Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (15 page)

“The
president
pardoned him?”

“Well … yes. Who else would’a done it? And when they came back, he was almost nominated for president, and then he got on the Senate, and that’s where he and my great-uncle met, and the two of them got Mama and Daddy together. So, see, if it weren’t for my grandmama keepin’ the business going in his absence, I wouldn’t be here.”

“Is that how you see it?” Scott laughed. “I’m not sure there’s an actual connection.”

“Course there is. Everything’s connected.”

“All those things could have happened even if he’d taken his family to Canada with him.”

“Not if the Union had gotten control of his land and all. He’d’a been poor then, and you need money for politics. That’s why my daddy’s just a judge.”

“Just,”
Scott said. “He’s one step from the highest seat in the state.”

“And that’s plenty good if you ask me. If he got any higher-and-mightier, he’d probably grow a beard and try’n elbow Zeus aside.”

“What story will our kids be telling about
us
someday, do you suppose?”

“It’ll be a lot more romantic than two senators matchmaking,” I said. “They’ll say that we were meant to be together no matter what. For us, stars aligned, the gods smiled—prob’ly there was a tidal wave someplace, too, and we just haven’t heard about it yet.”

“A Homeric epic, it sounds like. Have another glass of champagne and tell me more.”

*   *   *

Ludlow did phone that week with the agency name, but despite my appreciation and despite our need, I was in no hurry to hire anyone, not until we’d run out of clean clothes and used up all the dishes and needed to have the pantry stocked again. We were still honeymooning then, and as glad as we were to be there on Compo Road, neither of us wanted to pop that perfect bubble of happiness we’d been floating in for nearly two months.

When the inevitable did arrive, I hired us a Japanese houseboy named Tana, all the regular—that is, female—domestics having already been installed in the homes of women who’d made their summer plans in the wintertime. I never have been able to be organized that way. Tana was a quiet and efficient fella who I liked very much, but who Scott and George deviled by pretending that
Tana
was short for
Tannenbaum,
and declaring that they believed him to be a German spy in disguise.

My time was occupied as anticipated: I swam at the club and at the beach; I explored the countryside; I wrote letters to all my friends, to Mama and Daddy, to my siblings, to Scott’s friends who were now my friends, too. I read anything anyone recommended, and I gave a lot of thought to creating new cocktails for Scott and me and for the ever-increasing number of fellas Scott invited over. Ludlow and Alec were practically residents by summer’s end, and we saw an awful lot of George, too.

Scott had page proofs to correct or revise for his upcoming story collection,
Flappers and Philosophers;
he drafted chapter after chapter of what he’d titled
Flight of the Rocket
but would become
The Beautiful and Damned;
he went into New York for lunch dates with Scribner’s sales representatives and people associated with moviemaking. Already, he’d sold rights to three of his stories to the pictures—that was where the real money lay—and was looking for even more profitable ways to get involved.

How good life was! There was always an excuse to host a party or attend one. Every month, we got word that
Paradise
was going back to press for another five thousand copies. Scott wrote and sold three new stories. He befriended every actor, artist, writer, dancer, and bootlegger we came in contact with, and subsequently our house on weekends grew full of strange and lively and, yes, intoxicated people, but we almost always had a lovely time. Now and then he and I would get a drink or two past our limits, and a debate about, say, paganism versus Christianity would jump the fence of discourse and land in the slop trough of ugly argument, but there was nothing to such arguments; next day they’d be gone, along with all the food and the liquor, and we’d start fresh all ’round.

The single dark blot on that bright picture was my folks’ visit in August. We did scale back our usual gaieties, knowing how they’d react; however, two of Scott’s lesser Princeton classmates showed up drunk and uninvited at dinnertime one night. They barged in singing some bawdy fraternity song, and then before we were even out of our chairs, one of them puked in the kitchen sink. Daddy in particular was appalled; Scott got defensive; I tried to get rid of the friends, which only made Scott angry. He drank too much after dinner, and when my parents had gone to bed, we ended up in a truly ugly fight—and I ended up with a black eye. I was of the mind that I deserved what I got; it had seemed to me a fair fight, no different than I’d have had with my brother or any of the kids I’d grown up with. When my folks saw me in the morning, though, they were horrified.

