Patrick and Gigi wanted mostly to talk of summers in Wyoming and the L-Bar-T, about how once they saw a black bear that got all the horses good and spooked. Ernest had the touchiest horse, and had been thrown wide into rail fencing that split his forehead something wicked. They had lots of stories, most of them involving scars and tumbles and tough scrapes they’d come through together or separately. Gigi talked loudest, offering loads of details like a natural tale-teller, but I could also sense that it was important to him to assert himself about the summers he shared with his family, since many more of them had been spent with his nurse in Key West on their own in the Whitehead Street house, or with her family in Syracuse, New York, until he was old enough to make the trip.
Everyone seemed happy to concede to Gigi’s place as the entertainer of the family. He went on and on, his eyes bright, until Ernest took over, telling stories of Paris when Bum was a baby. About the apartment over the sawmill, and the constant high-whining sound of the mill running, and of the sharp smell of the wood dust in the air; of Bumby in his pram in the Luxembourg Garden on chilly fall days, warming his hands on pigeons Ernest had downed with his slingshot; of sitting in cafés like Lipp’s and the Closerie des Lilas and getting small sips of café au lait while Ernest talked to interesting friends.
“You were a good Parisian baby, Schatz,” Ernest said. “Everyone loved you desperately. You were so beautiful and solid and well behaved.”
“Tell Marty about F. Puss,” Gigi urged, and Bum obliged him, describing the large plush Persian that had possessively guarded his bassinet when he was an infant, not letting anyone come near.
“He was a wonderful nurse,” Ernest said. “Better than our femme de ménage.”
“Not really,” I said. “You didn’t leave the child alone with the cat.”
“Like hell we didn’t. He would curl up at Schatz’s feet and keep him warm from drafts when he had a cough. That cat would have lit into anything or anyone, make no mistake. He knew why he was there.”
“Now I’ve heard everything.”
“He was the best friend I ever had,” Bum said. “We should get a cat here, shouldn’t we? Or maybe bring one over from Key West. You always have cats around, Papa. It feels strange not to have at least a few.”
“I’m swearing off cats.” Ernest’s eyes were bright, his voice full of good humor. “They eat too much.”
“I don’t believe you,” Gigi said. “You let them eat from your hands at home, right at the table.” He turned to me, his face alive in the candlelight. “Papa calls them love sponges. You like cats, don’t you?” he asked me, and I recognized a pleading in his voice. I’d already said I didn’t like fishing. Perhaps he thought this was my last chance to fit in with the gang, to be one of them.
“I do. Very much.”
“That’s settled then,” he said, clearly greatly relieved, and everyone laughed.
* * *
—
Ernest wrote smoothly and well with the boys at home. The typescript was already over four hundred pages long and was an impressive thing on his desk while he worked, a neat white tower next to his sharpened pencils and his notebooks.
I couldn’t think about writing yet, and didn’t know when I’d be able to have that much hope again. So I dug into each day, instead, surprised at how gracious the boys were with me, sharing themselves as easily as they did their books and their games—inviting me to plunk pennies with them into a line of muddy cans, or join them in a mock-fencing battle with broomsticks and tennis rackets, or watch them climb into the alligator-pear tree and then rocket to the ground again and again. I was even more surprised at how easily I took up the role of stepmother and friend. I loved my long talks with Bumby, or Bumble, as I’d taken to calling him, as we walked the perimeter of our property, or sat on the terrace in full sun, both of us keen to soak up the warmth like happy golden lizards. He was good company for me when Ernest was busy, and I liked to hear him musing about his future, wondering about college boards and where he should think of flinging himself. Or maybe he wouldn’t go to university at all?
“Sure, you’ll go. You’re so bright. What else would you do?”
“Fish? It’s what I’m best at.”
“Fish for a living?”
“If there was such a job, I’d gun for it, that’s for sure. I think about it all the time, and dream about it, too, all the browns and blues and rainbows. Montana or Wyoming, or up in Michigan.”
