Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  Tootsie announced, “We’re just waiting on Tilde and John. With all the last-minute arranging, we can only hope she remembered that you all settled on today instead of Monday.”

  Scott checked his watch. “What I should have arranged for was a car to pick them up.” He turned to me. He looked like a horse at the starting gate waiting for the bell. “Scribner’s store is just two blocks down. I can’t wait to show you the book—we can go right afterward, if you like.”

  “Yes. Yes, of course, I can’t wait to see.”

  “You two,” Tootsie said. “It’s your wedding day!”

  “It’s our everything day,” I told her.

  It was ten minutes before noon. Scott said, “We should go in and get things situated.”

  “I’ll stay on post and keep an eye out for them,” Newman offered.

  Tootsie said, “Then if they’re late, you’ll miss it. That’s silly. Come on.”

  Father Martin led us inside through the towering wood doors. The church’s interior was enormous, and so stunningly beautiful in its architecture and finishings that I didn’t know where to look first.

  A long, straight ribbon of vanilla marble flowed far ahead of us to a magnificent altar. The ceiling towered overhead, formed by pale, graceful arching stone beams that seemed to bloom from tremendous stone columns that rose a hundred or more feet to the ceiling. Among the columns at floor level marched unending rows of polished wooden pews, nearly all of which were full.

  I whispered, “These people, they’re not all here for us?”

  “No,” Scott said. “We’re going to the vestry; that was the compromise, since you didn’t convert. Noon mass is about to begin.”

  The ceiling’s arcs merged at regular points along the way to the front of the church, creating what looked to me like a row of poinsettia flowers. Interspersed high up the walls between the arcing beams were stained-glass windows depicting biblical scenes. Below, both sides of the room—if room was even the right word for this space—were lined by even larger window scenes, all glowing brightly in the midday sunshine. Statues, presumably of Roman figures, gazed down at visitors from pillars and nooks in poses of classic boredom, as if to say they were beyond such things as whatever impressed mortals, that heaven was really the thing to see.

  Every surface, be it stone wall or ceiling, wooden balcony or bench, was sculpted or carved into one kind of artful form or another. Was all this about religion—an expression, say, of God’s supposed glory? Was this, somehow, about being Catholic in New York City? Maybe all the world’s great cities had cathedrals like this.…

  For the first time, I had a glimmer of the immensity of the planet, of lives being lived as routinely or as vividly as my own had been at any given moment. The world contained who knew how many Pennsylvania Stations and St. Patrick’s Cathedrals. If New York offered these two treasures within an hour of my arrival, what else would I discover here? What music? What dancing? What books? What plays? Beauty and art such as I’d never really considered were everywhere in this city, and probably all around the globe—and here I was, in this magnificent example, about to marry a man who had just added his own work of art to the collection.

  When we were about halfway to the front of the church, I stopped and turned in a slow circle to take it all in. Marjorie did the same, saying, “Oh, I do wish Mama had come.”

  “Our parents say they’re too old to travel so far,” Tootsie explained to Father Martin. “And I’m sure Scott’s parents wanted to be here as well.”

  “Certainly,” the priest said.

  I said, “You could park an airship in here!”

  “Indeed,” Father Martin replied. “We’ve considered the option—renting space to the government, should there be a need of maintenance funds.”

  “Sellout crowd today, though,” Scott said.

  Tootsie nodded. “I guess they heard that Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald was about to be married here.” She winked at me. I pinched her arm.

  * * *

  The vestry, though relatively intimate in size, was outfitted with rich wood millwork and leaded-glass windows. I breathed more easily in here. In this space, I could focus again on why we’d all come to be here in the first place. I could focus on Scott. How handsome and distinguished he looked in his dark gray suit, a finer cut than I’d seen him in before. He looked like the man he’d said he was going to be, and I thought, I will never doubt him again.

  “It’s nearly time,” the priest said, inviting us to stand before him.

  I looked at Tootsie and asked, “Any sign of Tilde?” Tootsie shook her head.

  Scott said, “Father Martin has a full schedule today. Let’s get started.”