It wasn’t only my black eye; nothing about my life made sense to them. I defended my life with Scott as
our business
. I was so sure of our love then, so determined to prove to Mama and Daddy that we weren’t doing things wrong, just differently. There was no way to know that certainty would one day become a luxury, too.

16

For that fall, 1920, imagine a scenario very much the same as the summer (minus the ugly fight), only see us in our little apartment on Fifty-ninth Street in Manhattan, right at the foot of Central Park. See us spitting distance from the Plaza, where, having put on our finery, we often drink cocktails in the lovely Japanese Garden. We no longer have Tana or any hired help; instead, we bring in our meals—from the Plaza’s kitchen, mostly—and send out our wash.

Scott is still working on
The Beautiful and Damned
.
Flappers and Philosophers
is out and is selling nicely enough for a story collection, though nothing like
Paradise
. He’s mostly happy about its reception—but Mencken’s review, while lauding a couple of the stories, calls the others “atrociously bad stuff” and asks rhetorically whether Scott’s going to be serious or be popular. Mencken doesn’t know that the question is far from rhetorical for Scott.

Scott often had dark circles under his eyes at the time, and a restlessness I didn’t quite understand. One minute he’d be agreeing with Mencken and Bunny and the other critics that the
Post
stories in the collection—the ones that paid for our life—were fluff at best and trash at worst, and then the next minute he’d be complaining that critics were rigid and hidebound, never willing to give due credit for anything that didn’t fit in with their predetermined parameters of what fiction ought to be. He’d say, couldn’t he be serious sometimes and popular other times? Wasn’t it better—wasn’t it
more
remarkable, he’d say—to have the ability to do both with real excellence? At those times, he was so sure he was right and everyone else was wrong.

On a Friday morning in late October, he handed me a roll of cash and said, “We’re going to the Palais Royale tonight—to commemorate ‘Head and Shoulders.’ Dress, shoes, hair—whatever you want, do it up right.”

The Palais Royale had made an appearance in that story, “Head and Shoulders,” but I hadn’t been there yet. That was the thing about New York: you could visit for months, you could
live
there, and still find a new place to go every time you went out.

As much as I liked the idea, I looked askance at the money. “Don’t you think we’ve commemorated it a few times already?”

When it came to Scott’s income, he gave me the highlights but I was not privy to the finer details. Even so, it was apparent that his earnings were unpredictable, and equally apparent that we were living awfully well. To spend even more, just on a whim like this, went beyond indulgence into luxury, which surely we couldn’t afford. Yet here he was with money in his hand, so maybe I had it wrong. Maybe he’d invested well—maybe Ludlow had passed on some of the knowledge that had made the Fowlers so wealthy. What did I know about how finance worked? I trusted that Scott knew what he was doing.

He said, “One can never commemorate too often—haven’t you ever heard that aphorism? I think Ben Franklin said it—or was it Mary Pickford?” He winked. “Get something really fabulous, something that’ll turn every head in the place.”

“I’ve got some nice things I haven’t even worn—”

“Surely you’re not going to turn down a chance to shop? Go on.” He patted me on the behind. “I need to rework a couple of chapters—I’ve promised them to Max, and then I’ve got luncheon with some of the boys. I’ll be tied up all day.”

He liked to show me off, and I liked being shown off, so, “Have it your way,” I said.

My first stop was a little boutique on Fifth Avenue that Scott’s friend Marie Hersey had mentioned when she’d stopped in to see us the week before.
Parisian fashions for rich Americans
was how Marie had described the shop’s goods, then she’d winked at Scott, who she’d known since they were children in St. Paul, and said, “Your bride deserves only the best, you told me so yourself.”

Inside the boutique, the racks held luxurious, indulgent garments of every type. Delicate lingerie trimmed with exquisite lace or fur; lush velvet opera capes; heavy silk suits with embroidery and bows and buckles; furs that ranged from narrow wraps to full-length coats in ermine, in mink, in rabbit, squirrel, fox—I’d never had a fur, or even wanted one, until I stepped into that shop.

