Kiki’s imagination raced over the possibilities. Had Mr. Gittings in his cups boasted of his bargain? Did it have something to do with Rip’s brother?
“It may come to nothing,” he said, “and it doesn’t sound well from me, because I suppose I ought to consider him a rival.”
“That’s all right, I’ve learned not to expect much from you, Alex.”
She got up suddenly and went to the other seat but he followed and bending over her said: “I can’t blame you, Kiki—but I’m very concerned with your happiness.”
“Have I got to go into the day coach?”
“I’ll go up there myself.”
She hated him and for a moment she wished Rip was there, coolly and gracefully “breaking his neck.” But after all this was no football field and Rip wouldn’t show to advantage. Poor Rip—who had done nothing except risen in the world on the leverage of his magnificent body.
From the station she tried without success to get him on the phone—finally reached him next morning at training table. In masked words she told him what Considine had said. There was a long pause at the other end—then his voice with a desperate note:
“I can always leave college.”
“Rip, don’t talk like that. But I want you to be careful. Have you ever told anyone about Gittings?”
“No.”
“Then don’t admit anything. And Rip—remember that whatever happens I’m with you.”
“Thank you, Kiki.”
“I mean it—whatever happens. I wouldn’t mind if everyone knew it.”
Flushed and exalted she hung up the receiver. Her protective instincts were marshaled on his side and it was beginning to feel real. She was proud and pleased when he performed brilliantly against Princeton. There, three days later, she opened to the football news to find a shocking headline.
INELIGIBILITY RUMOR DENIED AT YALE
MAJOR STAR BELIEVED INVOLVED
New Haven, Connecticut: The Chairman of the Yale Athletic Association today denied the rumor that a certain varsity star would not play against Harvard Saturday.
“The same line-up that faced Princeton will start Saturday’s game,” he said. “We have had no official protests against the eligibility of any players.”
The rumor stemmed from Cambridge and has been traced to the Harvard Club in New York. The material at New Haven has been under par this year—only twelve “iron men” were used against Princeton—and the loss of any one of several key players might considerably affect . . . .
Kiki’s heart stood still. Again she ran over all possible avenues of leakage. Mr. Gittings had denied any indiscretion, but the check, drawn on a New York bank, might have passed through the hands of some Harvard man who recognized the name. Yet it would be difficult to produce evidence. Beyond that, Kiki was sure that Rip had been careful—had shied away from an offer to play baseball for a hotel last summer.
In a sudden panic she looked up Alex Considine’s number—startled at the familiar digits. He was in Cambridge but expected back today and off and on all day she called him without leaving her name—just missed him at six to find that he would be at the Harvard Club for dinner. Slipping into a dinner dress she drove down to 44th Street and asked a suspicious doorman to take him a note. He came out surprised, without his hat, and seated in a grill nearby she came to the point:
“I saw the paper this morning. It’s Rip Van Kamp they mean, isn’t it?”
“I can’t tell you, Kiki.”
“You did tell me on the train. I want to know what you’ve got against him.”
Alex hesitated.
“I can say this—if we had absolute proof against him we’d have acted by this time.”
“Then you haven’t got proof?”
“At this moment I personally don’t know any proof.”
From his phrasing she guessed at the truth.
“You’re waiting for some proof right now.”
“Are you in love with this man, Kiki?”
“Yes.”
“Somehow I can’t believe it.”
“Can’t you? Well, if you do anything to bar him out I’ll marry him tomorrow night—if he wants me.”
He nodded.
“That I can believe—you’re a stubborn girl, Kiki, and you’re one of the best. But I don’t think you’re in love with Van Kamp.”
Suddenly she was crying angrily because she knew it was true. She was only getting started at being in love. It would be all right, it would come soon, it would atone for everything. But just now until it came she was so vulnerable. She could not avoid comparing Rip, boyish and unoriented, oblivious to so much, to Alex Considine, a grown man, confident and perceptive, with a will of his own making and his own mistakes.
“You’ll see,” she said chokingly, “You’ve always had everything and he’s come up from nothing, and so you try to drag him down. It’s so cruel, so mean.”
“Kiki, I didn’t start this. The information—” He broke off. “You sound as if you knew something—”
“Oh, no,” she said quickly, “But even if there is something I’ll stick by him.”
She got up and left him with the untouched cocktails. Utterly confused she stopped at a telegraph office to send Rip a message of tenderness and cheer.
VI
Rip had given her four tickets and she went up to Cambridge with friends, arriving at the stadium in a thin grisly snow. Remembering last year, the floaty joy and the sunshine, she was sad—even though the morning papers had relieved her worst apprehensions. Neither Athletic Association had given out any statement and the official line-up included Rip’s name. She opened a program.
Left Guard Van Kamp 5'11" 159 22 Newton High
The short history of a life—the boy from an orphanage with his brain in his nervous system. He was out there now in mid-field facing a crimson player in a white helmet, while a half dollar flipped up and fell in the snow. Yale strung out across the turf behind the ball—the leather boomed and Rip led the race down the field, skirting one blocker, sliding around another to make the first tackle of the game.
