“That’s kind of you to offer,” Mother said, though it was easy to see she was unsettled by the idea. I was, too, and yet I’d said it.
* * *
—
After the visit was over, we walked quietly through the yard, passing good wishes back and forth and promises to keep in touch. It had been a wonderful evening, and an important one, I thought. I wanted to hold the moment still as long as possible, but finally there was nothing to do but say good night one last time.
We passed through the gate and turned onto Whitehead Street, in the direction of our hotel.
“Please don’t do anything rash,” my mother said.
“I’m only considering it, that’s all. I’m not going to bolt for the nearest ocean liner.”
“I liked him,” Alfred said. “He’s hardly what I expected, though. More like us than you’d think. Like anyone. Who would have thought?”
Who indeed? But as he and Mother talked about how kind Ernest had been to us, and funny, too, and how beautiful his house was, and how charming his wife, I found I was only half listening. In my mind, I’d already turned toward Spain, and was wondering hard about what it would take to actually get there, and what it would cost me in all sorts of ways.
Was this all a dream? A beautiful illusion? Or was it a sign, finally, of what I was meant to be doing, and Hemingway, the signpost.
“Marty,” my mother called, and then again, louder, “Marty!”
I’d walked right past the hotel. I probably could have walked all night, thinking.
7
January in St. Louis had never been easy to bear, but with Key West behind me, the weather now seemed to draw a very particular target on my soul. Wet snow fell and then freezing rain until the streets and walks were slick and black and treacherous. The sky drooped heavily, pushing chimney smoke down until it thickened the air, clinging to the houses and lampposts. I thought I might scream, and then Hemingway rang.
When Mother called me to the line and I heard his voice, I was surprised, and also a little breathless. “How did you find my exchange?”
“ ‘Gellhorn’ isn’t that common a name.”
“Well. I’m flattered.”
He was silent for a moment, and I wondered if I’d embarrassed him somehow. But then he immediately began to talk excitedly of Spain. The Republic needed ambulances now most of all and he knew something about that from the Great War and it was all he could think about. He and some literary friends were getting together in New York soon to talk of how to raise money for them. “Maybe you should come,” he threw out.
“To New York?”
“Sure. Unless you weren’t serious about Spain.”
“I am. I just don’t know how. I’d need papers, credentials.”
“Maybe you just need good friends. There might be a way I could help fix it.”
I fell quiet, feeling amazed, and then I told him that would be wonderful. It was hard to take in just what was happening. My mind whirred at his interest in me, how unlikely it was, how promising. After a moment, I said, “I’ve been reading your novel. And feeling sick with jealousy, too, especially to read your dialogue.”
“Well, all I really do is listen.”
“If that’s all it is, anyone could do it. You have all sorts of secrets. Don’t think you’re fooling me for a minute.”
“Maybe, but this book still needs something. I know that much. Maybe the kind of miracle ending that wraps everything up and spits you out whole. I don’t quite see it yet, though.”
“You will.”
“Already she’s so sure.”
The affection felt heady. “About this I am.”
“Just come to New York,” he said suddenly. “You’ll sort everything and then I’ll buy you a steak and you’ll show me a story or two.”
“I want to. I’m determined to finish this book first, though. I might need one of those miracle endings, too. I can’t quite see it yet.”
“But you will,” he said.
“Goodbye, Ernesto. I’m awfully glad we’re becoming friends.”
“Goodbye, daughter,” he said gently, and then rang off while I was left holding the receiver, wondering if I could trust this strange turn my life was taking.
* * *
—
All that month and into February Ernest called every few days, his energy high, wanting to talk of Spain. He said he was thinking of himself as an anti-war correspondent, but that it felt imperative to go. He hadn’t really done journalism in years, and it was the damnedest thing, but he was looking forward to it. To not being so safe and cared for as he was now. It had been a long time since he was cold, or had lived simply. Close to the bone. “Being too comfortable can ruin a writer as much as anything,” he explained. “And no one ever saying no to anything you want. It’s dangerous.”
“I know what you mean,” I told him. “After my father died last year, and I moved here to be with Mother, I knew it was the right thing to do. But I feel too swaddled, and too fed. Like a seal in a zoo exhibit.” I paused and said, “I must sound ungrateful to you.”
“Not at all. You make sense to me.” Then, “I’m sorry about your father. Mine shot himself.”
“How awful for you.” I had read that in a newspaper, but it was something again to hear him say it and know it was him, the man and the writer and not the celebrity we were talking about.
“More awful for him, I guess, but it never feels that way. I was twenty-nine. My son was born that summer and nearly killed his mother. Then winter had my father blowing himself to smithereens, and no one saw it coming, except maybe me. I wasn’t surprised, just torn in two. It was the damnedest year of my life, I guess, or one of them.”
“I’m hoping it gets easier at some point,” I told him. “I still feel awful about the things we said. The things we didn’t say. Do you think it’s possible to make peace with the past?”
“Hell. You can try, I guess. But I’m not sure anyone gets forgiven. Not even then.”
