Finally Dr. Carroll wrote Mrs. Sayre. He told her that Zelda was fine physically, but mentally her condition was precarious. Certainly she did not need confusion of counsel. Zelda was being placed in the unfortunate position of receiving advice from all sides, and in reaction swung from one idea to another, each time in hope of a larger freedom for herself. Dr. Carroll put it plainly to Mrs. Sayre: Zelda was not prepared to live with any of the members of her family, and if they cared to do the best for her, they would treat her as they would someone with tuberculosis. She was permanently damaged mentally. Any letters to her about such plans as her eventual release should be directed to Dr. Carroll, not to Zelda, if her family cared to preserve her peace of mind; this pressuring for Zelda’s release was terribly unfair to her, for it gave her a false and premature notion that she would be able to leave.
Scottie was graduating from boarding school in Connecticut in June and Zelda wanted to go to her commencement. Dr. Carroll said it would be feasible and Scott arranged for her to go with Rosalind, who was then living in New York. She would be accompanied as far as New York by a nurse. He wrote Scottie: “Do try to make your mother happy for two days—excuse her enthusiasm. In her youth, she didn’t know such schools existed.” It was a casual remark, but it underlined the complicity that had come to exist between father and daughter; theirs was “a sense of partnership,” Scott wrote Scottie, “that sprang out of [Zelda’s] illness.” But it was just that aspect of their relationship that must have hurt Zelda most, for it undermined what little closeness she had with Scottie. Nevertheless, her trip North was a success. She looked smart for Scottie’s commencement at Ethel Walker, and was very proud of Scottie, who was voted the most popular girl in her class. It seemed to Zelda that Scottie and she might become closer, or at least there was the promise of a relationship they could enjoy and cultivate. Zelda wrote Scott: “Scottie is the prettiest girl.… She wore white gardenias and white flannel and white hopes and the freedom and grace of the best and we are very proud and devoted.… Meanwhile—life is so nice, when one can have some.… Scottie is a very good thing to have. I’m so glad we’ve got her.”
After the graduation exercises and Zelda’s return to Asheville, Scottie, who was studying for college boards at Ethel Walker, went off campus without permission and was asked to leave the school. Fitzgerald wrote her in cold fury:
When I was your age I lived with a great dream. The dream grew and I learned how to speak of it and make people listen. Then the dream divided one day when I decided to marry your mother after all, even though I knew she was spoiled and meant no good to me. I was sorry immediately I had married her but, being patient in those days, made the best of it and got to love her in another way. You came along and for a long time we made quite a lot of happiness out of our lives. But I was a man divided—she wanted me to work too much for her and not enough for my dream. She realized too late that work was dignity, and the only dignity, and tried to atone for it by working herself, but it was too late and she broke and is broken forever.… The mistake I made was in marrying her. We belonged to different worlds— she might have been happy with a kind simple man in a southern garden. She didn’t have the strength for the big stage—sometimes she pretended, and pretended beautifully, but she didn’t have it. She was soft when she should have been hard, and hard when she should have been yielding. She never knew how to use her energy—she’s passed that failing on to you.
For a long time I hated her mother for giving her nothing in the line of good habit—nothing but “getting by” and conceit. I never wanted to see again in this world women who were brought up as idlers.
Scott’s bitterness toward Zelda was not only for what he felt she had forced him to do for her during the early years of their marriage, it was also stimulated by his feeling that Zelda had failed him, had used him financially. His letter to Scottie implied that she might do the same. The air was cleared considerably when Scott learned that Scottie did well on her boards and was accepted by Vassar for the coming fall. But the vehemence of his rancor toward Zelda was clear. It was she who had ruined him; she who had made him exhaust his talents. This was of course only one facet of his attitude toward Zelda, but it was definitely there in reserve to be drawn upon. He had been cheated of his dream by Zelda.
Scott had promised Scottie a trip to Europe that summer, and with things back, on an even keel she left. Fitzgerald wrote her: “…quite possibly these are the last few years in which you will be able to see Europe as it was.” He wanted Scottie to have that opportunity. She sent him a postcard from the Brasserie Lipp in Paris, and later, after visiting a fortuneteller, she wrote him that the woman “told me some amazing things—that my mother was sick and was going to get a little better but not completely well, and my father was ‘willful and nervous’ (ha!) and we were going to have a few fights but always make up, and I was going to have an unstable career with hunks of money here and there.” When she returned in September Zelda was in New York to meet her boat.
Just being in New York buoyed Zelda’s spirits. The city was for her “bliss, again.” And Scottie was “prettier than ever; Scottie is on the brink of being ravishing…” The only thing that was missing was Scott. “I wish you had been able to come East— It would be fun to meet you here again.” She saw the Murphys for the first time in eight years and her reflections on them were tinged with resentment. She wrote Scott that they looked “very engaging; age and the ages leaves them untroubled and, perhaps, as impervious as possible. That was, indeed, a remunerative relationship— If they knew how much of other peoples orientations that they had influenced, they would less resent any challenge to their own.”
