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Miss Mary
- The Kent State University Press
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54 • miss mary Since his return to Cuba, Hemingway had gone out almost every day to Havana to dine and meet with friends. But with Mary Welsh soon to arrive, a new cook was needed. Papa placed an ad in one of the Havana papers, and within a couple of days we had a response. Papa asked me to meet the man by the gates and escort him up to the house. “I’m Ramón Wong. I’m here for the cook’s job,” he said in strongly accented, broken Spanish. Ramón was Chinese, about fifty years old, and of medium height and build. He had a good handshake, the kind that makes you comfortable and lets you know a person is straightforward and honest. Hemingway interviewed Ramón and was impressed with his references and hired him on a two-week trial basis. He then took Ramón to the kitchen and introduced him to Justo. After Papa left the room, Justo brushed Ramón aside and said that he was too busy and that I should show Ramón around. This was the beginning of an antagonistic relationship between the Finca’s majordomo and cook. On May 8, 1945, Miss Mary Welsh arrived at the Finca. A very pretty woman, with fair skin, short light hair, a petite frame, and a vibrant smile, she soon won the love and admiration of the staff. Papa had hired a young girl who was a distant relative of Reymundo, the deaf gardener, to be her maid and another girl, Pilar, to teach her Spanish . He also hired a hairdresser and manicurist, Lily, who came every Wednesday morning and washed Mary’s hair with rainwater collected in the cistern. For a short time after Mary’s arrival, Hemingway did not write. He woke up late, for him (at 7:00 a.m.), and spent most of the day reading hemingway’s cuban son 55 with Mary by the pool. He gave her the black-and-white kitten, and she took it everywhere with her in her gardening basket. She named it Spendthrift, eventually shortening its name to Spendy. In her early days at the Finca, Mary spent most of her time learning from the gardeners the Spanish names for the plants and flowers. She practiced her Spanish with all of us. She also liked to help Ramón in the kitchen, and in the process she learned to cook several Chinese dishes. Mary also visited my house and met my family. She took a special liking to Nilda and invited her up to the Finca to play with Spendy, talk, and work in the garden. She thoroughly enjoyed my nineyear -old sister’s company. Nilda was full of questions and charm. Later on those days, she walked my sister home and spent time talking with my mother. She also made friends with Josefa Guerra, a talented seamstress who had a small shop not far from the Finca. Mary adjusted to her new life at the Finca Vigía and worked hard to understand all the cultural differences. It could not have been easy to come to another country and learn a new language and live in a house that still had the furnishings and presence of her predecesor. Martha Gellhorn’s photograph hung on a wall of their bedroom for quite some time before it was taken down. In early June of 1945, Jack Hemingway came to the Finca straight out of a six-month detention in a German prison camp. Papa could not have been happier. He orchestrated a homecoming reception that involved the old gang from the pueblo and fireworks. Bumby was just the same—respectful, happy, and full of life. No one would have ever thought he had just arrived from a prison camp. He was a little thinner, but he still looked strong. He spent the summer playing tennis, swimming, and reading. A couple of times he and I went trout fishing on the San Juan River in Matanzas. We had a friendly competition over who could catch more fish—Bumby with his artificial lures and flexible rod or me with my “Cuban tricks,” as he referred to my real frogs, worm lures, and makeshift rod. Patrick and Gregory joined us when they came for their summer vacation. On June 20 Mary was to travel to Chicago to finalize her divorce from her second husband, Noel Monks. Juan showed up to drive her to the airport...