Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald

by Therese Anne Fowler

  “Well, first I’ll have to see what Scott thinks.” I’d told him only that I was going to try my hand at a novel, not what the story would be or how I’d approach it. “Then I’m hoping Scribner’s will want to publish the book.”

  “Very good, Zelda. This story is saying some important things, and with such unique style.”

  I mailed one copy to Max straightaway.

  Was sending it to Max first a kind of subterfuge? Yes. Was it necessary? Without question. Scott had been laboring for six years on a book that was still a long way from done. Six years, versus one month; that matchup promised disaster and I knew it. But I could no more stop myself than I could fly to the moon on gossamer wings. The novel had to be written and evaluated independently of Scott, that’s just the way it was.

  When he came to see me next, I had the other typescript waiting for him. I handed him the bundled pages.

  “What this?”

  “It’s my novel.”

  “What, finished?”

  I nodded. “I already sent it to Max—I didn’t want to trouble you with it when I knew you were concentrating on your book. But now that you’re on a break, I’d love to get your thoughts. I’m sure it’s awful and will benefit greatly from a master’s eye.”

  “Finished?” His face reddened and his voice rose. “You did all this behind my back, on my dollar, while I was slaving away to keep your life, our family, my career, all of it, from disintegration? Unbelievable!” He threw the bundle onto the floor.

  “No, Deo, you knew I was working on it, and what does it matter?” I said, retrieving it. “Aren’t you proud of me that I finished something? That I made good use of my time here? Scott, I wrote a novel, and I tried to put to use all the things you’ve taught me. Won’t you please at least have a look?”

  He snatched the pages from me and tucked them under his arm, then stormed out the door.

  Days went by with no sign of him, no telephone call, nothing. Had he returned to Montgomery? Would he read it at all? Maybe he’d burn it; good thing I’d already sent a typescript to Max.

  I chewed at the skin on the inside of my lower lip, and watched the ducks paddle along the lakeshore, and walked, and ate, and slept, and waited.

  The response came by mail:

  Good God, Zelda, if your intent is to ruin me, you’ve made good headway here. Your Amory is an alcoholic caricature of me, Zelda, wearing only the thinnest of veils, and everyone will know it! You may as well flay me and leave me in the sun for the flies and vultures to feast on, Jesus!

  If I allow Max to pursue this, you will submit to my editorial direction, is that clear?

  At about the same time, Max cabled to say he was quite impressed, that there was much to appreciate, some truly beautiful descriptions and turns of phrase, and that, yes, he would like to publish it.

  “So there,” I whispered.

  Oh, I knew I wouldn’t get my way, not entirely. In the months to come, Scott would take over the project as if he were Cecil B. DeMille himself. He’d scold the Phipps staff for allowing me such free rein. He’d make me cut or revise anything that rang too true for his comfort. He’d direct Scribner’s to apply any money the book made to his preexisting debt with them. He’d tell them to minimize efforts at publicity—supposedly to protect me from “overweening expectations.” It didn’t matter. None of that mattered. As far as I was concerned, I’d won.

  Or had I?

  I cut as directed and patched somewhat, and then the book was rushed to publication in October without any oversight save Scott’s, and no advertising support at all. Scott told me, “The doctors don’t want you getting egotistical about having a book out, it would only cause you more emotional trouble. A small start is best.”

  “Sure, okay,” I said, caught up in the thrill of having a whole book of my own, a book printed with my title, Save Me the Waltz, and my name all by itself below.

  Then came the reviews. The Saturday Review of Literature used words like implausible, unconvincing, strained, and full of obfuscations. Oh, and also disharmonious. The New York Times was slightly kinder; the reviewer there seemed more puzzled than antagonistic; he found the story a curious muddle and was unable to get past the author’s atrocious writing style.

  As bad as that? I thought, when I set the clippings aside. I felt weak, nauseated, ashamed. Where was the thrill? The pride of accomplishment? Could it all be undone by two strangers who hardly seemed to have given it a chance?

  Scott had been watching my face as I read the reviews; when I looked up, he said, “Now you know how I feel. Now you know what it’s like.”

