Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  Home for him, though, would be New York, the city of his dreams. He’d told me how his Princeton friend Bunny Wilson had lived in Manhattan before the war, working as a reporter, sharing an apartment with a couple of men and a great many books, the clamor and attractions of the city all around them. Scott envisioned a life like Bunny’s, not a life like he’d have here in sleepy Southern Montgomery, where the liveliest feature of a hot afternoon was a spinning ceiling fan.

  “Aren’t you thrilled?” Tootsie said, giving me a hug.

  “Yes, course I am. Who wouldn’t be?”

  Scott returned to Montgomery briefly, to help close Camp Sheridan down. We pretended not to worry about where he’d live, spending most of our time together kissing passionately in out-of-the-way alcoves at the Club, or in the back row at the Empire Theater while some picture or other played. We joked about how our romance seemed always to have a musical accompaniment. “I bet that’s how Lillian Gish feels, too,” I said.

  On a damp, cold early-February day, we went out for a walk in a stiff wind under scudding clouds just so we could be alone for a while. At the corner of Sayre and Mildred Streets he took my hands and said, “I’ll send for you, would you like that? New York isn’t much colder than it is here today.”

  I stared at him in surprise. His face was ruddy, his eyes bright and hopeful. “Is this an actual proposal?”

  “I can repeat it in candlelight over dinner, if that makes it feel more official—but, yes, I want you to marry me.” He dropped to one knee. “Marry me, Zelda. We’ll make it all up as we go. What do you say?”

  I looked around at my neighborhood, at the familiar homes, at the street sign that bore the Sayre name, at the sidewalks and post lamps and trees that had seen me through years of footraces, bicycling, roller skating, bubble-blowing, tag-playing—and, more recently, strolls with fellas who were as eager as this one to turn me into a bride. I loved Scott with all the enthusiasm of the most ardent eighteen-year-old girl, but did I love him enough to leave my home forever?

  He saw the indecision on my face and, rising, said, “You don’t have to answer now. Think it over. I’m yours, Zelda, if you’ll have me.”

  * * *

  When I closed my eyes that night, I saw myself as if I stood at an actual crossroads:

  I’m out in the country. The air is still, and all is quiet around me as I wait for Fate’s wind to blow, to push me in one direction or the other.

  Standing there, looking down the long dirt road, I know that if I let Scott go, I’ll most certainly end up married to some nice, proper fella from a good family whose people have deep roots in the South. I’ll be the same girl I’ve always been, only the parties I go to will take place in drawing rooms instead of the Club or the Exchange Hotel. My husband will be, say, a cotton grower who golfs and hunts and drinks fine bourbon with his friends. My children will have colored nurses who mind them while I go to luncheons with my girlfriends and plan all the same kinds of social and cultural events the young me has taken part in over the years. I know this life, can see it clearly, love it the way I love my family, understand it, have no real desire to do anything differently.

  Looking down the road in the other direction, I see the life Scott offers me, the life he outlined at the end of our walk. It’s more unpredictable than Alabama’s weather in springtime.

  To start, he’ll go to New York City, where he’ll find some kind of writing job that will support us reasonably well, he’s pretty sure, and then he’ll send for me. He’ll find us some place to live—an apartment, which will be old and small, he says, but cozy. Somehow, with my help, he says, he’ll get his novel published and take his spot among the top writers of the day. We’ll socialize with literary people and his friends from Princeton, who he’s sure I’ll find delightful. Sooner or later, we’ll have kids. In the meantime, we’ll be able to gorge ourselves on the kinds of entertainment we both love: music and dancing and plays and vaudeville. It will be an adventure—adventure: there’s a word that worked on us both like a charm.

  I could easily have chosen either life. But only one of them included the unique fella whose presence lit up a room—lit up me, and that was saying something. The question was, could he make it all work out? Which way was the wind going to blow?

  I was eighteen years old; I was impatient; I decided, Never mind waiting for the wind. Around three A.M. I crept downstairs and placed a phone call to Scott’s quarters. When he came to the phone, I said, “You’ll make it worth my while, right?”

