They set up shop in the spare bedroom downstairs. Propped on pillows, he pawed through his boxes of notes, dictating character sketches and background details and ideas for scenes. She was a touch typist, holding her perfect posture as she rattled off staccato bursts, sometimes finishing before he did.
“Read that back to me,” he asked, and she would have it.
She brought her own dictionary from home, and quickly he learned to defer to her on matters of spelling and grammar. She really belonged in college, but maintained that she was more interested in life. She was punctual and unstintingly chipper, helping Erleen in the kitchen and doting on him like a daughter, snipping a rose for the bud vase on his bureau and reminding him to take his pills. Even with the windows open and a fan going, the room was muggy, yet she never complained. After a particularly oppressive afternoon, when they were finished for the day, she came to him formally, as if petitioning for a special dispensation, and asked if she could wear shorts.
Early on, the work was bookkeeping. When he’d gone through all the boxes, he jotted a number by each entry, assigning them to categories she then collated on new pages. He went over these closely, making changes and passing them back, gradually, draft by draft, building a notebook while the fan paddled the sluggish air. Occasionally she couldn’t read his handwriting and had to ask what a certain word was, but for long stretches they could go without talking, their shared effort, like the book’s potential, filling him with contentment. Like him, she was a whistler, the two of them unconsciously picking up each other’s tunes as they worked, twining, falling silent, beginning again. “The Bear Went Over the Mountain.” “Tea for Two.” He wondered if her boyfriend knew how funny she was.
The coincidence of their names tickled him. Franny, he called her, but more often, recalling Proust, Françoise.
“Françoise, take a letter, s’il vous plait.”
“Oui, monsieur.”
I hope the doctor takes into consideration what a peach you were to me through the whole ordeal, he dictated. I’m still in bed but practically recovered, no thanks to the hellish weather. Water has become such a precious commodity that the dam here is guarded by armed constables and ice cubes have become a form of currency. Please don’t fret about my health. It will not be four months. That quack in New York doesn’t know my recuperative powers. The real shame is that it ruined what should have been—and still was, I submit—a triumph for you. I’ve written and told the doctor this. You were heroic and tender and lovely in every way, and I won’t forget it.
Frances didn’t ask what had happened, though he could see she was intrigued. The hospital’s address was an irresistible clue, and once again he struggled with how best to explain Zelda. Rest home and sanitarium were evasions, asylum frightening. He was afraid Frances might see him as tragic, and tried to be matter-of-fact.
“She’s in a mental hygiene clinic.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Thank you. She hasn’t been well for some time now. Lately she seems better, so we’re hopeful.”
“That’s good.”
“It is,” he said.
He was honest, she was sympathetic. So why did he feel he’d betrayed their dearest secrets?
“Is this her?” Frances asked, pointing to a picture of Sheilah and himself at the Cocoanut Grove.
“No, that’s just a friend.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“She is,” he said, noting the innate female prejudice against the better-looking.
He didn’t have to explain Sheilah to Frances, and yet he courted her approval. He was still sending Sheilah roses with breast-beating notes. As he dictated his entreaties to Frances, she must have thought she’d walked into a Restoration farce, though she gave no sign. Friday, when he introduced the two of them, he felt the same trepidation he had that first dinner at the Troc with Sheilah and Scottie, and was relieved when they seemed to get along.
“She’s very young,” Sheilah said later.
“You make it sound like a bad thing.”
“What I’m saying is that she’s at a very impressionable age. She obviously thinks you’re wonderful.”
“I’m not?”
“You can be, when you’re not being an ass.”
“I believe it’s pronounced ‘arse.’”
“Case in point.”
Terrible as it was to confess, during the week, with Frances there, he didn’t miss Sheilah as much. The days were full as Stahr’s Hollywood opened to him, another world. He woke early and worked so she would have fresh pages to type. At lunch Erleen made iced tea with sprigs of mint and served them on the shaded verandah overlooking the pool, taking a chair and fanning herself with her apron in lieu of a breeze. The hills were baked brown. In the distance rose the snow-covered peaks, promising a false relief. He had his one illicit cigarette for the day and they sat listening to the shrilling cicadas, invisible in the trees.