I stroked an ermine jacket while I surveyed the goods. Nothing in Montgomery came close to this. I thought,
What my girlfriends wouldn’t give to be here with me right now
.

I missed the Eden-like environment of home, but the trade-offs I’d been enjoying for six months more than made up for it. And there, on a rack along the wall, was possibly the finest trade-off of all: a dress like I’d never seen before. It was black and sleeveless and simply cut—straight, almost, with just the slightest suggestion of a waistline. What was remarkable, though, was the decorative finish. One narrow line of silver sequins ran along the neckline, and then a river of tiny, ethereal silver beads flowed over the dress from the right shoulder all the way down to the hem, branching into an array of intricate flowers and vines.

A tall, slender, carefully made-up salesclerk came over to me. “Gorgeous, isn’t it? All silk, the best there is. But wait,” she said. “You are going to faint when you see this.”

She retrieved the dress and turned it so that I could see its back. A smoke-colored mesh insert so fine that it was almost invisible was all there was to it, a deep U-shaped panel bordered by sequins and dropping almost to the point where a woman’s tailbone might show. There, it joined the black silk that flowed around from the sides and into the back of the skirt, which had its own beaded riot of flowers and vines.

“My father would have me whipped,” I said.

“You have the perfect figure for it—you’ve
got
to try it on. It’s the very latest thing from Paris, a Patou design,
so
sexy, the way Parisian women are. Truly one of a kind.”

I took the hanger. “You don’t need to ask me twice.”

Ten minutes later, the dress was being boxed and sent to the apartment, and I was on my way to the hair salon.

“What service may we provide for you today, Mrs. Fitzgerald?” asked the clerk when I arrived.

From my purse, I took a piece of folded paper and laid it out on the counter. “Life should imitate art, don’t you think?”

The clerk read the headline, which was the title of Scott’s May
Post
story, “Bernice Bobs Her Hair.” She said, “I do, absolutely. Carmen will be delighted to assist with your mission.”

“Quick, then, before I lose my nerve. How long does a person have to live here before they stop feelin’ like everything they’re doin’ is criminal?”

I was back home before Scott returned. From the bathroom, I heard him come in. He was humming something that I wouldn’t say was upbeat, exactly, but that he was humming at all was a good sign.

“What took you?” I called from the tub.

“Oh, you know. Business.”

“Don’t come in. I want to surprise you. Oh, I had the Plaza send up a light supper—
dinner,
I mean. Somethin’ with potatoes and beets. I was hungry. We can still get a bite later, too, if you want.”

“Are you in the tub?” he said from just behind the door.

“Do
not
come in here. I mean it!”

“All right then, I won’t tell you
my
surprise either.”

“What surprise?” I said, but he only laughed in reply.

I climbed from the tub, dried off, then took my time rubbing in the lilac-scented body cream I’d bought at the salon—where in addition to getting my hair bobbed, I’d had my first professional manicure. The deep red nail polish they’d talked me into still startled me—though not nearly so much as my hairstyle—but was going to look perfectly dramatic when paired with lipstick of the same shade.

I did my makeup, taking extra care with the eyeliner the way the salon girl had advised. A tiny hint of rouge, light powder, mascara, lipstick.
Goodness,
I thought, surveying the effect.

“What surprise?” I tried again.

“I’m afraid I can’t hear you, darling. These ice cubes”—Scott rattled some in a glass—“are just
so
loud.”

I said, “You’re an evil man, Scott Fitzgerald, I just want you to know that,” and resigned myself to waiting.

Sheer black, lace-topped silk stockings came next, with new garters. That was it for undergarments: the dress wouldn’t allow anything more. I was genuinely grateful to have small breasts that required no support. The prospect of going out in public without even a chemise beneath my dress, however, was awfully strange. Scary and thrilling at once. I thought,
Those Parisian girls are brave
. Well, I was brave, too, New York brave,
Paris
brave, even, and all this would prove it.