Talking with Scottie about Europe tripped open Zelda’s memories. “It fill[s] me with dread to witness the passage of so much time: another summer is half gone, and maybe there’ll never be anymore sun-burns and high hot moons. Do you suppose they still cook automobiles at Antibes, and still sip the twilight at Kaux, and I wonder if Paris is pink in the late sun and latent with happiness already had.”
She stayed with her nurse at the Hotel Irving on Gramercy Park, where Rosalind and her husband were living. Mrs. Sayre, who had gone to Saluda to be near Zelda, came North with her, and to both of them New York was magical. With Clothilde (who lived in Larchmont, New York), Rosalind, and Zelda in New York it was a family reunion. Zelda roamed New York, window shopping, remembering other times shared with Scott; she tried to see some shows but nothing good was on, she said. They ate at outdoor restaurants and drove along the new Henry Hudson Parkway. They also saw Scott’s film Three Comrades; she wrote him, “…maybe we’ll get some more money and more prestige and more liberties and all sorts of other desirable attributes. And meanwhile Mamma is here; and lovely and eager as ever, but a year older man she was last year which makes me sad—” Being with her sisters and mother reminded Zelda of how much she was missing in the circumscribed life she led at the hospital. She asked Scott for permission to go to Montgomery for Thanksgiving, Christmas, “and soon for ever?”
“I am so sick of the moralistic tone and repressive atmosphere of that hospital that I dont know how to endure. At my most desirable of attainments, they would have classified me at best as suspect.…”
The longer Zelda stayed at Highland the more rigorously she protested against its discipline. She felt imprisoned. Even if Dr. Carroll considered her ability to make decisions reduced to the level of that of a bright child, she did not and resented being treated as one. She pressed for release in her letters to Scott: “Dear, I would be so deeply grateful if you would let me try existing outside a hospital. I don’t want to nag you.… I have been for years, and years, and years tidying up my room and not making noise in the halls.” She missed Scott, who was her link with the life she had lived before her illness, her one contact out of the morass of illness, and whom she saw so infrequently. She would plead to him: “D.O. Won’t you let me go home? Whats the use of wasting what short space of life remains in a rou
tine… or anything else save a living death.… I wonder if you will ever be East again?—You must be quite a different fellow than when I.
“D.O. I’m so sorry about the hard luck that pursues us so relentlessly—”
Sometimes she asked Scott for small presents; she called them her necessities. Her taste, always whimsical, now ran to the colorful. She wanted a cowboy belt studded with bright stones and brass nails, size 28 (although her waist she carefully told him was 27) and a pair of beaded leather moccasins, size 5, and a vial of perfume. On the back of her list she added, “Don’t give up anything to get these, but I’ll be mighty happy when they come. “ Scott dutifully made notes at the bottom of the letter indicating which Hollywood drugstore carried the perfume, and the address of a Western costume store for the belt and moccasins.
By the fall it was clear that Dr. Carroll thought of Zelda’s improvement in terms of a very limited ability to cope with reality. He wrote to Scott telling him that her life had to be arranged for her on simple terms, and on that reduced level she could maintain her equilibrium with ease. From Dr. Carroll’s point of view it was unfortunate that Scott and Zelda’s family considered her current style of living unsatisfactory. Was it, he wondered, due to their imagining themselves having to live within it?
The letters that continued to pass between Dr. Carroll and Scott were about preserving this balance. Arrangements were made for Zelda’s brief trips—to Florida, a few days with Scottie, a holiday at home in Montgomery with her mother—but always with the members of Zelda’s family pushing for more: for her to be able to travel without a companion or nurse, for her to be released from the hospital. Christmas, 1938, she spent in Montgomery at home—but with a nurse who stayed at a nearby hotel. Zelda spent two hours with her each morning; they walked together and discussed the coming day; then she was free until the following morning. The nurse was a necessary ballast even if Zelda’s family did not think she was. The family constantly urged that Zelda be released to them. Their urging made Scott furious, and Dr. Carroll tried to assure them that what he was doing was in Zelda’s best interests. Zelda could not live alone. Scott wrote Rosalind: “Imagine Zelda running amuk in Montgomery!…The next time Zelda runs off the track God knows what form it will take.… I keep up a continual pressure to get Zelda more liberty. Cure her I cannot and simply saying she’s cured must make the Gods laugh.”
After Zelda’s Christmas at home Scott tried to write Mrs. Sayre a letter about Zelda that she could understand and accept. It must have cost him dear to keep remembering and trying to plan for Zelda, to maintain even the simplest level of hope on her behalf. Rosalind, he wrote Mrs. Sayre, “seems to feel that establishing Zelda in the world is a simple matter—like the issuing of a pass—not at all the problem that the best people in the profession have been working at for ten years.… There is no favorable prognosis for dementia praecox. In certain diseases the body builds new cells, drawing on its own inner vitality. When there has been destruction in the patterns of the mind only the very thinest shell can be formed over them—so to speak—so that Zelda is always living in a house of thinly spun glass.”
