West of Sunset

by Stewart O'Nan

“I gave those up. Too much work.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  He couldn’t be sure if they were joking anymore. All we have is work, he could have said, but refrained. Now that they’d stopped moving he felt tired and letdown. Long ago the novelty of travel had worn off. Even before that last summer—’29, that cursed year—they’d run out of places to go, and reasons.

  Scottie was lying on the couch with her book, and sighed when he tried to rally her for dinner.

  “Don’t be a sour Pie.”

  “Be a sweetie Pie,” Zelda finished.

  “And please put on something nice. We’re going to be out in public.”

  She gave Zelda’s shirt a quizzical look. “Yes, Daddy.”

  “Thank you.”

  She changed in their room and came back wearing a smart dress Helen had helped her pick out.

  “Don’t you look darling,” Zelda said, plucking at Scottie’s shoulders like a tailor.

  “Daddy bought it for me in Hollywood.”

  “Tres cher, n’est-ce pas?” There was no reproach in her tone, though for months they’d been jousting over her canteen bill.

  “Oui.”

  “Mais tres jolie aussi,” Scottie said.

  “C’est vrai—comme toi, chou-chou.” She kissed her on both cheeks, and while he was pleased, he had a sudden vision of Mrs. Sayre, her tottering walk and horsey rear.

  He couldn’t get used to her new size, or her wardrobe. As they descended the grand staircase, he imagined everyone in the lobby was staring at them, this mismatched family. At dinner he watched her for any sign of mania, but she ate at the same pace as both of them, and made polite conversation, laughing with Scottie when he got a spot of tartar sauce on his tie and reminding him of the oyster stew at the hotel on Capri. He remembered the hotel but not the stew. She skipped dessert, encouraging them to go ahead, then declining a bite of his trifle. He was so accustomed to diagnosing her, every slip a symptom, he didn’t know how to stop.

  After coffee they strolled the boardwalk beneath strings of naked bulbs, taking in the same flashing taffy parlors and midway games and dark rides that amused Sheilah in Ocean Park and Venice. He’d been gone three days now. He had an urge to cable her, send flowers, anything to let her know he hadn’t forgotten, as if she might. Knowing it was wrong didn’t change the feeling, only made the shadows stretching across the sand into the black water more sinister. In a thriller he would be the murderous husband, Zelda the helpless victim, the humid night a moody prologue. As much as he might protest, at heart it was true. To save himself he’d killed what once was best in him, and to his shame discovered he’d saved nothing.

  “It’s nice to be out at night,” Zelda said, breathing deep and looking skyward. “It’s a shame there’s no moon.”

  He hadn’t noticed, and sought it out, as if she were wrong. Scottie copied him.

  “I’m on the top floor, so I always know where it is. That’s how the ancients told time.”

  “Many moons,” Scottie said.

  “Blue moon, harvest moon, hunter’s moon. Waxing and waning.”

  “So it should be a low tide,” Scott said.

  “The high tide will be lower and the low tide will be higher.”

  It sounded like prophecy. It wasn’t something she would have known in their previous lives. Even if it was just a rote by-product of the hospital library, again her new abilities surprised him. One of his larger worries was her lack of a discernible future. Now he could picture her at home at her mother’s, paging through books, rocking on the swing, working in the garden. It wasn’t merely to assuage his guilt. He’d wanted her to be happy before he met Sheilah.

  It was only the first day, as Scottie noted later, while Zelda was using the bathroom, but she seemed calmer, less frenetic.

  “We’ll see how she does tomorrow,” he said. “Thank you for not commenting on her shirt.”

  “If she could stay like this it would be nice to see her.”

  He thought so too, though it was probably impossible.

  He let her have the bathroom next, giving Zelda time to get settled, then when it was his turn, took his pills and brushed his teeth thoroughly.

  “Good night, Pie.”

  “Good night, Daddy.”

  He could stall only so long.

