Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (32 page)

Scott had helped himself generously to the wine. I wasn’t drinking at all and was growing restless and bored. On it went:
Alexander was charming, Alexander was wonderful, Alexander was witty and wise, Alexander would be missed
—nice speeches, really nice, but not captivating, and I needed to be captivated because my mind kept trying to drag me back to my outrage over having been made to come here when the life I was trying to lead was in Paris.

Working against that outrage, though, was my recollection of Mama’s latest letter. She’d written,

Baby, I’m not sure what gives you the notion that your husband—or any woman’s husband—is bound to consider his wife’s wishes when making decisions such as this. It’s so hard to understand the life you’re leading so far away from home.… Have you become one of those awful feminists? By my measure, your life has become foreign in
every
way if you are somehow led to believe that women are due equal say. We are meant to keep a respectable home and care for our husbands and children, and in return for this effort, our husbands support us entirely. Is this not the case for women in France? Certainly women deserve time to pursue hobbies and such, and can find fulfillment in interests of their own, but we are not entitled to assert them over our husbands’ priorities and wishes. Perhaps if you will accept this, your health will improve and subsequently so will your happiness.

Part of me chafed against Mama’s old-fashioned attitudes. These were modern times, and women were more than chattel. Part of me worried that she was right; maybe I
would
be happier if I accepted the traditional thinking, rejected this particular aspect of the modern woman’s approach to marriage. It was so much easier to be led, to be pampered and powdered and petted for being an agreeable wife.

Easier, I thought, but boring. And not only boring, but plain wrong. Who really believed that men could be trusted to always get things right?

I stirred the ice in my water glass and watched the other women. They were bored, too, but doing their damnedest to hide it. All these men in their dapper suits, their slicked hair and waxed mustaches and tight collars—we women were all here trying to please these men, and for what? So that they could drag us to another boring, self-congratulatory event tomorrow, and the next day, and the next? We were with them for the support they provided.

Single women could work all they wanted; married women locked themselves into a gilded cage. All of that had seemed natural before. Now, it made me angry. Now, I saw how a woman might sometimes want to steer her own course rather than trail her husband like a favored dog.

With all the laudatory speeches done, all the Woollcott well-wishers began turning back to their companions and food and drink.

“Hold on,” I said, seized by the need to take some kind of action, even if it was wrong. I stood up on my chair. “Hold on, everybody. Here you all are talking about Mr. Woollcott with praise that I’m sure he appreciates, but it seems kinda like you’re shortchanging him, don’t you think? Where I come from, which is a very highly traditional place in America called the state of Alabama, we never send our friends off without also giving them gifts. I’ll start,” I said. Then I reached up under my dress and shimmied out of my black silk-and-lace panties, which I tossed onto the table, knowing they’d land near Scott. “Bon voyage, Mr. Woollcott—this was the best I could do on short notice.”

*   *   *

That sure raised eyebrows—but what didn’t, that spring?

Take also poor Hadley, arriving at Villa America with only Bumby while everyone knew that Hemingway, in Madrid for the moment, was carrying on with Pauline—though we weren’t certain yet whether Hadley knew.

Worse, Bumby brought an awful cough with him, and when it turned out to be whooping cough, Sara went white with fear that any of the other children should catch it. We were having coffee in the Murphys’ olive garden when the doctor came from the guesthouse and said that, while the worst of Bumby’s illness had already passed, he was directing two weeks’ quarantine in order to prevent the rest of us from getting sick.

“We can’t keep them here,” Sara said, and then, as Hadley appeared behind the doctor, told her, “Hadley, I’m so sorry. I’ll find you a hotel, and we’ll send along whatever you’ll need. I’m so very sorry,” she repeated, already moving toward the house to make arrangements. “We can’t take any chances.”

“Sara—wait,” I called. “We’ll just trade with Hadley. There’s six more weeks on our lease.”

“We’ll get another place,” Scott amended. “Villa Paquita is a little damp for me, but should be just the thing for Bumby’s cough—you don’t want anything too dry, it irritates the lungs’ lining, don’t you know.”

Why was he lying? The villa wasn’t damp, it was wonderful, perfect, he’d said so himself.