“Well,” Erleen said when he was done, “time’s a-wasting,” and collected their plates on a tray.
His life was quiet, focused solely on the novel. With the heat wave he stayed inside, free to dream, never leaving his keep. If he needed a book from the library or a prescription filled, Frances had her father’s Pontiac. He called her at all hours, rousting her from sleep with lists of things he wanted for tomorrow. He prevailed on her to deliver roses to Sheilah and choose Zelda’s birthday card. No errand was too intimate. A confederate, she disposed of his empties and bought him extra cigarettes. She became his envoy, representing him at the bank and the post office and Western Union. If she were a conman, she could have taken him for everything he was worth—a toothless risk, since he had nothing.
With no job, he was vigilant with expenses, but as the weeks passed and the bills rolled in, his savings dwindled to an alarming figure. In a month Scottie was visiting him, and her fall tuition was due. There was no way he could pay it. He pressed Ober to send the stories to more places and met with the same indifferent resistance. Swanie said it was a bad time of year to approach the studios. Town cleared out in the summer. Everyone was in Malibu or up at Big Bear.
In the midst of his panic, Scottie wrote to say she’d sold an essay on the differences between her generation and his to Mademoiselle. It was scheduled for next month. Could he look it over for her?
KUDOS PIE, he cabled. MLLE FINE DEBUT JE TAIME DADDY
He was proud, yet the news left him feeling sour. He was aware that he was being small, and yet part of him suspected the magazine was taking advantage of her name—a hunch which proved true when he read the piece. Its thesis was that his views were as old-fashioned and outmoded now as the Charleston and bathtub gin, as if that generation didn’t run the country. He told her he admired the wit in it and gently suggested she revise the piece to reflect a deeper continuity between the eras. Without a real cataclysm like war, he wrote, very little changes. It’s impossible for you to know, but 1920 and 1939 have more in common than 1913 and 1919, just as after the coming war 1939 will seem entirely a lost world. The luck I had was being old enough to see the new world clearly and so put in perspective both the admirable and the absurd.
He expected she would ignore him, as usual. A father, his duty was to offer advice in excess and hope some stuck.
While he awaited her reply, he received Pep’s novel about Hollywood, The Day of the Locust. After hearing Sid talk it up, he was afraid Pep might bird-dog his best material, but like Pep’s other stuff it was wildly morbid and overwrought, including a truly marvelous riot at a premiere. There was almost no overlap with what he had planned. In his relief he wrote Pep a glowing note.
A few days later he got a call from Scottie—rare, given the cost of long distance. He thought she might be sore at him.
“What? No. I wouldn’t call you for something like that. This is serious. Right before exams I started having stomach pains. I
thought it was just nerves. I tried buttermilk and Bromo-Seltzer but nothing helped. Finally I went to the doctor. He says I have to have my appendix out.”
“That’s not so bad. Your mother had hers out.” He tried to remember how much he’d paid for the operation, but it was fifteen years ago, and in francs.
“He said it’s not urgent, but I should definitely have it done this summer.”
“You’re not in pain, are you?”
“It comes and goes. I’m sorry, Daddy.”
She spoke as if she’d failed him, when, if anything, the opposite was true. Again he wondered what he was doing here. Seeking his fortune.
“It’s all right, Pie. We’ll figure something out.”
“How are you doing?”
“I’m working,” he said.
He had been, until then. Now he dropped everything to schedule her surgery. She was already going to visit Zelda in Asheville before heading west, the two of them staying in a Saluda boarding house like two matron ladies taking the waters. A few years ago when he’d broken his shoulder, the doctor in the hospital there had done a good job setting it. Was he available then? Perhaps she could come down a week earlier. Could Dr. Carroll give Zelda another week of leave? What time did the train arrive? He called back and forth with a calendar in his lap, and once he’d gotten it all in place, had Frances make the arrangements.
