Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  Worse, Bumby brought an awful cough with him, and when it turned out to be whooping cough, Sara went white with fear that any of the other children should catch it. We were having coffee in the Murphys’ olive garden when the doctor came from the guesthouse and said that, while the worst of Bumby’s illness had already passed, he was directing two weeks’ quarantine in order to prevent the rest of us from getting sick.

  “We can’t keep them here,” Sara said, and then, as Hadley appeared behind the doctor, told her, “Hadley, I’m so sorry. I’ll find you a hotel, and we’ll send along whatever you’ll need. I’m so very sorry,” she repeated, already moving toward the house to make arrangements. “We can’t take any chances.”

  “Sara—wait,” I called. “We’ll just trade with Hadley. There’s six more weeks on our lease.”

  “We’ll get another place,” Scott amended. “Villa Paquita is a little damp for me, but should be just the thing for Bumby’s cough—you don’t want anything too dry, it irritates the lungs’ lining, don’t you know.”

  Why was he lying? The villa wasn’t damp, it was wonderful, perfect, he’d said so himself.

  “I couldn’t—” Hadley looked lost, as if all this was beyond her capacity to take in.

  “Of course not,” Scott said, “but we must. You’ll be doing us the grandest favor. I’ve had my eye on this other spot, Villa St. Louis, right on the water’s edge, and needed an excuse to rent it.”

  I stared at him. This was the first I’d heard of Villa St. Louis. Why would we take on yet another expense when we could use the guesthouse for these two short weeks?—and then it hit me: He’s leaving the guesthouse to Hemingway and Pauline.

  He was saying, “The place has forty rooms, imagine! Why, we’d be doing them a favor by filling a half-dozen or so until the family’s return at summer’s end—so how lucky it is that poor Bumby is ill!”

  “All right then,” Hadley said, nodding. “We’ll do that. It’ll be so nice for Bumby.”

  “And even nicer for me,” he said. “If I didn’t put myself first, you’d all think I had taken ill.”

  “That was the perfect solution,” Sara said later, thanking Scott. “I couldn’t turn her out but couldn’t keep her here, and with you in the guesthouse, where would we have put Ernest?”

  With his wife and son, I thought, and why hadn’t that solution been foremost in everyone’s mind—including Hadley’s? Especially Hadley’s.

  * * *

  Hemingway arrived a few days later, temporarily alone. “I heard what you did,” he told Scott at dinner that night. “There’s no finer, truer friend. All of you,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “you’re incomparable. A man counts his fortune in the number of true and generous friends, and so while I’ve hardly got two francs to rub together, I am a rich man indeed.”

  To celebrate his new books (Torrents just published and Sun forthcoming), Sara and Gerald hosted a party at the casino. Every person we knew on the Riviera that spring turned out for the party; of course they did. Who would miss a Murphy event, regardless of the purpose? It was certain to feature wonderful food, great music, and even better company. Pablo and Olga were there, and Coco Chanel, who I’d been wanting to meet. The MacLeishes, the Myerses, Man Ray, Diaghilev, Dottie Parker, Dos Passos, and a new fellow, a Canadian writer and friend of Hemingway’s named Morley Callaghan. It was, for me, another version of the scene from our earliest days in Manhattan, the Princeton boys now supplanted by this influential bunch.

  That such a thing was happening on Hemingway’s behalf hadn’t sat well with Scott, who’d been grumbling, too, about the “war boys’ club” of Hemingway, Dos Passos, and MacLeish, all of them writers who’d been in the thick of things during the Great War, whereas Scott’s attempted sacrifice had been thwarted by the armistice.

  We were dressing for the party, Scott standing at the mirror adjusting his tie, his mouth set in a hard line. He was wearing one of his better suits, nicely cut, brown summer-weight wool, and wore a striped tie that matched the color of his eyes. Except for his expression, he looked as good as I’d seen him lately.

  He said, “Not to take anything away from Ernest, but I had a book out this spring, too—as if anyone gives a damn.”

  “A story collection’s different.” My intent was to sound fully supportive, but Scottie, who’d just helped herself to one of my lipsticks and was using it like eye shadow, distracted me. “Here, sugar, give that to Mama. I’ll show you where it goes.”