“I couldn’t—” Hadley looked lost, as if all this was beyond her capacity to take in.

“Of course not,” Scott said, “but
we must
. You’ll be doing us the grandest favor. I’ve had my eye on this other spot, Villa St. Louis, right on the water’s edge, and needed an excuse to rent it.”

I stared at him. This was the first I’d heard of Villa St. Louis. Why would we take on yet another expense when we could use the guesthouse for these two short weeks?—and then it hit me:
He’s leaving the guesthouse to Hemingway and Pauline.

He was saying, “The place has forty rooms, imagine! Why, we’d be doing
them
a favor by filling a half-dozen or so until the family’s return at summer’s end—so how lucky it is that poor Bumby is ill!”

“All right then,” Hadley said, nodding. “We’ll do that. It’ll be so nice for Bumby.”

“And even nicer for me,” he said. “If I didn’t put myself first, you’d all think
I
had taken ill.”

“That was the perfect solution,” Sara said later, thanking Scott. “I couldn’t turn her out but couldn’t keep her here, and with you in the guesthouse, where would we have put Ernest?”

With his wife and son,
I thought, and why hadn’t that solution been foremost in everyone’s mind—including Hadley’s?
Especially
Hadley’s.

*   *   *

Hemingway arrived a few days later, temporarily alone. “I heard what you did,” he told Scott at dinner that night. “There’s no finer, truer friend. All of you,” he said with a sweep of his arm, “you’re incomparable. A man counts his fortune in the number of true and generous friends, and so while I’ve hardly got two francs to rub together, I am a rich man indeed.”

To celebrate his new books (
Torrents
just published and
Sun
forthcoming), Sara and Gerald hosted a party at the casino. Every person we knew on the Riviera that spring turned out for the party; of course they did. Who would miss a Murphy event, regardless of the purpose? It was certain to feature wonderful food, great music, and even better company. Pablo and Olga were there, and Coco Chanel, who I’d been wanting to meet. The MacLeishes, the Myerses, Man Ray, Diaghilev, Dottie Parker, Dos Passos, and a new fellow, a Canadian writer and friend of Hemingway’s named Morley Callaghan. It was, for me, another version of the scene from our earliest days in Manhattan, the Princeton boys now supplanted by this influential bunch.

That such a thing was happening on Hemingway’s behalf hadn’t sat well with Scott, who’d been grumbling, too, about the “war boys’ club” of Hemingway, Dos Passos, and MacLeish, all of them writers who’d been in the thick of things during the Great War, whereas Scott’s attempted sacrifice had been thwarted by the armistice.

We were dressing for the party, Scott standing at the mirror adjusting his tie, his mouth set in a hard line. He was wearing one of his better suits, nicely cut, brown summer-weight wool, and wore a striped tie that matched the color of his eyes. Except for his expression, he looked as good as I’d seen him lately.

He said, “Not to take anything away from Ernest, but I had a book out this spring, too—as if anyone gives a damn.”

“A story collection’s different.” My intent was to sound fully supportive, but Scottie, who’d just helped herself to one of my lipsticks and was using it like eye shadow, distracted me. “Here, sugar, give that to Mama. I’ll show you where it goes.”

I looked over my shoulder at Scott. “It’s just an assemblage of stuff you already published.”

“Which took a damn lot more effort than
Torrents
!” He turned from the mirror. “Jesus, Zelda, does she really need to be wearing lipstick? Nanny!” he yelled, then said, “Nobody appreciates how difficult it is to get a story in the
Saturday Evening Post
. Christ, they’re all agog at Ernest’s fifteen-hundred-dollar advance when I’m getting
twice
that for a short story.”

Lillian appeared, assessed the situation, and swept Scottie out of the room with a promise of fresh lemon parfait.

I said, “Maybe
they’d
appreciate it more if
you
did; you’re always disparaging the slicks and saying how you hate writing for ’em—as if somebody’s holding your feet to the fire ’til you spit out another flapper tale.”

“My feet
are
to the fire. And if I don’t complain, they’ll all think I’m done with serious work, finished trying to be relevant. I need the money, and I need my novels to be taken seriously.”

