Z
A Novel of
Zelda Fitzgerald
THERESE ANNE
FOWLER
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK
Z
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this
novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
z. Copyright © 2012 by Therese Anne Fowler. All rights reserved. Printed in the United
States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (TK)
ISBN 978-1-250-02865-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02864-8 (e-book)
First Edition: April 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Happily, happily foreverafterward—the best we could.
—Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
Z
Dear Scott, December 20, 1940
Th e Love of the Last Tycoon is a great title for your novel. What does
Max say?
I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll brave an airplane ride and come
to see you for New Year’s. Wire me the money, if you can. Won’t we be
quite the pair?— you with your bad heart, me with my bad head. Together, though, we might have something worthwhile. I’ ll bring you
some of those cheese biscuits you always loved, and you can read me
what you’ve written so far. I know it’s going to be a wonderful novel,
Scott, your best one yet.
Th is is short so I can send it before the post offi ce closes today. Write
me soon.
Devotedly,
Z~
If I could fit myself into this mail slot, here, I’d follow my letter all the
way to Hollywood, all the way to Scott, right up to the door of our next
future. We have always had a next one, after all, and there’s no good reason
PROLOGUE
Montgomery, Alabama
2
we shouldn’t start this one now. If only people could travel as easily as
words. Wouldn’t that be something? If only we could be so easily revised.
Th e postmaster comes, keys jingling, to lock up. “How are you, Miss
Sayre?” he says, despite knowing that I’ve been Mrs. Fitzgerald since 1920.
He is full- blood Alabama, Sam is; Sayrefrom him is Say- yuh,whereas I
have come to pronounce those trailing soft consonants somewhat, after living away for so long.
I tuck my hands into my sweater’s pockets and move toward the door.
“I’m just about right as rain, Sam, thanks. I hope you are.”
He holds the door for me. “Been worse. Have a good evenin’, now.”
I have been worse, too. Far worse, and Sam knows this. Everyone in
Montgomery knows this. I see them staring at me when I’m at the market or
the post offi ce or church. People whisper about how I went crazy, how my
brother went crazy, how sad it is to see Judge Sayre’s children spoil his legacy.
It all comes from the mother’s side,they whisper, despite Mama, whose main
crime is that she came from Kentucky, being as sound and sensible as any of
them— which, now that I think of it, may not be saying much.
Outside, the sun has sunk below the horizon, tired of this day, tired of
this year, as ready as I am to start anew. How long before Scott gets my letter? How long ’til I get his reply? I’d buy a plane ticket first thing tomorrow
if I could. It’s time I took care of him, for a change.
It’s time.
Th at commodity, once so plentiful that we spent it on all- day hangovers
and purposeless outings with people I’ve long forgotten, has become more
precious than we ever imagined it could be. Too many of our dear ones are
ruined now, or gone. Nothing except luck protects you from catastrophe.
Not love. Not money. Not faith. Not a pure heart or good deeds— and not
bad ones either, for that matter. We can, any of us, be laid low, cut down,
diminished, destroyed.
Take me, for example. Until moving here to live with Mama this past
April, I endured six years in a series of sanitariums in order to heal my broken brain and fractured spirit. Scott, meantime, straggled through a bunch
of different hotels and inns and towns, always nearby me— until Hollywood beckoned again and I urged him to go. His luck hardly improved: for
3
three years, now, he’s battled liquor and studio executives. He had a minor
heart attack earlier this month.
Th ough I suspect he has someone out there, he writes to me all the
time, and always ends his letters, With dearest love . . . My letters to him are
signed, Devotedly . . . Even now, when we haven’t shared an address in six
years, when he’s probably shining his light on some adoring girl who surely
thinks she has saved him, we’re both telling it true. Th is is what we’ve got
at the moment, who we are. It’s not nearly what we once had— the good, I
mean— but it’s also not what we once had, meaning the bad.
Mildred Jameson, who taught me sewing in ju nior high school, calls to
me from her porch as I pass. “Say, Zelda, when’s that fella of yours coming
back for you?”
We’re celebrities in this town, Scott and me. Folks here have followed
our doings all along, clipping articles about us, claiming events and friendships that are as invented as any fiction Scott or I ever wrote. You can’t stop
the gossip or even combat it, hardly, so you learn to play along.
“He’s writing a new movie script,” I tell her, which is sexier than the
truth: he’s done with the studios—for-ever,he says— and is working only
on the book.
Mildred moves to the porch rail. “You can’t spend another Christmas
apart!” Her gray hair is set in pins and covered by a filmy scarf. “Tell him
to hurry up, for goodness’ sake— and tell him to put that handsome Clark
Gable in the picture. Oh, my, I do love Rhett Butler!”
I nod and say, “I’ll tell him.”
“Make certain you do. And tell him to be quick about it! We aren’t any
of us getting any younger.”
“I’m sure he’s working as fast as he can.”
At a dinner we attended for James Joyce, in Paris back in ’28, Scott
lamented Gatsby’s lackluster sales and his slow start at writing a new book.
Joyce told him that he, too, was making slow progress on a new novel,
which he hoped to complete in three or four more years.
“Years,”Scott kept saying after ward, never anticipating that nine strange
and tumultuous ones would pass between Gatsbyand his next. And now
again it’s been six, but I am persuaded that he’s going to finish this novel
4
soon. After everything he’s been through, every disappointment, every insult, this novel will restore him— not only to his readers but also to himself.
Th e other day, he wrote to me:
I’ve found a title: Th e Love of the Last Tycoon. What do you think?
Meanwhile, I fi nished Ernest’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s not as
good as his last, which explains why Hollywood’s giving him over a
hundred thousand for it. Together with the fi fty grand he’ ll make for it
being the fi rst Book- of- the- Month selection, he’s really rolling in it like
we never were (though we did put on a good show). Quite a change
from when all he could aff ord were those awful rooms over the sawmill
in Paris, isn’t it?