  I had believed I was writing my way to salvation, but just like that night outside the Dingo with Hemingway, I’d miscalculated, overestimated what I could do.

  In the end, the novel sold only a thousand copies or so. The cover should have read,

  Another Failed Endeavor

  by Zelda Fitzgerald

  51

  The sound of the back door closing told me Scott was home, “home” this time being a porches-balconies-turrets Victorian on twenty snow-covered acres in Towson, Maryland, another pastoral rental taken in hopes of us reordering our life so that Scott could finish his book. Gatsby was now more than seven years in our past.

  Scott had rented the house, La Paix—which means peace, a moniker that would grow ever more ironic—not long after I completed my novel. Coming off his most lucrative writing year ever, thanks to the Post buying nine stories written while I was locked away in Prangins, he’d splurged. Again. I had been released from Phipps in late summer and come home to find we had fifteen rooms, four live-in servants, tennis courts, and a lake. We also had dowdy, kind Isabel Owens, a secretary who managed Scott’s affairs and the household, too, when I wasn’t around.

  What we didn’t have much of was furniture, but not much company to use it, either. We did see a lot of Scott’s mother, Mollie, who was sweet, if forever puzzled by her son’s irregular life and his irregular wife. Next door were the Turnbulls, an old-money pair who made good landlords and whose three children made good playmates for Scottie but, being a “dry” couple, not such good playmates for Scott.

  Upon my release, Dr. Meyer had directed me not to drink alcohol and had gone ’round with Scott about how much more successful my treatment would be if Scott licked liquor, too. Scott’s reply: “I’ve done the reading about schizophrenia and, with due respect, see nothing that even suggests the illness can be triggered by a spouse’s alcohol use.”

  “It presents unnecessary stress,” Dr. Meyer said.

  “It relieves unnecessary stress,” Scott replied.

  Now I heard Scott tossing his keys into the dish near the door, and then the creak of the stair treads. I expect he assumed, as I did, that everyone was asleep. Probably he hoped he could haul himself upstairs and fall into bed as usual, and probably he would have done so if I hadn’t still been up and painting in my little studio, which was the first room at the top of the back stairs.

  When Scott saw me, he stopped and, holding on to the doorjamb, leaned in. He’d taken off his coat and shoes, but was still wearing his hat. His mouth was slack, his skin pasty, his eyes dulled by whatever he’d been drinking on the train from New York, and from whatever he’d been drinking with Ernest Hemingway before getting on the train.

  Hemingway had recently published Death in the Afternoon, a book of his thoughts on bullfighting, and was in the city to give a speech of some kind—something Scott was both eager and loath to witness. Afterward they would meet up with Bunny Wilson, whose second wife, Margaret, had died a few months before after falling on some stairs. Hem the hero; Scott the conflicted; Bunny the morose: it had promised an evening I could hardly wait to miss.

  On my easel was a canvas, and on that canvas was the start of what would, I hoped, be a warm depiction of calla lilies, done in oils. I’d been dreaming of calla lilies, Zantedeschia aethiopica, fragrant, mudbound stems like ones I’d seen along old riverbeds so often in my gir
lhood. With January’s icy hold on the house and the land here, I needed some warmth.

  “You can go on to sleep,” I told Scott. “I’m not tired yet, so I’ll be a while.”

  In fact, sleep was becoming ever more fickle, refusing me when I needed it, demanding attention when I would have preferred to spend the afternoon with Scottie. At eleven, she was very much her own person, further from me than ever before. My minutes with her were precious. I tried hard not to interfere with her schedule or habits or friendships; she was getting more than enough direction from Scott, who advised her how to dress, walk, speak, wear her hair, study, eat, and laugh. (“Don’t show your teeth so much, and be quieter about it; you don’t want to draw so much attention to yourself. Boys prefer modest girls, girls they can respect and admire.”)

  Scott let go of the door frame and came into the room. Leaning against the wall, he studied me. Certainly I wasn’t my glamorous best in one of his old shirts and a shapeless skirt—painting clothes. My hair needed washing. I had paint on my hands, could feel it on my chin, my ear, my forehead. I wore knitted green slippers that Mama had sent.

