Beautiful Fools

by R. Clifton Spargo

  “Scott, I need you to be honest,” she said, sliding across the leather seat to separate from him. “I know you love me and you’re loyal to a fault, more loyal than anyone has ever been.”

  He was looking over the driver’s shoulder ahead of them at the road, trying to judge the treachery of the terrain. “Despacio,” he muttered once or twice, loud enough that the driver might have heard but casually enough that it was just as likely he hadn’t.

  “Once not many years ago,” she said, starting again, “we traded bitter words about divorce, oh, when was that, it seems ages since, but I don’t feel that way anymore.”

  “I know you don’t.”

  “I can only recall all that barbaric hate and resentment in the abstract.”

  “We can let it go,” he said. “It takes discipline, not to let ourselves return there.”

  “Still, maybe you’ve decided you’re better off without me. It’s okay if in the end that’s what you decide, Scott, but you should just say it—I’ll grieve the loss of you, but I’ll pull through somehow, you know I will, look at everything I’ve survived.”

  “Zelda,” he said, “please don’t talk that way. I’ll never abandon you.”

  “I know that, Scott,” she said. “But please listen to me, you’re missing my point. If you can’t live with me again, in my presence, in the same house, if too much has happened and we’re too much for each other, you need to tell me so I can begin to make plans for how to live my life after the Highland without you.”

  He was silent as she stared over his shoulder at the splashes of water and sky.

  “Let’s not be sad, Scott,” she said, pressing her cheek to his, brushing her lips on the corner of his mouth, and then he turned and cupped her chin in his fingers, crushing her mouth in a kiss as though determined to keep her.

  “I’m still your future, Zelda,” he said. “You’re still mine.”

  Those were the words she’d come all this way to hear, but having won them so easily she couldn’t trust their meaning. She was tired of the conditions placed on his promises: if she continued on the course she was on, if only some director bought his next script so that he could buy time for the new novel, if her doctors said this or her doctors said that, then maybe, and only then, could they resume planning a life together. She could recall promises after a trip to South Carolina, in letter after letter, promises running back to the year he was holed up in Asheville and broke his shoulder on the diving board showing off for that nurse, oh, what was her name, Scott recklessly making promises to his wife about resuming their life together while falling for one frivolous, mentally unsound Southern belle after another, all of them mere shadows of her former self. Really, the folly of it—Scott playing the bachelor, acting with impunity because he was wretchedly tubercular and drunk and she so sick at the time he imagined she would never find out. Still she forgave him, and on each trip they took thereafter she imagined a future they might yet spend together, but it always ended with Scott again putting everything on hold. Chunks of each year passed, without the doctors signing her release, without Scott forcing their hand, God only knew how he could afford the payments for the Highland. It was all so extravagant, his endless worry; maybe he could never be free of the memory of what she was like when broken.

  “Let’s not take two rooms at the resort,” she said as the car banked into a curve and rode within inches of a tall rock outcrop built into a hill to which the skeletal roots of a tree and a portion of trunk clung; and Scott sucked air asthmatically as she was thrown into him, pressing against his ribs, not wanting to straighten herself even after the car righted itself on the road.

  “We really can’t afford two rooms anyway,” she said, “and I always feel so much better when you’re in the room with me, in the bed next to mine.”

  “Yes, that would be fine,” he said, a hint of formality in his reply, maybe also shyness.

  “Only if you want to.”

  As a young girl she had been tomboyish, up for any adventure, undeterred by taunts or challenges, unable to tell the difference between them. In Zelda there was a daring that went beyond bravery and teetered on the edge of recklessness. She possessed more innate verve than most men of her generation, never mind women. Throughout her childhood she was known for an indefatigable tongue. She could talk for hours on end to anyone who would listen, sometimes at the age of four wandering off her family’s property to find a neighboring mother to regale with thoughts about everything from the proper way to soothe an angry dog to the best among hundreds of possible names for a box turtle. Her deeds, though, soon caught up with her words. Her friends used to say to her, “Zelda, you should have been born a boy.” Scott would later recall on her behalf tales told by Sara Haardt and Sara Mayfield, her companions in adolescent mayhem—a story, for instance, about Zelda racing downhill on roller skates from Montgomery’s Court Square, straight down the middle of Perry Street, weaving among pedestrians, forcing the horse-drawn carriages to pull up, causing Model Ts to brake and choke and often stall, and if no one followed her example, she would bolt to the top of the hill and repeat the act until at least one of the other girls, or a timid boy watching from a distance, worked up enough courage to imitate her. She would assemble parties for expeditions to the Alabama River on the edge of town. Disrobing among the elm trees that lined the river until all she wore was the sheerest of undergarments, she would climb to the highest rock in half-naked splendor, before jumping off without so much as a glance below—even the boys looked before they leapt, but not Zelda, she cast her body out, arms and legs on the air, plummeting with such abandon that her admiring friends would conclude years later that she had been bent on self-destruction even then. All the proof they required was that image of her waiting to the last minute to tuck into a dive or a mock-fetal ball before hitting water.

