Love and Ruin

  I wanted to pinch myself. After the failure of my first novel, it felt wonderful and gratifying to be taken seriously as a writer—like long-prayed-for sunshine breaking through storm clouds. I was happy, and I felt vindicated. And yet there was something missing. I read the notices over and over, wondering why they weren’t quite enough. And then turned to the newspapers again. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch ran the latest story, along with the Times and the Chicago Tribune. More and more papers seemed to be sending correspondents over because daily coverage was only growing, and Spain was on everyone’s mind.

  “How can this really be happening?” I asked Alfred and my mother, waving the latest story like a terrible flag. After a sixty-eight-day siege at the Alcázar, Franco’s rebels had broken through the fourteenth-century fortress and taken control of Toledo, slaughtering hundreds of hostages as well as Republican soldiers. Elsewhere in Spain, there were daily executions and firing squads as Nationalist forces gained momentum.

  “It’s too awful,” Mother said. “And who knows what Roosevelt’s thinking.”

  “He’s thinking how to get reelected,” Alfred said. “You can bet he won’t send anything, not even water pistols.”

  “I hope you’re wrong,” I said. “What if it’s like the Balkan Wars? That’s what everyone seems to be predicting. War could come for all of us soon, and no one’s doing a thing to intervene.”

  Anxieties only built through the fall as the death toll mounted, reported by all the major papers. The Nationalists had moved on to Valencia, and then Madrid in early November, attacking from the north and southwest, while hundreds of thousands of Republican refugees streamed into the city from the east. Daily shelling started, and German bombers began targeting the center square.

  “I will destroy Madrid,” Franco declared to the whole world, but then the first International Brigades of volunteers arrived in the city, marching up the Gran Vía while crowds of Madrileños cheered. Maybe the brigades could turn Madrid and stop Franco here. Maybe Franco would have another crushing victory. All we could do was watch and wait to see what would happen next.

  5

  That December the anniversary of my father’s death loomed, and Christmas, too. Mother took the box of fragile balsam ornaments down from the attic, but then couldn’t bear to unwrap them. The glowing Nativity in Forest Hills Park seemed to belong to other, happier people, as did the skaters in pairs on the frozen river, and every other symbol of the season. We enlisted Alfred to choose a place on the map, anyplace at all as long as the sun shone there. Then placing a pillow on the best chair next to the stove where he had liked to read Robert Browning, we let Daddy’s ghost have the house, and ran away. Ran away as only widows and orphans can.

  Miami was where we meant to stay. By lunchtime on our second day, though, we had already tired of the shuffleboard tournaments and charades. Every third dish on the hotel’s luncheon menu came with Mornay sauce.

  “It isn’t very wild here, is it?” Mother frowned at an arrow-straight, well-oiled stand of picture postcards. “We only have a week after all.”

  I felt it, too—that we hadn’t gone far enough yet, or fast enough. Hadn’t fully escaped.

  “We can do better,” Alfred chimed in, and before an hour had passed, we’d collected our things from our still-tidy rooms, settled our account, and were dragging our luggage through the center of the town toward the bus station, all three of us happy—finally—with a sense of adventure.

  Out of the city, Florida’s orange-juice-colored sun fattened, and the heat grew wonderfully heavy. A single tired road stretched south through swamp and marsh flats, like an enormous python digesting the slow line of cars and wagons one by one. The twisted mangrove and saw-grass marshes released a salty, earthy living smell, while roadside signs offered pan-ready turtles and bonefish, and ominous biblical quotes.

  Nearly every turn and crook of the place was different and mysterious and as far away from home as I could imagine, and I could imagine a lot.

  Three hours later, after much bumping and jostling, we were delivered to the southernmost tip of the whole country. Key Languid. Key Desultory. Key Wonderful West.

