by Sally Koslow
I take him back once more and try to forgive not only him, but also myself. Later that night we begin with dinner at our favorite Italian joint, where we can’t keep our hands off one another, and make each other dessert at my place. As I offer Scott amnesty, our lovemaking weaves the real and the imaginary while my feelings flood back. I am exactly where I want and need to be, in his arms, hearing him murmur, “I love you. Please don’t leave me. I depend on your love to get me through the day and night.” This brings on a contentment that echoes in my dreams, even after Scott has fallen asleep. I curl myself next to him, our arms around one another. I could stay here forever.
Chapter 32
1938
It’s a given that in each of his novels a lovesick hero, one of the characters Scott refers to as “his brothers,” is his own dead ringer, besotted with someone like Zelda—or at least like Zelda once was—cultured and wealthy. I pretend to be a working girl version of Daisy Buchanan, but if I resemble any of Scott’s characters, it’s his twenty-four-carat fake: Jay Gatsby. Both of us changed our names, concealed our pasts, and with a blast of bravado have created an alias that we pray society will admire. Our similarities extend even to the photographs we display to disprove our deception. We are successful, Jay and I, albeit in undignified fields, bootlegging and gossipmongering, and to the world, we are all confidence. Inwardly, we feel perpetually second-rate.
I am sorry I have read to the end of Gatsby.
After lunch at the MGM commissary, as Eddie and I walk to our respective appointments, I admit that sometimes I’m baffled by Scott’s love for me. He throws back his head and roars, “You’re gorgeous and bright. How many women would be happy with him?”
I turn my voice icily British. “Because he often drinks to excess?”
“You do have a gift for understatement. The party in Malibu?”
“He was trying too hard to show everyone a good time,” I say in Scott’s defense. “He apologized for days afterwards.”
“Let’s not forget he’s also married, and I don’t predict a divorce.”
“Harsh, Eddie.” But true. I concede to myself that most women past thirty who aspire to becoming a wife and mother would have moved on. They also wouldn’t stick with a man who complains about his health, which Scott has started to do, though he continues to smoke nonstop, live off canned turtle soup and Hershey bars, and pop pills to sleep each night and more to rise and shine every morning.
“You could have anyone in this town,” Eddie says. “Me, for example. Why him?”
I flash a grin. “You don’t know the Scott I know,” although I am not sure how well I, or anyone, understands the man I love.
After my afternoon appointments I drive to Martindale’s Book Shop in Beverly Hills. Perhaps I’ll find the answer to why I want Scott so in Marcel Proust’s novel, which Eddie and the others were discussing today at lunch. It intrigued me when Eddie said, “Swann was insanely in love with Odette, but when it ended, he said, ‘She wasn’t even my type. ’”
That night when Scott sees the books I’ve bought, his mouth drops open. “A little light reading, baby? Whatever possessed you?”
I slink off to the kitchen. He follows me, and puts both hands on my shoulders. “Did I insult you? I’m so very sorry. You have the brains for Proust but to tackle him, you need to bite off only a morsel at a time.” At the kitchen table, he grabs the pad I use for grocery lists and hands it back a minute later. “This is what Professor Fitzgerald suggests.” He assigns me ten pages a day of Swann’s Way until I’m a third through, then thirty pages a day. For the last third, I’m to read forty pages a day. Only then can I start the second book, and so on, until I’ve read all seven. He hands me the first volume. “I’ll keep the others for later,” he says.
Over the course of many months—when Scott is back on the wagon and our life is smooth as cream—I read Remembrance of Things Past so slowly I might have been scaling the Alps with a twenty-pound pack. But I smell the madeleine. I drink the tisane and I begin to relive not just the author’s childhood, but my own. I see my white-blond hair fall to my feet as it’s snipped close to my skull. I gag on orphanage potatoes, eyes still sprouting in them. I smell my own urine each morning on the straw mattress where for two years I’m forced to sleep.
Proust’s characters come alive, in particular a Madame Verdurin, who buries her face in her hands at a crisis. Much to Scott’s amusement, I begin to do the same if Flora burns the soup or I forget to return a phone call. As I turn the pages I stop looking for why Scott loves me and I love Scott, and revel in the fact that I can decode the arcane language and enjoy exercising my mind in this new way .