Ernest. Scott thinks we are all on an even keel nowadays, he and Hemingway and me. He said the new book came to him inscribed, To Scott with
aff ection and esteem. He was so pleased. What I might have replied, but
didn’t, is that Hemingway can afford to be magnanimous; why wouldn’t he
tread the high road now that we are all in the places that, by his mea sure,
we’re supposed to be?
Scott went on,
I just came across my Montgomery Country Club membership card
from 1918, issued to Lt. F. S. Fitzgerald . . . do you remember that guy?
Bold and dashing and romantic— poor soul. He was wildly in love with
writing and life and a par tic u lar Montgomery debutante all the lesser
fellows said was ungettable. His heart still hasn’t fully recovered.
I wonder if we’re completely ruined, you and I. Th at’s the prevailing
opinion, but you’ve had eight pretty good months since you left the hospital, and my outlook’s improving too. Haven’t touched a drink since
last winter, can you even imagine that?
But Zelda, what wouldn’t you give to go back to the beginning, to be
those people again, the future so fresh and promising that it seems impossible not to get it right?
5
Lord help me, I miss him.
I wish I could tell everyone who thinks we’re ruined, who thinks Scott’s
beyond washed- up and I’m about as sharp these days as a sack of wet mice,
Look closer.
Look closer and you’ll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.
PART I
Picture a late- June morning in 1918, a time when Montgomery wore her
prettiest spring dress and finest floral perfume— same as I would wear that
eve ning. Our house, a roomy Victorian on Pleasant Avenue, was wrapped
in the tiny white blooms of Confederate jasmine and the purple splendor of
morning glories. It was a Saturday, and early yet, and cloudy. Birds had
congregated in the big magnolia tree and were singing at top volume as if
auditioning to be soloists in a Sunday choir.
From our back stairway’s window I saw a slow horse pulling a rickety
wagon. Behind it walked two colored women who called out the names of
vegetables as they went. Beets! Sweet peas! Turnips!they sang, louder even
than the birds.
“Hey, Katy,” I said, coming into the kitchen. “Bess and Clara are out
there, did you hear ’em?” On the wide wooden table was a platter covered
by a dish towel. “Plain?” I asked hopefully, reaching beneath the towel for
a biscuit.
“No, cheese— now, don’t make that face,” she said, opening the door to
wave to her friends. “Nothin’ today!” she shouted. Turning to me, she said,
“You can’t have peach preserves every day of your life.”
“Old Aunt Julia said that was the only thing keepin’ me sweet enough
1
10
to evade the dev il.” I bit into the biscuit and said, mouth full, “Are the Lord
and Lady still asleep?”
“Th ey both in the parlor, which I ’spect you know since you used the
back stairway.”
I set my biscuit aside so as to roll my blue skirt’s waistband one
more turn, allowing another inch of skin to show above my bare ankles.
“Th ere.”
“Maybe I best get you the preserves after all,” Katy told me, shaking her
head. “You mean to wear shoes, at least.”
“It’s too hot— and if it rains, they’ll just get soaked and my toes’ll prune
up and the skin’ll peel and then I’ll haveto go shoeless and I can’t,I have
my ballet solo to night.”
“My own mama would whip me if I’s to go in public like that,” Katy
clucked.
“She would not, you’re thirty years old.”
“You think that matter to her?”
I thought of how my parents still counseled and lectured my three sisters and my brother, all at least seven years older than me, all full adults
with children of their own— except for Rosalind. Tootsie, we call her. She
and Newman, who was offfighting in France, same as our sister Tilde’s
husband, John, were taking their time about parenthood— or maybe it was
taking its time about them. And I thought of how my grandmother Musidora, when she lived with us, couldn’t help advising Daddy about everything from his haircuts to his rulings. Th e thing, then, was to get away from
one’s parents, and stay away.
“Anyway, never mind,” I said as I went for the back door, sure that my
escape was at hand. “Long as no one here sees me—”
“Baby!” I jumped at Mama’s voice coming from the doorway behind us.
“For heaven’s sake,” she said, “whereare your stockings and shoes?”
“I’m just goin’—”
“—right back to your room to get dressed. You can’t think you were
walking to town that way!”
Katy said, “S’cuse me, I just remembered we low on turnips,” and out
she went.
11
“Not to town,” I lied. “To the orchard. I’m goin’ to practice for to night.”
I extended my arms and did a graceful plié.
Mama said, “Yes, lovely. I’m sure, however, that there’s no time for
practice; didn’t you say the Red Cross meeting starts at nine?”
“What time is it?” I turned to see that the clock read twenty minutes
’til. I rushed past Mama and up the stairs, saying, “I better get my shoes
and get out of here!”
“Please tell me you’re wearing your corset,” she called.
Tootsie was in the upstairs hallway still dressed in her nightgown, hair
disheveled, sleep in her eyes. “What’s all this?” she said.
When Newman had gone offto France in the fall to fight with General
Pershing, Tootsie came back home to live until he returned. “Ifhe returns,”
she’d said glumly, earning a stern look from Daddy— who we all called the
Judge, his being an associate Alabama Supreme Court justice. “Show some
pride,” he’d scolded Tootsie. “No matter the outcome, Newman’s ser vice
honors the South.” And she said, “Daddy, it’s the twentieth century, for
heaven’s sake.”
Now I told her, “I’m light a layer, according to Her Highness.”
“Really, Baby, if you go out with no corset, men will think you’re—”
“Immoral?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I don’t care,” I said. “Everything’s different now anyway. Th e
War Industries Board said not to wear corsets—”
“Th ey said not to buythem. But that was a good try.” She followed me
into my bedroom. “Even if you don’t care about social convention, have a
thought for yourself; if the Judge knew you left the house half- naked, he
would have your hide.”