  The entire town would have fit in an unwashed teacup, and was hotter than anything and falling apart. The dusty streets were overrun with chickens, ready to riot over breadcrumbs or pebbles, it didn’t seem to matter which. We found a hotel on Petronia Street and walked to Mallory Square for ice cream and an unobstructed view of the sea. Neither disappointed. On our way back toward the center of town on Whitehead Street, we passed the fattest, most senatorial tree I’d ever seen. I wanted to marry it, or maybe just sit forever in its circle of shade, but Mother had other ideas. Her pretty hair was sticking to the back of her neck, and liquor was called for. She dragged us farther on, to a low, whitewashed stucco watering hole on a little side street off of Duval.

  It was the middle of the afternoon, and inside, the bar was dark as a cave, nearly empty. There were sawdust shavings and peanut shells in not-entirely-fresh drifts on the floor and a bar that jutted out of the wall, held in place by a hulking, mountain-sized barman. His name was Skinner, he told us, and we were welcome in his Conch bar because he could see we were lost and had no idea what we were in for.

  Mother smiled. “We’re not lost.”

  “If we are,” I corrected, “we mean to be.”

  Skinner laughed, and then set about making us daiquiris with a mound of chipped ice and fresh lime, while a grizzled-looking fellow at the other end of the bar looked us up and down. I was wearing my black cotton sundress and a pair of strapped low heels, an outfit that set off my hair and my calves, and generally speaking didn’t fail to make an impression on the opposite sex. But he didn’t seem more than politely interested in me, and anyway, I stopped thinking about myself the moment I recognized him.

  He wore a ragged T-shirt and shorts that seemed to have come from the bottom of a fish barrel—both of which weren’t doing him any favors. But it was him. His dark, nearly black hair fell over one side of a pair of round steel-wire spectacles. He caught me watching him, and our eyes met for a split second before he passed his hand through his mustache absentmindedly and went back to a stack of letters he was reading.

  I didn’t say a word to Alfred or Mother, just let myself look at him for a moment, as a tourist looks at a map. His legs were brown and muscled as a prizefighter’s. His arms were brown, too, and his chest was broad, and everything about him suggested physical strength and health and a kind of animal grace. The whole picture made an impression, but I wasn’t going to trot over there and confess that I had his photo in my handbag, marking the page of my mystery novel. I’d clipped it from Time magazine, and also the long article alongside it, that he’d written about bullfighting. I didn’t want to stammer out how meaningful his writing was to me, or abase myself by claiming I was a writer, too.

  While still at Bryn Mawr, I had pinned my favorite quote from A Farewell to Arms above the desk in my dormitory room: “Nothing ever happens to the brave.”

  It was meant to be a daily reminder as I worked on my own writing, and a challenge, too, though I secretly hoped that everything happened to the brave. That life came hot and bright and loud if you flung yourself fully in its direction.

  In the dark close bar, I tried to galvanize myself to approach him somehow. He was my hero, and not twenty feet away. Nothing ever happens to the brave, I thought, pinching myself and waiting for something clever to come to me, but nothing seemed good enough.

  I swallowed hard and a little breathlessly and turned away to face my family again, and my daiquiri. The drink was tart and strong, with floating bits of ice. Overhead, the blades of the fan clipped round like a slow-breathing animal. Beyond the open door two seagulls harassed each other, wrestling over a black mussel shell. And Mr. Hemingway continued to ignore us, reading his mail until Skinner, chipping more ice for a second round, as
ked where we were from.

  “St. Louis,” Mother said proudly.

  That did it. He stood up from his end of the bar and came over. “Two of my wives went to school in St. Louis,” he said to Mother in a neighborly way. “I’ve always liked that town.”

  Two of my wives? The way he’d phrased it, you’d think he’d had a dozen—not that I would have dared risk pointing it out.

  “It suits us most of the time,” Mother said. “Though down here you have better rum. The sunshine isn’t bad, either.”

  When he smiled at her, his brown eyes shone warmly and a dimple stretched along his left cheek.