  “And then some.”

  * * *

  “Look at you,” Sara Haardt said when I arrived at her parents’ house for tea one gorgeous, fragrant afternoon in May. “Could you get any lovelier? You look like Botticelli’s Venus.”

  Sara, born “blue” and always a slim girl, was thinner than the last time I’d seen her, and pale as ever. “And you’re Mona Lisa,” I said. “Think of the attention we’ll get if we appear in public together.”

  “I can’t imagine you’re wanting for attention, all on your own.”

  I wasn’t. Though Scott had sent his mother’s diamond ring and I wore it with pride and pleasure, my social life was going on pretty much as it had before. The local fellas, all home now from France—except for the dozens who would never come home—seemed not to mind my long-term unavailability so long as in the short term I could still do a good two-step, and tell a good joke, and climb onto a chair or table now and then to demonstrate how well the little bit of fringe on my dress collar swayed when I shimmied. Also, Second Sara and I were volunteering as assistant wedding planners with Mrs. McKinney. Also, there was my painting class, where I was on my third pass at perfecting a dogwood bloom. Also, there was tennis. And now that the golf course had greened up, I was working hard on my drive, so as to maybe win the women’s amateur trophy at the tournament next month.

  I trailed Sara into the Haardts’ parlor, where the maid was laying out the china tea service on a table near two floral-chintz chairs. Outside the picture window, three fledgling cardinals, their feathers sticking up in tufts, crowded together on a magnolia branch. I could hear their chatter through the glass.

  Sara said, “What’s the latest on Scott? No one can believe you’ve actually allowed a man to catch you—and take you off to New York City! What do your folks say?”

  “Oh, they had a fit when I announced our plans, but I told them, ‘I adore Scott. There’s no one else like him. I’ve found my prince.’ Daddy rolled his eyes, you can imagine. But Scott’s wonderful is all,” I said with a sigh. “Course, before he can carry me off, he has to do this quest, you know. Hardships must be overcome. Dragons must be slain. Then he can return for me, triumphant.”

  “You’ve been reading Tennyson, haven’t you?”

  “Isn’t Lancelot marvelous?” I said. Then I leaned back and propped my feet on the table. “I used to think I’d never want to leave here, even for a fella as impressive as Scott, but now Eleanor’s at her sister’s in Canada, and you’re in Baltimore most all the time, and my brother and sisters are away—well, except Marjorie—and, I don’t know, plenty happens, but nothing happens.”

  Sara nodded. “I’ve been to some of the most interesting lectures recently. Have you heard about this new subject, sexology?”

  “Don’t let your mother hear you say that word.”

  “She went to one of the lectures! I was so proud of her.” Sara poured our tea. “Sexology is concerned with women’s power within the intimate relationship, and about understanding our unique physiological qualities so that we aren’t shamed by our desires. We live in historic times, you know. Women are going to get the vote when Congress comes back into session and finishes ratification.”

  “Sounds like a witch’s spell. Ratification—turns you into a rat.”

  Sara swatted me. “It’s going to turn us into actual persons with rights,” she said. “Women will be able to choose our next president.”

  “Right now, I’ve chosen me a hu
sband, if he stops promising and actually comes through. He sold one story this spring, to some fancy magazine called The Smart Set, then spent the whole thirty dollars they paid him on a feathered fan for me and flannel pants for him. He can’t find work he likes—he’s writing advertising copy for ninety dollars a month and living in some terribly depressing apartment near … what did he say? Harlem? Some place kind of in the city but not really. He hates his job, but he keeps saying, Soon, and I have to tell you, the more he says it, the less I believe it. How long is soon? It isn’t days, or weeks, or a season. It’s a placeholder is what it is, no measure at all.” I leaned toward Sara. “Do you think I’m foolish to marry him? Tell me. I trust your opinion.”

  “Does he love you—and I mean genuinely, for the special person you are and not just some idealized feminine object?”