“I was tryin’to have a thought for myself,” I said, stripping off my
blouse, “and then all you people butted in.”
Mama was still in the kitchen when I clattered back down the stairs.
“Th at’s better. Now the skirt,” she said, pointing at my waist.
“Mama, no. It gets in my way when I run.”
“Just fi x it, please. I can’t have you spoiling the Judge’s good name just
so you can get someplace faster.”
12
“Nobody’s out this early but the help, and anyway, when did you get so
fussy?”
“It’s a matter of what’s appropriate. You’re seventeen years old—”
“Eighteen, in twenty- six more days.”
“Yes, that’s right, even moreto the point,” she said. “Too old to still be a
tomboy.”
“Call me a fashion plate, then. Hemlines are goin’ up, I saw it in
McCall’s.”
She pointed at my skirt. “Not as high as that.”
I kissed her on her softening jawline. No cream or powder could hide
Time’s toll on Mama’s features. She’d be fi fty- seven on her next birthday,
and all those years showed in her lined face, her upswept hairdo, her insistence on sticking with her Edwardian shirtwaists and floor- sweeping
skirts. She outright refused to make anything new for herself; “Th ere’s a
war going on,” she’d say, as if that explained everything. Tootsie and I had
been so proud when she gave up her bustle at New Year’s.
I said, “So long, Mama— don’t wait lunch for me, I’m goin’ to the diner
with the girls.”
Th en the second I was out of sight, I sat down in the grass and pulled
offmy shoes and stockings to free my toes. Too bad, I thought, that my
own freedom couldn’t be had so easily.
Th under rumbled in the distance as I headed toward Dexter Avenue, the
wide thoroughfare that runs right up to the domed, columned state capitol,
the most impressive building I had ever seen. Humming “Dance of the
Hours,” the tune I’d perform to later, I skipped along amid the smell of
clipped grass and wet moss and sweet, decaying catalpa blooms.
Ballet, just then, was my one true love, begun at age nine when Mama
had enrolled me in Professor Weisner’s School of Dance— a failed attempt
to keep me out of the trees and offthe roofs. In ballet’s music and motion
there was joy and drama and passion and romance, all the things I desired
from life. Th ere were costumes, stories, parts to play, chances to be more
13
than just the littlest Sayre girl— last in line, forever wanting to be old
enough to be old enough.
I was on Mildred Street just past where it intersected with Sayre—
named for my family, yes— when a sprinkle hit my cheek, and then one hit
my forehead, and then God turned the faucet on full. I ran for the nearest
tree and stood beneath its branches, for what little good it did. Th e wind
whipped the leaves and the rain all around me and I was soaked in no time.
Since I couldn’t get any wetter, I just went on my way, imagining the trees
as a troupe of swaying dancers and me an escaped orphan freed, finally,
from a powerful warlock’s tyranny. I might be lost in the forest, but as in
all the best ballets, a prince was sure to happen along shortly.
At the wide circular fountain where Court Street joined Dexter Avenue,
I leaned against the railing and shook my unruly hair to get the water out.
A few soggy automobiles motored up the boulevard and streetcars clanged
past while I considered whether to just chuck my stockings and shoes into
the fountain rather than wear them wet. Th en I thought, Eigh teen, in twenty-
six days,and put the damn things back on.
Properly clothed, more or less, I went up the street toward the Red
Cross’s new office, set among the shops on the south side of Dexter. Th ough
the rain was tapering off, the sidewalks were still mostly empty— few witnesses to my dishevelment, then, which would make Mama happy. She
worries about the oddest things,I thought. All the women do.Th ere were so
many rules we girls were supposed to adhere to, so much emphasis on propriety. Straight backs. Gloved hands. Unpainted (and unkissed) lips. Pressed
skirts, modest words, downturned eyes, chaste thoughts. A lot of nonsense,
in my view. Boys liked me becauseI shot spitballs and becauseI told sassy
jokes and becauseI let ’em kiss me if they smelled nice and I felt like it. My
standards were based on good sense, not the logic of lemmings. Sorry, Mama.
You’re better than most.
Some twenty volunteers had gathered at the Red Cross, most of them
friends of mine, who, when they saw me, barely raised an eyebrow at my
state. Only my oldest sister, Marjorie, who was bustling round with pamphlets and pastries, made a fuss.
14
“Baby, what a fright you look! Did you not wear a hat?” She attempted
to smooth my hair, then gave up, saying, “It’s hopeless. Here.” She handed
me a dish towel. “Dry off. If we didn’t need volunteers so badly, I’d send you
home.”
“Quit worryin’,” I told her, rubbing the towel over my head.
She’d keep worrying anyway, I knew; she’d been fourteen when I was
born, practically my second mother until she married and moved into a
house two blocks away— and by then, of course, the habit was ingrained.
I looped the towel around her neck, then went to find a seat.
Eleanor Browder, my best friend at the time, had saved me a spot across
from her at a long row of tables. To my right was Sara Mayfield— Second
Sara, we called her, Sara the First being our friend serene Sara Haardt, who
now went to college in Baltimore. Second Sara was paired with Livye Hart,
whose glossy, mahogany- colored hair was like my friend Tallulah Bankhead’s. Tallu and herglossy, dark hair won a Picture- Playbeauty contest
when we were fifteen, and now she was turning that win into a New York
City acting career. She and her hair had a life of travel and glamour that I
envied, despite my love for Montgomery; surely no one told Tallu how long
her skirts should be.
Waiting for the meeting to start, we girls fanned ourselves in the airless
room. Its high, apricot- colored walls were plastered with Red Cross posters.