  “I was born in the Middle West,” he told her. “Near Chicago. It always looks better to me from a distance—the country as well as the people.”

  Alfred had been quiet, but suddenly stood and shook hands, and we traded names all around. I was proud of him and Mother for not startling or seeming overimpressed at the introduction. The whole country knew who Hemingway was, and most of the rest of the world, too. But here in his town, it was obvious that he liked to be taken for a regular Joe. The T-shirt alone proved that.

  “Let me show you around while you’re here,” he said to us all while looking pointedly at Mother. She was still a very handsome woman. She kept herself up, as they say, and had lovely silvering hair, open blue eyes, a perfect mouth, and absolutely no vanity. Except for our recent loss at home, I’d always thought she was the most contented and well-adjusted person I’d ever known. Luck came to her often, as it did now. And it was almost as if a roulette wheel had been set spinning the moment we got on the bus or even before, the black marble spit out precisely here with a winning, effortless, inevitable click.

  A private tour of Key West by Ernest Hemingway? Of course. Sure thing. Don’t mind if we do.

  * * *

  —

  In Hemingway’s black Ford coupe, we made a stitching loop around the outside of the island, beginning at the southernmost point, where there was a barrel painted red and white like a barber’s pole. There were two anemic-looking beaches, but Ernest assured us the swimming was good.

  “This doesn’t seem at all a literary place,” Mother said to him from the passenger seat. Her hat was off, and on her lap. She trailed one hand out the open window. “How did you manage to end up here?”

  “The long way, I guess.” He grinned. “Paris to Piggott, Arkansas, to Kansas City. Montana after that, and then Spain, then back to Paris. Wyoming, Chicago, New York, and Piggott again. And Africa was in there, too, actually. I don’t think we spent a month in one place the first two years we were married.”

  “Goodness. How did your wife manage?”

  “Beautifully, actually. Managing is what she does best, I think. She runs absolutely everything and is a fine mother, too. We have two boys.”

  “How wonderful,” Mother said, “to see so much of the world.”

  “Yes. But you need a quiet place as well to come and let the dust settle. You can’t really work on the run like that. You can, but the work will show the strain. And all the footprints, too.”

  At the last, I felt he was talking to me directly. It was just the thing I’d been worrying about. That I was trying too hard in my new novel, and the effort was everywhere in my pages, translated into stiffness, or sometimes desperation, but there.

  “I’m not sure I’d get anything done, what with all the sunshine and the daiquiris,” I said, trying to joke, when in fact he’d rattled me.

  “If you force yourself into the yoke before dawn, you can do whatever you like after.” His eyes cut sideways at me in the mirror, and my pulse quickened. It was something to have his attention, even briefly. Like a bright light passing my way before moving on. But there was also a feeling that he really saw me, and understood how my mind worked. It didn’t make any sense, as we’d just met—but he was a brilliant painter of people in his work, and I believed that he probably did see all kinds of things, perhaps without even trying.

  Later, just as the sun was beginning to drop behind the palmetto trees, he drove us up to a small cemetery and parked, leading us on foot through a creaking wrought-iron gate on Angela Street. Jacaranda blossoms flared high above the grave markers. We wove through them, slowly, toward a central copper statue, where Alfred stopped and squinted to read the memorial placard.

  “Hey, there are sailors here from the USS Maine.” He sounded pleased.

  “It sank in Havana Harbor,” Hemingway said. “Cuba’s just over there.” He gestured to the south over his shoulder. “Ninety nautical miles and half a world.”

  “I think I read something about the conquistadors at the hotel,” Mother said.

  “That’s right. ‘Cayo Hueso’ means ‘Bone Reef’ in Spanish. The whole island was a mound of skeletons when Ponce de León turned up.”

  “What did they do with all of them to make the place livable again?” I asked.

  “Is it livable?” He was smiling. “I think they’re all out in the shoals somewhere. Every once in a while I drag a thighbone for a mile thinking it’s a marlin.”

