Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  “I’m game for anything.”

  “So I hear, so I hear. How about boxing?” he said, and I made a serious effort not to roll my eyes. “Ever take a turn in the ring?”

  * * *

  Gertrude Stein was what you might call amply proportioned. Her skin was smooth, her features unexceptional save for her eyes, which had the clarity, humor, and wisdom I’d seen in old Aunt Julia’s ancient mother, Mama Clio, who I’d known when I was a little girl. Mama Clio was half-Haitian, half-African, and had the pruniest skin I’ve ever seen; she must have been near a hundred years old when she passed. She knew everything about life and the world; it was all there in her eyes, and she could tell you all about it. Gertrude Stein had those same eyes.

  “I’ve been hearing a great deal about you,” she told Scott after Hemingway presented us to her in her anteroom. “Our friend Sherwood Anderson found your book very satisfying and sent it to me to read, and I’ve found much about it worth reading.”

  Scott smiled—not the polite, secretly condescending smile I’d seen him give to other writers who saw themselves as superior to him, but a genuinely pleased grin. He said, “That’s very good to hear.”

  We followed her into the whitewashed, high-ceilinged main room. Unframed paintings filled every wall; I recognized Pablo’s serene, lovely Head of a Sleeping Woman, which Sara Murphy had praised, and his striking portrait of our hostess, which hung at the head of a long table in the corner to our right. Small statuary done in marble and plaster and carved wood sat on sideboards and side tables throughout the room.

  “Sit there,” she directed Scott, pointing to an armchair near the hearth. “Hemingway, pull up a chair for yourself as well, and ladies, Alice will get some tea.”

  This Alice, who I guessed we were supposed to either know about already or not pay attention to at all, was looming silently nearby.

  She said, “Come.”

  I didn’t imagine that we “ladies” wouldn’t also gather at the hearth, but Alice led us past it into a distant corner of the room. Nice as the corner was—plush wool rug, upholstered settee and chairs, lovely spindle-legged side tables with hand-painted Chinese lamps—it wasn’t central, and I was used to being in the middle of things.

  Alice left us, saying, “Please, make yourselves comfortable. I’ll just be a minute.”

  I must have let my irritation show, because Hadley whispered, “I should have warned you. The wives sit over here.”

  “And you don’t mind that?”

  She shrugged. “I’m not a writer, or an artist either. I wouldn’t have much to contribute.”

  I was both—which neither Scott nor I seemed capable of pointing out, here in the revered Miss Stein’s apartment. And so I said, “Is Alice her sister?”

  “Her … companion,” Hadley said in a low voice.

  “Oh.” I looked over at Miss Stein, trying to see her as the object of anyone’s desire, let alone another woman’s.

  My stomach chose that moment to cramp, and I became far more concerned about those implications than about Miss Stein’s romantic life or whether I was worthy of an audience with her. Rather than tell Hadley about my stomach trouble and have her think her cooking was to blame, I stood up and said, “Well then, I hope you’ll excuse me. Not that it hasn’t been grand to visit with you, but there are other things that need my attention.”

  I stopped beside Scott and said, “Miss Stein, it was purely a delight to meet you. I’m afraid I’ve promised myself elsewhere.”

  Scott looked up at me with surprise and concern while Hemingway joked, “She’s got a date with Pound.”

  “Dancing on a Saturday night—why not?” Then I leaned down and said in Scott’s ear, “It’s my stomach. Stay as long as you like.” I hurried off, calling, “Good night, all,” and barely made it back home in time to save myself an awful embarrassment.

  32

  A typical day that Paris summer would go something like this: I’d paint in the morning while Scottie had her lessons and Scott was still asleep—at this time I was using watercolors and gouaches on paper, which was simplest given the limited space in our apartment. I might have lunch with Scottie or I might meet up at Deux Magots with one of the women I’d met at Natalie Barney’s salon, which I preferred over an evening at Miss Stein’s. I’d paid my first visit when Scott and Hemingway went off to Lyon to retrieve our car, damaged during transit from Marseille. “He’ll be good company,” Scott had said, packing a bag with more clothes and books than he could possibly need. “And I think he could use my counsel.”

