“It is a shame they were out of beluga, Papa,” Mrs. Hemingway said a few hours later, when we were all sated and tired. She dabbed the corners of her mouth with a white napkin. “We’ll have to see if we can order some back at the Plaza.”
Hemingway sat back in his chair. Behind him, the early-spring sun was beginning to set upon the Hudson. I felt myself stifling a yawn. “Of course the Plaza will have it, the Plaza never runs out of caviar.” He signaled the waiter. “Double bourbons all around.”
My mother moved quickly to cover her glass. “Oh, no, not for me, thank you.”
Hemingway winked at her. “Mrs. Leithauser, I like you. You know when to pull the pitcher.”
My mother’s face turned crimson, and she responded by burying her nose in Francie’s neck.
In a very real sense, this scenario was both my mother’s nightmare and my own. At the Hemingways’ insistence, we were eating in a restaurant that was not half a mile from the house in which I’d grown up, but which we’d never been able to afford. Since I reached adulthood my mother had accused me of putting on airs and social climbing, and now I’d shown up at her house with a famous writer and his stylish wife. I could see the look on my mother’s face when we burst through her storm door: irritation, confusion, a sense that I was rubbing something in her face. Like an uncontrollable tic, her hand had flown to cover the right side of her mouth, where she was missing one incisor. Her eyes had flitted nervously upstairs, where, without a doubt, my father was sleeping off a violent hangover.
But then her gaze had landed on Francie, and she softened. She’d agreed to come out with us, and she’d held the baby, mystifyingly placid in her arms, in the back of the car. Still in a stained housedress, she’d barely spoken a word or eaten a bite during the meal; Hemingway had had to order for her. But even though she still showed signs of shell shock, her expression glazed over with happiness every time she looked down at the baby.
“You all right, Miss Leithauser?” Mrs. Hemingway asked me just before our plates were to be cleared. “You keep looking over your shoulder.”
“She’s making sure we didn’t pick up a tail,” Hemingway answered for me.
I laughed nervously. I had been scrutinizing every customer who came into the restaurant, especially anyone who sat near us or lingered by our table for too long. The two young men sitting beside us were, I thought, suspiciously quiet and dressed unusually blandly; the woman who kept walking a young girl to the window to look at the water had made eye contact with me one too many times. “Just looking around for old classmates, I guess,” I said, feeling daft. “I haven’t been to Ossining in quite a while.”
“Oh, shoot,” Mrs. Hemingway proclaimed, rifling through her purse. “Papa, we were going to buy more aspirin. It was on the list. Regina, dear.” She put her hand on my mother’s arm, and my mother stiffened. “Did I see a drugstore a couple doors down from here?”
“Yes, that’s right,” my mother said in a small voice, mostly to Francie. Part of me wanted to shake her—these people didn’t care about her housedress. They didn’t care that she cleaned homes for a living.
Then I remembered—I cared about those things. I never would have introduced her to Hemingway if I’d had a choice. I still hadn’t introduced her to Joe.
“Perfect.” Mrs. Hemingway popped out of her chair, flipped her mink coat back onto both shoulders in a neat shrug. “Game” was the adjective that came to mind as I watched her fluff her blond hair, wink at her husband. She seemed game as hell. I supposed you had to be, to sign up as Ernest Hemingway’s fourth wife. “Papa, what do you say, a candy bar for the road?”
“Baby Ruth,” said Hemingway, with a kiss on her hand.
With Mary gone, some of the energy left the table, and we fell into a stunned silence. My mother responded by taking Francie, who’d just woken up and was making staccato motions with her little tongue, to the window to watch the sunset.
“At last,” Hemingway said, leaning on the table with one firm elbow. With the meaty pointer finger of his other hand, he stabbed the air at me. “We’ll speak quickly. Never enough time. You need a meeting at the mound, daughter.”
“I know.” With my index finger, I plucked at a tiny barnacle cleaved to one of my discarded oyster shells. “What will I do without Joe?” I wondered aloud.
“Joe! Good riddance!” Hemingway scoffed, which led to a small coughing fit. His big chest heaved. “Can’t trust a man who thinks he should be operating the crane while the others are on the ground with hammer and nails. By God, that boy fancies himself a crane operator.”
“But I’m all alone, with a baby. And you can see I have no family money.”
“Don’t need money. Just smarts. Listen to me, daughter, there’s great freedom in being a girl.”