To pay for it, he had no choice but to appeal to Ober. In Scott’s two years in Hollywood he’d completely paid off his debt, more than thirteen thousand. While he hated to go back to their old credit system, an advance of fifteen hundred was nothing against his future earnings. The novel was underway and he had two new stories for him.
Ober wired and told him to try Swanie.
He didn’t want to swear in front of Frances. “Merci,” he said, and set the telegram aside.
Over the decades, how many tens of thousands in commissions had Ober skimmed from his labors? Scott had stood by him when he left to form his own agency. Now that he’d built a stable of moneymakers like Agatha Christie he didn’t need Scott and his problems. Ober had always considered him irresponsible, especially with money. The last few times he’d seen him in New York had been at the end of binges—unrepresentative, he might argue. If this was about his drinking, Ober could have thrown him over ten, fifteen years ago. Why abandon him now when he was sober and doing good work?
DONT UNDERSTAND SUDDEN CHANGE IN POLICY, he cabled. WOULDNT ASK EXCEPT THREE FITZGERALDS UNDER DOCTORS CARE. PLEASE RECONSIDER.
After hearing nothing for a week, he wired Max: CAN YOU LEND ME 600 ONE MONTH. AM BROKE AND SCOTTIE NEEDS OPERATION. OBER REFUSES TO HELP. HAVE STARTED NOVEL.
GLAD TO, Max wired that afternoon. LOOKING FORWARD TO PAGES WHEN READY.
Ober’s response, when it finally arrived, was long and closely reasoned, betraying, in spots, like an editorial, a moralistic tone. Its theme was that darling of the prosperous, self-reliance. By becoming Scott’s banker, Ober had done them both a disservice. He’d hoped that finally squaring their accounts would put an end to the loans and prod Scott to live within his means—which, given how much he’d made last year, were comparatively generous. If he needed more to cover his expenses, he could take on more assignments there, or they could ask Max for an advance on the novel, once he had a sizable chunk of it done.
Though he could argue that he’d never worked harder, or in worse circumstances, there was nothing he could fully refute, and no point. The sentiment was clear. Ober had carried him for years, like the corner grocer in Buffalo extending credit to his mother when they were short. No more. When he was flush Ober would be there to collect his share, but in the lean times Scott would have to fend for himself.
What galled him most was how slowly Ober had gotten back to him after he’d wired the second time. Once again he’d made the mistake of thinking publishing was a gentlemen’s game. Before he wrote to break formally with him, saying how sorry he was and how much he appreciated him and Anne giving Scottie a home, he sent the two new stories to Esquire and offered Collier’s first serial rights to the novel.
Max, who was a gentleman, asked him to reconsider, as if he were being rash, until Scott explained it wasn’t a case of him losing faith in Ober but vice-versa. I’m sure it’s a result of those wintry afternoons memorizing the Baltimore Catechism—apostasy being the ultimate sin. All shall be saved who believe in me.
He had a harder time explaining the break to Scottie, who, with the egotism of the young, thought she was the cause of the problem. She and Zelda were in Saluda, awaiting her operation. He’d made a deal to pay the doctor on the installment plan, as if he were buying furniture, and lied when she asked how much it was. He still had to pay the hospital and the day nurse.
“Put your mother on,” he said. “I love you, Pie.”
“I love you, Daddy.”
Zelda sounded mousy and abstracted, like her own mother. She spoke haltingly in her impassive drawl, the dreamy belle. “You’d like it. It’s cool at night. We’re having a lovely time, just the two of us.”
He wondered if she was drugged. After he’d hung up he realized he hadn’t talked to her on the phone since she was at Pratt.