  The luncheons sometimes turned into afternoon outings to a studio or gallery; sponge-time, I called those outings, wherein I soaked up everything I saw and was told about Impressionism, Realism, Rayonism, Post-Impressionism, Cubism, Modernism, Pointillism, Synthetism, Art Nouveau—and more. You couldn’t take a step in that district, Saint-Germain-des-Prés, without bumping into art. In addition to the galleries, along the riverfront on Quai Malaquai and Quai de Conti were artists and easels and, truth be told, a whole lot of really bad paintings.

  Scott usually got up around eleven and then, with or without me, went out to the cafés in search of other writers who, like him, were doing a fine job of conversing about other people’s writing while producing very little work themselves. He’d finalized his choices for the new story collection, which would be published the following February as All the Sad Young Men, and talked a great deal about his unwritten next novel, as if by discussing it he would conjure a finished manuscript into being. There’d be wine at lunch—which lasted well into the afternoon—and then came late-afternoon cocktails before he’d return to the apartment to change clothes for the evening’s events. Throughout it all he exuded the same sort of pleasant buzz he must have been feeling.

  Scott’s idea of an evening well spent began with a stroll among the horse-chestnut trees that line the Champs-Élysées, then cocktails at the Ritz, after which we’d often head into the Latin Quarter to meet up with the Hemingways at one or another of the bal-musettes for dinner, dancing, and drinks.

  These had the potential of being good times, and to be fair, I enjoyed myself when the music began and I could set aside every thought and let the sounds infuse me from scalp to toes. A roomful of dancing, sweating, laughing people is a beautiful thing. Scott would dance with me some; more often he and Hemingway would drop out and I’d find them later at a table outside, debating not the finer points of sentence structure or the state of literary theory, but the merits or failings of various boxers whose matches they intended to see, or the intimate lives of their writer friends.

  We would migrate from one place to another, getting progressively tighter and collecting friends as we went, and the party might go on until sunrise, at which time Scott would realize we’d lost the Hemingways hours earlier, Ernest having the self-discipline to leave early and get up, clearheaded, to write the next day. At home, Scott would want sex—except that sometimes his brain was more willing than his body, and nothing I tried made a difference. He’d push me away then, saying, “Never mind,” and we’d both just sleep it off.

  I learned that if I consented to his outings regularly enough, on other nights I could go do what I preferred. On “my” nights, I would join the Murphys, or sometimes just Sara, or sometimes no one, for a performance of the Ballets Russes or a production at La Cigale theater. Here, amid the swelling orchestral music, the grace and beauty of the dancers, was the life of my childhood imagination.

  As much as I loved the spectacle of the dance and the drama, I also loved being able to see the sets afterward, to meet the artists Gerald spoke of with admiration and high regard. In particular, Gerald introduced me to Mikhail Larionov, whose designs for the Ballets Russes that season were astonishing. Larionov fractured color into kaleidoscopic scenes that had sophistication and whimsy, both. You didn’t just view his wild sets and costumes; you felt them, responded to them. Or I did, anyway.

  At the first of what would be many post-
show coffee dates, the Murphys, Larionov, and I ran into Sara’s friend Pauline Pfeiffer and two of Pauline’s friends from Vogue at Deux Magots.

  “So good to see you again, Zelda,” Pauline said. As usual, she wore an up-to-the-minute dress, in this case a gorgeous peony-and-birds print with gold metallic lace sleeves. “Didn’t we have great fun last summer in Antibes?” she went on. “Sara, do say we can all come to Villa America this year—I’m dying to see it done, and Zelda’s so good at that game we played.”

  “We have grand plans to see everyone,” Sara assured her. “Have you met Mikhail Larionov, artiste extraordinaire? He’s promised to share all his brilliant secrets with us. Join us, why don’t you?”

  “You’re sweet,” Pauline said while holding her hand out to Larionov. “Pauline Pfeiffer, not an artist. And thank you, Sara, but no. We’re on our way to the Dingo to meet some fellows.” She made a show, then, of kissing Gerald, then Sara, then me in the way the French do, before wagging her fingers and following her friends out.