“Honestly, Scott, I don’t see how you can have it both ways, or why you even persist in trying. What’s wrong with being purely popular, as long as the quality is high? Look at Ziegfeld—do you suppose he worries about his critical reputation?”

“He doesn’t need to worry, he’s a millionaire.”

“Yes—because of dancing girls and bawdy songs and sentimental tearjerker, crowd-pleasing acts. And yet everybody thinks he’s tops.”

Scott checked his collar and adjusted his tie once more. “The standards are different in literature.”

“But they don’t
need
to be—they’re arbitrary, and you all just perpetuate the problem by acting like they aren’t. A coupla critics decide what’s important, what
matters,
and then you all go along with it like it’s been decreed by God himself!”

“You’re oversimplifying. Literature is an art, it has an effect—it
matters
.”

“I’m not saying otherwise. But good is good.” I followed him down the hallway to the front room, my heels clacking on the marble tile. “And there’s all different kinds of value, all of ’em legitimate. Fine artists understand this; why don’t writers? And why is this serious literary acclaim so important to you anyway? You’re popular, beloved—Deo, you still get fan mail from
Post
readers every week!”

Scott sighed. “Let’s just go,” he said.

At the casino, Hemingway looked different than he had when I’d seen him last. Smug in one way, edgy and watchful in another. Thanks in large part to Scott, he’d taken a great stride forward in his career and likely had a sense that things were going to improve even more in times to come—but he’d also begun shedding some of the very people whose friendship, guidance, and influence had led to his progress. Now his eyes seemed to be saying,
Which of you want to latch onto me? Which of you will be of use to me next? Which of you can be trusted to serve my purposes?
All around him he saw good prospects and faithful supporters—except when his eyes rested on me.

With a glass of champagne in one hand and caviar piled upon toast in his other, Hemingway raised his glass and said, “What a fine set of friends you are, and how fortunate I am to be here among you. To the Murphys I give my humblest thanks and highest regard, for there are no finer people on the planet.”

Gerald bowed. “We couldn’t be prouder of you. As many of you know, Ernest has been away watching the bullfights in Madrid. Tell us all about the
corrida
!”

He did, endlessly, and Hadley, the ever-dutiful wife, stood by getting slowly drunk.

I did my best to tune him out by talking with Coco Chanel. Sara had said Coco was involved with the Duke of Westminster, and Dottie Parker had said Coco saw Edward, Prince of Wales, too. I wanted to know which of the men was behind the astonishing diamond, pearl, and sapphire choker she wore to the party with her simple white sheath dress. And her eyebrows—they were so artful and expressive; I wanted to find out whether she did them herself.

While I sought distraction, Scott couldn’t seem to separate himself from the attention his great good friend was commanding. Every time I glanced across the room, there he was at Hemingway’s elbow.

If Hemingway was the king that night, then Scott was the court jester—or he tried to be, at least. Midway through the party, just when Coco, hand to throat, was saying, “This incredible decoration was a gift from—” Sara found me and pulled me aside.

“He’s asking the oddest things of the other guests. I wonder if you ought to claim a stomachache or something and have him take you home.”

“Only to turn back up like a bad penny later,” I said. “You know how he’s gotten. Leaving has to be his idea or it won’t stick.”

“Well, his idea right now seems to be finding out what color underwear the women have on, whether the men believe extramarital intercourse is a sin, and whether Dottie might be—and I quote—‘a fine piece of tail despite her big mouth.’”

“Oh, Lord, I’m sorry. He’s feeling a lot of pressure to turn in his novel, which of course isn’t nearly done. All of this attention on Hemingway…” I shrugged. “You should get Gerald to talk to him—he’s sure to have better luck than I would.”

I went to the ladies’ room, just to escape all the nonsense. It turned out to be no escape at all, though, because there was Hadley, sitting on a chair in the corner, crying.

“Oh, Zelda,” she said when she saw me, “I’m the biggest fool. Ernest and Pauline have been carrying on for God knows how long, he doesn’t even deny it. What am I supposed to do with this?”

I had no answers for her. Maybe I ought to have put her together with Coco, who might have enlightened us both about the impracticality and undesirability of giving one’s whole self to any man—for all the good it would have done.