“You sound like your father,” I told him.
He smiled sideways, looking pleased. “I guess I do.”
“It’s nice of you to be my friend,” I teased, “when I haven’t ever caught anything. Those flies in the box all look the same to me. That’s unforgivable, isn’t it?”
“You can still learn. Anyone can. And it’s not like I’m going to test you on the names or anything. Hell, we don’t even have to use flies, we can use grasshoppers.”
“You’re a good one,” I told him, which was exactly what I felt, as well as the truth. He glowed with goodness, with fineness of character. What a remarkable boy Hadley and Ernest had made together. Then I said, “I’m awfully glad we’re getting to know each other.”
“Me too. I haven’t ever seen a woman stand up to Papa like you do and just be herself.”
“Do I stand up to him?” I had felt myself shrinking inside since the release of A Stricken Field, and it troubled me. I would have to find a way forward soon, somehow.
“Seems like you do. Anyway, I think he likes you better for it.” He cut his eyes at me, suddenly shy. “I hope that’s okay to say.”
“Sure,” I told him, inwardly pleased by what he’d noticed. “You can say anything to me.”
“That’s another thing I like. I was just telling Papa I’ve never met a woman who was so pretty and also swore.”
“Ha!” I felt the laugh burst from me, delighted and also slightly horrified. “Please don’t tell your mother.”
“It’s all right.” He was blushing now, the way boys did, bright pink striping his cheeks vertically. “My mother swears, too, every now and then. And anyway, I think she’d like you.”
Hadley had been the angel of Ernest’s youth, the best thing about his Paris years, and the loss he most regretted. She still shone brightly for him, the way only the past could. And though I didn’t know if I was a large-enough person to shake her hand without feeling threatened, I loved Bum’s wanting to knit us together, even with words. “What a nice thing to say,” I told him. “The very nicest.”
49
After the boys left, I decided to behave more bravely than I actually felt and locked myself in my office, determined to begin something new. In one of my notebooks, I found some sentences I liked about Finland and began to work them into a story about an American reporter in the midst of the Winter War. It felt good to be back in that country as it was before it fell. Almost as if this were my way of honoring the place and reviving it, even a little, for one small moment.
“It might be called ‘Portrait of a Lady,’ ” I told Ernest of the new story one afternoon after I’d worked well.
“I’m happy you’re back at it, Rabbit. But I do worry a little. Your subjects are so dark. Wasn’t that a lot of the guff you got about A Stricken Field?”
“The world isn’t exactly a cheerful place these days,” I snapped. “Or hadn’t you noticed? Only grim things have gone on for years. Am I supposed to pull a happy story from my hat?”
“Now, now. I’m on your side, remember? I just don’t want you being boxed in as just one kind of writer.”
“I know,” I told him, but there was something in his tone that rattled me. He knew more about writing, certainly. Maybe he even knew what my career should look like better than I did. But in order to hold myself up and keep moving forward on my own steam, I had to do what felt right to me. I needed his love.
I needed his support and then some, but the most dangerous thing I could possibly do was shift myself to get his stamp of approval. He never waited for mine, did he?
These days, Ernest was on a strict regimen of work and little else. He’d cut back on drinking and was watching his diet, weighing himself each morning, and then recording the number on the wall above the scale in pencil. All of this so that he could go more deeply inside his book. Sometimes it felt like he wanted to close himself up in the pages like another skin. He’d stopped telling me about the scenes he was working on, his characters, or moments of dialogue. I understood why he couldn’t, how it was only when you gave a book everything that it gave everything back to you, and then some. But the house was a lonelier place, just the same.
In the meantime, the monsoon season had begun and every day brought in torrents. As if on cue, the roof grew spongy and began to sag precariously. The plaster in the living room loosened with the damp, falling with a smack on the tiles. There were buckets and tarps everywhere, wadded soggy newspapers and useless mops.