  I looked over my shoulder at Scott. “It’s just an assemblage of stuff you already published.”

  “Which took a damn lot more effort than Torrents!” He turned from the mirror. “Jesus, Zelda, does she really need to be wearing lipstick? Nanny!” he yelled, then said, “Nobody appreciates how difficult it is to get a story in the Saturday Evening Post. Christ, they’re all agog at Ernest’s fifteen-hundred-dollar advance when I’m getting twice that for a short story.”

  Lillian appeared, assessed the situation, and swept Scottie out of the room with a promise of fresh lemon parfait.

  I said, “Maybe they’d appreciate it more if you did; you’re always disparaging the slicks and saying how you hate writing for ’em—as if somebody’s holding your feet to the fire ’til you spit out another flapper tale.”

  “My feet are to the fire. And if I don’t complain, they’ll all think I’m done with serious work, finished trying to be relevant. I need the money, and I need my novels to be taken seriously.”

  “Honestly, Scott, I don’t see how you can have it both ways, or why you even persist in trying. What’s wrong with being purely popular, as long as the quality is high? Look at Ziegfeld—do you suppose he worries about his critical reputation?”

  “He doesn’t need to worry, he’s a millionaire.”

  “Yes—because of dancing girls and bawdy songs and sentimental tearjerker, crowd-pleasing acts. And yet everybody thinks he’s tops.”

  Scott checked his collar and adjusted his tie once more. “The standards are different in literature.”

  “But they don’t need to be—they’re arbitrary, and you all just perpetuate the problem by acting like they aren’t. A coupla critics decide what’s important, what matters, and then you all go along with it like it’s been decreed by God himself!”

  “You’re oversimplifying. Literature is an art, it has an effect—it matters.”

  “I’m not saying otherwise. But good is good.” I followed him down the hallway to the front room, my heels clacking on the marble tile. “And there’s all different kinds of value, all of ’em legitimate. Fine artists understand this; why don’t writers? And why is this serious literary acclaim so important to you anyway? You’re popular, beloved—Deo, you still get fan mail from Post readers every week!”

  Scott sighed. “Let’s just go,” he said.

  At the casino, Hemingway looked different than he had when I’d seen him last. Smug in one way, edgy and watchful in another. Thanks in large part to Scott, he’d taken a great stride forward in his career and likely had a sense that things were going to improve even more in times to come—but he’d also begun shedding some of the very people whose friendship, guidance, and influence had led to his progress. Now his eyes seemed to be saying, Which of you want to latch onto me? Which of you will be of use to me next? Which of you can be trusted to serve my purposes? All around him he saw good prospects and faithful supporters—except when his eyes rested on me.

  With a glass of champagne in one hand and caviar piled upon toast in his other, Hemingway raised his glass and said, “What a fine set of friends you are, and how fortunate I am to be here among you. To the Murphys I give my humblest thanks and highest regard, for there are no finer people on the planet.”

  Gerald bowed. “We couldn’t be prouder of you. As many of you know, Ernest has been away watching the bullfights in Madrid. Tell us all about the corrida!”

  He did, endlessly, and Hadley, the ever-dutiful wife, stood by getting slowly d
runk.

  I did my best to tune him out by talking with Coco Chanel. Sara had said Coco was involved with the Duke of Westminster, and Dottie Parker had said Coco saw Edward, Prince of Wales, too. I wanted to know which of the men was behind the astonishing diamond, pearl, and sapphire choker she wore to the party with her simple white sheath dress. And her eyebrows—they were so artful and expressive; I wanted to find out whether she did them herself.

  While I sought distraction, Scott couldn’t seem to separate himself from the attention his great good friend was commanding. Every time I glanced across the room, there he was at Hemingway’s elbow.

  If Hemingway was the king that night, then Scott was the court jester—or he tried to be, at least. Midway through the party, just when Coco, hand to throat, was saying, “This incredible decoration was a gift from—” Sara found me and pulled me aside.

