Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  He told John, “I’m awaiting word from a very powerful producer—head of United Artists,” he said, as if Tilde and John would be impressed. “Then we’ll have ten thousand to pay off our debts and start setting a little something aside.”

  “Start?” Tilde said, directing little John to a set of building blocks. “What happened to all the money you’ve gotten from selling all those stories and things? Mama wrote that Zelda said you can’t stop making money. I’ll suppose a lot of it went for that coat—”

  “Now, Tilde, dear,” John said, “that’s not our business—”

  “That’s all right,” Scott said too heartily. “We’re family. It’s true, I’ve made a tremendous amount of money, with which we’ve had a tremendously good time.”

  “The money’s just irregular,” I said, and Tilde gave me a look like I’ll say it’s irregular!

  “You should buy bonds,” she said. She took the baby from me before either he or I wanted her to, as if remembering that I was irresponsible. “Children need a secure, stable home—and heaven knows they’re not inexpensive. A good nurse or nanny is worth her weight in gold.”

  “I told you, we aren’t having any yet.”

  “You will, though—”

  “Your sister makes a tremendously valid point,” Scott said, and clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s time we started acting like adults. No more of this lavish spending. No more John Emerson seduction scenes. It’s tremendously improper—we know that,” Scott told them with his sincerest frown.

  Tilde looked alarmed. “Seduction scenes?”

  “Not literally,” I said. I glared at Scott; he was performing, putting on an act not for Tilde and John but for me, to punish me for having dared to utter Sinclair’s name.

  “I can’t imagine telling friends in St. Paul that my wife’s an actress,” he continued. “Though I’m sure your good friend Nathan wouldn’t mind it at all.” When I started to speak, he held up his hand. “No, no, I’m going to have to put my foot down this time. I’m calling Emerson the minute we get back.

  “Imagine!” he added, then leaned close to John as if to confess. “It’s awfully embarrassing to think I was almost as swept away by the idea as Zelda was.”

  “Almost? You’re the one who arranged for it!”

  “Dearest,” he said as he took his flask from his pocket, gave it a testing shake, uncapped it, and downed what little gin was left while my sister and John watched, eyes wide, mouths open. “Say, John,” Scott interrupted himself, “what do you have on hand? I’ll want a refill for the return trip.”

  Tilde answered in a huff, “We’re not lawbreakers!”—but John’s expression wasn’t quite so definite.

  Still, he kept silent and Scott went on, “Dearest darling wife, look at that magnificent little creature in your sister’s arms. Don’t you want one of those? I can’t wait to be a father.”

  * * *

  We fought the whole way home, and then he got right on the phone with John Emerson, saying I’d had second thoughts and was pining for motherhood—so no movie career for me. This wasn’t a problem in itself, because in most ways what he’d said was actually true. I didn’t actually want an acting career, and I did actually want to have a baby. I just resented Scott manipulating my life.

  A silent night was followed by a silent morning, whereby our already-small apartment seemed to have shrunk to the size of an elevator car. I staked out a corner of the sofa to read the crime-fiction magazine George and Mencken had just launched, Black Mask, which was a terrific escape. Scott pretended to work for a while, then made a show of putting on his coat, hat, and gloves, surely expecting me to ask him where he was off to. When I didn’t, he left the apartment in a huff.

  Later, the phone rang and the operator put through Griffith’s secretary, who said, “Would you please relay to Mr. Fitzgerald that Mr. Griffith and Miss Gish feel the scenario isn’t quite what they were looking for? His efforts are much appreciated. Mr. Griffith will be in touch.”

  “I will tell him, you bet, and thanks very much.”

  Scott walked in just as I was hanging up the phone.

  I said, “Griffith had his secretary phone to say you just don’t have what it takes for the job. Looks like you’re out of luck.”

  He stripped off his gloves nonchalantly, then his coat, then let all of it drop to the floor behind him. His hat remained on his head. “You should choose your pronouns more carefully,” he said. His voice was loose. “We are out of luck. We’re ruined, in fact.”