One showed a wicker basket overflowing with yarn and a pair of knitting
needles; it exhorted readers, “Our boys need SOX. Knit your bit.” Another
featured a tremendous stark red cross, to the right of which was a nurse in
flowing dress and robes that could not be a bit practical. Th e nurse’s arms
cradled an angled stretcher, on which a wounded soldier lay with a dark
blanket wrapped around both the stretcher and him. Th e perspective was
such that the nurse appeared to be a giantess— and the soldier appeared at
risk of sliding from that stretcher, feet first, if the nurse didn’t turn her distant gaze to the matter at hand. Below the image was this proclamation:
“Th e Greatest Mother in the World.”
I elbowed Sara and pointed to the poster. “What do you reckon? Is she
supposed to be the Virgin Mother?”
Sara didn’t get a chance to answer. Th ere was a rapping of a cane on the
15
wooden floor, and we all turned toward stout Mrs. Baker, in her steel- gray,
belted suit. She was a formidable woman who’d come down from Boston
to help instruct the volunteers, a woman who seemed as if she might be
able to win the war single- handedly if only someone would put her on a
boat to France.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said in her drawl- less, nasal voice. “I see
you’ve found our new location without undue effort. Th e war continues,
and so we must continue— indeed, redouble— our efforts for membership
and productivity.”
Some of the girls cheered. Th ey were the younger ones who’d only just
been allowed to join.
Mrs. Baker nodded, which made her chin disappear into her neck briefly,
and then she continued, “Now, some of you have done finger and arm bandages; the principle of the leg and body ban dages is the same. However,
there are some significant differences to which we must attend. For any
who have not been so instructed, I will start the lesson from the beginning.
We start, first, with sheets of unbleached calico . . .”
I squeezed rainwater from my hem while Mrs. Baker lectured about
widths and lengths and tension and began a demonstration. She handed
the end of a loose strip of fabric to the girl sitting nearest and said, “Stand
up, my dear. One of you holds the bulk of the fabric and feeds it through as
needed— that person is the rollee.The roller’s thumbs must be on the upper
aspect of the fabric, the forefinger beneath, like so. As we proceed, the forefingers are kept firmly against the roll, thumbs advanced for maximum
tautness. Everyone, up now and begin.”
I took a loosely tied bundle of fabric from one of several baskets lined
up along the floor behind me. Th e fabric was pure white at the moment,
sure, but it would soon be blood- soaked and covering a man’s whole
middle, crusted with dirt and irresistible to flies. I’d seen photographs of
Civil War soldiers suffering this way, in books that depicted what Daddy
called “the atrocities done to us by the Union.”
It was my brother, Tony, seven years older than me and now serving in
France, who Daddy meant to educate with the books and the discussions.
He never shooed me out of the parlor, though. He would wave me over
16
from where I might be picking out a simple tune on the piano and let me
perch on his knee.
“Th e Sayres have a proud history in Montgomery,” he’d say, paging
through one of the books. “Here. Th is is my uncle William’s original residence, where he raised his younger brother Daniel, your grandfather. It
became the first Confederate White House.”
“So Sayre Street is named for us,Daddy?” I asked with all the wonder of
my seven or eight years.
“It honors William and my father. Th e two of them made this town
what it is, children.”
Tony seemed to take the Sayre family history as a matter of course. I,
however, was fascinated with all of these now- dead relatives and would continue to ask questions about which of them had done what, when. I wanted
stories.
From Daddy, I got tales of how his father, Daniel Sayre, founded a
Tuskegee paper, then returned to Montgomery to edit the Montgomery Post,
becoming an influential voice in local politics. And Daddy told me about
his mother’s brother, “the great General John Tyler Morgan,” who’d pummeled Union troops every chance he got, then later became a prominent
U.S. Senator. From Mama I came to know her father, Willis Machen, the
U.S. Senator from Kentucky, whose friendship with Senator Morgan was
responsible for my parents’ meeting at Senator Morgan’s New Year’s Eve ball
in 1883. Grandfather Machen had once been a presidential candidate.
I wondered, that day at the Red Cross, if our family’s history was burdensome to Tony, oppressive, maybe. And maybe that was why he’d married Edith, whose people were tenant farmers, and then left Montgomery
to live and work in Mobile. To be the only surviving son in a family— and
not the first son, not the son who’d been named after the grandfather upon
whose shoulders so much of Montgomery’s fate had apparently rested, not
the son who’d died from meningitis at just eigh teen months old— well, that
was a heavy yoke.
Untying the calico bundle, I redirected my thoughts and handed Eleanor the fabric’s loose end. “I had a letter yesterday from Arthur Brennan,”
I said. “Remember him, from our last trip to Atlanta?”
17
Eleanor frowned in concentration as she tried to form the start of the
roll. “Was it thumbs under, or forefingers under?”
“Fingers. Arthur’s people have been in cotton since before the Revolution. Th ey’ve still got old slaves who never wanted to go, which Daddy says
is proof that President Lincoln ruined the South for nothin’.”
Eleanor made a few successful turns, then looked up. “Arthur’s the boy
with that green Dort car? Th e glossy one we rode in?”
“Th at’s him. Wasn’t it delicious? Arthur said Dorts cost twice what a
Ford does— a thousand dollars, maybe more. Th e Judge would as soon dance
naked in front of the court house as spend that kind of money on a car.”
Th e notion amused me; as I continued feeding the fabric to Eleanor, I
imagined a scene in which Daddy exited the streetcar in his pin- striped
suit, umbrella furled, leather satchel in hand. Parked at the base of the
broad, marble court house steps would be a green Dort, its hood sleek and
gleaming in the sunshine, its varnished running boards aglow. A man in a
top hat and tailcoat— some agent of the dev il, he’d be— would beckon my
father over to the car; there would be a conversation; Daddy would shake
his head and frown and gesture with his umbrella; he would raise a finger
as he pontificated about relative value and the ethics of overspending; the
top- hatted man would shake his head firmly, leaving Daddy no choice but
to disrobe on the spot, and dance.