We fell silent for a time, the line between us stretching with the weight of what we’d shared. It was baffling to me, how comfortable I was beginning to feel with him, speaking so freely to a near stranger. And of course he wasn’t just any stranger, was he?
I had recently sent him a short story I’d written while still in Germany the summer before, called “Exile.” It was about a German man who decides he can’t take the Nazis for another moment and moves to the States, only to realize that life is still terribly difficult, and that he doesn’t fit there either, or maybe anywhere. Ernest said he had liked it tremendously, and the next thing I knew he’d sent it to his editor, Max Perkins, who wanted to publish it in Scribner’s Magazine if I’d agree to a few cuts and changes. Soon, Perkins and I were exchanging letters about the story, and just like that, I’d slipped into a life that seemed to belong to someone else.
“Scribner’s,” I said to my mother. “And they’re paying me, too. Ernest is really becoming a champion for me. I can hardly believe it.”
“Well, I hate to say it, but you are a beautiful young woman. Are you quite sure he doesn’t have other motives?”
“It’s not like that, Mother. We talk of real things, important things. And there’s never a time when he doesn’t mention Pauline and the boys. He’s very loyal to them.”
“As he should be. Be careful. That’s all I mean to say.”
“You don’t think I could actually have designs on him, do you?” I interjected. “He’s my idol, Mother. A marvelous glowing idol, and a rare sort of person. I only want to be near him awhile and soak up his light. I don’t know how you can blame me for that.”
“No one’s blaming anyone. I’m on your side, don’t forget.”
“How could I ever? You’ve always been on my side, always. Even when I wasn’t.” I went to her, and gr
ipped both her hands lightly, and met her blue eyes with my own. “It really will be okay. I know what I’m doing.” Then I went upstairs, wrapped myself in a quilt, and stood at the window for a long time, thinking of New York.
* * *
—
As much as I wanted to get my way to Spain sorted out, and to see Ernest before he sailed, I was determined to finish my book first. I locked myself in my little room for the next two weeks, and hammered out the last twenty pages all in one strenuous, nerve-shattering day. I pushed so hard I didn’t even know what I’d created and was more than a little afraid to find out. The pages themselves were satisfying, though. I lined them up neatly, and bound them with fat rubber bands, and then held the manuscript in my hands, weighing it silently before sliding it into a desk drawer. Someday I would feel strong enough to look at what I’d done, or hadn’t, as the case may be.
I felt depleted and also anxious to be moving, as if I’d been sequestered for several dark years in Siberia without a single glimpse of the sun. Dragging a weathered canvas duffel out of the attic, I packed quickly, trusting that there would be time to prepare more fully once I arrived in New York.
“What does one need for a war, anyway?” I asked my mother.
“Courage, I suppose. But I’d throw a cake of soap in there, too. And warm socks.”
“You know I’m going to be perfectly all right, don’t you?”
“Of course,” she lied, then kissed me and left me to my packing.
8
Before I had stepped off my train in Penn Station, I was counting pennies and frowning. I’d scanned the fare schedule for European sailings and would need one hundred sixty dollars for even a broom closet. Then there was the money I’d need for my time in Madrid, a number that went up or down depending on how long I stayed. For the moment that was utterly a mystery to me. Actually, everything was.
I went first to my girlfriend’s house in Greenwich Village, stopping long enough only to throw my duffel in a corner and swipe on lipstick. Then I went to search out Ernest at the Barclay, where he told me he would either be or leave word as to where I could reach him. But he wasn’t to be found. I must have puzzled the concierge, standing there like a wooden duck on the marble parquet, wondering what to do next. I had just sat down, spinning through my possible options, when the revolving doors whirled in from the street level, and there he was at the center of a large, loud group.
“Daughter,” he shouted, when he saw me, and then scooped me up in one large paw, moving me toward the bank of elevators without bothering to introduce me to his friends. The doors slid closed, and we all began to climb. Everyone simply went on talking over one another, the cold seeping from their overcoats, while I stood and bit my lip to keep from saying anything stupid. I didn’t know why I thought I’d find Ernest alone, that we’d go to a café and talk about writing and maybe go someplace for spaghetti and talk. Now all that felt incredibly foolish. He was at the center of a whirlwind. He was the whirlwind, making it go.
In his suite, I found a blue velvet chair and tried to stay out of the way while two different phones were picked up and orders for booze and caviar rattled off to room service. Ernest had thrown his overcoat onto a corner of the bed and now sat on it, loosening his tie. He smiled at me in a lopsided way, and our eyes met for the briefest moment before he turned, barking out, “And three bottles of Taittinger. Make that four.” Facing me again, he said, “You do like champagne, don’t you?”
If that was a real question, there wasn’t time for me to answer because a very smartly dressed woman flared over and began talking to him, standing close with her fists on the hips of her slim-cut skirt, blocking him from view. This was Lillian Hellman, I would soon learn. She and Ernest and the others in the room made up the newly formed Contemporary Historians, a corporation bent on funding a documentary film that would help Spain acquire ambulances and other kinds of support. The filmmaker was Dutch, apparently, and already over in Spain with his Norwegian cameraman. Other members of the Historians were John Dos Passos, Archie MacLeish, and Evan Shipman, all writers big enough to cast shadows. The room seemed full of them as I sat in my blue chair, wondering how I might break in.