  “Y’know,” Scott said, “I thought we’d pick up girls.”

  “It’s the middle of the night. The girls are in Scottie’s room, sleeping,” I said, assuming he’d gotten too drunk to keep her sleepover plans straight.

  Scott gave a little bark of a laugh. “Girls,” he said. “Prostitutes. Christ, you really aren’t right in your head, are you?”

  My mouth opened but no words emerged.

  He went on, “And I know that’s true, and I should be a good Christian about it and forgive you and love you all the same, and I do, or I did, and I want to, but, Jesus, Zelda, I don’t. I don’t love you. I don’t.”

  He slid to the floor and put his hands over his head as he cried, “You’ve ruined my life! I’m a goddamn eunuch compared to Ernest. Three sons! Bulls and blood…” He looked up at me. “Imagine this: I told him, ‘I’m done, Ernest, I’m washed up, hang me out but I won’t dry.’ I said, ‘Let’s pick up some girls,’ and Ernest said, ‘You’re in no shape for that.’ A eunuch! No shape for girls, for writing—I’m good for nothing and it’s your fault. I’m so tired of you.”

  I cleaned my brushes, covered the canvas, and without saying a word stepped over Scott and across the hall to a spare bedroom, where I managed to turn the lock before the tears came.

  It’s the liquor talking, I told myself, curled up on top of the quilt. The liquor, the liquor, it’s the liquor and Hemingway, damn him to hell, and damn Scott, and damn my weak, pitiful brain, damn everything.…

  After fitful sleep, I woke ahead of sunrise and found that a sheet of paper had been slipped beneath my door.

  Darling, darling, what you must think of me now.… Too much bourbon turns me maudlin these days, but that’s no excuse for mistreating you. You are brave and admirable, Zelda. I’d never survive what you’ve been through. Please forgive the wretch I can sometimes be. Say you still love me and I will be able to stand myself long enough, I hope, to find my way back to the path.

  When I opened the door, he was there, waiting in the dim morning light. He’d changed his clothes, his hair was combed, his eyes looked bloodshot but alert.

  I crossed my arms. “Decide what it is you want, Scott.”

  “Do you love me?”

  I thought, Do I? What does real love feel like, anyway? I wasn’t sure I knew anymore. And then I remembered Tootsie and me talking of this so many years before:

  —I guess I ought to be aware of what to look for, is all. The signs of true love, I mean. Is it like in Shakespeare? You know, is it all heaving bosoms and fluttering hearts and mistaken identities and madness?

  —Yes, yes, it is exactly like that. Gird yourself, little sister.

  I would have needed iron ramparts, I thought—and even then it might not have been enough.

  “I shouldn’t,” I told Scott, and saw him visibly relax. “I might not,” I added. Why should he be able to relax when I still felt a wreck? “Don’t count on it,” I said.

  He reached for me and wrapped me in his arms. “Then let’s just have this for now.”

  * * *

  Four months later, I had conceived and written and found a local playhouse to produce an original play I called Scandalabra. Scott, meantime, was still searching for that path he’d mentioned, searching one-handed while he held a highball in the other. He wasn’t writing. The bills were coming in but not getting paid. Shopkeepers, suit makers, barkeepers were calling, all singing the same song: “Mr. F’s account is past due; will you tell him that we inquired?” My patience was as brittle and thin as springtime ice.

  I was brittle and thin. And icy sometimes, too, sure I was. He was never going to change, I would never be able to make him change, all my idealism had eroded away and now it was time to do what Tootsie and Sara Mayfield were urging: Get out. When Scandalabra flopped and closed after a one-week run, I wrote back to Sara, Easier said than done— Ha, that ought to be my epitaph. Or Scott’s.

  However, she knew, as I did, that there are many ways to leave a man if that is what one is determined to do. The easiest method is to snag a new man’s devotion—a wealthier man is preferable, and I knew plenty of those. If I wanted to, I could seek the appropriate gentleman and turn his head sufficiently that I would never again worry about how, whether, and when the merchants got paid. What’s more, the prospect of losing Scottie no longer terrified me; wasn’t she lost to me as it was? Didn’t she already distrust my stability, my judgment? Hadn’t she become, during my absences, entirely Scott’s child?