In this vision I allowed my father the dignity of being at a distance from
my vantage point, and facing away from me. In truth, I hadn’t yet seen a
man undressed— though I’d seen young boys, and Re nais sance artwork,
which I supposed were repre sen ta tional enough.
“Speaking of nakedness,” Eleanor said, leaning across the table to take
the end of the ban dage from me, “last night at the movie house, an aviator—
Captain Wendell Haskins, he said— asked me was the rumor true about
you parading around the pool in a flesh- colored bathing suit. He was at the
movies with May Steiner, and asking about you, isn’t that sublime? May
was at the concession just then, so she didn’t hear him; that was gentlemanly, at least.”
Sara said, “I sure wish I’d been at the pool that day, just to see the old
ladies’ faces.”
18
“Were you at the dance last winter when Zelda pinned the mistletoe to
the back of her skirt?” Livye said.
“You should’ve been down here with us on Wednesday,” Eleanor told
them. “Zelda commandeered our streetcar while the driver was on the corner finishing a smoke. We just left him there with his eyes bulging and went
rolling on up Perry Street!”
“I swear, Zelda, you have all the fun,” Sara said. “And you never get in
trouble!”
Eleanor said, “Everyone’s afraid of her daddy, so they just shake their
finger at her and let her go.”
I nodded. “Even my sisters are scared of him.”
“But you’re not,” Livye said.
“He barks way more than he bites. So, El, what’d you tell Captain
Haskins?”
“I said, ‘Don’t tell a soul, Captain, but there was no bathing suit at all.’ ”
Livye snorted, and I said, “See, El, that’s what I like about you. Keep
that up and all the matrons will be calling you‘wicked,’ too.”
Eleanor reached for a pin from a bowl on the table, then secured the
ban dage’s end. “He asked whether you had a favorite beau, who your people
were, what your daddy did, and whether you had siblings—”
Sara said, “Might be he just wanted some excuse to make conversation
with you,Eleanor.”
“In which case he might have thought of one or two questions about
me.” Eleanor smiled at Sara fondly. “No, he’s most certainly fi xated on Miss
Zelda Sayre of 6 Pleasant Avenue, she of the toe shoes and angel’s wings.”
Livye said, “And dev il’s smile.”
“And pure heart,” Sara added. I pretended to retch.
“He said he’s not serious about May,” Eleanor said. “Also, he intends to
phone you.”
“He already has.”
“But you haven’t said yes yet.”
“I’m booked up ’til fall,” I said, and it was true; between the college
boys who’d so far avoided military ser vice and the flood of offi cers come to
19
train at Montgomery’s new military installations, I had more male attention than I knew what to do with.
Sara took my hand. “If you like him, you shouldn’t wait. Th ey might
ship out any day, you know.”
“Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “It might be now or never.”
I pulled my hand from Sara’s and lifted another pile of fabric from the
basket behind us. “Th ere’s a war, in case you haven’t heard. It might end up
being ‘now and then never.’ So what’s the use?”
Eleanor said, “Th at hasn’t stopped you from seeing a military man before. He’s awfully handsome. . . .”
“He is that. When he phones again, maybe I’ll—”
“Chatter later, ladies,” Mrs. Baker scolded as she strolled by, hands
clasped behind her back, bosom straining forward like a warship’s prow.
“Important though your affairs may be, our brave young men would appreciate your giving their welfare more speed and attention.”
When Mrs. Baker was past, I tilted my head and put my forearm to my
eyes, mouthing, “Oh! Th e shame of it!” as if I were Mary Pickford herself.
Th at eve ning, the Montgomery Country Club’s high- ceilinged ballroom
was filled to capacity. Along with the young men and women from the
town’s top families were a handful of chaperones, and dozens of uniformed
offi cers who’d been given honorary memberships while assigned to nearby
Camp Sheridan or Taylor Field. Th ose fellas would soon be joining their
army and air corps brothers in the skies or on battlefields in places like
Cantigny and Bois Belleau— but right now they were as youthful and happy
and ready for romance as anyone there.
My ballet troupe readied itself behind a bank of curtains. Shoes snug,
ribbons tied, skirts fastened and fluffed. Lipstick, rouge— though not one
of us needed it, as warm and excited as we were. A final costume check.
One more hamstring stretch, ankle flex, knuckle crack. Instructions to spit
out our gum.
“Two minutes, ladies,” Madame Katherine said. “Line up.”
One of the younger girls, Marie, moved a curtain to peek out at the
audience. She said, “Look at all those offi cers! I sure wish Ihad the solo.”
Another replied, “If you were as good as Zelda, maybe you’d get one.
Plus, you better quit eating so much cake.”
“Hush,” I said. “It’s baby fat. Time and practice is all you need, Marie.”
She sighed. “You look like a princess.” Mama had pinned my wavy hair
2
21
into as neat a bun as it would tolerate, then encircled it with a garland of
tiny tea roses from her garden. Th e roses were the same deep pink as my
costume’s satin- trimmed bodice, and a shade darker than my diaphanous
skirt. I wasa princess, for right now anyway— and right nowwas all I ever
cared about.
Th e orchestra began and I waited anxiously for my cue, glancing down
once more to make sure my shoe ribbons were tied, that a bit of my skirt
wasn’t tucked into my stockings. Would I remember the one- more fouetté
the professor had added last minute? Would the two new girls remember to
split the line when I came upstage from behind them?
