I recently read The Paris Wife, Paula McClain’s fictional but historically accurate account of Hadley and Ernest Hemingway’s marriage, and I am brokenhearted.
I won’t spoil it for you, but if you know anything about Ernest Hemingway, he was no saint, so you can imagine that, like in his novels, things don’t end well. McClain said she wanted to give voice to Hadley, to tell her side of the story. But what surprised me most in her portrayal of their marriage is how much they loved each other, what good friends they were, and how much they relied on and needed one another.
McClain paints an unusual picture of deep intimacy that brilliantly depicts the everyday struggles of marriage –not just the passionate highlights. Details like Ernest not being able to sleep without a light on, his anger at Hadley for being careless with tracking her cycles, their nicknames for each other, all come together to give us a picture of the good and the bad of marriage—but mostly the good, wholesome steadiness that a good marriage can be. But then his skyrocketing fame, and you can guess what happens next to their story. Hadley’s words foreshadow what’s ahead, “we would never again be unknown. We would never again be this happy.”
I’m not writing a book review, although I do recommend McClain’s thoughtful, lovely, well-researched portrait of Hadley and Ernest Hemmingway. I’m writing because I want to say some things about marriage. I am married 23 years now, and like Hadley and Ernest talked of becoming, my husband and I are likely “one of those couples who have been married so long, you can’t tell them apart.”
One sweet scene in the book shows Hadley in front of a mirror dissatisfied with her hair, “I’m sick of it.” So she starts to cut it while Ernest sits nearby reading, and he chuckles at her, “You’ve lost your mind, you know,” he says. Then she comes to him and starts cutting his hair too, like hers, so they can look like each other, “just as Ernest wished we might, long ago on a star-hung rooftop in Chicago.” That night in Chicago she had said to him, “I’d love to look like you . . . I’d love to be you,” and then comments that nothing could have been truer at the time. “I would gladly have climbed out of my skin and into his that night because I believed that was what love meant.”
Was this flawed thinking, as Hadley guesses, or were they onto something? The scriptures talk of marriage as one-flesh. Can you think of a description of marriage that is more romantic and shocking at the same time? Is marrying really like crawling into someone’s skin?
That is exactly the theme of the best wedding homily I’ve ever heard. My friend Anna got married last summer, and as I sat alone at the wedding (my husband couldn’t make it), I wished I had a pen and notepad. Why couldn’t every marriage homily be like this one? The minister expounded on this beautiful, mysterious description of one-flesh, but then he invited the bride and groom to count the cost.
Yes, there’s a cost, the minister said. From this point on, there are not two people here, but one. None of us has ever experienced these two people as one before today. Today they are one new entity. As beautiful as that is, there is a cost. The first cost, he said, is that you must commit to never again make a life-changing decision independent of each other because you are no longer two, but one. The second cost, is this—from this day forward, you must say “no” to every other charming person that you will meet along life’s way, and there will be many. This is the cost and the beauty of one-flesh.
If Hadley and Ernest would have heard that homily and been in a community that practiced one-flesh, perhaps they would have made it. Perhaps they would have understood the cost and been expecting the hardship of it. Perhaps they would have recognized the beauty of the oneness they felt, not as a naive dream, but a mysterious reality that could only be preserved through choosing to daily pay its price.
treadmilltalks 