Mrs. Hemingway Read Online Free PDF Page A

they can manage, before one risks being caught by the other. It looks like you could lick the salt right off him.
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    Fife stands and touches her fingertips above her head—Hadley sees the curveless shadow behind her—and dives into the water. There is only a very small splash where the water breaks. “You know, I bet you could dive, Hash,” she says as she pulls herself back up onto the deck. Seawater leaks distractingly down her inside leg. “You just have to try.”
    Fife sits close enough for Hadley to feel the
maillot
against her skin, the wool of it a little rough. Despite the warmth, Fife’s skin is goosefleshed. Hadley notices that when she stoops, it’s as if she’s breastless. How can Ernest love her, this boy-child?
    â€œI don’t want to. I’m scared.”
    â€œOf what?”
    â€œOf breaking something. My back. My neck.”
    â€œYou won’t. I promise.”
    The memory of her fall comes back to her. She remembers how the handyman waved up to her from the garden in St. Louis; the noise of the chair hitting the floor as she lost her footing; her hands failing to catch the window’s hasp and then the terror of falling through the air and her jaw knocking shut against the brick wall, the taste of blood in her mouth. She had been six years old. Wheeled around for months in a stroller to keep her spine still, she felt as if she had been in a stroller like that all of her life. Her whole life spent in the killing blandness of St. Louis! Then Ernest had arrived, at a party one night in Chicago, unexpected, uninvited, and the world had ripped open with its riches.
    â€œI’ve just never learned.”
    â€œEveryone can dive, silly.”
    â€œMy back. I’ve always been worried about it.”
    â€œAll you have to do is put your arms up, bend from the knees, aim for a spot, and go in head forward.” Fife goes into the water at a perfect angle and emerges, wet and adorable. Hadley is thankful Ernest’s eyes are closed. “Try it.”
    The one thing Hadley does not want to do is dive. She can feel how heavy her body is next to Fife’s, which is as thin as a strap. She can feel the fall: her jawbone smashing, the taste of rust as her tongue split. Madly she imagines the dive breaking her back, and Ernest and Fife wheeling her around Antibes in a baby carriage.
    â€œGo on, Hash,” Ernest says, and the two women turn, thinking he had been asleep. He shades his eyes with a hand so that they cannot see his expression. “Give it a try.”
    More than not wanting to dive, she doesn’t want to be outdone. If she’s going to be outperformed at the party tonight, she might as well make a decent attempt at this. The beach shines ahead of her. Fife stands close. Hadley grips the edge of the raft with her toes. All she can think of is each stud popping from her spine like pearls coming loose from one of Sara’s necklaces. The raft keeps jerking as the chain gets to the end of its reach. She’s scared it’ll throw her off before she’s ready.
    Fife holds Hadley’s hands up above her head. “Arms up. Higher, Hash, yes. Now imagine yourself”—Fife’s hands follow her words—“your head, your stomach, your hips, and then your legs, following the line of your arms.” Her touch is gruesome and delicate and Hadley wonders how Ernest bears to have it on him. If only to flee, she jumps.
    Hadley’s stomach hits the water first in a perfect belly flop, but at least she hasn’t broken anything. She stays a while under the sea, where it’s quiet and warm, and where Ernest and Fife cease to exist. Her hair spreads around her as if it were long again, no longer cut in this unflattering flapper style, which Ernest likes and she detests. She stays unmoving for a while under the sea: suspended, outstretched, blank.
    When she comes up for air, the salt