When I took the stage, though, all of that disappeared, and I felt so light
that I wondered if I’d been specially charmed by one of our Creole laundresses. Or maybe the lightness owed to the fact that I was finallydone with
school. Maybe it was the energy of war time, the sensation that all of time
was faster now, and fleeting. What ever the case, my body was supple and
tireless. It seemed I’d hardly begun the dance when the orchestra played the
final strains and the per for mance ended to cheers and applause.
While taking my bows, I noticed some officers at the front of the crowd.
Like others I’d met, these fellas were a little older than my usual beaux. Their
uniforms, with those serious brass buttons and knee- high leather boots, gave
them sophistication that the local boys— even the ones in college— were
lacking. Th e soldiers wore an air of impending adventure, the anticipation
of travel and battles, of blood and bullets and, possibly, death, which made
them more vibrant and alive.
A pair of tall boots paler than the others caught my eye. As I straightened, I followed the boots upward to olive- colored breeches, a fitted uniform tunic, and, above it, an angelic face with eyes as green and expressive
as the Irish Sea, eyes that snagged and held me as surely as a bug sticks in
a web, eyes that contained the entire world in their smiling depths, eyes
like—
Something bumped my arm. “Go,Zelda,” one of the young ballerinas
said, and nudged me into line for our exit.
That offi cer was nowhere in sight when I returned to the ballroom after
changing into my dress— corset included in the ensemble; shoes, too— and
22
dabbing on Mama’s own rose perfume. So I danced a tango with a boy I’d
known my whole life, then followed it with a half- dozen more dances, a
new fella for every new song. Sweaty brows, sweaty hands; sweat trickling
down my back as I moved from one partner to the next, indulging no one
of them more than another. Th ey were useful accessories, these fellas were.
Good dancers. Good company. Nothing more— though I wouldn’t have
said so to them. It was far more fun to let them think they had a chance.
Finally I took a break to catch my breath and get something to drink.
As I stood near the doorway, cooling down and waiting for my latest partner
to return with refreshments, here came the offi cer with the fawn- colored
boots. Now I noticed the crisp white collar inside his tunic, his softly squared
chin, the perfect almond shape of his eyes, and the long, feathery lashes that
shadowed them. Oh, my.
He bowed. “Lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald, hoping to make your acquaintance.” His voice was deeper than I’d expected, with no trace of Alabama
or any place Southern.
I pretended to be shocked by his forwardness. “Without a proper introduction?”
“Life is potentially very short these days—and,your latest partner might
return at any moment.” He leaned closer. “I’m wiser than I am impetuous
or improper, rest assured.”
“Well. General Pershing ought to be consulting you on strategy. I’m
Zelda Sayre.” I offered my hand.
“Zelda?Th at’s unusual. A family name?”
“A Gypsy name, from a novel called Zelda’s Fortune.”
He laughed. “A novel, really?”
“What, do you think my mother is illiterate? Southern women canread.”
“No, of course. I’m impressed, is all. A Gypsy character— well, that’s
just terrifi c. I’m a writer, you see. In fact I’ve got a novel being read by
Scribner’s right now— they’re a New York City publishing house.”
I didn’t know publishing houses from Adam. What I did know was
that he held himself differently from the other boys— other men,I thought;
he had to be in his twenties. And his speech had that dramatic flair you
23
find in people accustomed to playacting in theater, as I was. When you’d
spent so much time performing onstage, the habit bled into your life. Or,
possibly it was the other way around.
I said, “I thought you were an offi cer.”
“My secondary occupation.”
“Th ere’s not one bit of South in your voice, Lieutenant; where’s home?”
“Prince ton, before my commission,” he said. “I did prep in New Jersey.
My childhood was spent in Minnesota— St. Paul.”
“A Yankee in every single way.” I glanced beyond him; thirsty as I was,
now I hoped my partner might forget to return.
“Yes—though I’ve developed quite an affection for the South since my
assignment to Camp Sheridan. A growing affection, in fact.” In those captivating eyes was what Mama would call “an intention.” A spark, or sparkle;
a glint or gleam. Th e fairy tales I’d read throughout my childhood were full
of such words for such looks.
I said, “Well, that should make you more pop u lar in these parts.”
“I’m hopeful.”
He smiled then, and I felt that smile like a vibration moving through
me, the way you might feel if you walked through a ghost or it walked
through you. “Hopeful,” he repeated as the orchestra struck up a waltz, “and
compelled to ask you for this dance.”
“Well, I am waiting for that nice fella from Birmingham to get back
with a whistle- wetter. It is so blazing hot. I don’t know how you all can stand
to wear all that”— I indicated his uniform—“and not want to just strip down
and jump into some creek.”
“I think it’s because creeks are lacking somewhat in music and beautiful
young women. Dancing, I’ve found, provides a good distraction from the
discomfort of all this wool. Won’t you help a fellow out?”
He offered his hand. How could I refuse? Why would I want to?
“I suppose it wouldbe a ser vice to my country,” I said, just as the Birmingham boy returned with my drink. I took the glass from his hand,
downed the punch, then returned the glass, saying, “Th ank you somuch,”
and let Scott lead me offinto the ballroom.
24
He danced as well as any of my partners ever had— better, maybe. It
seemed to me that the energy I was feeling that night had infused him, too;
we glided through the waltz as if we’d been dancing together for years.
I liked his starched, woolly, cologned smell. His height, about five
inches taller than my five feet four inches, was, I thought, the exact right
height. His shoulders were the exact right width. His grip on my hand was
somehow both formal and familiar, his hand on my waist both possessive
and tentative. His blue- green eyes were clear, yet mysterious, and his lips
curved just slightly upward.
Th e result of all this was that although we danced well together, I felt
off- balance the entire time. I wasn’t used to this feeling, but, my goodness,
I liked it.