Watching my mother, who was pointing out at the horizon and murmuring to Francie, I had been wondering what would become of us all. Having a pity party, really, thinking how rotten we’d all been treated by the men in our lives. “Freedom?” I repeated. “In being a girl?”
He huffed, “You all bellyache about being the ‘second sex,’ but listen. Great thing about being a girl is this: no one pays attention. Whatever’s in this book of yours, whatever radical stuff, you’ll get away with it. The censors won’t give a damn.”
The waiter had come back with our double bourbons. I took too big a sip, winced at the burn. Hemingway drank his with a napkin wrapped around the glass. Emboldened by the liquor, I leaned forward and put a hand on his forearm, warm and hairy. “What do you think the powers that be are after, Papa? What’s their game?”
“Their game is just what you think it is. Control. They like to control all writers, no imagination allowed, only bald-eagle Harvard Yard bullshit.”
“Do you believe they’d kill to maintain that control?”
He licked his bottom lip, squinting. “Any of us could kill, at any time.”
Bells tinkled at the front of the restaurant. Mrs. Hemingway had come back in, and was now chatting loudly in Spanish with the maître d’. Francie was beginning to fuss. Hemingway replaced his glasses and jabbed the tabletop with his fist. “Louise Leithauser, you listen to me. You’re outmatched. You can’t swing at these fellas and all they’ve got backing them; they’re punching above their weight. What you need to do is duck, under the arm. Get on the inside, and then you hit with everything you’ve got.”
He didn’t seem to care who overheard him, but I lowered my voice, hoping he’d follow suit. “What does that mean, Papa?”
“Forget the New York publishers. There’s a Joe in every goddamn one of them. Instead, find the silliest publisher you can, the one with the bright-pink paperbacks, and bring your manuscript to them. It’ll get printed, mark my words.”
Mrs. Hemingway strode back to the table and put her hand on her husband’s shoulder. “Getting dark, Papa. We’d better head back to town. Traffic’s going to be murder.”
“This lousy town and its traffic. You’d think they’d be clamoring to get out. Here, my dear, drink your bourbon.”
While Mary drank, I watched my mother nervously. She was starting to get that panicked look from before, when our ragtag gang had arrived at her house, but I had a couple more things to say to Hemingway. I took another glug from my own glass.
“Papa,” I said, my voice creaky from the bourbon, “what about your novel? The one about the guerrilla. You think they’ll let you go through with it?”
Mary was giving me dagger eyes, I realized too late. “Huh!” Hemingway said. “Clifton already knew about it, probably thanks to your boys and the bits I told you in the interview. Already suggesting mon-u-men-tal changes to manuscript. I tell him maybe I find new publisher. And maybe not.” He shrugged. Mary was shaking her head, tsk-tsk-ing her tongue.
When I heard Clifton’s name, my mouth went dry. “I have to tell you something, Papa. It was my fault they came looking for you in Wyoming. I mentioned it to Clifton.”
The noises in the restaurant seemed to increase as I faced the silent Hemingways. Dishes clinked in the kitchen. The chef shouted in French at a waiter. Mary had gone from a bird on his shoulder to a snake, her eyes and nostrils narrowed. Hemingway considered me thoughtfully, his big chest going up and down with each breath, the ribs on his turtleneck sweater expanding and contracting, like the belly of a whale. Finally, he spoke.
“Loose lips sink ships, Leithauser.”
“I know, I’m so sorry—”
“Tell you what. Can use those loose lips of yours to play a little game. Tell your Joe, tell Clifton, tell whomever you want, there’s a secret Hemingway novel in the works. Could be guerrilla novel, could be something you make up. Tell ’em I buried it in Cuba, somewhere on the grounds of the Finca Vigia. Say it’s under the livestock if you please, maybe under the corner where all the shit collects.”
“Oh, that’s good, Papa,” Mrs. Hemingway said, descending into a fit of giggles. She was his little parakeet again. “That’s a good one.”
“They’ll be looking for it,” said Papa. “They’ll be looking for it long after I’m dead.”
The last sliver of red, shimmering sun dipped below the horizon. The light in the room went from bright red to muted mauve. Waiters came around, lighting candles. Mrs. Hemingway had a far-off look on her face.
“I will, Papa,” I said.
“They’ll be looking for it.” He wasn’t smiling. He lifted his glass to his lips and downed the rest of his double bourbon in a huge gulp, drenching his beard. “That’s just the counterpunch to do them in.”