  “But she’ll hate to miss it,” Marjorie said.

  “We could end up waiting all afternoon.” Scott looked at me; I nodded and he said, “Go ahead, Father. We’re ready.”

  With Tootsie at my elbow and Ludlow Fowler at Scott’s, the priest said all the things that needed saying in order for the Church and the state to consider us lawfully wed. While he spoke, I let his words flow over me. I stared into Scott’s eyes, seeing there all the happiness, the pride, the love, the promise that we’d been striving for, together, since that July night almost two years earlier.

  “Now.” Tootsie nudged me.

  “Oh—yes, yes, I do.”

  We exchanged simple wedding bands, then kissed sweetly, to the applause of our small audience. The door opened then, and a young man admitted Tilde and John into the room.

  “You’ve just missed it,” I said, going to my sister, whose unstructured dress and loose coat did a good job of disguising her advanced pregnancy—though of course the very fact of her wearing that style of clothing indicated her condition.

  I put my hand on her belly and asked the baby, “Was it you who made them late?”

  “The train.” Tilde put her hand over mine. “But the good news is that the motion lulls him to sleep. This child is going to be an acrobat.”

  John squeezed my shoulder. “So he’s made an honest woman of you?”

  “Can you believe it?” I said, as Scott joined us. “They claimed it’d never happen, but here I am, a happily wed woman.”

  “One who’s got a date at Scribner’s.” In my ear Scott added, “And then the Biltmore.”

  “Naughty,” I whispered.

  Tilde took in the vestry’s scene. “Was the ceremony lovely?”

  “It was quick. Here.” I lowered my voice to imitate the priest’s. “‘We’ve come together before God on this fine day in order to ensure that these two crazy kids don’t go to the devil.’” Then I kissed Scott the way I’d just done at the ceremony’s conclusion and said, “‘What God has joined together let no bunch of sisters interfere with.’ And,” I said in my own voice, “now we’ve got to get going.”

  Marjorie said, “What, Baby, just like that?”

  “I’d like to see the book,” Newman said. “Buy a copy, even.”

  Tootsie told him, “Later. Let this be their adventure. Besides, we’ve got to feed poor Tilde, who I’m sure is famished.”

  I hugged Tootsie. “Thank you.”

  Tilde looked crestfallen. “It would be so much nicer if you joined us. Tootsie, why didn’t you help them set up something?”

  “They didn’t want any fuss.”

  “We’ll visit you after the honeymoon,” Scott said.

  I nodded. “We’re off, then. You all have a nice time catching up. Marjorie, get a copy of the book for the Judge and take it home, would you? I’ll write to all of you; so long!”

  Scott and I strolled the two blocks to Scribner’s store hand in hand. I was so busy looking at everything around us that I didn’t realize we were at the store until Scott pulled me over to a shop window.

  “Here she is.”

  The window display featured a number of books individually. Copies of Scott’s, though, had been built into a pyramid that dominated the display. In front of the pyramid was a sign:
<
br />   At only twenty-three years of age, Mr. F. Scott Fitzgerald is the youngest writer for whom Scribner’s have ever published a novel.

  I said, “Is that true?”

  Scott nodded.

  “This is my husband’s book!” I shouted, pointing to the display. Passersby smiled. I turned to Scott and said, just to him, “And this is my husband.”

  10

  At the Biltmore Hotel, I couldn’t resist petting every polished brass railing, every gilded table, every brocaded chairback along the way to our suite. I twirled beneath the crystal chandeliers, posed in front of the clock. I admired the brass buttons on the elevator operator’s uniform. I admired the elevator. After a light meal in the hotel’s lush dining room, I admired the three bottles of bootleg champagne awaiting us in our suite—sent over by Scott’s Princeton friends, who I’d be meeting Tuesday night.

  Soon after admiring the champagne (and its bubbles, and its flavor), I praised the wide bed and the way it accommodated the two of us no matter which way we lay or shifted while we made love. All this was so much grander than the life Scott had led me to imagine, and while I’d foreseen good things, this was simply beyond.