  “He’s asking the oddest things of the other guests. I wonder if you ought to claim a stomachache or something and have him take you home.”

  “Only to turn back up like a bad penny later,” I said. “You know how he’s gotten. Leaving has to be his idea or it won’t stick.”

  “Well, his idea right now seems to be finding out what color underwear the women have on, whether the men believe extramarital intercourse is a sin, and whether Dottie might be—and I quote—‘a fine piece of tail despite her big mouth.’”

  “Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. He’s feeling a lot of pressure to turn in his novel, which of course isn’t nearly done. All of this attention on Hemingway…” I shrugged. “You should get Gerald to talk to him—he’s sure to have better luck than I would.”

  I went to the ladies’ room, just to escape all the nonsense. It turned out to be no escape at all, though, because there was Hadley, sitting on a chair in the corner, crying.

  “Oh, Zelda,” she said when she saw me, “I’m the biggest fool. Ernest and Pauline have been carrying on for God knows how long, he doesn’t even deny it. What am I supposed to do with this?”

  I had no answers for her. Maybe I ought to have put her together with Coco, who might have enlightened us both about the impracticality and undesirability of giving one’s whole self to any man—for all the good it would have done.

  When I saw Scott next, he was attempting to juggle three glass ashtrays and was managing pretty well until some man I didn’t recognize called out, “Say, Fitzgerald, when are you ever going to write another book?” Scott threw one of the ashtrays at the offender, grazing the man’s head.

  “Enough!” Gerald hissed. He took Scott’s arm and led him toward the door. “You might have killed him. Christ almighty, Scott, go home and sleep it off.”

  Scott’s eyes brimmed with tears. “I’m sorry.” Gerald turned from him and Scott clutched his hand. “I’m sorry. Please, don’t make me leave.”

  I had to intervene. “Scott, darling,” I said soothingly, “your aim is a little off, yet. Let’s go back to our place and practice a little by chucking some rocks into the water. We can come back later.”

  His bleary eyes lit up. “Yes! Grand. That’s just what we’ll do,” he said, and I led him out of the casino wondering how I was ever going to survive the summer.

  * * *

  There were so many people at the Riviera that year, and Scott was making it his business to befriend every one of them. In addition to those of us attached to the Murphys, there were theater and film people like Rex Ingram, whose film studio in Nice was a sort of second Hollywood, and playwright Charlie MacArthur, and actresses like Grace Moore—we’d first seen Grace in a musical during our honeymoon in New York—plus a number of those playboy types who enjoyed being wherever the actresses were.

  Scott was forever meeting people at casinos and cafés and bringing them home with him, staying up until all hours, and then the whole lot of them would pass out wherever they happened to be when drink got the better of them. Mornings, I’d sometimes lead Scottie past a snoring man draped over a chair; or we’d see some actress, her eyeliner now raccooned around her eyes and lipstick bleeding around her mouth like a clown’s, sprawled in a garden chaise, undisturbed by the raucous gatah-gatah! calls of the pintail sandgrouse out for their morning drink.

  To save my sanity, I tried to give most of my attention to painting. My head was still full of Larionov and his abstract work, his passion for rejecting conformity and realism in favor of works that expressed. My new oil would feature my impression of a young girl in a swaying orange dress, and a cheerful little dog as her companion—if I could get it right. With all my new education, my ideals had grown far loftier than my talent could accommodate.

  The other problem was that Villa St. Louis, while ordinarily beautiful and serene, was the last place I wanted to be. Hemingway was there almost daily—and though I couldn’t know for sure, I suspected he was feeding Scott a steady diet of advice on how to manage a “crazy” wife like me. One evening during cocktail hour, Hemingway had said in front of everyone, “A woman who knows how not to be a distraction to her husband’s work and career is a good and fine and honorable woman.” He apparently had two such women, and if Scott took his advice, Scott might yet have one, too.

  * * *

  Though my colitis had improved a great deal since I’d taken the cure in Salies-de-Béarn, new twinges of pain made me scared that a relapse was imminent. Fear dragged me down and stole my appetite. I woke almost every day in a fog of dread that took an hour or two to shake off. Everything was bad, I thought, and getting worse. When I learned that Sara Mayfield was coming to Antibes for her summer holiday, I actually cried with relief.

