by Sally Koslow
As the time stretches since the gun incident, I realize, too, how much I want to be on his side. Like me, Scott is alone. In England, I had the kind heart of Johnny—and somewhere on this earth, my brother Morris—but now I only have acquaintances. Who does Scott have? Zelda depends on him, but can give little back. Scottie is still a girl. Frances is an employee. Many long-standing friends adore him, but he opens his heart to none except in his writing. Scott and I need one another. He is my bread and water, the only man who recognizes my flaws, yet loves me nonetheless, and the only man who has come to cherish my mind as well as my body.
I like being seen as Scott alone sees me, with my secrets and broken places. I am his beloved infidel and he is simply my beloved.
Since we met a few weeks ago, there have been no flowers, no notes, no poems. But I sense him waiting. Well into February, when I can no longer stand to be apart for one more hour, I call.
“I need to know you’ve truly changed,” I say, not bothering with hello.
“I have. I promise you.” He speaks without hesitation, as if he anticipated the call.
“I want to be able to count on you.”
“You can.”
“Then I’m ready to see you.”
“Sheilo,” is all he says as his voice breaks. “Yes, yes, yes.”
A few hours later I hear the huff of his car, a sound sweeter to me than a Mozart aria. He walks quickly up my walk, his scruffy trench coat hanging open so I can see my favorite pink shirt. When I open the door, he hands me one red rose. We stand still, taking each other in. At first we embrace tentatively, yet a moment later I crush him in the way I might if he’d escaped a plane crash. I want to be crushed in return, to freeze this moment and never be separated again. One hand ruffles his hair and with the other, I remove his necktie.
“You,” is all I say. “Darling.”
“Sheilo,” he whispers in response.
Upstairs, our lovemaking begins with cautious civility, but as Scott’s skin warms mine, passion replaces restraint and kisses become more. I cannot pretend I don’t want this gifted soul, with all his complicated humanity. I want us to own one another.
We wake from a doze, arms entangled, our feelings ratified and bodies satisfied. “Day by day, that’s the only commitment I’m willing to make,” I say.
“I’ll take it,” he answers.
Chapter 45
1940
Our life falls back in place, secluding us in a country cocoon. Were it not for premieres in town, we’d see nothing of our friends. When spring explodes, Scott pays to have the pool filled as an enticement for me to stay at Belly Acres during the weekdays. This is a luxury, but he has money trickling in—he’s been commissioned to write a script from his own short story “Babylon Revisited,” and while the fee is just short of a swindle, Scott is pleased. He swims in his own words, reimagining them for the screen, though he barely dangles a toe in the water. “Can’t risk it with the old TB,” says my favorite hypochondriac, who now takes his temperature every four hours. At midday we indulge in a break when Scott paces on the sidelines in a hat and long-sleeved shirt, bellowing orders on how I should fine-tune my breaststroke and crawl. “Arm higher! Slice the water! Every fourth stroke turn to breathe! Kick!”
Our enclosed world is an incubator of creativity. Scott writes while I finish my column and read for the College of One. He’s starting this faux shiksa on the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke. Perhaps he’s called on the same saints for heavenly forbearance, because when he discovers that I incinerated the first editions of his novels, he replaces them with rueful grace, inscribed again, Encino Edition. I’m also taking his urging to heart and trying my hand at my own fiction, which I haven’t attempted since my clumsy detective novel written in London. I am dotting the i’s on “Janey,” a short story about a rebellious daughter with a creamy complexion and widely spaced blue eyes who wrangles with her professor father, who in the 1920s was the literary mouthpiece for flaming youth.
“I wouldn’t exactly call this fiction,” Scott said, not unkindly. “You’d better change it up so the characters aren’t instantly recognizable.”
I take that as a compliment, though I ask, “Since when do you follow this advice?”
The evening hours are when Scott reads me pages from his novel, using his full arsenal of dramatic fireworks. I’m honored when I hear my own descriptions—“at night the Ping-Pong balls on the grass look like stars” or “the cascading California rain sounds like horses weeing”—and hoot when he dismisses a script in the novel as being “flat as an old column of Lolly Parsons.”