  In the bedroom Zelda was waiting for him. She hadn’t turned out the light. She was in bed, her doughy shoulders poking from the covers. Even if there had been pajamas in the lost and found, she would never wear them. Her habit of shedding her clothes at parties, unlike his, wasn’t a drunken stunt. She was at heart a naturist, happiest on the beach, open to the sun, free of any worldly constraints. It was her wildness that had attracted him, the desire to join her boldness to his own. He’d misread her—willfully, he suspected—as so often he’d misread himself. It wasn’t her fault.

  He turned out the lights to change into his pajamas and then stumbled against the dresser trying to get his leg in.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just clumsy.”

  The sheets were clammy. He could tell he’d be hot later. In the dark he could make out the square of the open window, silvered from the glow of the boardwalk. Far off, softly, with the regularity of breath, the surf boomed. It had been months since they’d been alone like this. In Virginia Beach she’d been sick, lashing out at Scottie and him, then lapsing catatonic. Now she seemed fine. He didn’t want to do anything to ruin it, and lay still as a mummy, hoping she’d go to sleep.

  He thought of Sheilah in her brassiere, how different the two of them were, and what that meant. As well as he knew himself, he was helpless when it came to love—if that’s what it was. His entire life he’d given himself wholly to only one woman. A romantic, he never imagined he could or would again.

  He needed to tell Zelda, though he worried what the truth might do to her. What it would do for him was just as uncertain. For years now they’d pretended to a deathless bond, when long ago they’d stopped relying on each other for their daily happiness.

  With a creaking of springs she sat up and pushed herself out of bed. She walked hunched over, her skin ghostly in the reflected light, taking baby steps, arms held in front of her, feeling her way like someone blindfolded. He was afraid she was coming for him, but when her knee discovered his bed, she circled the foot and groped her way to the window, where she stood in silhouette. They were on the fourth floor, the drop high enough to be fatal, yet he didn’t move.

  She sighed appreciatively, a wistful simper meant for him.

  “What?”

  “Remember the stars in Monte Carlo?”

  “Of course.”

  “I used to wish on them. Every time we went there I wished we’d win a million dollars.”

  “What happened?”

  “I was young and foolish. I should have wished for something else.”

  “You can still wish,” he said. “We can still use a million dollars.”

  “Don’t make fun.”

  “I’m not.”

  He sat up. She had her back to him, and the longer she stood there the surer he was that, if only to comfort her, he would go to her and take her by the shoulders, rest his chin on top of her head and gaze out over the sea so she wouldn’t be alone.

  “There,” she said, turning from the window, her face shadowed.

  “What did you wish for?”

  “If I tell you it won’t come true.”

  She crossed the room to him. Illogically, pettily, despite everything, he fixed on her new body. She came around the bed and he closed his eyes, as if that might erase his guilt, then, unable to resist, peeked. She’d stopped right beside him, brazen as an Amazon. Instead of getting into her bed, she knelt by his and laid her head on his chest. Out of reflex or common decency he stroked her hair, and lying there staring
into the darkness, he thought it didn’t matter that they were married, or that he loved some long-lost version of her. In his heart he knew it was wrong, and yet he couldn’t push her away. He didn’t know how he would explain it to Sheilah, but he would always be responsible for her.

  “Okay,” he said, patting her shoulder. “It’s late.”

  “Just a little longer.”

  “Just a little.”

  He thought she must be uncomfortable, kneeling on the bare floor, but she didn’t waver or complain. There was something terrible in her obeisance, a bloody tribute laid at his feet.

  “Thank you, Dodo.” She pushed herself off him and stood, lingered palely above him a second, almost posing, as if giving him a chance to reconsider, before getting into her own bed.

  “Good night,” she said.

  “Good night.”

  Beyond the silver window, the waves broke and foamed, endlessly. If her wish was to go home, to be free again, he had the power to make it come true. If she wanted them to be together the way they had been, the time for that had passed. He didn’t know what to wish for besides her peace of mind—a lie, since it depended on him. Why did every wish of his seem impossible? Whatever happiness he might find, her misery would always be his. As he gnawed on the problem with her breathing right beside him, he thought he’d never get to sleep, and then, as he was imagining the boardwalk going dark string by string, the touts and candy butchers locking their shutters against the fog, his pills drew him down into their murky undertow—a familiar surrender—and out of the world.