Two hours later, we stood facing each other in the pink glow of a driveway post lamp while the Club emptied out behind us. Any second now,
Eleanor would come out, and then her daddy’s driver would be there to
ferry us home in the old phaeton I’d once decided to drive myself. I was
twelve at the time, and the horses nearly ran away with me before the whole
thing went sideways and I was flung into a hedge.
“Tell me more about this book business,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone who could write more than a news article— well, Mama wrote a short
play once, but that hardly counts ’cause it was a musical and it only ran
some fourteen minutes— it was for a charity ball, we’re always having charity balls here, do y’all do that, too, up North?”
He laughed. “Do you want to know about my novel, or St. Paul’s society habits?”
“Th e novel! Both! Tell me every single thing about every single thing
until El drags me off.”
“How about this: I’ll send you a chapter, and you can see for yourself
what I’m about. Th en you’ll be able to say you were among the first to read
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s phenomenal first book.”
“F.Scott?”
“Francis—after my cousin Francis Scott Key—The Star- Spangled
Banner?”
“Not really!”
25
“Oh yes. Besides which, F. Scottsounds weightier, don’t you agree?
Authoritative.”
“Absolutely.” I nodded. “Why, I respect you more already and I haven’t
read a word. Imagine how much I’ll admire you when I’m done. And then
once it’s an actual book. . .” I let the sentence hang like that, allowing his
imagination to fill in the rest.
I wanted him to tell me more about how he’d done it, written a whole
entire novel, and about what he liked to read, and I wanted to tell him what
I liked to read, and then we could talk about things from those books.
India, for instance; I’d been reading Kipling since forever. And Joseph
Conrad’s made- up Costaguana, from Nostromo— had he ever heard of it?
Where exactly did he think it was? Tar zan of the Ape s— had he read that
one? Africa, now thatwas a place to talk about!
“Th e ‘actual book’ part may be a while, yet,” he said. “Alas. I’ll lend you
something else in the meantime, though, if you like. Do you enjoy reading?”
“I’ll read most anything. My friend Sara Haardt just sent me the strangest story, Herland,it was in a magazine, and it’s about a society that’s made
only of women. I wouldn’t like that much.”
He grinned. “Good news, all.”
None of the boys I knew had much interest in books. For them it was
football and horses and hounds. I looked at Scott there in the rosy light, his
hair and skin and eyes aglow with joy and ambition and enthusiasm, and
was dazzled.
“Hereshe is,” Eleanor said, slipping her arm around my waist. A
linebacker- size fella was with her. “I thought maybe you’d snuck off like last
time.”
Scott said, “Snuck off ? Had I but known—”
“To smoke,” El said the moment after I pinched her. “She’d snuck offto
smoke with a couple of the older girls.”
“Older than . . . ?”
“Seventeen,” I told him. “I’m seventeen ’til July twenty- fourth, that’s
twenty- six—well, nearly twenty- five, really— days from now, given how it’s
closing in on midnight. Twenty- five days, and then I’m eigh teen.”
26
“After which time she’ll be far less annoying, I hope. We don’t smoke
much,” El assured him. “But it’s good for preventing sore throats.”
“It’s good for making you feelgood,” I said, “which is why the law and
my daddy have always been against women doing it.”
“Who areyou, by the way?” El asked Scott. She pointed at her companion and said, “Th is here new friend of mine, who is about to be on his way,
is Wilson Crenshaw Whitney the Th ird.”
“Scott Fitzgerald, the one and only,” Scott told the two of them. Th en,
looking at me, he added, “Who very much wishes he didn’t have to do the
same.”
“I purely hate that I have to go home,” I told him. “If I wasn’t a girl—”
“—I wouldn’t insist you allow me to phone you tomorrow. All right?”
“Th ere’s my consolation, then,” I said. Th e phaeton was rolling to a stop
in front of us. I followed El to its door, adding, “Judge Anthony Sayre’s
residence. Th e operator will put you right through.”
g
Th e morning’s scattered clouds had, by afternoon, formed themselves into
great towering columns with broad anvil tops while I lay on my bed, diary
open, pencil in hand. I had one ear attuned to the thunder that might spoil
my eve ning plans, and the other waiting for the telltale three short rings
that indicated a telephone call for our residence. Scott still hadn’t phoned,
and now I was almost certain that he wouldn’t. He’s all words, no substance,
I thought. Writers are probably like that.
Tootsie appeared at my bedroom door. “Teatime. Katy’s got lemon pie,
or tomato sandwiches— and Ihave gin.”
“So Mama has gone out.”
“Baby, I’m twenty- nine. Not exactly a schoolgirl, Lord.”
“Yet you still wait ’til Mama’s gone to pour a drink.”
“I try to be considerate. Anyway, it’s Daddy we need to worry about
most . . . and God help me if he ever sees me smoking. I’m goin’ to muddle
up some mint and raspberries to go with that gin. Are you game?”
“Okay, sure.” I glanced at my diary, where I’d been writing about the
27
morning’s Ser vice League work. We volunteers had served doughnuts and
coffee to soldiers at the train station canteen, and a married offi cer had
taken an obvious shine to me. Th ough I knew I was supposed to discourage
his interest, I flirted with him anyway. He was attractive and funny, and
what harm was there in it? He was nothing more than a way to pass the time
until we finished, until I could return home, until that charming lieutenant
phoned.
I asked my sister, “Tootsie, how’d you know you were in love with
Newman?”
“Oh- ho!” She sat down next to me. “Who is he? Tell!”
Katy called up the stairs, “Miz Rosalind, what’d you all decide?”
“What did we decide? Pie?”
I wrinkled my nose.
“Th e sandwiches,” Tootsie yelled. “And rinse those berries for me, would
you?”
“Yes’m.”
Tootsie turned back to me. “Now tell.”
“Nothin’ totell. I guess I ought to be aware of what to look for, is all.