“He ought to be an end,” said a man behind her. “He could be anything.”
“But who can play guard like that—watch any halfback and you’re just watching the ball, watch Rip Van Kamp and you’re watching the game.”
The snow fell thicker—when a man slid twice his own length in the muddy mush it made a sentence for paper or radio, giving the game a wild haphazard quality, making it into an obstacle race and a winter sport. The tricks and laterals that were breath-taking anyhow assumed a miraculous flickering aspect in the chalky haze.
She watched Rip sitting on his haunches while the other team huddled. Quick as the play started he was on his feet, borne backward momentarily on a shoulder, then free and over at the other side of the line, running smack upright into the play. That was why the crowd could see him, because he went in like that, it was why his face was ribbed with scabs all through the season.
The half ended with Yale leading, 10–3. It was growing colder, the people next to Kiki were taking measure to keep warm and their voices rose—the girl beside Kiki said to her companion:
“I don’t know him but that’s his brother Harry with the black hat two rows down.”
Kiki looked. Harry was one of those blue faced men who shave futilely twice a day and who have contributed their affliction to our conception of the ungodly. He had no redeeming points—his eyes were set far apart as if pushed out by the spreading and flattening of his nose—yet Kiki felt disloyal as she saw a certain undeniable resemblance.
With the opening of the second half Harvard came to life—within ten minutes roars of triumph tolled across the field from the crimson side and the faces around Kiki were frowning and foreboding. She peered at Rip through field-glasses; as ever he was cool, white and impassive—as the game went into the fourth quarter with the score tied, there was a time when he was the only man on that weary team who seemed alive
. That was when he knocked down a dazed Yale man who was trying to run out an intercepted pass from behind his own goal.
Ten minutes to play. Yale, taking the ball on its own twenty, came out of the huddle with both tackles on the right side of the line. Suddenly the left end was in motion running toward the side-line, but two seconds before the ball was snapped cutting back toward his own goal while a halfback stepped up into the line on the right. This made the guard eligible for a pass and Rip caught the soggy ball almost in the clear for a forty yard gain and a first down.
The Yale stand came alive with hope, but almost immediately time was called and there was a puzzled murmur from the crowd. Three men with the air of a delegation had appeared at the Yale bench and the coaches were on their feet talking to them while the substitutes, shrouded in blankets, gathered around the argument. A moment later one substitute threw off his blanket and dashed out of the group, warming up; then seized his headguard, ran out and reported to the referee. The murmur grew when he spoke to Rip Van Kamp and the voices around Kiki were asking:
“What is it?”
“Taking Van Kamp out?”
“They’re crazy. He isn’t hurt.”
“Can you beat it? With the score tied!”
Kiki saw Rip tear off his headgear and run to the sidelines. Still ignorant of what had happened the crowd rose in a wild thundering cheer, which died away in wonder as he exchanged words with the coach, turned and ran toward the showers. The murmur broke out again—this time the guesses bordered on the truth.
“Was he put out? Did he foul somebody?”
“They didn’t pull him out because they wanted to.”
“It must be Van Kamp that the newspapers—”
It was all through the crowd in a minute—the connection was made by everyone at once and the confirmation drifted up from the seats closest to the field. Rip Van Kamp had been taken out on a protest by the Harvard Athletic Association.
Kiki shrank down in her seat covering her face as if she were the next victim of a mob. It had happened—here at the very end they had taken it all away from Rip, sent him off like a disgraced schoolboy. In a second she was on her feet pushing past her friends, running up the aisle and down the dark entrance and then along under the stand in the direction he had taken.
“Where’s the dressing room?” she cried. A vacuous drunk looked at her blankly and there was a roar overhead as the game resumed its course. She ran from gate to gate along the snowy cinder walk until a guard directed her, adding:
“You haven’t a chance of getting in there. They don’t even let old players in.”
“When do they come out?”
He told her and she went to an iron grill and waited. After a long time she heard the game end with the perfunctory disappointed cheering of a tie score and saw the first dribble of the crowd come down the runways, then the great waves of it, surging past her as if it were rolling, careless and insensible, over her and over Rip. . . .
Time passed. There were only streams, then trickles and finally individuals like drops. A truck marked Harvard Crimson drove up in a rush and a boy jumped out with a bundle of papers.
“Final game score! Harvard protests Van Kamp! Yale Guard played in West!”
Kiki bought a paper and held it with trembling fingers. The thing was in hasty large type just under the score.
Van Kamp was removed from the game on Harvard’s claim that he played with Almara College in Oklahoma in 1934. Identification was made by his co-ed wife. . . .
That was all, but Kiki could have read nothing more. After she had said aloud in a fierce voice “That’s a lie,” she knew suddenly and without question that it was true.
VII
Much later she wondered how Alex Considine knew where to look, for it was he who found her sitting against a cement pillar with the paper in her lap, staring at nothing.
“I have a car,” he said, “We can walk to it if you’ll let me help you.”
“I’m all right. I just sat down to think things over.”