“I’ve never met anyone who’s as quick a study as Sheilah,” Scott boasts to Dorothy.
Months pass—happy months—and when I finish the seventh volume of Proust, he treats me to lobster at the pier, and gives me the novel Vanity Fair, liberated from the studio library. “You need this book more than MGM does,” he says. “You’ll like Thackeray.”
I see myself in Becky Sharp, who fights for what she wants, which, in her case, is position. I fight for acceptance and decide they’re not unrelated. I want to be seen, not as a dumb blonde, but as the intelligent heroine of my own life. Scott sees me that way, the very foundation of our bond. I feel closer to him than anyone else in my entire life.
He follows Vanity Fair with Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, books I read long ago with only a token understanding. He explains their satire. I realize that around him, I might actually be developing a public sense of humor. Since I’ve always obsessed about how I’m judged, I have rarely permitted myself unrestrained laugher. But his gaiety is infectious. He guffaws so hard he almost chokes, taking special pleasure in puncturing pomposity. In front of our friends, I hear myself laughing, too.
One Friday night we attend a screening for Jezebel. At the opener, the voice-over proclaims, “From the Old South, a gorgeous spitfire who was loved when she should have been whipped ,” and we both snicker. Our tittering stops, however, as the story unfolds. Jezebel is an impetuous Southern belle cut from the same satin as Zelda. As the plot unfolds, he sinks lower in his seat, and when Jezebel ends, says only, “Terrible casting. Bette Davis was too hard-boiled for the role.”
I disagree. Bette’s strength did not diminish her appeal. I plan to publish exuberant praise.
For most of the drive to Malibu, Scott is quiet. Shortly before we arrive he comes to life and begins to recite:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
His voice is a caress. Eddie, I think, this is the authentic Scott, not the party drunkard. I feel his love in each phrase and surprise myself by crying. I repeat the lines, “ Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
“Isn’t it unbearably brilliant?” he says. “Each word is as perfect as a note in Beethoven’s Ninth. After Keats, most other poetry is like humming.”
When we get to the house, Scott reads me all of “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” followed by “Ode to a Nightingale,” from which he borrowed “tender is the night” to title his novel. Although I suspect that I am not the first woman to have been the recipient of one of his private poetry recitals, it becomes its own seduction, to which I willingly succumb. With each line, he removes a piece of my clothing as I do the same for him. After we make love, he declaims “To His Coy Mistress” as, under the covers, he lazily traces the contours of my body.
“I’m amazed that men and women who lived hundreds of years ago feel the same way about love I do.”
If my remark is naïve, Scott shows no disdain. “Exquisite writing captures those passions. You discover your longings are universal and you’re
not lonely and isolated. That’s part of the beauty of all literature.”
Writing like his. “You hope to be immortal, don’t you, darling?” I ask in a rush I regret; one thing Scott never kids about is his writing.
“For a few years I thought as much,” he says, after a considerable pause. “Now the second printing of Gatsby is gathering dust in a warehouse and the joke’s on me. But I’m like the athlete who’s let himself go to fat and has decided to make a comeback. That’s why I want to write another novel, Sheilo. I still hope.”
As do I. I squeeze his hand and know better than to speak. He lights a cigarette and turns on the radio. I expect him to find music that matches our mood, perhaps even get up and ask me to dance, but instead, Adolf Hitler’s invective explodes in our bedroom like a volley of grenades, overpowering even the crash of waves we hear through open windows. No translation required.
“I’d like to fly over there and assassinate Herr Hitler before he starts another war,” Scott says, not for the first time. During the Great War he never saw combat, which he regrets, especially when Ernest chides him about this as if it illustrates a character flaw that Second Lieutenant Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald, in his custom-tailored Brooks Brothers uniforms, should have corrected.
“I’ve been to Munich, you know, six years ago,” I say, “with my friend Tom Mitford and his sister.”
“Oh? You’ve never mentioned it.”