  “Not really?” Alfred said.

  “Not really.” Then, with a wink, “A thighbone weighs nothing.”

  6

  The next afternoon, Hemingway invited us to Whitehead Street to meet his family. His wife, Pauline, was small and dark and handsome more than pretty, with short, boyish hair and a slender figure, and very intelligent eyes. She made us a pitcher of lemonade and rye whiskey we drank in the back garden, right where the swimming pool was going to go soon. It would be the first on the island, Ernest told us, and the workers would have to dig through solid coral first. He seemed to like that it wouldn’t come easy.

  The boys, Patrick and Gregory, had been playing badminton when we arrived, and came over when the game was finished to say hello. They sat nearby, cross-legged and on the ground, natural as anything, their faces pink with exertion. This famous man is their father, I thought, looking between them and Ernest, who sprawled in a chair. But they had beautiful manners and didn’t seem spoiled in the least.

  The house and grounds were well kept up, with banana and date trees and frangipani adding lushness to the large dollop of paradise. Ernest’s writing studio was a separate building that had been converted from a small garage, and was attached to the main house by a rope bridge. Nothing could have been more romantic or better situated. In fact, everything I turned my eyes to seemed perfectly designed to hand-deliver happiness, right down to his funny, pleasant wife, his boys, easy in their bodies. The shade as it fell. He had quite a life, I thought, but of course he would.

  Before we left, Ernest went to fetch something and came back with a copy of my latest book for me to sign. I shot a look at Mother, wondering if she’d mentioned it while I was out of earshot. But no, Ernest quickly told me. He and Pauline had both read it a few months before, and thought it very fine. He’d known immediately who I was in the bar, in fact, but hadn’t wanted to embarrass me.

  Embarrass was hardly the word. I was overwhelmed. Ernest Hemingway had read my work and liked it. Had recognized my name. Had thought well enough of the book to want my signature inside. Flushing, I thanked them both and then sat awkwardly with the volume in my lap, not knowing what to write that would adequately describe my feelings. The whole situation felt like a fantasy, surpassing my wildest imaginings.

  Then, just when I thought I couldn’t be more flattered, Ernest offered to let me read pages of his new novel, which was about fishing and Bimini, and “rich people,” and getting ruined a little, he said.

  I couldn’t quite believe he meant it, or that any such thing could happen outside of dreaming. But he went and got the pages and handed them to me, seeming shy, suddenly.

  It was almost finished, he explained, but now he was going to have to set it aside for a while. He was headed to Madrid soon to report on the conflict for
the North American Newspaper Alliance.

  “Oh, let’s not talk about it now,” Pauline said. Her eyes did something complicated and she smoothed the lap of her simple white dress.

  “Poor old Mama,” he said affectionately. “I wouldn’t go if I could help it. You know that.” He looked at her tenderly for a moment longer, and then turned back. “I try not to be political. Politics ruins writers. But Franco is a bully and a murderer, and the Fascists seem determined to wipe out the Spanish working class. I don’t know if there is a middle ground now. Not for anyone who’s paying attention.”

  “It could be the war that never ends,” Mother said. “I know that sounds dramatic.”

  “I only wish it were,” he said.

  “Well, I’m glad you’re going,” I told Ernest. “It’s hard to leave your family, I know, but Spain needs writers like you.”

  “Spain needs all sorts of writers. There promises to be plenty of bloodshed,” he added darkly.

  “Do you think any journalist could get over?” I didn’t think before I asked the question, and now felt my mother’s gaze swinging around pointedly, and Alfred’s, too.

  “Could be.”

  “I’m not working for any magazine now.”

  “You’re not really serious, Marty,” my mother said.

  “I might be. I’ve wanted to do something.”

  “It’s so dangerous, though.”

  “I can promise to watch out for her,” Ernest said. “If she finds a way to get there.”