In early June, I met my mother in New York at the Carlyle, telling Ernest I just needed a week of sunshine and her company, but actually the weather was only a symbol of what prickled at me. Europe had been at war for nine months, and though England and France had both declared war on Germany after Hitler’s capturing of Poland, only now were things escalating for the bulk of the nations involved. A full attack had recently been launched by Germany on France and the Low Countries. Holland, Denmark, and the Netherlands were swept under so quickly you’d think they’d been made not of flesh and blood but paper.
As bad as things were, I felt comforted to be near Mother. She’d always been my North Star, but nothing helped for long. Each day’s headline was more terrifying than the last. The Nazis had crossed the Meuse River, punctured the Maginot Line, and were swinging their way south through the Ardennes with great force. France was poised to fall.
I chewed my fingernails raw, and didn’t want to leave our hotel room, but Mother insisted on dragging me out for a walk. We headed up Madison Avenue for twenty blocks, slowly, arm in arm. Crossing Central Park near the North Meadow, we wound our way down again, as if by tracing the city with our feet, we could ward off some evil.
But it came anyway. We were having tea in the Algonquin when we heard the news, and we sat there, numb, while the service staff disappeared and our tea went cold, and the cress sandwiches wilted. The Germans had done it. Tanks were rolling into Paris.
* * *
—
The world was in the hands of madmen, and Roosevelt still wouldn’t act. He froze all American assets of the Axis powers. He made speeches to condemn fascism and aggression, arguing loudly and with vehemence, but he held the same line as ever. America would not enter this war unless attacked.
When I raced back to Cuba, taking Mother with me, I expected to find Ernest tuned in to the wireless, but we no longer owned one. He’d done away with it.
“You can’t be serious.” I whirled on him. “Nazis are marching down the Champs-Élysées.”
“Who wants tragedy and disaster screamed at them from their own parlor?”
“Tragedy and disaster are happening. It’s irresponsible to be so insulated. The mail takes four days.”
“I wish it took a week. It’s so distracting.”
I could hardly believe him. “That’s like saying a fire alarm is distracting when flames are licking up the wall!”
“Listen, if someone’s army comes battering down the door, by God I’ll fight to save what’s mine. I’m not ignoring anything. I’m making a stand.”
I could see that Mother was uncomfortable with our arguing, but I was just about to lunge with another point anyway when she broke in. “How about lunch? I’m famished.”
“Your daughter seems to want my liver,” Ernest snapped.
“Yes, but I was thinking oysters,” Mother shot back, and we laughed nervously.
* * *
—
In the end, I had to admit that Ernest’s utter commitment to this book about war while the world raged on and on was his stand. I found it hard to agree with him, and might not ever, but I had to respect the work itself. He’d begun sharing pages with me again, and they were magnificent, as good as anything he’d ever done or might do. Max Perkins had set October as the date to publish, and so Scribner’s needed the pages now, if not yesterday.
In the meantime, the boys had come to visit and left again, and the summer heat closed tightly around our days. I worked on my stories in the morning, took swims with Mother in the saltwater pool, and then we would go to town. We had to, now, to get any news.
One afternoon we’d just taken several papers to the Floridita when a man walked through the door of the café. He looked like any other gringo you might see in Havana except for one small thing. He was wearing a Nazi uniform, crisply turned out, with leather strappings and epaulets, bright-striped insignias and a stiff high-rising hat, and jet-black boots. But your eye only wanted to go one place—there on the left arm, where a swastika blazed vividly, almost luridly red.
I reached for Mother’s hand under the table because she’d gone absolutely stiff. “It’s all right,” I said very quietly. “Ernest and I have seen him before. There are quite a few Germans in Havana.”
She looked at me sharply and I knew exactly what she was thinking. He’s not just any German.
