And I'm Letting Myself Down in Satisfying You...

I have just finished reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, and my heart feels oddly broken. Now, to those of you who don't know, the novel is based off of the relationship between Hadley Richardson and Ernest Hemingway as they made their way through the beginning of his career and among the fellow members of The Lost Generation in 1920s Paris. The book plainly states that it is a novel, and therefore not a cut and dried biography of Hadley, but the author was very, very loyal to Hadley's real life events, letters she and Hemingway sent to each other, and other intricacies that turned the book from just a piece of historical revisionism into something that really gets into Hadley's soul and psyche. I had been meaning to read it for months now, but was really inspired to buy it finally after hearing that my absolute favorite movie, Midnight in Paris, took a lot of inspiration from Hemingway's A Moveable Feast, which was written about this specific time in his life. We all know Hem's point of view of the story; I wanted to know Hadley's.


It actually took me far longer to read this book then it takes me to read most others - about two weeks. Normally I can put a book I'm really into to bed in five days to a week, considering work and bathroom breaks. This, however, I needed a break from - it was getting too personal, too sad. We all know that Hemingway had four wives, and Hadley was just the first, so obviously it wasn't going to end well. It was about halfway through the book, when Hemingway, for the first time, grew testy with Hadley, that I went forward with one of my very, very bad habits: I skipped ahead and read the last chapter. I've never been terribly good with surprises, and I pretty much do this naughty deed with all books I read. I don't know if it is the actor or humanities student in me, but I like to know who the characters in the final act end up being, and, in knowing that, really paying attention to the things they do and say along the way that gets them there. Or it might just be that I'm horribly impatient. Either way, it's just one of those odd quirks that inhibits my being. So, back to the book, I saw exactly how the outcome was presented, and broke down in tears. It was then that I knew that I needed to take a break and gather the courage to really get through the rest of it.


Last night, I did just that. The fun and fabulosity of gay Paris had begun to grow tarnished. The steadfast, loyal, and achingly devoted Hadley has had a child, and has grown tired of Hemingway's ways. He was a published author by then, and was losing friends left and right, including one of his closest, Gertrude Stein, due to him getting a little big-headed. Soon, she finds out that he is having an affair. Bad enough he was cheating on her, but in the grand tradition of those that cause the most pain, he was having an affair with one of Hadley's good friends. She tries to remain a good wife, going so far as to vacation with the two of them in an odd, non-sexual (mostly on her part) and uncomfortable menage a trois, but she finally cracks. We all know what happens from there: they divorce, and he marries the tramp lady. Hadley eventually remarries, and she only sees Hemingway twice in her life after.


That is all well and lovely, and happened long ago to two people who died before I was even born... so why did it begin to feel so personal, like Hemingway's selfishness was hurting me, not Hadley, not some character in a book? Why did I find myself crying, over a BOOK, at 5 am? And why did it compel me to write again? I think it is because I see a lot of myself in Hadley. I don't necessarily like it, but I think it's the truth. We both came from families with a comfortable upbringing (although hers was far, far more depressing). Really, that is our own literal similarity. However, I feel like emotionally we share a lot of similarities. We are both slightly old fashioned (although I would call myself a hardcore feminist, I still feel like I have an "old soul"), and we both know we can love loyally, fiercely, and devotedly. I know for a fact that, when I'm in love with someone, I will love them better than any one else possibly could. I have turned myself inside out, and outside back in for the one I was in love with, willing to do almost anything to support them and their goals (I had this brief plan that we would move out to the desert and live with Bedoin tribes at one point). This is exactly what Hadley did for Hemingway. And it is their outcome that terrifies me, because you can never guarantee that, regardless of how fiercely and freely you give yourself to someone, how much of a coddling, petting dummy you make of yourself, they will not selfishly rip your heart out and throw it toward a raging bull to be gored. She was much more level headed and forgiving than I want to be... she made up so many excuses and knew that if she pushed back or rebelled against him for his indiscretions, she would lose him entirely. However, for all of her goodness, he still left her for the next make and model. I have been in that situation, and the fear of losing them is worse then the fear you have of losing yourself. And that fricken sucks.


The book didn't end pretty, but what hardcore passionate relationship does, it seems? I long for passion, for someone to pine for me so thoroughly that their final memoir encapsulates our relationship... I want to be needed, desired, wanted almost like a seething hunger. But I don't want all of the messy stuff that results - the heartbreak, the loss of inner self, the fear to fall for another ever again, the bittersweet emptiness that inhabits your heart almost to the point where you can't really be sure WHAT you ever felt for the other person. Is love always pain and longing? Deceit and regret? Hope and blind, naive faith in the other person's goodness? I've never been one to like the schmoopy versions of love. If I'm with someone when Valentines' Day rolls around, I don't want anything special to happen then... I want to be wooed sometime later, when society doesn't pressure couples to publicly shout their love from the rooftops. When I get engaged someday, I don't want some standard solitaire that Tiffany's extolls as the perfect token for an engagement ring... I want something that actually means something to us. I've always preferred the exclamations of love that seemed more organic, painful even, like the poor sap who loved Keira Knightly in Love Actually, who shamefully zips up his hoodie and runs away in panic when she sees for the first time that he loves her. That pain is real... we have all felt rejection - it is raw, authentic... corporeal even. Or in Shakespeare's sonnet 130 where he blithely proclaims that "and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare" when he describes that she doesn't follow the usual standards of beauty, but loves her just for who she is. No false pretense, no flowery bullshit. This is love. Messy, uncomfortable, authentic.


I knew a girl in college named Hadley, and I remember her telling me once, in the streets of London, that she was named for Hemingway's first wife. I thought to myself, "who the hell would name their child after someone's first wife?" However, its said most beautifully in the book - she had him when both of them were at their best. They INVENTED the iconic version of Paris that they lived in. They, as a couple, were a force to be reckoned with, and a duo to be admired. And who wouldn't want that?