It’s not news that the hero’s love interest faintly resembles me, but with additional chapters revealed, I recognize that she transcends a dim replica. Kathleen, who’d been engaged to a king, floats through his pages like my ghost. I once described blueprints a movie director had shown me for a house he wanted to build. There is the construction site where Monroe Stahr and Kathleen consummate their love. “When I’m with you, I don’t breathe quite right,” she whispers to Stahr, re-creating the honesty I risked in revealing this to Scott the first time we danced. Kathleen, who also has “nice teeth for an English girl,” confesses the shame of her past to Stahr, as I did my own history to Scott. Each time I hear new pages I wonder which cadged details will be woven into this fictional tapestry that we hope will reinstate him in the bestseller pantheon. I’m both flattered and horrified.
Tonight when he finishes his reading, I repeat, “Her eyes invited him to a romantic communion of unbelievable intensity,” and ask, “Do you realize you’re offering the world a glimpse into our own love affair, even to how we give one another pleasure?”
He puts on his most cherubic smile. “Nonsense. These are characters, Presh, though if you feel they’re real, I’ve done my job.”
“You’re being elusive.” I get no answer beyond a short, self-satisfied cackle. “You always write your life, don’t you?”
“What else do I have to work with? Even if I were reporting on wrestling alligators, what would interest me isn’t the blood and biceps, but why the lady alligator broke the big guy’s heart. I shake it all up, the good and the bad, and see where the dice land.”
Scott must sense that I’m unconvinced because he says, “If there’s anything you want me to change, I will.”
“Not change, explain,” because I am learning how much Kathleen reminds lonely Stahr of his dead wife. I take the temperature between us, decide that it’s smoldering, and ask the question that’s been on my mind for three years. “When we’re together are you thinking about Zelda?”
I am afraid Scott will brush off my question with a laugh, but he admits, “At the very beginning, I did, a bit. That first night I thought I saw something around your eyes, and the fair hair, which, by the way, Zelda doesn’t have anymore. Her hair is dark now, to match the rest of her.”
“But when you’re looking at me, is she who you see? I need to know.”
This is as important a question as who the real Scott is, the drunk or the gentleman.
Now he takes my hands. “I see only you, Sheilo. You are today. Well, today and tomorrow and forever. The Zelda of almost twenty years ago is long gone, and while out of loyalty and human kindness and a tribute to our history, I will always try to take care of the girl I wed, our marriage has expired in every way but legal.”
These sentiments are a sonata, though I don’t expect to hear what every woman in my position craves: I love you best. You arouse me more. Only you are the true love. Most of all, I want to have a child with you, because I want what you want.
I will never stop hoping that Scott speaks these words, and today I say it straight. “I’d love to have your baby. Could you see us as parents together?”
He looks electrocuted. “Is this humor?”
“With your insomnia the night feeding would be painless.”
He isn’t chuckling. “You would make a loving mother and we would have a perfect child, but t
his is something I can never offer you, Presh. Please don’t ask. I’m not young enough.”
“You’re only forty-three. I give you Picasso.”
“Or rich enough.”
“After Tycoon the dollars will pour in and you’ll feel thirty-five.” As Tatte said, from my mouth to God’s ears. “Please think about it.”
Scott ends the conversation with a kiss. I read this as a definite maybe.
As spring broils into summer, the heat is like a thick bandage binding the valley to the steaming earth. Belly Acres becomes a furnace where the wind dies in the haze. Leaves stand still, and there aren’t enough fans or chilled glasses of Coca-Cola and minty iced tea to make a difference. I dip in the pool first thing in the morning, and again before dinner. It has become too hot to swim at high noon.
“I can’t think in this smelter,” Scott complains early one evening as we sit in the dining room, fanning ourselves and eating puddles of vanilla ice cream.
“We’ll get better cross-ventilation if you push that sticky window higher,” I suggest.