  “What are you saying? You’re drunk.”

  “I’m drunk, and we’re broke. Aren’t pronouns fun?” Then he pulled his pockets inside out for effect. “I can’t even buy us lunch.”

  “Go to the bank, then.”

  “No, I mean we have no money at all. Not in my pockets, not in my wallet, not in the bank. In fact, I had to borrow to pay for your coat.”

  “Borrow from who?”

  “The Bank of Scribner, in this case, although sometimes I use the Bank of Ober.”

  I was confused. “Max and Harold lend you money?”

  “Against royalties, or future earnings—it’s all money I’m going to get eventually; just, eventually doesn’t always arrive as quickly as I need it to.”

  I went to the closet, pulled the coat from its hanger, and shoved it at him. “Send it back!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” He plopped down on the sofa. “You look fantastic in this coat. In fact, I think you should take off everything you’re wearing and then put the coat on.” His eyelids were drooping as he said this, and then they closed.

  I watched him for a moment, thinking he’d fallen asleep. Then, without opening his eyes he said, “Don’t hate me. I’m sorry. It’s all for you.”

  * * *

  Scott went on the wagon and finished his novel, The Beautiful and Damned, a story of a young society couple so indolent and overindulged that they ruin themselves. His self-discipline impressed me, so much so that I was pregnant by February.

  18

  Knowing—sort of—what parenthood would do to our lives, when Scott made a seven-thousand-dollar deal with Metropolitan Magazine for the serialization rights to The Beautiful and Damned, we decided we’d better go abroad and see some of the places so many of our friends had seen and told us about. Touring Europe was the thing to do, I guess, now that America had invested so much in its salvation. We booked first-class passage on the Aquitania and departed May 3.

  Having never been on board any water vessel larger than a rowboat, I was as enraptured by the ship as I’d been by so many things in Manhattan. Nine decks, including a grand ballroom decorated with all the polished wood, wrought iron, stained glass, marble, and gilt-covered splendor any overspending couple could possibly wish for.

  “I bet the Titanic looked like this,” I said as we walked to our cabin.

  A woman grabbed my arm and told me, “Hush! You’re going to jinx everything.”

  “Titanic, Titanic, Titanic,” I said, pulling my arm away. “Better reserve your spot on a lifeboat.”

  We spent a whole lot of time in the Palladium Lounge, where velvet-upholstered chairs and a wide, ornate fireplace deferred the Atlantic’s chill. For a week, we danced to the ship’s orchestra, dined on every variety of fish and prawn and pheasant dish imaginable, drank fine champagnes, and acquainted ourselves with a variety of people as dissipated as we would one day become. Scott was accosted by a fella who brought an opened copy of Shadowland magazine to our table. He dropped it in front of Scott and pointed at a paragraph, saying, “It says here that you are ‘the recognized spokesman of the younger generation—the dancing, flirting, frivoling, lightly philosophizing America.’” Then he pumped Scott’s hand like he thought Scott’s mouth might open and gold coins would spill out. When the seas got rough, we all told shipwreck stories the way people tell ghost stories while in a cemetery—you want to be prepared, I guess.

  In London, we met up with Scott’s friend Shane Leslie
—whose aunt was Lady Randolph Churchill, whose son Winston took luncheon with his mother and us and then went back to his duties at whichever important post he was assigned to at the time. Young as I was, I failed to be suitably impressed by both London and its celebrities, who seemed as stuffy and formal to me as I must have been unsophisticated and silly to them.

  We saw Paris, we saw Venice, we saw Florence and Rome. It was strange to see liquor served right out in the open, though of course this made perfect sense, there being no Prohibition in Europe. After the first hundred impressive statues and cathedrals and fountains and alleyways and villas, our eyes and our brains took on a glaze. We were the most ignorant of tourists, and got little out of the experience because of that.