  The next day she was fine, swimming like a fish and beating them at hearts. That night she came to him and he held her the same strange way, and then again their last night, ritually, as if this were now permitted them. It was harder to leave her when she was good—as if condemning an innocent—and after putting Scottie on her plane he stopped in the airport bar and had a double gin. He remembered ordering a second, then nothing until Albuquerque. He was sprawled on someone’s wet lawn, a sprinkler arcing over him. His money was gone and there was blood on his jacket, and when he called Sheilah, before he uttered a word, she told him she would not be spoken to like that and hung up.

  THE RICH GIRL

  He thought they would make up, but she stayed away. It was his fault. She didn’t like him when he was drinking, and he was drinking with real purpose. Three Comrades wasn’t his alone anymore. While he was gone, for no reason—as he’d promised he wouldn’t—Mankiewicz had brought another writer onboard.

  Scott knew him from New York: Ted Paramore, an ex-Broadway hack who’d snubbed him and Zelda at the Plaza when they were the city’s reigning couple. To even things, he’d sent him up in The Beautiful and Damned, calling a sniveling character Fred Paramore. His understanding, at first, was that Paramore had been brought in to help tighten the structure and shore up any soft spots in the original script, which Mankiewicz said he liked on the whole, but soon it became clear that he was trying to take over.

  Paramore had a dozen credits, most of them hijacked, and knew how to jigger a story conference. Instead of helping Scott make the script better, he questioned long-settled choices, down to the names of the three heroes, taken directly from the book. Mankiewicz listened to his suggestions as if Paramore were an equal—as if he’d written anything of consequence. Scott fought against the obvious but was overruled. He wasn’t surprised. In all his dealings with Hollywood save one, the collaborative process was a case of the narrowest majority agreeing on the broadest effects to please the widest audience. The one exception, as he told anyone who’d listen, was Thalberg, and Thalberg was dead.

  “The lucky bastard,” Dottie said.

  Line by line, scene by scene, Paramore was exacting his revenge, and Scott couldn’t stop it. Each week came new instructions to dynamite his carefully turned work. Though they shared a hallway, outside of Mankiewicz’s office they didn’t speak. His secretary delivered his revisions to Paramore’s, and vice-versa. Every knock on the door promised another assault. Occasionally, when Paramore had done more than his usual violence to his words, Scott thought of crossing the hall and beating the little weasel to his knees, and would have if he didn’t need the paycheck.

  “What do you think the rest of the world does?” Dottie said. “We don’t all get to hobnob with countesses.”

  “He has a German officer say ‘Consarn it.’”

  “How do you say that in German?”

  “Let’s ask the countess,” Alan said.

  At the Garden he drank with Bogie and Mayo, doing dizzying backflips and punishing half-gainers, staying in the pool until the stars were out and his fingerprints shriveled. Like any bachelor, his fridge was empty, and Dottie and Alan had to prod him to eat. He ordered in sandwiches from Schwab’s, washing down the salty pastrami with cold beer. Sitting in a camp chair in the shallow end, he watched the balcony of the main house for Alla but there was nothing, just the darkened windows.

  Sheilah kept putting him off, saying she needed to see the marquis, leaving the reason unspecified. Scott saw it as punishment. While he was jealous, he was also angry with her. He’d told her he was an ugly drunk, and at the first sign of Mr. Hyde she disappeared.

  That he’d warned her only meant he knew better.

  “Knowing doesn’t do anything.”

  “It has to do something,” she said.