He attempts to raise the window, which refuses to budge, tries again, and snaps back, grabbing his right arm, flailing and shrieking, “What the hell?”
“Scott!” I jump from my seat and race across the room.
He stumbles, spins, and reaches to bolster himself against the wall. “Holy Mother of God.” He has collapsed, moaning.
“Talk to me!” I say, bending over him.
Scott opens his eyes. “It went black for a minute, as if I’d been torched by a hot poker. The pain shot all the way up here”—he points to his shoulder—“and now my arm’s gone stiff.” He reaches for it with his left hand and his face contorts.
“You’re going straight to bed.” I shout for Earleen to help him walk upstairs while I call Dr. Nelson, who promises to get here as fast as possible.
For nearly two hours I hover over Scott, wiping his forehead with towels dipped in ice water. He’s been telling me that a novelist becomes his characters and that he’s begun to feel and think like Monroe Stahr. Is Stahr’s bad heart casting a spell on our newly perfect life?
“Everything’s going well—us, the book, Scottie’s studies,” Scott groans. “Why trouble now?”
“It’s probably nothing,” I lie. “Just close your eyes and rest.”
We wait for Dr. Nelson. And wait. Finally, he arrives, brandishing his stethoscope and forced optimism. After a few “breathe deeplys” and prods he says, “You’ll live, my friend, but I want you in my office first thing tomorrow.”
The next day, anxiously, we report for the exam. A cardiogram proves that Scott didn’t have a heart attack, as we’d both feared. He experienced what the doctor calls a seizure. A warning.
“We’re finished with Encino,” I say when we leave the physician’s office, no less scared. “I’ll find you someplace in town, near me”—and the doctor, just in case. “All that heat and the driving, it’s too much.”
I feel a tremendous yearning to care for Scott now, demonstrating my love in sickness and in health. I wish we could live together, letting me be with him night and day, every day, but Hollywood hypocrisy prevents it. Our relationship may be an open secret, but given showbiz priggishness, should a couple share a household without the holy sacrament of marriage, they’re considered shameful, even in 1940. In our case, since the whole world knows about poor Zelda, I would be cast as a hateful hussy and Scott the cruelest sort of philanderer. Louella and Hedda would make us a bigger scoop second to the United States declaring war on Germany.
We opt for a furnished flat I find on Laurel Avenue, only a block away from me and a short stroll from Schwab’s, since God forbid that Scott runs low on Raleighs and Hershey bars. It’s an entirely unexceptional apartment with a top note of cat-once-lived-here and a saggy couch the green of a rotting pepper, but spacious enough, and given the location, cheap.
We move immediately. The first thing Scott does is hang his map of Europe where he tracks the whereabouts of Hitler’s troops, whom he is sure he could defeat if only the English commanders would take his advice. Next to the map are timelines and charts for The Love of the Last Tycoon. Together, we make short work of unpacking his suitcases and boxes—his new grey suit and tuxedo and the rest of his small wardrobe, records, a radio with reliable reception for war reports and music, books and more books, and for the bedroom, pictures of Scottie, Zelda, and me, including one of the two of us when we spent a weekend in Tijuana; I’m grinning like the ass I’m sitting on. My caballero wears a serape and sombrero, looking as witless as anyone would in that get-up.
Settling in takes all of an hour. During that time his neighbor down the hall entertains us with ear-piercing shrieks, which the landlord tells us she sells for movie soundtracks. She inflicts her entire repertoire on us, which appears to range from “cockroach ahead” to “girl trips on a cadaver.” When the woman finishes a particularly heartfelt screech, we follow it with maniacal laughter of our own. After we calm down, however, I notice that Scott’s eyes droop.
“You nap now,” I say. “Dinner at eight, at my place.” We’ve hired a maid who’ll clean both apartments, go to the market, and cook an evening meal, because even a poor man in Hollywood finds money for a servant. I walk to my flat and unpack the few items I kept in Encino—nightgowns, slippers, lingerie, a blue silk kimono, books, the remaining half inch of my Elsa Schiaparelli perfume, cosmetics, and toiletries. I think about what Dr. Nelson promises: Scott’s heart will heal. It’s a muscle like any other. But for six more weeks, he forbids sexual activity.