“I expected Mozart and marzipan, but I wound up terrified.”
Scott bombards me with questions. I summon answers I’ve shared with no one. I relive the Nazi banners and inescapable swastikas. The boisterous Party headquarters where soldiers Heil Hitlered each other as they goose-walked in glossy, knee-high boots. I paint a picture of SS-Rottenfuhrer Otto von Pfeffel and his gift to Unity and speak of the no-Jews-and-dogs signs and the placard that read Juda verrecke, which I learned meant not just that Jews should die, but that they should come to an agonizing end. I drag it all into the light.
Scott appears spellbound. “You did understand that Hitler is a monster who wants to kill democracy?”
“Not completely. All I wanted was to leave.”
“Did you sense how much he reviles the Jews?”
What I sense is a whiff of rebuke, as if I, Sheilah the giant-killer, missed the chance to single-handedly wage war against the German chancellor. I reel with culpability as well as the cowardice that I spoke of at Tatte’s grave. But I am also getting angry.
“Most people see Jews as noisy, evil, pushy, too smart for their good.” Our own good. “Everyone despises the Jews.” I stop short of adding, even you. My declaration stuns Scott to silence—unfortunate, because I plough ahead. “Your Meyer in Gatsby had not one redeeming trait. He’s a moneylender, obese and disloyal, with hairy nostrils and cuff links made of human molars, and his Yiddish accent is a parody right out of vaudeville.”
I can’t read Scott’s expression. Horrified? Contrite?
“In The Beautiful and Damned isn’t there a Jewish storekeeper with ‘suspicious’ eyes?” I ask, my voice toughening. “Once you portrayed a Jewish movie studio head as slimy and power-grubbing and somewhere”—the tirade gathers speed until I can barely breathe—“I’m positive you wrote of a ‘little kike’?”
Scott’s face flushes. “These are low blows,” he snaps in a voice as loud as my own. “I modeled Wolfsheim on Arnold Rothstein, a gangster who happened to be a Jew. Good Lord, he fixed the 1919 World Series, which to me makes him fascinating, not unlike many of our Jewish friends, and we have plenty. And Jewish bosses.” He knits his eyebrows. “Thalberg was Jewish and a king.”
“Yes, I know, you’ve practically canonized him.”
“Call me provincial—I deserve it—but I’m not malicious. Where is this coming from?”
I’d like to think Scott’s characters simply mirror prejudices of the day, not what’s in his heart. But how can I be sure? “I’m sorry I brought it up. May we change the subject?”
“No, because you’re attacking me,” he says in a slow drip. “I’ll admit my mother, who was as small-minded as she was hideous, probably believed Christian boys were killed at Easter so Jews could drink their blood. But my father wasn’t a bigot and neither am I.” He grasps my wrist and pulls me toward him. “I deserve a clarification.”
I try to wriggle free. “Stop badgering. Please.”
He releases me but asks, “Whatever caused this harangue? You’re being irrational and that, darling, is my department. Tell me, please, what set this off.” His voice is still curdled, though no longer loud. “You’re acting like a child.”
I feel like six-year-old Lily who lost her doll, Kichel. “Scott, I’m sorry. I . . . I . . .” I explode with tears, race downstairs, and slam the door behind me, barricading myself in the small, front bedroom. Scott stands outside and calls my name. After twenty minutes I hear him walk away.
I sob until I have no tears left. I’m crying about my lies to Scott, my lies to myself, my lies to the world, my lies to God. I’ve tried to wear them lightly, but they feel like a hand pushing me under water. In time I am crying simply because I am crying. I wail until I fall into a vacant sleep.
Early the next morning, I walk to the bathroom for aspirin. My head is pounding, and my face is puffy with eyes swollen to slits. I brew a cup of tea and sit on the patio, waiting for sunrise. Hours pass before I hear Scott.
He comes to my side, takes my hand to his heart, and kisses my cheek. “Good morning,” is all he says.