Finally, Ernest saved me. He pulled me over and introduced me all around, saying, “This lovely blond giraffe is my good friend Marty Gellhorn. She’s coming to Spain, too.”
“Once I sort it out,” I explained to Evan Shipman while Ernest headed to answer the door. The liquor had arrived, an ocean of it as far as I could see. “If I sort it out.”
“What’s standing in your way?” Evan cocked his head like a lion. He was a poet, but looked more like a film star to me. His hair was as perfect as his shirt, his oxfords, the crease running up his charcoal flannel trousers.
“This nonintervention pact against foreign involvement,” I said, squeezed against the doorjamb as Ernest came through with a crate of champagne on ice. “You need real credentials and all the right paperwork, and I have nothing. At least for the moment.”
“Just go to a magazine and say you’ll be a stringer for them.”
“You mean freelance?”
“Sure.” He rocked his drink back and forth, the ice clattering, and then downed the last of it in one go. “You’ll be a woman in a war zone. That’s not typical in the least. Seems to me someone will at least give you a fair read if you send good work on.”
“It’s worth a try,” I told him. “At the moment I don’t have any other ideas save stowing away or being baked into a cake.”
Dos Passos came over holding a massive bottle of Taittinger that was streaming foam onto the floor. No one seemed to notice or care. He filled our glasses and gestured at Ernest, who now sat backward in a chair nearby, leaning on tented elbows and talking a mile a minute. “So how do you know this character anyway?”
“Hem? We met in Key West. My family was on holiday and we fairly stumbled into him.”
“Huh. That stumbling typically goes the other way.” Dos’s smile was leering, and obviously for effect. I didn’t know what to make of him even before he said, “I see he’s got you already.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Hem, you’re calling him. He’s probably got you using Hemingstein, too. It’s all right. Everyone plays up to him, and nearly everyone manages to talk like him if they stick around for two minutes together.”
I stared at him, feeling pinned in place. “I’m not trying to talk like anyone,” I began to say, but he only grinned and moved on, continuing to play barman. Suddenly I felt off-balance and overwarm. I grabbed my cigarettes and stepped out onto the balcony to get some air. It had rained earlier, a drenching mist that now left everything strung with cold little beads. I touched the wrought iron, collecting moisture on my fingertip, and let myself fume for a minute at Dos’s words. It had been mean of him to expose me when we’d only just met, but he was right, wasn’t he? It had taken no time at all for me to parrot Ernest, behaving like his sidekick, believing we were good friends, and that our alliance meant something. But all those writers on the other side of the heavy curtains, they were bona fide and terribly busy, too, swirling like the polished stars they actually were. What was I doing here?
“Thinking of jumping?” Ernest had stepped through the French doors and came to stand beside me.
“Maybe. I don’t think I’d even feel it with all of this champagne.”
“It’s good champagne, isn’t it?”
“It is. The best. Thank you.” My words came out fast and clipped, as awkwardly as I felt. He was looking at me.
“Did you finish your book?”
“I did, God help me, but I haven’t been able to face it. How’s yours coming?”
“Finished, too. At least that’s what I’ve told Perkins. But frankly this is taking all my time at the moment and then some. I haven’t done journalism since twenty-three.”
&n
bsp; He meant the year, I realized. Nineteen twenty-three, when I was fourteen, taller than all the boys at the dances, and terribly shy. It made me a little dizzy to think of the gap in our ages. He was thirty-seven, and had already done so much with his life, while I’d accomplished so little with mine. The thought came again: What am I doing here? “How do you think it will be, getting back to it?” I asked him. “They’re very different kinds of writing, aren’t they?”
“Like riding a bike?” His smile slid sideways. “Honestly, I’m not sure the whole job isn’t just a way to do something for Spain, and to see it again. I love that country. The people are as lovely and decent as any you’d ever meet. And they don’t deserve what’s happening to them now. Hell, not even a dog deserves Franco.” He was watching my face again, and now said, “You feeling all right?”
“Sure. Why not? I’m tired, that’s all.”
“Well, get some rest. There’ll be a lot to do over the next few days, and no one really sleeps here.” Something in his face softened. “It’s nice to see you, kid.” Then he folded his large frame back through the doors and I faced the city again, smeary and twinkling and indecipherable.
* * *
—
The next day I woke late to a couriered message from Ernest, saying that he had to run back to Key West the following morning, but that I should come to the ‘21’ Club that night if I was free. He was sailing at the end of the week. So much to do before then and no time. He’d signed it Ernestino.
I sat back down on the bed I’d only recently crawled from and held the cable between two fingers, reading his words again. A soft, spongy feeling came up through my chest. I was disappointed. For weeks I had been thinking that if I simply pointed myself here at Ernest’s feet, he would shine his light, and my next steps would be clear. But that had been silly, and girlish. He owed me nothing, and anyway, it was Monday now. He was sailing on Friday and had to race to Florida and back before then, with his own affairs to settle and a family to worry about, too.