  I took Larionov’s arm and said, “Never mind those show-plates; let’s get a table, and then you need to tell me everything.”

  His enthusiasm for his work was boundless. After two hours of conversation, he said, “I have much to add, but I must be on my way. Please seek me out anytime you come to a show.”

  And so I did.

  “Tell me how an artist makes a name for himself,” I urged him during our next meeting, just the two of us this time. “I want to know so I don’t end up like the proverbial grasshopper.”

  He looked at me quizzically, and I explained, “Caught unprepared when winter comes.”

  “Of what winter is it you speak?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t describe it. It’s just a feeling I have—that anything can happen and I need to be prepared.”

  He smiled generously. “A woman of your beauty will never find herself alone. I think you will always be warm when winter comes.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “Just the same: How did you come to work with the Ballets Russes? When Diaghilev says he’s got a new ballet to stage, how do you begin forming your vision? Do you need to see the dancers in rehearsal, or just hear the music, or…”

  We met weekly, then, and I wasn’t exactly deceiving Scott when I neglected to mention these platonic post-performance dates. He was always out when I got home, and by the time he was awake and sober the next day, his mind was occupied with the future, so why volunteer the information and give him the opportunity to overreact? My silence was a protection from distraction, that’s how I thought of it.

  All was well until one night in June, when we attended a small party to celebrate Cole’s thirty-fourth birthday. The party was being held in one of the Ritz’s opulent private salons. Before we went in, though, Scott wanted to pay a visit to the Ritz bar, where he had quickly become a favored patron.

  As always, we were greeted warmly by the maître d’ and the staff of liveried waiters and the bartender, whose regard was maybe one grin shy of obsequious. Here at the Ritz, Scott was le suprême Américain, the role he’d been born to play.

  “Champagne, my good fellow,” he told our waiter. We were dressed in our finery, Scott in a tuxedo with a bow tie, me in sleeveless teal silk and fringe.

  “Monsieur has an occasion?”

  “That’s what I want to know,” I said. “It’s Cole’s birthday, darling. Are we going to practice our toasts?”

  Scott said, “Au contraire; we’re celebrating.” He sent the waiter off, then placed a square velvet box in the center of the table. “I have this, to go with this,” he said, then took a folded bit of newspaper from his jacket pocket and laid it out on the table beside the box.

  The newspaper clipping’s headline read, “Our Own Movie Queen” by F. Scott Fitzgerald, and was followed by the story, my story, the one I’d written back in Great Neck.

  “What’s the matter?” Scott said when I didn’t speak or react. “I know it took forever, but I thought you’d be ecstatic.”

  “I … it’s great,” I said, my eyes scanning the words that I’d labored over. My Gracie Axelrod was now as alive as she’d ever become, here in the Chicago Sunday Tribune. Right below Scott’s name.

  “It’s real exciting,” I added, forcing cheer into my voice.

  “It is!” He pushed the box over to me. “Open it.”

  I did; inside was a black-enameled, diamond-bejeweled film-reel brooch made of gold, about a half inch in size. “I had it custom-made,” Scott said, beaming.

  Had I accepted the gift with grace and gratitude, the night might have ended better. Neither of those feelings came to me, though. My mind was warring with my heart over the disappointment I felt as I looked, again, at Scott’s name beside my story’s title.

  This was my own doing. I’d agreed to let Harold sell the story as Scott’s, never guessing the result would depress me so. We’d gotten a thousand dollars, but where had that thousand dollars gone? What did I have to show for it—except this brooch that, pretty and thoughtful as it was, announced nothing of my talent, my imagination, my skill.

  “I don’t want it,” I said. “It’s lovely, but you haven’t sold anything since winter. We can’t afford this sort of thing right now.”

  Scott’s eyes narrowed the littlest bit, a flinch, really, and he glanced around to see whether I’d been overheard.