  We met at a tiny café in the old-town section of the city, in view of the Marché Provençal, a covered outdoor market where vendors hawked fresh beans, parsley, carrots, berries, scores of spices, hundreds of cheeses, ropes of dried peppers and garlic. There were bunches of lavender, buckets of roses, baskets of turnips, potatoes, squash. Alongside all of this were silk scarves dyed in colors even rainbows hadn’t thought of, tied like nautical flags along a length of clothesline and waving in the sea’s breeze.

  We’d hardly ordered our shrimp cocktails before I started in about Hemingway’s latest insult. “They go out drinking all the time, and he knows Scott will be useless in every way afterward. He encourages Scott’s bad habits and then blames the effects of them on me.”

  Sara said, “There’s something not right about him.” She was quiet for a few seconds. “I’ll guess you don’t know what Bob McAlmon has been saying. I wasn’t goin’ to tell you, but—”

  “Saying about what?”

  “About who; Scott and Hemingway, that’s who. McAlmon says that something scandalous happened between himself and Hem a while back, and that now it’s Scott who’s caught Hemingway’s eye, if you know what I mean.”

  Skeptical, I shook my head. “I never heard this.”

  “Who would tell you—besides me?”

  “He thinks Hemingway’s a fairy?”

  “If you believe ‘it takes one to know one,’ then I’ll guess he knows that’s the case.”

  “He’s a fairy?”

  “They say he goes both ways. Could be our mighty Hem does, too.”

  “I don’t know…” I said, thinking of that night outside the Dingo bar. “He propositioned me once—and now he’s got two women tangled up with him. I wrote you about Hadley and Pauline, didn’t I?”

  She nodded. “He tried to rope you into his sordid circle? What did you say?”

  “That he’s got nothin’ on Scott. You can bet he didn’t like hearing that.” The recollection chilled me. “Scott doesn’t know. No one does, so don’t say anything.”

  Sara reached for my hand. “He’s a shit, Zelda. You should give Scott an ultimatum: his pal Ernest, or you. Pick.”

  “And if he doesn’t choose me, then what do I do, run home to Montgomery like some whipped dog?” I couldn’t imagine it. Montgomery, compared to Paris?

  “Of course he’ll choose you. He’s crazy about you. Yo
u have a daughter together. You’re his muse.”

  “Yes, well, he doesn’t need a muse if he’s going to spend all his time working on someone else’s book.”

  Our food arrived. I picked at mine and said, “I just can’t imagine what the appeal is; they’re about as alike as parsnips and pachyderms.”

  “Maybe it’s this,” Sara said. “Scott thinks he’s being the hero, while Hemingway thinks Scott’s worshipping the hero.”

  I nodded and sighed. “Sounds about right. Do you really think McAlmon is telling the truth?”

  Sara speared a shrimp. “Why would he say it otherwise?”

  “Why do any of them do the strange things they do?”

  “The real question is, what are you goin’ to do?”

  “Wait it out, I guess.”

  37

  The first time I’d seen a doctor about my stomach troubles, I’d been reluctant to describe all the symptoms. It’s so much more embarrassing to talk about such disorders with a man than with, say, a girlfriend—more embarrassing, even, than discussing fertility troubles, with those intimate how-often, what-position, do-you/does-he questions. I’d done it, though, and that doctor, who was old and pleasant and sympathetic, made it as easy on me as it could be made.

  The prospect of going through it all again with a stranger made me reluctant to seek care when the pains came back and refused to leave. For days, I put off taking action, staying in bed while Scott took off for his adventures and Lillian took Scottie off for hers. The so-blue sky and sea outside my window taunted me, Here we are, here we are, so I closed my eyes and slept … until I was awakened one afternoon by a strange man standing at the foot of my bed beside Scott.

  He had beady eyes and thin, firm lips and dealt with my assessment real matter-of-factly, which I appreciated. Even so, I was mortified the whole time.

  “The pains are where?… You see blood every time or only sometimes?… Describe the stool’s consistency…”