  Our ignorance remained firmly in place upon our return to the States in July, when we went to Montgomery thinking we would live there, be near my family so that we’d have the support and help I’d be so appreciative of when the baby came. I wonder, were Scott and I just so distracted by the elements of our moment-to-moment life that neither of us recognized it was going to be as impossible for him to live there as it had been the first time around?

  After a few days of visiting my family and seeing some friends, even I felt like a misfit, saturated as I was with my experiences since leaving New York. The South seemed so backward, so slow—not to mention unbearably hot for me in my ever-expanding state. My father’s perpetual disapproval made it easy for us to alter our course: by the end of July we were house hunting in St. Paul.

  * * *

  There’s a word for people who move from place to place, never seeming to be able to settle down for long: peripatetic. And there’s a word for people who can’t seem to stay out of trouble—well, there are a lot of words for such types: unstable, irresponsible, and misguided are some of them.

  Trouble has lots of forms. There’s financial trouble and marital trouble, there’s trouble with friends and trouble with landlords and trouble with liquor and trouble with the law. Every sort of trouble I can think of, we’ve tried it out—become expert at some of it, even, so much so that I’ve come to wonder whether artists in particular seek out hard times the way flowers turn their faces toward the sun.

  One element of my life that has never given me serious trouble, though, is my perfect baby girl, my sweet Scottie. She was born on October 26 that year, 1921, following a pregnancy that was unexceptional in every way.

  My labor was long and awful—so, as unexceptional as my pregnancy had been. When I’d coughed and blinked my way out from underneath the anesthesia’s effects, there Scott was at my bedside as the nurse brought the baby in. He held a notebook and wore a Look what I’ve done! smile, as if he was the first father on the planet and had birthed that child himself.

  The white receiving blanket gave nothing away. “Is it a boy or girl?”

  “You don’t remember? You’ve been in and out,” he said. “We’ve got a daughter! You said you hope she’ll be ‘a beautiful little fool,’ but we won’t hold you to that.”

  The nurse put the little swaddled bundle of baby girl into my arms, and my eyes pooled with tears. “Hello there, baby Patricia,” I said, rubbing her soft chin with my knuckle.

  Scott leaned over us and petted her downy head. “Actually, I was thinking that she doesn’t really look like a Patricia. What would you say, darling, to naming her Frances—my name, but with an e instead of an i? Frances Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “But … she’s Patricia. All this time, that’s what I’ve been calling her.”

  “Frances Scott—it seems fitting, don’t you think? Her having been born in my hometown, you know. We have to think of her future. There’s nothing unique about being Patricia Fitzgerald; really, darling, it’s too common. The Irish are forever naming their sons and daughters some version of Pat.”

  The nurse returned then, and Scott asked her, “What do you think of this: Frances—with an e—Scott Fitzgerald, and we’ll call her Scottie.”

  “That’s so clever! Named after her famous father—she’ll like that, what a privilege!”

  “Except that she’s Patricia,” I said, feeling foggy, still. This conversation was moving too quickly. “We agreed on Patricia.”

  “Oh, well, that’s a perfectly nice name. Nothing special, but nice. You have to consider that she’s not just any child, though, don’t you?”

  “Her legacy,” Scott said.

  “Exactly.” The nurse took the baby from my arms. “Now, Mother needs her rest, so off with you”—she indicated Scott—“and you, little Frances.”

  “Scottie.” He touched the baby’s tiny nose.

  “Patricia,” I said.

  I knew, though, that Scott would replay this scene with everyone he encountered, and that they’d all see it his way. No one would disagree with the charismatic hometown hero. Even so, I would stubbornly continue to assert my preference for weeks, the way you do when you allow hope to prevail over knowledge, and in the end, I would grow tired of the battle, and Scott would win.

  19

  We spent the exceptionally, ridiculously, unendingly frigid winter of 1921–22 in the company of an assortment of Scott’s old friends. My drawl, never a problem in New York, was a hindrance here. “Would you repeat that, dear?” was a regular refrain. And if I said something like “If I never see another snowflake, it’ll be too soon, I swear!” someone was sure to ask, “Is ahswayah a Southern term? I don’t think we have that one here.”