  “That’s my concern, darling,” he said heartily, and now his voice had the false cheer. His eyes were wary, as if he was dealing with an impostor; his wife loved gifts, and had always before been thrilled with publication.

  Heeding the warning, I said, “Yes, of course it is. Thank you.” I closed the box and tucked it into my handbag, then picked up my glass and downed the contents fast. I called out, “Garçon,” and signaled the waiter with my glass. “Bring us a bottle.”

  * * *

  Cole was at the piano when we joined the party. The room was afire with gilt and crystal, awash with gleaming silver and white tablecloths, abuzz with music, sequins, beads, feathers. Cole was in the middle of a jazzy tune we hadn’t heard before:

  No one knows what a glimpse of paradise

  Someone who’s naughty showed to someone who’s nice …

  Linda, elegant in a powder-blue sequined suit, greeted us near the piano and said, “He’s test-driving this one—”

  “If you hate it, don’t tell me,” Cole said as he continued to play. “At my advanced age, I can’t handle disappointment.”

  He sang, “‘I’m in love again…’”

  Scott said, “Does it make you think of Jozan, darling?” which alarmed me until he continued, “Linda, did Zelda ever tell you about the man who fell in love with her last year on the Riviera? Poor fellow took his own life when she rejected him for me.”

  “My God!” Linda said. “How awfully sad.”

  Jozan had not done any such thing, but I played along, affecting a bored look. “Yes, but what can you do? Men are so irrational about love.”

  It seemed that Scott had decided to overlook my out-of-character reaction from earlier, so I tried to let myself relax and enjoy the party. Drinking, mingling, dancing: it was a routine so familiar to me that I ought to be able to do it automatically. I found, though, that this time the best I could do was listen politely while carrying a drink with me as a prop; the champagne and events of earlier had soured my stomach and my mood.

  That mood lifted some when Mikhail Larionov saw me and came to say hello. He hugged me with all the warmth of an old friend. “Your art, how does it progress?” he said.

  “Like a snail over boulders,” I told him, aware that Scott had come up beside me. Scott held a highball glass half-full of what looked like bourbon, and I just knew he was sniffing Larionov for trouble.

  I went on, “Paris is too full of distractions for me to get much done. Mikhail Larionov, meet my husband, Scott Fitzgerald.”

  “What line are you in?” Scott said, keeping his free hand in his pocket—and another
warning bell rang in my head. “Do you write? Paint? Fly for the navy?”

  A string trio had taken over for Cole, and he and Linda were hamming things up on the dance floor with an exaggerated waltz. They were an ideal pair, always affectionate, supportive, funny, sweet. Why, I thought, can’t that be us?

  Larionov said, “I paint and sculpt, and do the stage sets and costumes for the Ballets Russes.” He nodded toward Diaghilev, who was waltzing with Sara.

  “How good of you, then, to take Zelda’s little pastime seriously.”

  Larionov raised an eyebrow. “Her mind is the artist’s,” he said. “And while I’ve not yet seen her work, I have quite enjoyed our conversations after the shows.”

  “Oh, have you?” It was Scott’s brow that rose now, along with his pitch and volume. “And where have we been going for these delightful tête-à-têtes?” I started to answer but Scott went on, “Paris is such a marvelous city, so romantic, don’t you think? An ideal setting for intimate talks, walks along the Seine, conferences in quaint little hotel lobbies—or apartments—where doormen keep the riffraff out.”

  “Isn’t that all true?” I said oh so brightly, and put my arms around Scott. His body was as rigid as his voice, but I persisted, “And so well put, darling. Of course Mikhail is a huge fan of yours, I’ve told him everything abou—”

  Scott unwound my arms and set me apart from him, saying, “How do you suppose it looks, you out there alone, carrying on with men who aren’t your husband?”

  My face grew hot. “There’s no carrying on, just a few of us having a coffee before going our separate ways.”

  The song had ended and Sara came over, saying, “What’s this? You two aren’t quarreling?”

  Scott said, “Coffee, sure. I’ll guess that’s his story, too.” He looked on the verge of tears. “And yours, Sara—you’ve all rehearsed this, haven’t you?”