting around the table under the linden tree looking relaxed and handsome as spring. “It's
so good
to see you two,” Sara says. “Have you been awfully pent up?”

“It's good to be out,” Hadley says in her best attempt at neutrality.

“And Bumby's completely out of it?”

“It's all out of him, thank God. He was just too tired to come.” Hadley wonders why Ernest had to lie about dinner. Her eyes travel the empty bowls; there's a bread roll left at Scott's place.

“Well that's just wonderful. I can't
wait
to be all together again.” Sara squeezes her hand and looks at Hadley, mother to mother. She has an intense stare made more so by her bangs that come just short of the brows. She is a handsome woman, though not like Zelda or Fife. She isn't skinny; could not slip, eel-like, into tiny dresses or bathing suits.

“Fantastic news, eh, Hash?” Gerald emerges from the house with a tray of drinks. Framed by the black satin sofas, white walls, and the vast vases of Sara's peonies, he could be emerging from a Hollywood set. He could play a leading man, were it not for the creep of baldness. “Cocktails!” he announces, and, as if on cue, he nearly trips on the step down from the house.

“Do be careful!” Sara says but giggles. She is never mean to her husband.

The wind carries the smell of the citrus orchard from the bottom of the garden. Heliotrope and mimosa flower by the gravel paths. Gerald puts down the tray of drinks and cookies with a flourish. Ernest looks embarrassed and barricades himself between Hadley and Sara. Gerald kisses Hadley near the lips and Scott goes for another glass.

“What number is that?” Sara asks.

“I haven't drunk a thing all night.”

“Minus the aperitif before dinner.”

“And the bottle of wine during it,” Gerald says as he passes drinks around the table.

“So tell me, dearest Hadern,” Scott says, with the moniker only he uses for her. “What have you been occupying yourself with?”

The table turns to look at her. “Oh, you know. Reading. Writing endless telegrams to my absent husband. Looking after Bumby, mostly.”

“She is a doting mother,” Ernest says, looking at her proudly, but then his eyes flit upward toward the house as if he has been, in a moment, transfixed.

Fife walks from the house smoking a cigarette. A vest plunges from her shoulders. Her skirt is made of black feathers, layer upon layer from the waist, and it resembles the closed wings of a swan. Their spines click against each other as she moves, her feet making no sound, as if she really did advance like a bird of prey under the lounge's electric lamps. When Hadley turns back she notices her husband is entranced, as if only he has had the wherewithal to spot this goose no one else has thought to shoot.

“Darling dress, isn't it?” Sara asks, with a plump wink for Hadley who feels dumbfounded, ambushed. What can an old serge frock do next to this bird's plumage? Scott offers her a cigarette as if in consolation. She tries to recompose her features. It's just a dress. Only a dress. And Ernest has always hated women who care too much for their appearance.

Fife sits down with a broad smile. “Hello, chaps,” she says. Her marcelled hair looks immovable. She must have spent all afternoon getting ready after the abandoned game of bridge. “Have I missed anything?”

Tears feel like they will breach Hadley's eyes with nothing more than a blink. How can no one else see how schlocky and cheap is this show of feathers and skin?

Hadley tries to join in on the conversation at the table: Sara still seems to be berating Scott but now it's for his profligacy rather than his drinking. “Surely you're rich by now, darling?”

“Not as rich as you. I don't think any of us can get to that dizzying height.”

“I heard your last book's advance was so big you've had to drink vats of champagne just to get rid of it.” Sara plays with the length of her pearls and puts them for a moment in her mouth. “Dearest, I'm only teasing you. Besides, it's old Hemingstein who's going to have to worry about this soon.” Sara drapes her arms around Ernest's neck and kisses him on the cheek. Storm clouds gather on Scott's face. He'd rather be teased than ignored.

“Do you think so, Sara?” asks Ernest like an ingénue.

“You'll have girls walking around Paris talking like Brett Ashley in no time.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Talking? Isn't talking simply
bilge
? Doesn't Brett say that? Did you steal that from me?”

“Certainly not.”

“
The Sun
is going to make you a star, Ernest.”

“Of course it is,” Hadley says, looking over at her husband. “It's the best thing he's ever done. And he's worked so hard at it.”

No one speaks. Ah yes, she has forgotten that success should come effortlessly or not at all. It's always got to be playtime. Cocktail hour. As if life were always a mooning adolescence or always blindingly fun. Hard work was for other people. “I mean that it will be the great success we've been waiting for.” There, Hadley thinks, half-saved.

Fife's feathers lift and fall in the breeze.

“Wonderful title,” Sara says.

“The Bible gives and gives, as my mother would say.”

“And what
does
the Bible give, may I ask, aside from the obvious?” A man has come up the gravel path from the direction of the sea. He comes with a basket of fruit and a bottle of perspiring wine, like a figure from a Greek myth. “Spiritual nourishment, the standard homilies, rolling papers for cigarettes?”

The man looks to be in his late twenties, with short brown hair and a neat little mustache that does its bit to hide a large mouth. A generous mouth, Hadley thinks, though perhaps too full for a man. “Harry, my dear!” Sara says, rising. “We thought you were staying in Juan tonight?”