  “Are we rich?” I asked.

  “We are unstoppable.”

  We slept late on Sunday, lazed in bed with a room-service breakfast of fruit and cream and muffins, bathed together in the marble tub in the afternoon, then spent the evening in the Broadway district. Supper first, at a little diner on Forty-third Street, and then, as promised, a performance of Ziegfeld’s Follies at the New Amsterdam Theatre. By the time we took our seats and the curtain went up and the stage revealed its remarkable sets and even more remarkable performers and, most remarkable of all, the Follies Girls’ resplendent beaded, sequined, feathered, shimmering, sparkling costumes, I could only stare and grin and wonder at the crazy luck that had put Scott and me together and brought us to this place.

  On Monday, we took a picnic lunch of cold fried chicken over to Central Park in the early afternoon. I hadn’t expected statues or artful bridges or colorfully tiled tunnels. “They even make their parks like this?” I said, repeatedly, turning it into a joking refrain as we walked along the paths and over the bridges and beside the lakes. We ate in a sunny spot on the steps of the Bethesda Terrace near the Angel of the Waters, a benevolent statue that rose from the center of a wide, shallow fountain-pool. At the angel’s feet were four cherubs that Scott said were meant to represent Health, Peace, Temperance, and Purity. I laughed at that. “The first two hardly matter if you have to mind the last two.”

  “That’s my girl,” Scott said.

  * * *

  Tuesday, I got my first real taste of what it was going to be like to be married to F. Scott Fitzgerald.

  We had only just finished getting dressed when a knock sounded on our hotel-room door. A one o’clock appointment time for Scott’s first magazine interview had sounded reasonable when Scott mentioned it on Saturday afternoon. That was before either of us realized we’d be staying up until near dawn every night. New York City’s diversions were irresistible; if we could have survived without sleeping at all, we’d have done it.

  Scott said, “Am I presentable?” as the rap on the door sounded again. “Coming!” he yelled.

  I straightened his tie and kissed him. “Don’t be nervous.”

  “Not a bit. He’s a Princeton man.”

  Scott opened the door to Jim Ellis, a balding man of about thirty who had a soft, round face and eyes like a spaniel’s. His brown suit jacket looked tight through the shoulders and at the waist, and its sleeves rode up over his fraying cuffs. The overall effect was that the suit had shrunk, or its owner had expanded, or possibly he’d borrowed it last minute from a roommate or coworker. Ellis was a features writer for a magazine I’d never heard of. Some little start-up tabloid, Scott said.

  Ellis shook Scott’s hand. “Thank you for agreeing to talk with me. Our readers are eager to get to know the man behind the novel.”

  “Glad to do it.”

  Scott led him into the sitting room and indicated a chair to my left, where the man dutifully sat down. I smiled at him as though he was as important to Scott’s career as Mr. Charles Scribner himself.

  “Jim Ellis, meet my lovely bride of three days, Zelda Fitzgerald.”

  Zelda Fitzgerald. What a foreign sound to my ears!

  I crossed my legs, letting my knee show, and leaned forward to offer my hand. “It’s a pleasure.”

  Ellis’s face reddened and he took my hand in a quick, shy clasp before turning back toward Scott. “Congratulations on your marriage.”

  I recognized Ellis’s type. In my experience, there were two kinds of men. One type—no matter how plain or how poor he might be—is always willing to at least try his luck with an attractive girl. The other type looks upon all of those first types with envy. Ellis was among the second group. He probably wasn’t married, or if he was, I ungenerously figured he’d found a girl even less confident than himself, a pairing that was sure to perpetuate a race of timid, boring people you’d never invite to a party unless for some reason you’d taken a shine to them and wanted to lift them out of their misery.

  While Scott sat, Ellis took out a notebook and turned to a page where he’d already written some notes. He pointed at the copy of This Side of Paradise that sat on the table between his chair and Scott’s. “I have to say, I read the novel and I fully agree with the Times: ‘As a picture of the daily existence of what we call loosely college men, this book is as nearly perfect as such a work could be.’ My sentiments exactly.”