Tonight we sleep together at his place. We spoon and the closeness of his warm flesh next to me fills my heart. I am counting the days . . .
Chapter 46
1940
After Dr. Nelson’s pronouncement of a heart seizure, I half expect Scott to limp about with a cane, chewing on a thermometer. I am wrong. Whether the cause is the change of scenery or fear of being classified as a legitimate invalid, I cannot say, but he displays a defiant energy that is resulting in a personal Industrial Revolution. Pages for Tycoon pour from Frances’s typewriter, typed three times: triple-spaced, so her boss can eviscerate the draft with pencil edits; a double-spaced version that suffers through a second polishing, and finally, another double-spaced manuscript Scott may or may not consider to be “finished.”
As someone who zips through one draft of her column, meets her deadline, and moves on, I never fail to be awed by Scott’s perfectionism. Nor is his novel all he is producing. He has another quickie script job, adapting an English play whose plot revolves around a matinee idol undone by drink; Darryl Zanuck seems to think Scott Fitzgerald has the insight to turn this into a wry comedy. Every morning my cinematic soldier marches off with a briefcase of Coca-Cola to meet Frances at the Fox studio. When he returns there are Pat Hobby tales and other stories to churn out, and his continuing correspondence with Scottie, Zelda, Max Perkins, and other regulars. Scott and the United States Postal Service maintain an intimate relationship. With a flourish of epic grandeur, he keeps duplicates of his letters, in case posterity gives a damn. Destiny, take note.
Scott thrums with energy, and appears too occupied to take more than the occasional drink. Does he suppose I don’t notice the odd bottle poking out of the trash? What’s different is that for the first time since I’ve known him, he is drinking to the point of joie de vivre, not oblivion, able to have one or two gins—though never in front of me—sleep them off, and get cracking in the morning. My deepest regret now isn’t for the hurt he’s caused me, almost a year gone, but for the books he might have written during the past decade’s vast swaths of squandered time. At nearly forty-four—his birthday is in September, two months away—I believe Scott is belatedly saying ta-ta to his endless adolescence, as Dr. Hoffman urged last year. He’s trading clownery that brought bums to the house for a muffled quiet that brings chapters to completion. If he seems older, he is also happier.
I say the same for myself
. This busy yet tranquil life is one I choose with a full heart. I enjoy reporting, reading, and tinkering with my short story, though I’m not going to turn down a junket to Dallas for Gary Cooper’s premiere of The Westerner, nor would I mind occasionally dancing to Benny Goodman or Artie Shaw. I can’t say I miss the charades. At thirty-six what I do miss is marriage—going to bed every night with a husband and waking up with him by my side in the morning. I also miss a child, but when I float that subject, as I have now more than once, Scott shuts me down.
This evening—Scott’s birthday—marks two months since we’ve been back together.
We splurge on dinner at the Brown Derby rather than eat the maid’s unrelenting steak, peas, and baked potato. Feasting on shrimp cocktails followed by lobsters big as footballs, we bask in the attention of fawning waiters and random acquaintances. At home later on Hayworth, I dim the living room lights.
“Are you preparing a naughty seduction?” Scott asks.
“That depends on what you wish for. Close your eyes.” My maiden baking effort is a fudge cake that lists at a rakish angle, with shaved coconut rained over the top to hide its patchy, crumb-flecked icing. I ignite an infantry of candles.
Despite Scott’s orations on the theme of tuberculosis, he blows out every flame.
“Well done, Mr. Fitzgerald.” I throw my arms around him. “Happy Birthday, darling.”
“May I assume this lovely confection is your handiwork?”
“This cake may be the inspiration for the word ‘slapdash. ’”
“ You are a confection, and do you know this is the first cake anyone’s baked for me since I left St. Paul? Sheilo, you do make me more content than I have a right to be.”
“Should I cross-stitch those words on a sampler?”
