ERNIE AND ERNESTINA: The Writer, His Wife, and their Afterlife

Book One, Part Two, Chapter 10: Restless

On the Greensboro paper, Ernie met Janey, and they moved back here and married. She found a job in advertising — everyone liked her fanciful drawings — and Ernie became editor of a suburban weekly.

Soon they bought a house together. It suited Ernie — long and narrow, with a study for him and even a fireplace — but after a few years Janey wanted a showier place, so Ernie agreed to the stucco cottage.

She painted its five rooms antique white and made kitchen curtains striped orange and yellow. She found mission oak chairs for the living room and a partner’s desk for the back bedroom — where she worked on her drawings — but she didn’t live there long. Only long enough to become jealous of Rosalie. Only long enough to put a bullet hole through the dining-room wall. Soon the marriage was over.

Oh. That’s what happened to Ernie’s first marriage, isn’t it? Helen came home from a party jealous-hearted because Ernie had talked so long to his old friend Sally, then slit her wrist in front of him. Ernie’s life was repeating itself.

In our forty years together, Ernie and I lived in eleven houses.

“I’m a restless soul, Ernestina. Maybe there’s a place in England where I would feel at home.”

We traveled to England. We stayed in Oxford for awhile. We argued. We crossed the channel. In Paris, he wanted to hop the Orient Express to get away from me.

Ernie and I never felt truly at home with each other, did we? And, I realize, we never felt truly at home with ourselves.

Restlessness. It never left either of us.