He stood at the bar now, half turned away with one boot on the rail, making some remark to the waiter. Meanwhile, our lunch had arrived, but Mother could only pick at hers. I couldn’t remember seeing such an intense reaction in her before. After he left, finally, she leaned toward me and whispered, as if he had informants in the room or might yet come back, “I can’t believe anyone would go about like that.”
“Well, they mean to instill fear. It’s very effective.”
“I hate it,” she said simply. “I hate everything about this war.”
“Sometimes I pray that a nice bolt of lightning would strike Hitler. It would simplify so much.”
She looked nervous that I’d said such a thing out loud, but what else could you think, really? Lightning or tornado, or great sweeping typhoon, some very specific and acute natural disaster delivered right to his doorstep. It wouldn’t solve everything, but it would be a start.
When we got home, I told Ernest what had happened, trying to explain how upset Mother had been. “It was as if she’d seen a wolf on two legs. Maybe we’ve gotten used to having them around here, but that’s a mistake. When you stop noticing ugliness. Maybe I should write something about them.”
“Instead of your stories? You’re liking them, I thought.”
“I am. But I don’t want to pull a blanket over my eyes, especially not here where we live.” I was thinking of being in France and England when Czecho was falling, and how a Nazi in your newspaper wasn’t at all the same thing as one in your café. “Being with Mother today reminded me of how when you really see something for yourself it can change the way you feel. Change you.”
“Yes. But don’t change too much, Rabbit.”
“What do you mean?”
“I just wondered if you were thinking it wasn’t enough to be here anymore. That you might want to be part of the action.”
He was right. I had begun thinking in a fragile, shadowy way about what it would mean to go to France, just for a short while, to be involved with things, and face them head-on, and maybe write an article or two that could make a difference to someone. But admitting as much would only hurt him, and now was not the time anyway. “No,” I told him, and then reached for what was true. “I love our life.”
50
Though I’d often wondered if Ernest might be writing this book forever, the ending finally came. The bridge was blown, and he had finished off Robert Jordan, and now was as wrung out and empty as if he’
d killed off a part of himself to do it. He had, really, since Jordan was in him deeper than most real people in his life would ever get.
He went up to New York to be on hand as his proofs came in. He stayed at the Barclay, sweating through the heat wave that was punishing most of the country just then. He wrote me saying that I should think of him in pajamas, in a puddle of sweat and effort, the fan going around the clock. Every time he finished proofing and correcting a section of the book, it was rushed to Scribner’s by a runner who was always ready nearby, and then on to the printer—forty-three chapters all told, each as dear to him as a child. Each day he raced to keep just ahead of the typesetters. But I could also tell he was buoyed up by all the urgency and expectation, the thrill of the deadline.
When he was finished, bleary eyed and spent, he took the train to Miami and then boarded the Pan Am Clipper to Havana. Mother and I met his plane, and though anyone could see how exhausted he was, there was also a clear sense of triumph. He had the Scribner’s contract in his shirt pocket, and it was a doozy—promising 20 percent on copies once he reached twenty-five thousand copies sold—an almost unheard-of royalty. The Book of the Month Club was also sniffing at the book for their October selection, and if that came through, they would print one hundred thousand copies immediately, and the number would just go up from there. Scribner’s was going to devote all its window space on Fifth Avenue to display copies, and there was even talk already of the movie rights being snapped up in Hollywood, with Gary Cooper playing the lead.
I was thrilled for Ernest, I really was. But it stung to see the red carpet rolled out for a book that wasn’t even published yet. I had been just as devoted to A Stricken Field, and it had vanished into the ether almost immediately. I had poured my best self into those pages, but instead of triumph, or some sense of personal accomplishment, I’d been sucker punched. It still hurt that work I loved and had suffered for could be so easily dismissed. It enraged me as much as ever that even the few good reviews I’d received had been hijacked by the larger story of my being Ernest’s new girl. But I didn’t know how to say any of this to Ernest, particularly now when his book was poised to be the biggest novel of the year, and perhaps the most important thing he’d ever done.