“Scott, I’m sorry,” I say after minutes of silence. “I don’t know what came over me.” But of course, I know. I have been a dormant Mount Vesuvius for half my life. Bei mir bist du schoen . “Please let me explain. But one condition, please,” I place two fingers on his lips. “Do not cross-examine me.” I am ready to crack the seal on my secret, and blurt out the story I never told anyone in entirety.
Chapter 33
1938
I’ve never wanted to reveal the truth about myself to Scott, thinking he has chosen me and I want him to be proud. He shouldn’t feel that the woman he loves is a grubby little waif with a history of deceptions. But I count to ten and begin.
“My parents are dead—that part is true—but they weren’t John and Veronica Roslyn Laurence from Chelsea who perished in a car crash. As I’m sure you’ve guessed by my lack of education, I wasn’t taught by tutors, nor did I attend a French finishing school. I was forced to quit school at fourteen. I did marry Sir John Gillam, but he was my employer, not a family friend. Often we couldn’t pay our bills unless I made some money and”—it feels disrespectful to Johnny, but I feel compelled to tell the truth—“he was impotent. He encouraged me to be with other men.”
Scott hops up from his chair, his eyes widening. “What kind of husband would act this way? He was a pimp?”
“Don’t say that. Johnny is a wonderful man.” I refuse to think otherwise. “Sit down and listen, please. My childhood, I assure you, was the real humiliation.” I’m in the thick of it now and cannot stop, my voice mechanical as I try to tell the story straight. “I come from one of London’s filthiest slums. My father’s name was Louis Shiel. He was a tailor from a shtetl in Russia. My mother spoke only Yiddish and cleaned toilets for a living. After Tatte died, she couldn’t afford to take care of me, so she left my brother and me at a charity institution. That’s where I grew up and went to school, with a shaved head, clothes that barely kept me warm, and inedible food—at the Jews’ Orphan Asylum.”
“The Jews?” Scott gawks as if he is watching a movie. “An asylum?” I expect him to say, “Stop right there, Sheilo—I need to grab a pad and pen.”
I start with the first day at the orphanage, and try to confess every indignity. “I was raised among poor, shabby people. I’m a phony. A sham. My name’s not Sheilah Graham . Those family photos you saw are fakes, and I used to speak like this.” I exhume my Cockney. “Did ya clock the bloody size of that rat?” I describe the squalor of Stepney Green
, not just the vermin, but the lice, the squalid basement flat, the stink of the brewery, and the vomiting drunkards, who terrified me and tried to touch my breasts and bum as I passed them in unlit lanes.
“As bad as Stepney Green was, I am worse. Scott, I slapped my mother as she was dying. I’ve abandoned the faith of my mama and Tatte, who was a pious man. I adored my brother Morris, but cut him out of my life as if he never existed. I have no idea where he lives, or even if he is alive.”
I could have been in a synagogue on Yom Kippur ticking off my sins as I retch up details that reflect my shameful burden. “Before the Marquess of Donegall I was engaged to a rich businessman I loathed. When I broke it off, he”—here is something I have kept to myself all these years—“hung himself because of my rebuff. If Jews believed in hell, I’d burn for eternity.”
The shock on Scott’s face is matched by my own. I’m surprised that I am able to release my sewer of facts, but my lies have been choking me. I’ve talked for an hour, and am left thoroughly drained.
“You can never tell anyone what you know,” I say. “Never.”
As I gave vent, Scott’s face contorted along with mine, but now he turns solemn. “I’m baffled. You say ‘Jewish’ as if it’s your worst humiliation, but almost every tycoon in this town probably grew up in a village one mule ride away from your father’s. The Warners, Louis B. Mayer, even Thalberg with his yellow Rolls.”
I drop my shoulders and sigh. “But you don’t see them making movies about Jews, do you? These men practically invented the American dream, which their films perpetuate.”
It’s Scott’s turn to be breathless. “Granted, but this is also what confuses me. To the refugees who wash up here, Hollywood is a rubbish heap. They’d give anything to have their old life back, mit schlag. They’d return to Berlin or Vienna or Warsaw or even Minsk in a heartbeat for serious philosophizing and some decent pastry. When Max Factor opened his salon, he invited what, a thousand Jews who were also here from Europe?”
