Mrs. Hemingway Read Online Free PDF

smarts her eyes so that the features of the couple blur. Hadley blinks and they become clear: they’re both smiling and looking down at her, brightly encouraging. The memory of the baby carriage surfaces again, and Ernest and Fife grin mawkishly like two proud parents.
    Hadley climbs up onto the raft and stands dripping over Ernest. She kisses him and surprises him with her tongue. He’s probably always wanted her to be a bit more reckless. “Not bad,” he says.
    â€œThe dive?” she says, “or the kiss?”
    â€œBoth.” He smiles, gazing up at her. In the corner of her vision she sees Fife flinch and look to the beach.
    â€œI’m hungry,” she says.
    â€œHave you not had breakfast?” Fife asks, still facing away from them.
    â€œGet something later,” Ernest says and his hands trace Hadley’s spine as if he, too, were remembering her injury. “I’ll go back with you soon.”
    They don’t speak for a while. They sit there, all three, as if waiting for something to happen. In the distance the trees on the bank seem to shrink away like dye in an old photograph. Then Fife stands and dives. Once again it’s perfect. As soon as she returns to the raft, her long legs take her back to the sea.
    She dives again and again, enjoying her skill, but Hadley knows the performance is misjudged. What Fife can’t hear, or doesn’t notice, is that Ernest lets out a louder sigh each time the raft rocks. He’ll want to sleep off his hangover, she thinks, and will find this cute spectacle maddening.
    Wickedly, because she knows he does not want to be left alone with Fife, Hadley says she has a headache and will swim back. Sometimes, she sees Ernest wearing a phony smile, as if he is not quite sure of his mistress, whether or not he likes being alone in her company.
    â€œWhat about lunch?” Fife says, water dripping off her in a puddle around her painted toes. “Won’t we get it in the village?”
    â€œYou two go on without me.” She smiles at Ernest. “See you at home.”
    Hadley descends on the ladder and begins her swim toward the beach.
    â€œWill you be at the party tonight?” Fife shouts from the landing.
    Hadley turns, treading water, and replies, “Of course! End of quarantine! Hurrah!” She waves and gives them her best smile.
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    At the road she stares down at the sea: the raft is a spot of brown, unmoving. She squints, trying to make out the two figures on the deck. Perhaps they have gone swimming. Perhaps they have climbed up on the bank to make love and feel the sun’s rich heat on each other’s skin. Hadley can feel Fife’s ache for Ernest as strongly as if it were in her own body.
    When she wrote Fife, asking her to come, she was banking on the pressures of Paris transferring to Antibes. She thought this vacation would break their attachment to each other. But it has turned into a boring game of treading water. Their legs keep churning under the surface while their heads nod and smile above it. And she did not take into account how often Fife would be in a bathing suit. Oh no; she did not think of that.
6. ANTIBES, FRANCE. MAY 1926.
    Hadley sent off Fife’s invitation calmly one day: as if inviting his mistress to vacation with them were a matter of ordering a dress from a catalogue.
    All this time alone might have turned anyone’s head. Only occasionally was the quarantine broken by visits from the Villa America pack: Scott and Zelda, Gerald and Sara, when they brought eggs and butter and cakes of Provençal soap. Scott sometimes brought flowers, which always made Hadley smile, and they would talk over the fence posts about Bumby’s progress.
    Sara always stood at the back of the group. She had a fear of germs, and her eyes darted over Hadley as if the
coqueluche
might jump like a flea from her clothes. As soon as Sara had learned of Bumby’s