“Oh no. It's positively malarial there this evening. I haven't ambushed the party, have I?” Harry is handsome, though his eyes make Hadley think of the empty stare of geckos when they sun themselves at the top of the day.

“But darling, we've eaten everything! There's nothing left. The kids were ravenous from being in the sea all day.” Hadley notices, as the man comes over to the table, that each step has a neat girlish bounce. She can see Ernest grimace—he has never been one for queers.

Harry places the basket on the table and Hadley eyes her supper in a couple of apples. She notices his finger-nails are very neat. He kisses Scott and Zelda but shakes Gerald's hand. “You have met the Hemingways, haven't you, dear?”

“No,” he says, “I haven't yet had the pleasure.”

“Harry Cuzzemano, this is Ernest and Hadley Hemingway. Ernest and Hadley, this is Harry Cuzzemano, book collector extraordinaire.”

“Pleased to meet you, Harry,” says Ernest, holding his hand in his own as he asks, “What type of thing do you collect?”

This is when those eyes come to life. “Oh, anything I can get my hands on. Rare books. First editions. Manuscripts. Anything with a definable . . .”—he seems to search for the precise word—“value. I'm a sucker for anything that will make a killing in a few years or so.”

He flashes a grin at Hadley, as if this comment is meant just for her.

“Does it have to have merit?”

He laughs. “Just value, sir, just value. But I must say, Mr. Hemingway, I read
In Our Time
. I managed to get my hands on the Three Mountains edition. If you carry on writing like that you'll have given me quite the little nest egg. I think it was a print run of a couple of hundred or so?”

Ernest's color is high with the flattery. “I'm only in possession of one myself.”

“Well, keep on to it, man. You know how expensive school can be nowadays.” Hadley wonders how he knew Ernest was a father. “I can only hope your next book will have a similar print run.”

“I don't wish for the same thing, you'll be unsurprised to hear.”

“Any other publications?”

“The
Little Review
did something a while back.”

“That should get your name out.”

“I shouldn't think so. It's only read by intellectuals and dykes.”

“Dear man, it's the most stolen journal in the country! America, that is.”

“Suits me fine,” Ernest answers. “I'd rather be read by crooks than critics.”

“Very right. Very right.” Cuzzemano seats himself between Ernest and Sara and pours himself a glass of white wine.

“You don't mind, Mr. Cuzzemano, if I steal a piece of fruit?”

“Not at all. Please.”

Hadley eats the apple and tries to listen to Zelda's conversation with Sara but she finds herself returning to watch this man. Harry's eyes are always on her when she looks at him.

As the night moves on, dancing starts on the terrace. At one point the Murphys' kids, Patrick, Baoth and Honoria come down, rubbing their tired eyes, asking what's going on, but with an eye on the plaguish Hemingways Sara shoos them quickly away. Ernest and Scott are too busy singing along in chorus to “Tea for Two” for anyone to notice the kids' dispatch.

All evening Cuzzemano toadies up to her husband. Ernest answers his questions cordially enough. It is good to see Ernest behave well to someone he doesn't like. Sometimes he can say such astonishingly vile things she wonders if it's really him. She knows he grapples with dark thoughts and low moods but that doesn't give him an excuse to treat people badly. Most often it's the night-time when it's worst: when he enters a world where he can't find anything left that's meaningful. And then, in the daytime, Ernest is fine, and cheerful, and immensely interested in words and art and how to make a new kind of text from the bones of language. The two personalities seem as if from two different men.

Though he evidently has no good feelings toward the collector, Ernest signs a piece of paper which Cuzzemano puts in an envelope and seals with a swipe of his tongue. On the envelope he writes
E. HEMINGWAY, JUNE 1926.

Later Cuzzemano scrapes a chair closer to Hadley. She prepares to be flattered. “Mrs. Hemingway?”

“Hadley. Please.”

“What a handsome name. There's a South Hadley where I'm from.”

“And where's that?”

“Massachusetts.”

“Where do you live now? I assume it's not Massachusetts anymore.”

“Oh no. I split my time between Paris and New York. They're the only places to really live. London is such a bore. Too many English to make it a city worth spending any time in.”

Hadley wonders if he is queer, or married, or a bachelor. Paris is full of all three, often doing all three at the same time. Cuzzemano gives her an inquiring look, as if asking if the pleasantries have now been safely dispatched. He has teeth that wouldn't look amiss in the gums of a fish. “Can I be frank, Mrs. Hemingway? Hadley?”

Cuzzemano drops his voice.

“Sara told me about a valise, Mrs. Hemingway, a suitcase full of papers gone amiss: Mr. Hemingway's first novel, and several short stories. Make no mistake, I inquire about this not to upset you, but because your husband's work is of lasting literary merit . . . And whatever was in that valise will one day be worth a whole heap of money.” Cuzzemano's eyes wince, as if pained to think of its value. “Now, my understanding is that it was lost at the Gare de Lyon? Four years ago, on a train bound for Lausanne?”

Hadley is nothing but bewildered. “I don't care to talk about it.”

Cuzzemano draws toward her. His hands practically rest on her knees. “Mrs. Hemingway, did anyone have any idea of what was in there? Ernest, surely, would be so happy to see his work returned to him—”