  “He does, but—”

  “But what?”

  “If he doesn’t succeed, he’ll be miserable. I’d have a miserable husband and a miserable apartment. Romantic as I am, I’m pretty certain love does not conquer all. Plus I haven’t had a letter from him in two weeks. He’s got this whole other life. Other friends.”

  “So do you, from his perspective,” Sara said. “Give him a little more time. If he regards you the way you say he does, he’s a rare man, Zelda. Even in times as modern as ours is becoming, most men don’t see any reason to get well acquainted with more of a woman than her vagina.”

  “Why, Sara Haardt,” I said admiringly. “Goucher’s given you quite the vocabulary.”

  “Are you ever serious?”

  “You’ve known me my whole life.”

  “Right.” She laughed. “Most women hear things like I just said—and I don’t mean only that word—and want to put their fingers in their ears. ‘What about romance?’ they say. ‘What about love?’ We can have romance, love, sex, respect, self-respect, and fulfilling employment in whatever interests us, if we like. Motherhood doesn’t need to be our whole lives—it can be one feature in a woman’s broader life, the same as fatherhood is for men.”

  “You really think so?”

  “If we had easy, legal ways to prevent pregnancy—other than the obvious one, I mean. Those are coming, too, thanks to women like Margaret Sanger.”

  And to women like Sara, who’d led the Montgomery campaign for women’s rights. I said, “You are impressive, Sara Haardt. I really ought to at least try to be more like you.”

  “What fun would that be?”

  “That’s the problem in a nutshell, isn’t it?”

  * * *

  In late May, I got bronchitis with a cough so severe that it kept me housebound. While I waited for the fever and cough to break and for Scott to report back on a lead he’d gotten for a newspaper job, I read. First was Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, which Daddy had given me. “Some food for thought,” he said, “now that you have to sit still for a spell. See if it doesn’t open your eyes about your future.”

  That wasn’t the book for the job; that one amounted to a dry bunch of Stoic platitudes everyone had heard before but no lively person actually wanted to observe. “Do not act as if you were going to live ten thousand years. Death hangs over you. While you live, while it is in your power, be good.” The man was a killjoy. Clearly, joy-killing was Daddy’s intention, too.

  The eye-opener was Plashers Mead by Compton Mackenzie, which Scott had sent. Its protagonist, Guy Hazlewood, resembled the romantic poet Scott said he saw in himself, and its heroine, Guy’s fiancée, Pauline Grey, was a passionate woman Scott said reminded him of me. These characters were older than we were, and their circumstances were different from Scott’s and mine, yet in reading the story I felt as if I was living a version of it. It was the strangest thing.

  There was a line in the book, in the chapter titled “Another Summer,” that jumped out at me, stuck itself into my brain and would not leave me alone. A friend of Guy’s said this about him to Pauline:

  He’s such an extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let himself do nothing in the end.

  That friend was speaking directly to me.

  The newspaper job Scott was trying for: Did that add up to “nothing”? Scott didn’t want to think so. For him, such a job appeared to be an answer to the problem of how he could support us properly in New York. But that was only one little part of things. He was giving too much credit to the idea that if he secured a new job, he’d be able to put the rest of his plan into action. New job, new wife, time for writing, cash for the theater and parties, great book, literary fame—he would make it all happen at once, by God, or die trying.

  It was an impossible plan.

  6

  A few days later, Mama was on the phone with Tony when I came into the front hall. “I’ll wire you the cash,” she was saying, talking too loudly and leaning too close to the mouthpiece, as usual. She didn’t trust telephones and treated them the way she’d treated Grandmother Musidora when Grandmother’s hearing had nearly gone. “But this needs to be the end of it. You know how the Judge feels about a man living within his means—” She caught sight of me. “Your sister’s here; do you want to say hello?”

  She held up the receiver and I took it, while she moved out of the way.

  “Hey, Tony,” I said, my voice still raspy, “when are you comin’ to see me?”

  “Oh, soon,” Tony said.