“I’ve been looking for you, Kiki. Just at the end I hoped it wasn’t going to happen. At first the girl wouldn’t talk until—”
“Don’t tell me,” Kiki said quickly. “What will they do to Rip?”
“I imagine he’ll have to leave college. He must have known the rules.”
“Oh, poor Rip—poor Rip.”
Suddenly she told him about the money from Mr. Gittings, everything.
“And I wish it had been more,” she said passionately. “He deserved it. I didn’t want him to die like Ted Coy with nothing left but his gold football.”
“He was a great player—they can’t take that away from him and he’ll probably play professionally.”
“Oh, but it’s all spoiled now—and he was so beautiful.”
They drove into Boston through the twilight.
“It’s a long trip to New York,” he said. “Why don’t we go out in the country to some friends of mine. I know you don’t want to be engaged to me again but supposing we just get married? I can vouch for the weather on the Nile.”
When she was silent he said:
“You’re thinking of Van Kamp.”
“Yes. I wish there was something I could do. If I could only think that he wasn’t alone.”
“You love him?”
“No. I was lying to you that night. But I keep thinking of how they’ll turn on him—when he’s given them so many grand afternoons.”
He pulled up the car suddenly.
“Shall I take you to him—I know where the team’s staying.”
Kiki hesitated.
“I haven’t got anything for him now. It was all wrong—the directions were different. I’ll go with you, Alex.”
“I’m glad.”
The car sped on through the city, turning the right corners, stopping at the right signs, and then into the country, always gathering speed—out on the right road at last.
FSF with gloves and a glare.
“The Women in the House,” later cut severely and revised into “Temperature,” is a medical story centered on a patient with heart trouble—which Fitzgerald was himself at the time he wrote it. But it is also about famous stars, dope, drinking, dazzle, and the Hollywood he knew. As he told Kenneth Littauer, when trying to sell it directly to Collier’s himself in the summer of 1939, “It is absolutely true to Hollywood as I see it.”
Fitzgerald finished the fifty-eight-page story in June 1939. He sent it to Harold Ober, and Ober responded by advising that he should cut six thousand words, chiefly those that dealt with drinking and drug use: “I think the closet scene and a lot about the nurses could be cut. Also the part of the story where Monsen is intoxicated.” Fitzgerald wrote back that about five thousand words were as much as could be “pried out of the story (by this old hand). . . . I know it’s a difficult length, but unfortunately that’s the way the story was.” Fitzgerald also said—showing how glad he was to be once again writing stories—“One’s pencil gets garrulous after that snail’s pace movie writing.”
Both the Saturday Evening Post and Ober still felt it was too long, and after arguing about this in some of their last exchanges, Fitzgerald reluctantly cut the story further to forty-four pages and then thirty-four. His desire to keep “The Women in the House” as a long story, possibly published in two parts, and Ober’s insistence that it be cut helped trigger the unfortunate break between Fitzgerald and Ober that began at this time.
When sending the story himself to Littauer, Fitzgerald wrote frankly about it, and with both humor and deep self-knowledge as a writer:
Asking you to read it I want to get two things clear. First, that it isn’t particularly likely that I’ll write a great many more stories about young love. I was tagged with that by my first writings up to 1925. Since then I have written stories about young love. They have been done with increasing difficulty and increasing insincerity. I would either be a miracle man or a hack if I could go on turning out an id
entical product for three decades.
I know that is what’s expected of me, but in that direction the well is pretty dry and I think I am much wiser in not trying to strain for it but rather to open up a new well, a new vein. You see, I not only announced the birth of my young illusions in This Side of Paradise but pretty much the death of them in some of my last Post stories like Babylon Revisited [February 1931].
Fitzgerald viewed “The Women in the House” as a “sort of turn” for his writing—opening up “a new well, a new vein.” He’d made a start, but was not yet happy with it, and particularly not with a version diminished to someone else’s specifications.
The story, in any of its versions, feels like a cross between a short story and a screenplay, unwilling to give up being either, and too uncomfortable to be both. Two movie stars are in supporting roles: Carlos Davis, a “Dakota small town boy” who “had been born with a small gift of mimicry and an extraordinary personal beauty”; and Elsie Halliday, a cypher of a Golden Age silver-screen goddess. The hero is a dashing explorer-scientist with some kinship to Richard Halliburton, as well as to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald uses movie-speak for segues often: “And at this point, as they say in picture making, the Camera Goes into the House, and we go with it.” The plot is a mix of Fitzgerald fiction standbys, including mistaken identity (in this case, the patient who is really ill, and the one who isn’t) and love lost with love anew ensuing—all stirred with a large serving of 1930s Hollywood screwball comedy. Present also are a maid and her African-American boyfriend, not exactly standard Fitzgerald fare.
One of the shorter cut-down versions of this story was published as “Temperature” in Strand Magazine in July 2015. On the finished typescript of that version of the story, Fitzgerald has written across the top of the first page, in his traditional No. 2 pencil: “File Under False Starts.”
First page, early manuscript draft in first person.
The Women in the House
(Temperature)
I'd Die For You Page 27