  She carried that lack of inhibition into her debutante days in Montgomery, dancing provocatively at galas, hastening suitors with teasing notes when they were a step slow in getting to her doorstep, doing her best to maim what was left of the stodgy mating rites of the Deep South. One night she drove herself and a friend to the outskirts of town to shine the headlights on their male classmates as they exited a local brothel.

  Now, under the boundless skies of Varadero, on this strip of land jutting out into the Gulf, from which Florida could be glimpsed on a clear day by the naked eye, Zelda felt it would require little effort to change herself once more. She was cut off from as much of the past as she wished, in a foreign land, in salt winds with the palm leaves quivering above her. It was up to her to choose what to be. Instinctively she chose again, before they were even checked into the resort: that girl of eighteen from Montgomery who could have had any man she desired, but what she wanted, desperately, expansively, was a blond-haired Yankee soldier from Princeton, possessed of a chiseled but also somehow effete profile, and (when viewed from the front) a soft chin, and deep-set, gently sullen eyes.

  The entire resort consisted of a central building, a few beachside cabins, and a square, two-storied stone villa for guests. Scott arranged for transport into town for the evening, and the porter led them to their room through one of the villa’s dank archways, into a sunlit courtyard of mottled cobblestone at the center of which was a fountain, water falling down over the edges of several increasingly widening concentric basins, cascading until it reached a pool in which plants danced slowly if fretfully, in tight loops, every now and then breaking free from the conventions of centripetal motion. In a first floor guest room two maids tended to linen and towels, sweeping the floor, airing out the bathroom and beds. The porter led Scott and Zelda up a staircase at the top of which a waist-high bronze-railed balustrade wrapped the entire second floor.

  Their room at the front of the building was small but airy, beaming with light, its French doors thrown open to a balcony furnished with a view of the ocean obstructed only by several coconut palms. Zelda believed in this anonymous place. Just two options on the im
mediate horizon: siesta or a dip in the ocean. Scott, in favor of the former, tumbled onto the bed as soon the porter shut the door. He hadn’t slept more than an hour or two the previous night.

  “Don’t drowse off on me now,” she said.

  She wanted him to follow her onto the balcony and share the exhilaration of the nearby ocean, the white sands stretching for miles along the coast, the water layered and thick like colors in a terrarium, cerulean folded onto jade onto emerald, each shade a current of buried history. Scattered along the beach were umbrellas with chairs beneath them, lily pads on a pond blown apart by wind, their occupants stranded in relative isolation.

  “Oh, it’s not a social beach at all,” she called from the balcony. “You can’t make me go out there alone.”

  “Lie down beside me first,” he said. A quick nap, then he’d be up for anything.

  “But you can sleep on the beach.” She strode into the room, ransacked her portmanteau in search of a bathing suit. While searching her belongings she talked at him. “Dearest Deo, have you seen my dress from the other night? We must have left it in the wardrobe at the Ambos Mundos.” He started to answer, but she immediately interrupted him. “Perhaps you could telephone the concierge,” she said, pressing on his knee with her hand as she headed for the bathroom. Leaving the door ajar as she peeled off her dress, she stood at such an angle that (if he wanted to) he might see her from the bed, the curved lines of her breasts, her round hips. By the time she reentered the room wearing her old one-piece maroon bathing suit with the slender white shoulder straps, his eyes were shut.

  “Scott,” she said, “Scott, please, don’t fall asleep. I’ll find your bathing suit and set it out for you, then I’ll run ahead and find us a spot on the beach.” She refused to take no for an answer, singing his name until he opened his eyes, his long-lashed lids quivering. She indicated the swimwear draped on the chair by the desk, also a robe, then gathered everything else into her arms: blanket, towels, two novels, bathing oil, sunglasses. All he had to do was drag his lazy self to the beach.

  “No broken promises,” she said. “Let’s make this the trip on which we keep all our promises, starting now, starting with your promise to meet me at the beach in five minutes.”

  “Five minutes,” he said, eyes curtained in sleep.

  She pulled the door shut behind her, refusing to look back, believing in her power to conjure him. She crossed the courtyard in a straight line and followed a cobblestone walk that gave way to fresh lawns, after that to white sands, the granules grinding under heel against the soles of her sandals. It took longer than expected to procure an empty umbrella. Several of those she visited first revealed traces of people if not the people themselves: a straw hat on a chaise longue, a blue plaid shirt strewn over the back of a chair, sometimes nothing more than a stray towel discarded on the shaded sand. But she didn’t want to take chances, not on someone returning from lunch once she and Scott were settled. So she wandered the beach until she found an umbrella with a single empty chair, the sand beneath furrowed from the prongs of a rake. She spread the blanket on the sand, the upper third in shade, then pulled the base of a folding wood chair onto one of the corners. No need to search for a second chair—it didn’t make a difference, Scott could have the blanket or chair, whichever he preferred, she would take the other, or they might lie side by side on the blanket.

  Up the beach toward the hotel a cluster of fashionable young people volleyed English and Spanish phrases as portions of their party played a game of volleyball, the women standing to the side and cheering, their joyous shouts whipped on the wind. Nearer to Zelda two bathers, a man and woman, now stood up, folding their towels and blanket, the woman’s face shadowed by a large beach hat as she pulled at the base of her bathing suit, releasing the sand trapped there.