  Scott nodded his thanks. “I’m always especially interested in how it plays with fellow alums.”

  “I wish my time there had been more like I hear yours was. I was a bit of a hermit.”

  I said, “Oh, I can’t believe that. I’ll bet you were just a sensible fella.”

  He glanced at me. Now his ears had gone red. He said to Scott, “What a thrill it must be to get a gold seal from the Times—and you being just twenty-three, first book…” Ellis shook his head with obvious envy.

  I said, “He is impressive, isn’t he?”

  “Why, thank you, darling.”

  Ellis asked him, then, about how closely the experiences of Scott’s main character, Amory Blaine, reflected Scott’s own life.

  Scott said, “Loosely. I’ve put a character into a version of my personal history, is what I’ve done.”

  “So Blaine’s an alter ego.”

  “A somewhat naïve one, yes.”

  “Well, sure, of course, that makes sense; you couldn’t write him so wisely if you were him.”

  Scott beamed.

  “Now,” Ellis continued, “about the women in this book—”

  “It’s a novel about flappers—you know the term? These independent, morally modern girls?—a flappers’ story, for philosophers.”

  Ellis nodded and made a note. “And the selfish girl who breaks his heart—Rosalind. Is she…” He glanced at me again.

  I said, “She bears me some resemblance, it’s true—but you see, I married my Amory.”

  Scott added, “But only after her Amory proved he had a far better outlook and future than our poor hero here.” He thumped the book. “Zelda was used to the finer things in life, things I couldn’t provide until now. She wouldn’t have me until I’d proven myself capable and had a few dollars in my account.”

  I said, “Actually, it wasn’t quite as—”

  “Darling,” Scott said, opening his cigarette case, then snapping it shut, “I can’t believe it, but I’m out. Would you ring for some while I finish up with Mr. Ellis?”

  “Sorry?” I said, surprised that he’d interrupted me.

  “Cigarettes. And something for you, Ellis?”

  “If they’ve got a ham sandwich. I missed lunch—”

  “Sure,” I said, “but I just want to explain that I didn’t—”

  “No one thinks the worse of you for making me wait, darling. Women
have to be practical.”

  I stood up and, in a tone suited to my supposed character, said coolly, “How about I just go find the concierge personally?”

  Neither man replied, but I felt their eyes on me as I crossed the room. As I opened the door, I heard Scott saying, “These flapper girls, they’re like racehorses.” I slammed the door closed behind me. To hell with them, I thought. Let them find someone else to play fetch.

  When I returned ninety minutes later, Ellis was gone and Scott was seated on the floor with half a dozen newspaper clippings laid in front of him. His nearly full cigarette case sat opened on the end table nearby.

  “You said you were out!”

  He stood up and came to me. “That was just a ruse, so that you’d stop trying to straighten the story. I didn’t want you to dampen Ellis’s interest. Did you see how he looked at you? To him, you were Rosalind. In the future, if anyone should bring up the subject of Rosalind being like you, don’t split hairs; play it up. Be Rosalind. That’s what they’re hoping for.”

  I took a cigarette and lit it from his, dragged on it, then exhaled slowly. “But I’m not her. To start with, she’s not Southern, not even a little bit. She’s New York society, and I sure am not that.”

  He waved away the protest. “Artistic license.”

  “And she’s a prissy snob, wouldn’t you say?”

  “What, for following her family’s wishes and choosing a wealthy man over Amory? She’s practical. Chill-minded, we might call her. These aren’t bad traits necessarily. It’s all about the context, all about how the traits are put to use.”

  “You want people to see me like that? Selfish? ‘Chill-minded’?”

  “Anyone who knows the real you knows you’re warm and generous and smart. ‘Most Popular’ girl at Sidney Lanier High School—that’s indisputable. For the papers and magazines, what difference does it make who you really are—or who I really am, for that matter? It’s like in advertising: give the public what it thinks it wants, and they’ll lay down their cash.”

  “Thinking they’re getting some sob-sister confessional about us, sure. I’d think you’d want the book judged on merit.”