  Lately they couldn’t get beyond these impasses, her silence over the phone an indictment. Admitting he was wrong wasn’t enough. She wanted promises she could hold against him when he trespassed again. He didn’t tell her how many times he and Zelda had played this scene, at how many different pitches. His bats lasted for days then, expeditions through strange neighborhoods by freight elevators and fire escapes and back doors in alleys that opened at the magic word, the usual rules of time suspended in pursuit of rooftop sunrises and slow dances in the middle of bridges, ending only when he’d run out of money or friends, so that he would have to go home and face the damage, the needless waste. Once, inadvertently, he’d hurt her, slamming a door to cap an argument, not realizing she was chasing him. One side of her face ballooned, bruised black, and he vowed he would change. To his shame, he was still the same man, just older now, and tired.

  I’m so glad we could all be together like old times, Zelda wrote. The sea was warm and so were you and the Pie. I already miss the oysters and sandy sheets. The Beachcomber has aged gracefully, like a grandame wrapped in Irish lace. Dr. Carroll says Christmas is a possibility, but don’t you think I might try to make a go of it at home? Mama’s wrist is better and Sara can drive me if you think I’m ready. Here it’s fall and every sunny road leads back to dusty summer and your tie waving like a flag on the boardwalk.

  He knew too well how quickly she could turn, especially after a good stretch, and expected word, any day, that she’d attacked someone, or hurt herself, or fallen into that faraway state he’d come to understand as her last hiding place. Retreating himself, he couldn’t see her breaking free.

  It was typical for him to be stirred up after a visit. In his dissipation he was almost grateful he didn’t have to face Sheilah, except that he missed her. He sent her roses with poems begging forgiveness. They didn’t move her, but, as he’d figured, she was too polite not to acknowledge them.

  “Please stop,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m running out of vases.”

  “I’ll buy you more.”

  “I don’t want more. I want you to stop drinking.”

  “I’ve stopped.”

  “It’s nine thirty in the morning.”

  “I haven’t had a drink in two days.” Which was true, if you counted today.

  “I mean permanently.”

  “I’m trying,” he lied.

  She still wouldn’t see him, so it was into this bitter limbo, one afternoon as he was stewing at h
is desk in the Iron Lung, that a wire arrived for him, not from Ober or Max or Dr. Carroll but Ginevra King.

  She was in Santa Barbara, visiting her son Buddy at a clinic, and she’d heard Scott was working at MGM. Next week she had to come down to L.A. to take care of some business, and she wondered if they might get together.

  His immediate reaction was that of a fugitive cornered by his pursuers. He hadn’t spoken with Ginevra in twenty years, and hadn’t expected to the rest of his life. He had loved her purely, with an undergraduate fervor, their romance mostly epistolary, his few visits to her family’s place in Lake Forest heavily chaperoned. It was there that he first discovered the sequestered world of the privileged—the circuit of summer homes and northern resorts funded by the Chicago fathers and favored by the newly moneyed—to which, despite his shanty Irish cynicism, he aspired, and to which, by her side, he was admitted. After she’d thrown him over to marry the son of her father’s partner, he still dreamed of her house, the French doors open to the stone terrace, the lawn sloping down to the dock and the glittering water, a lost idyll he would try to recreate again and again, never succeeding more than temporarily, though on the page he came close. At one time he would have been gratified to know she was thinking of him, but that was long ago. He thought, if not happy, he was reconciled to looking back at her role in his adolescent sadness with a wistfulness that time and the consolation of art had gradually sweetened to melancholy. That was the Ginevra he missed, the Ginevra of infinite possibility and perfect memory, not this Ginevra Mitchell, whose unfortunate son was heir to the spoils of the last century.

  At the same time he was curious, and somewhat flattered. It was likely she’d read his work, perhaps even seen herself and him in his characters. She couldn’t wound him any further, he figured, and he did want to see what she looked like and hear about her life—as if, by her beauty and special destiny, the hurtful past might be justified. Another, more immature part of him thought that perhaps she’d sought him out to finally apologize, to say she realized she’d made a mistake. Absurd as the idea was, wasn’t her tracking him down a kind of admission? Why did she want to see him, if not to revive their friendship?