The day of the operation, he had Frances send Scottie her favorite, gladiolas. She was fine, already bragging about her battle scar. He was at Universal, where Swanie had gotten him on a dog of an academic comedy called Open That Door. A milquetoast geology professor leaves his ivory tower to climb a mountain and finds gold—and romance. Six weeks at three-fifty. It folded after one.
Esquire accepted a story, a reprieve, but he’d lost momentum on the novel, and with Scottie coming, he’d only have to set it aside again. He hadn’t heard back from Collier’s, which worried him. Having broken with Ober and already put the touch on Max, the list of old friends he might implore was short. Just contemplating borrowing money from Sheilah paralyzed him. Out of pride he wouldn’t bother Ernest or Dottie, though, good comrades, they had it to burn. Bogie and O’Hara he didn’t know well enough, or Pep or Sid. Ring would have given him fifty thousand without blinking. Sara and Gerald were a possibility, though Sara hadn’t been happy with him after Tender.
In the end, heeding Ober’s call of self-reliance, he took to bed with his lap desk and ashtray and churned out two more stories for Esquire. Frances sent them airmail, following up with a wire.
He wasn’t new to ruin. He’d ducked creditors before, in Westport and New York, Montreux and Rome. After paying Zelda’s monthly bill at Highland he couldn’t make rent, and so, the day before Scottie arrived, against doctor’s orders, dressed in his rube’s suit, he drove the Ford to a hock shop on Wilshire. Frances followed in her Pontiac, waiting in the lot while he signed over the title and pocketed a hundred and fifty dollars. It would have to last until something else came through. He had nothing left worth pawning.
“Merci, Françoise,” he said as they rode through Hollywood.
“Mais bien sur,” she said.
Scottie was to understand the car was in the shop. He’d promised her driving lessons this trip and used the excuse to have Frances take her out in the Pontiac, the two of them cruising around Encino like best friends home for the summer. Along with her appendix she’d lost the last of her baby fat and her hair was light from the sun. In the afternoons the pool was full of boys from back East. At night they barbecued and sang campfire songs under the stars. Ober, maybe in conciliation, forwarded a check for radio royalties, and the car was fixed. To help celebrate, Sheilah made a rare appearance, meeting them at the Troc for an anniversary of sorts, though, wary of his lungs, they barely danced.
“She seemed different,” Scottie said when they were alone at the end of the evening, sitting in Erleen’s kitchen, eating blackberry pie.
“How so?”
“I don’t think she was having much fun.”
“She’s worried abou
t me.”
“I worry about you too. I don’t know, she felt different to me.”
“You’re not turning mystic on me.”
“Stop,” she said, and regrouped, looking at her hands in her lap, then seriously at him, as if she had grave news. “I told mother, and I wanted to tell you in person. I’m writing a novel.”
“God help you. Is it about us?”
“That’s what she asked. No.”
“That’s wonderful, Pie. And very brave of you, I must say. How far along are you?”
“Not quite a hundred pages. I was hoping, maybe later, if you have time—”
“I’d love to see them,” he said, thinking with alarm that she was ahead of him.
“They’re not ready yet.”
“When they are, just let me know. I’d be honored. Will you be showing them to your mother as well?”
She wasn’t sure of the right answer.
“She’d like that,” he said.
“I will.”
“Oh God, we’ve failed. Our baby’s a writer.”
Her visit raced by like a week at the beach. It seemed she was always leaving. Her last day, she passed her test, acing the course in the Pontiac. At the train station she hugged Frances like a sister, and he felt rich.
Friday the Germans invaded Poland. England and France declared war. It was the first of the month, and he couldn’t pay his rent, let alone her tuition. While the world burned, he closed his door and carefully wrote Gerald and Sara. As Keats said, illness and want are poor companions.
He didn’t wait for them to save him. Monday morning he bothered Swanie, who called in a favor at Fox and got him on the lot. He did a story conference for Everything Happens at Night, a thriller starring Sonja Henie and the Gestapo that Ernest would have loved. He thought it had gone well, but they never called him back.
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