In February, 1939, Zelda was off to Sarasota, Florida, for an entire month with the Carrolls. She took her first formal art courses in life drawing and costume design in the Ringling School of Art, and she baked on the beaches of Miami and Key West. Almost as soon as she returned to Asheville Scottie visited her there briefly. Scott was pleased with their visit: “You made a great impression on your mother. How different from a year ago at Virginia Beach when you seemed as far apart as the poles, during those dreary tennis games and golf lessons! Of course, the fact that she is so much better accounts for a good deal of it…write your mother, because I’ve been putting off a visit to her and may possibly have to be here three weeks longer on this damned picture and she probably feels that I’m never coming.”
Prior to Zelda’s trip to Florida Dr. Carroll had asked Scott if Zelda might travel to Cuba with a group from Highland. Scott agreed, but too late for arrangements to be made for Zelda’s going. She wrote Scott: “Havannah is probably a substantial sort of place and may be will stay there till next time. Anyway, its all very expensive, and we are so well adapted to spending money to-gether. When you come East there will be that much more justification for buying things. I am as grateful to you as if I were on board.” At the end of the letter she added a plea: “Come on! Let me see you fly East! We can go to Cuba ourselves, as far as that goes.”
Somewhat surprisingly that was exactly what Scott did. According to Sheilah Graham’s account in Beloved Infidel, Scott left for Asheville after a fierce quarrel with her. He had been drinking straight gin for several weeks and in a desperate effort to stop him Miss Graham, herself hysterical after a violent fight over a revolver he kept in his dresser, slapped him and swore she’d never see him again. The following morning, still drunk, he flew to North Carolina. He picked up Zelda and together they flew to Cuba. The trip was a disaster from beginning to end, and the end was in New York at the Algonquin, where Scott, who had been badly beaten in Cuba for trying to stop a cockfight, was so drunk and exhausted that he required hospitalization. Zelda tried to cope with him, but was in no condition herself to handle the situation. Finally she called her sister and brother-in-law in Larchmont for help and returned to Asheville alone. Scott was put in Doctors Hospital, where he remained under treatment for nearly two weeks. Zelda, afraid she had somehow provoked the situation and antagonized Scott, wrote to him just before she left.
It seems useless to wait any more; I know that you are better; and being taken care of; and I am of no assistance; so I’ll go back to the hospital on the 2:30 train.… Why don’t you come to Tryon?… we could keep a little house on the lake and let you get better. We might have a very happy summer in such circumstance— You like it there, and I am very clever at serving bird-song and summer clouds for breakfast.
Scottina could visit us; and we could find a better meaning to so many things.…
Please believe that I stayed over solely to the purpose of helping you if I could. I know from experience what a difference it makes in life where somebody cares about your troubles.… I know mat I have written you all this before but, as you know my letters are censored from the Hospital and I wont have another chance to communicate until we meet again.
To the Hospital, this version: We had a most enviable trip. And everything was according to the rules. This last refers to cigarettes and wine concerning which I will follow our agreement as to any irregularity of arrival. Your lungs are bad, and required attention, and I am capable of travelling alone so there wasnt any use in your adding another tiring journey to what you had before you.
D.O. please take care of yourself. So you will be well again and happier than these last times. There are so few people of our era who have made original contributions to the life about us, and not many who can be so charming, and almost not any with a greater capacity for enjoyment.
There are still a great many things which could give us pleasure
And there are such a lot of people fond of you.…
Back at Highland Zelda stuck to her story, although the staff was quite aware of the pattern most of the Fitzgeralds’ trips together took. “We were all afraid when she went off with him of what would happen—and it always did,” one staff member recalls. “They simply could not be in each other’s company for more than a few days at a time. Dr. Carroll would allow them to go together for a week or so, but they always came back a few days early and usually something terrible had occurred. It was awful, it really was, because you could see that he still loved her very much and did not want to abandon her. But they couldn’t be together for any prolonged length of time.”
Zelda wrote Scott soon after her return. “Don’t feel bad. You were so sweet in the station. I wish things had been so that we were going on together, somewhere. There are lots of happy places: it says so in the time tables, and before long we’ll surely find one.
…
“Meantime: You know I’ll be there waiting on that green hillside: and expecting you.”
Back in Hollywood after his stint in the hospital, Scott wrote her at once:
You were a peach throughout the whole trip and there isn’t a minute of it when I don’t think of you with all the old tenderness and with a consideration that I never understood that you had before.… You are the finest, loveliest, tenderest, most beautiful person I have ever known, but even that is an understatement because the length that you went to there at the end would have tried anybody beyond endurance. Everything that I said and that we talked about during that time stands—
Unknown to either of them, this was the last time they would see each other.
As devastating as their vacation together had been, the contact between them renewed Zelda’s feelings for Scott; to some measure it must also have rekindled Scott’s toward her, for in May he was seriously considering bringing Zelda to Hollywood for a month. He had not yet made up with Sheilah, but when he did Zelda remained in North Carolina. Scottie had an attack of appendicitis during her spring term at Vassar and her doctor recommended that she have an appendectomy. Scott decided that this would provide a perfect opportunity for Zelda and Scottie to come together. He arranged for Scottie to have her operation in Asheville and recuperate during the month of July in Zelda’s company.
Zelda Page 41