  * * *

  July 20th, 1933

  Dearest Tootsie,

  I know what you said in your last letter was right. Scott appears to be a hopeless case and I have too often felt pushed beyond my limits. We aren’t either of us model spouses, though, are we? You know how I can get when I’m irritated—and even if I was once the darling of the social scene, I’m slightly less of a prize these days.

  Who else would have stood by me so rigorously when I was the one who appeared hopeless? He must love me. This must be just another rough patch.

  He’s so brilliant, Tootsie, but so, so fragile. I want to swaddle him like we do all our finest Christmas ornaments before we store them away, protect him from even the most innocent-seeming hazards that can result from too much admiration.

  I mean to try writing another novel. Max has said he’d be glad to see one from me. Scott will have a fit, as he’s still a long way from being done with his. I am girding myself once again. If you think God is still listening to anyone on our dissipated behalves, say a prayer for Scott and me.

  Best love to you, and Newman too—

  Z~

  * * *

  All that summer we bloodied our knuckles, Scott and I did, neither of us giving an inch. I was fighting for my right to exist independently in the world, to realize myself, to steer my own boat if I felt like it. He wanted to control everything, to have it all turn out the way he’d once envisioned it would, the way he’d seen it when he’d first gone off to New York City and was going to find good work and send for me. He wanted his adoring flapper, his Jazz Age muse. He wanted to recapture a past that had never existed in the first place. He’d spent his life building what he’d seen as an impressive tower of stone and brick, and woken up to find it was only a little house of cards, sent tumbling now by the wind.

  * * *

  In August, on a day when Scott was upstairs working and my kitchen was aflutter with me, Scottie, and three of her friends attempting to make “gen-u-ine Southern biscuits,” the telephone rang.

  I hurried over to the nook and answered before the ringing could disturb Scott further. Tootsie was on the line. “Zelda, listen, honey, something’s happened. It’s Tony.”

  The girls were still chattering away, so I plugged my free ear. “What? What happened?”

  “I know you and Mama have been corresponding about his treatment sin
ce he took ill last month; thank you so much for trying to help.… You spoke to him, didn’t you?”

  My heart was beating wildly. “Yes. God, he was a wreck.” He’d been depressed about losing his job and was hearing voices, he said, or maybe they were waking dreams, what did I think? Something was urging him to kill Mama, he said, and he was desperate to make it stop. After seeing doctors in Charleston, Asheville, and finally Mobile, he’d checked into the sanitarium there.

  “He was bad off,” Tootsie said. “Baby, is anyone there with you? Is Scott home?”

  “Just tell me,” I said, choking out the words. The girls, all as flour-covered as I was, had gone silent and were watching me.

  “He had a fever, he was delirious, he—God, Zelda, he climbed out his window and jumped. The fall killed him. He’s gone.”

  I swallowed hard and blinked back my tears. Delirium? Had that really been the case, or was that the story Tootsie was telling in case the operator listened in? Had he just been desperate?

  Then Scottie was next to me, saying, “What’s the matter, Mama?”

  “Oh. Aunt Tootsie has some awfully sad news.”

  “Is it Granny?”

  “I’ll call you later,” I told Tootsie, then placed the handset in its cradle, saying, “Not Granny, no. Uncle Tony. He had an accident. He … he … He passed. Uncle Tony is dead.”

  What dread filled me then! It was as if my saying the words had turned my blood to a thick, cold fog. Gooseflesh covered my arms; I wrapped them tight around myself and thought, Tony and I, aren’t we two of a kind? There was no escape for either of us, no escaping our bad blood, our bad fate, those moody ghosts that had followed one or another of us all our lives. No escape, except the ultimate one.

  I looked at Scottie, her budding loveliness, her kind eyes, and before I could stop the words that were rising like a bubble in my chest, I said, “Oh, sweetness, we’re doomed.”

  We both started at a noise from the corridor. Scott was there.