  (soon, soon…)

  “Can’t get time away from this damned job right now. If I don’t act like I’m supremely grateful to muck around in the swamp measurin’ saw grass so’s Montgomery can have a highway to Mobile, there’s fifty unemployed former soldiers who will.”

  “Well, we sure do miss you. Maybe I’ll come pay y’all a visit once I know I won’t infect you. I have all kinds of time.”

  “Meanin’ you still haven’t set a wedding date.”

  “Scott’s still tryin’ to work out the details.”

  Tony laughed, but it wasn’t a happy laugh. “I know fellas like that, senior engineers, here, fussin’ over this and that while the rest of us go gray. Better marry a farmer—they know ‘perfect’ doesn’t exist.”

  “Those senior engineers, though, they’re just makin’ sure it’ll be a good road. Right?”

  “It’ll be no road unless someone gives them a swift kick.”

  “That’s what I’m afraid of.”

  That night, when the house was quiet and there was only the sound of crickets at the windowsill and frogs in the trees, I sat at the desk in my bedroom and composed a letter. It took hours of careful thought—much longer than I’d expected—and, nauseated, I tore up my efforts twice, wanting to believe that what I was attempting to do wasn’t necessary. Then I thought it through again and got back to work.

  In the end, the letter was brief:

  Dear Perry,

  What a fine time we had last weekend in Atlanta!—but I’m afraid I went just a little too far by accepting your fraternity pin. Blame the gin. I regret having to wound such a tender heart, but your pin is enclosed. I can’t accept it while I’m still promised to someone else. That may change, though, and if it does I’ll certainly let you know.

  Until then—

  Zelda

  I tucked the letter, along with a pin from an old beau, into an envelope, which I then addressed quite deliberately to Scott.

  * * *

  Sara Mayfield was with me when Scott’s reply arrived the following week. Mama had sent her up to my room, aware that I’d been morose for days but unaware of the reason. When Sara arrived, I’d heard Mama say, “Go see if you can cheer her up. My moody children, goodness…” I couldn’t tell Mama what I was up to; she’d have clucked about it endlessly and made everything worse.

  Now Sara sat next to where I lay on the bed with damp eyes and the letter clutched in my hand. She patted my arm and asked, “What does he say?”

  The lump in my throat made it hard for me to answer, so I handed her the letter, which was as brief as mine had been and am
ounted to Never contact me again.

  Sara read it. “Wow, he sounds really hurt. But then, that’s what you wanted.”

  “Mm.”

  “He’ll be happy in the long run, I guess. If he gets his book published and all.”

  Wiping my eyes, I nodded my agreement.

  “And if he loves you truly, he’ll love you then, too. You had to do it, Zelda.”

  “For his own good.”

  “And yours.” She took my hands and pulled me up from the bed. “Now come on, it’s hot and I’m thirsty. Let’s go down to the drugstore and have us some ice-cold dopes. There’s more to life than fellas, right?”

  “Not really,” I said. My smile felt weak, but it was a start.

  * * *

  Ten days later, Scott stood in the hall of my house. “I had to see you,” he said breathlessly, while Daddy scowled at us from the library’s doorway. “This is all wrong.”

  He looked as desperate and miserable as I’d been when I’d gotten his letter. He wore a light brown suit that he’d obviously slept in—and run in, it seemed, likely all the way from the train station. Sweat was beaded on his forehead and made shiny trails along the sides of his face.

  I took his hand; it was moist, too. With a glance at my father, I said, “Come outside.”

  As I led Scott to Mama’s rose garden, he said, “It was all my fault for taking too long. Come back with me—we’ll get the first train and get married right away.”

  My heart pounded in my chest. Yes! Buy me a ticket, I’ll pack my trunk! I tried to say the words, they were right there in my throat, but—

  He’s such an extraordinarily brilliant person that it would be terrible if he let himself do nothing in the end.

  Yes, I know, I thought—but I was stubborn, too, and he was right there with me looking so hopeful and impassioned, and I didn’t want to let him down and I didn’t want to give him up.