  The women allowed me into their bridge groups, though, and invited me to join their committees—Lord, you never did see so few women create so many committees! They extended every courtesy whether they wanted to or not, unwilling to lose their connection to F. Scott Fitzgerald even if his wife was, unfortunately, a foreigner.

  Scott’s mother, however, always treated me like I was an orchid she’d discovered blooming in her parlor. Sadly, Scott was far less fond of her than she was of me. He thought her old-fashioned and eccentric and absentminded—the very qualities that made her so dear. His father was old-fashioned, too, but Scott thought him benign, like an old pocket watch that keeps time and has style but isn’t worth much.

  Whenever Scott and I weren’t, say, out riding in horse-drawn sleighs and then rewarding ourselves afterward with hot toddies, we worked together on a musical revue, Midnight Flappers, for the Junior League’s April fund-raiser. Scott wrote the script and was also the director; I was choreographer and, of course, would be one of the flappers—if I could get rid of all my leftover roundness, which, although I was nursing Scottie, stubbornly stuck with me as if I needed the fat to keep me warm. Scott and I collaborated so well and had so much fun that my irritation with him about the baby’s name faded and then disappeared. She was Scottie; this seemed self-evident before long, and I was glad we hadn’t named her Patricia.

  She was a happy, indulged, adored infant. Nursing her was demanding but rewarding, too, most of the time. Scott had a bad habit of inviting friends up to our place without first seeing whether I’d welcome company. The commotion—and my goodness, between Scott and his former nemesis Sinclair Lewis and their third musketeer, Sherwood Anderson, there was always commotion—would wake the baby. She would want me, not the nanny Scott had hired, and so I’d have to go off and nurse her back to sleep. I’d hear the others talking and laughing, carrying on without a thought for me, for my having to go from gay socialite to milk producer in the space of a baby’s cry. Fierce as my love was for my baby girl, it was no antidote for resentment.

  Scottie was not even four months old when my monthly, which had returned, sort of, in January, went missing again. I couldn’t be pregnant; my sisters had told me I’d be safe as long as I was nursing! But the doctor, after confirming what I hoped was not true, shrugged and told me, “The only sure method of prevention is abstention, and of course no husband can be expected to agree to that for long. Congratulations, Mrs. Fitzgerald, and give my best to Scott.”

  For the next couple of weeks, while we planned a
trip to New York to see friends and celebrate the March 4 launch of The Beautiful and Damned, I kept the news to myself and chased my thoughts around and around inside my head, unable to be happy about my condition and miserable about that unhappiness. I just could not imagine celebrating Scottie’s first birthday, still eight months away, by giving her a baby brother or sister. I couldn’t stand the thought of gaining so much weight again. I couldn’t see my way through the tall grass of sleep deprivation and milk-engorged breasts, couldn’t face the prospect of managing the needs of two wonderful but helpless, demanding little beings, even with the nanny’s help. I longed for my prepregnancy body and had just begun to wean Scottie in preparation for my being gone two weeks in New York.

  Judge me harshly if you will—God knows I’ve spent the ensuing years judging myself that way—but I decided to assert my right to control my own fertility, as Margaret Sanger liked to say, and told Scott how it had to be.

  “I can’t do it, Deo, the timing is all wrong, I’ll be awful to everyone if I do it, I just know I will. It would spoil our lives, we’re hardly getting started, I don’t want to be a baby-making factory, I just can’t.”

  He didn’t want that life either; he said, “Yes, all right, I understand,” and the look of terror he’d worn the day I’d said, “I’m pregnant,” changed to relief.

  While we were in New York, Scott gave an interview to a reporter from the New York World, who, having read Scott’s flapper stories and now the novel, wanted his opinion about women in Prohibition society.

  “I think that just being in love and doing it well is work enough for any woman,” Scott said. “If she keeps her house nicely, and makes herself look pretty when her husband comes home from work, and loves the fellow and helps him and encourages him, well, I think that’s the sort of work that will save her.”