  She turned to Zelda, only her lips visible beneath the brim of the hat as she nodded up the beach. “The wedding party, from this past weekend, what’s left of it anyway.”

  “Oh, isn’t that supposed to be good luck?” Zelda remarked, aware that she was inventing freely. “To share a beach with newlyweds?”

  “Not if your cabin is next to theirs and they’ve been celebrating for three days straight,” the man said sourly, without turning, his back to Zelda the entire time. She tried to place his accent: maybe Ohio or Indiana.

  “It’s the daughter of Colonel Silva, the owner of Club Kawama,” the woman said sheepishly, hoisting her bag onto her shoulder. “She married a prominent young man from New York here at the club this past weekend. Well, enjoy your stay. We’re leaving the resort this evening.”

  “I’m not going into the water ’til he arrives,” Zelda said once the couple was gone, addressing the eager ocean.

  For some reason she felt the need to have Scott’s eyes on her at all times. She was a strong swimmer, stronger than Scott had ever been, even in good health, but she wanted him to watch her as she swam far out, wanted his witness if she were to go missing from the world. She could taste the fresh, briny scent of the water, inviting her. Gulls cawed nervously overhead. She began to doubt his arrival. Maybe he hadn’t been awake when he made his promise. Maybe she should run back to the room.

  Just then she saw a pale figure walking toward her in the sun, wearing far too much clothing for a beach, a jacket over his navy swimwear, shoes and socks on his feet, on his head a proper tweed hat. His hand perched on top of the hat, he ducked under two or three umbrellas, already wearied as he righted himself and gawked at the water and forlorn beach. She waved, but he headed off in the opposite direction, hooding his eyes with his hand to peer under someone else’s umbrella, hesitantly, infirmly, seeming much older than she’d ever allowed herself to imagine he might become. He was middle-aged, not a specimen of robust middle age—there were some men who grew stronger and stronger late into life—but rather of its decadent variety. He was one of those whose bodies had begun to betray them, the tubercular poets. She thought of Keats and all the sickly young literati, even the brave ones like Byron who wanted to be revolutionaries but instead died of pneumonia while espousing some lost cause.

  At last Scott spun around and caught sight of her waving at him and she could relax her arm as he dragged himself up the beach, lips parted wryly as he came into view, his face happy with recognition of her, his smile still so youthful.

  “What took so long?” she asked. “I felt certain you’d abandoned me for slumber.”

  The smile fell from his face, however, as he hauled his body onto the blanket.

  “I lost my journal,” he announced. “Several weeks of dialogue, scenes, sentences, paragraphs, also character sketches, observations to be used in the new novel.”

  “Oh, but you haven’t,” she said from the chair above him, worrying that she had kept her secret too long.

  “Zelda,” he said sharply, “I ought to know when I’ve lost my own goddamned notebook. I keep it in the breast pocket of this jacket and I always put it back here when I’m done with it, but I’ve checked my suitcase, also the pants I wore yesterday—”

  “If you’d let me finish,” she said, knowing she would have to tell him now or he would spend all afternoon brooding. “What I was trying to say is I found it.”

  He jerked his chin over his shoulder, tilting it upward, his distant agate eyes fixed on her. She felt the sting of ancient distrust.

  “You left it on the night table at the Ambos Mundos and I only happened to notice, lucky for us, as we were leaving the hotel room.”

  Relief rippled across his face, mixed nevertheless with irritation.

  “Why didn’t you say any—”

  “Scott, can’t you just be glad I found your journal, that your work isn’t lost, can’t you say thank you and be grateful I was watching out for you, as I always am?”

  He reached an apologetic hand behind him, wrapping it onto her calf, but she refused to acknowledge him.

  “Well, I’m going for a swim. Will you join me?”

  “Ma
ybe later,” he said. “I’m beat from the trip.”

  “Scott, really, you must learn to relax. You might as well have been driving the car the way you kept looking over the driver’s shoulder. You can’t control everything. Sometimes that’s a good thing.”

  “Not in my experience.”

  “Well,” she said, her tone lightening, “would you at least take off your clothes, those shoes and socks, the jacket, you do look rather ridiculous.”

  “You know I have a hard time keeping warm,” he said sheepishly, smiling in shameful solidarity, infected by her mirth.

  “What were you thinking just now? Was it witty?”

  “I look like a caricaturist’s notion of Paddy the Irishman at a beach, don’t I? Is this the way you imagine Thurber would draw James Joyce stretching his limbs on the Riviera?”

  They laughed together as his jacket came off and he untied his shoes. Scott hated the appearance of his own feet and rarely removed shoes or socks. For years he’d slept with socks on, like a soldier on alert.

  “I wish I had a camera, I’d send your photo to old Jim Thurber for inspiration, maybe with a caption, ‘A puritan in the tropics,’” she said. “You really should come into the water, Scott. Strip down to your bathing suit and follow me because it will be good for you.”