Th e signs of true love, I mean. Is it like in Shakespeare?” I sat up and took
Tootsie’s hands. “You know, is it all heaving bosoms and fluttering hearts
and mistaken identities and madness?”
Th e sound of the phone ringing downstairs made my heart leap.
“Yes,”Tootsie said with wide eyes, holding tightly to my hand as I jumped
up. “Yes, it is exactlylike that. Gird yourself, little sister.”
A Novel of
Zelda Fitzgerald
THERESE ANNE
FOWLER
ST. MARTIN’S PRESS NEW YORK
Z
This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this
novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
z. Copyright © 2012 by Therese Anne Fowler. All rights reserved. Printed in the United
States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New
York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data (TK)
ISBN 978-1-250-02865-5 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-250-02864-8 (e-book)
First Edition: April 2013
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Happily, happily foreverafterward—the best we could.
—Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald
Z
Dear Scott, December 20, 1940
Th e Love of the Last Tycoon is a great title for your novel. What does
Max say?
I’ve been thinking that maybe I’ll brave an airplane ride and come
to see you for New Year’s. Wire me the money, if you can. Won’t we be
quite the pair?— you with your bad heart, me with my bad head. Together, though, we might have something worthwhile. I’ ll bring you
some of those cheese biscuits you always loved, and you can read me
what you’ve written so far. I know it’s going to be a wonderful novel,
Scott, your best one yet.
Th is is short so I can send it before the post offi ce closes today. Write
me soon.
Devotedly,
Z~
If I could fit myself into this mail slot, here, I’d follow my letter all the
way to Hollywood, all the way to Scott, right up to the door of our next
future. We have always had a next one, after all, and there’s no good reason
PROLOGUE
Montgomery, Alabama
2
we shouldn’t start this one now. If only people could travel as easily as
words. Wouldn’t that be something? If only we could be so easily revised.
Th e postmaster comes, keys jingling, to lock up. “How are you, Miss
Sayre?” he says, despite knowing that I’ve been Mrs. Fitzgerald since 1920.
He is full- blood Alabama, Sam is; Sayrefrom him is Say- yuh,whereas I
have come to pronounce those trailing soft consonants somewhat, after living away for so long.
I tuck my hands into my sweater’s pockets and move toward the door.
“I’m just about right as rain, Sam, thanks. I hope you are.”
He holds the door for me. “Been worse. Have a good evenin’, now.”
I have been worse, too. Far worse, and Sam knows this. Everyone in
Montgomery knows this. I see them staring at me when I’m at the market or
the post offi ce or church. People whisper about how I went crazy, how my
brother went crazy, how sad it is to see Judge Sayre’s children spoil his legacy.
It all comes from the mother’s side,they whisper, despite Mama, whose main
crime is that she came from Kentucky, being as sound and sensible as any of
them— which, now that I think of it, may not be saying much.
Outside, the sun has sunk below the horizon, tired of this day, tired of
this year, as ready as I am to start anew. How long before Scott gets my letter? How long ’til I get his reply? I’d buy a plane ticket first thing tomorrow
if I could. It’s time I took care of him, for a change.
It’s time.
Th at commodity, once so plentiful that we spent it on all- day hangovers
and purposeless outings with people I’ve long forgotten, has become more
precious than we ever imagined it could be. Too many of our dear ones are
ruined now, or gone. Nothing except luck protects you from catastrophe.
Not love. Not money. Not faith. Not a pure heart or good deeds— and not
bad ones either, for that matter. We can, any of us, be laid low, cut down,
diminished, destroyed.
Take me, for example. Until moving here to live with Mama this past
April, I endured six years in a series of sanitariums in order to heal my broken brain and fractured spirit. Scott, meantime, straggled through a bunch
of different hotels and inns and towns, always nearby me— until Hollywood beckoned again and I urged him to go. His luck hardly improved: for
3
three years, now, he’s battled liquor and studio executives. He had a minor
heart attack earlier this month.
Th ough I suspect he has someone out there, he writes to me all the
time, and always ends his letters, With dearest love . . . My letters to him are
signed, Devotedly . . . Even now, when we haven’t shared an address in six
years, when he’s probably shining his light on some adoring girl who surely
thinks she has saved him, we’re both telling it true. Th is is what we’ve got
at the moment, who we are. It’s not nearly what we once had— the good, I
mean— but it’s also not what we once had, meaning the bad.
Mildred Jameson, who taught me sewing in ju nior high school, calls to
me from her porch as I pass. “Say, Zelda, when’s that fella of yours coming
back for you?”
We’re celebrities in this town, Scott and me. Folks here have followed
our doings all along, clipping articles about us, claiming events and friendships that are as invented as any fiction Scott or I ever wrote. You can’t stop
the gossip or even combat it, hardly, so you learn to play along.
“He’s writing a new movie script,” I tell her, which is sexier than the
truth: he’s done with the studios—for-ever,he says— and is working only
on the book.
Mildred moves to the porch rail. “You can’t spend another Christmas
apart!” Her gray hair is set in pins and covered by a filmy scarf. “Tell him
to hurry up, for goodness’ sake— and tell him to put that handsome Clark
Gable in the picture. Oh, my, I do love Rhett Butler!”
I nod and say, “I’ll tell him.”
“Make certain you do. And tell him to be quick about it! We aren’t any
of us getting any younger.”
“I’m sure he’s working as fast as he can.”
At a dinner we attended for James Joyce, in Paris back in ’28, Scott
lamented Gatsby’s lackluster sales and his slow start at writing a new book.
Joyce told him that he, too, was making slow progress on a new novel,
which he hoped to complete in three or four more years.
“Years,”Scott kept saying after ward, never anticipating that nine strange
and tumultuous ones would pass between Gatsbyand his next. And now
again it’s been six, but I am persuaded that he’s going to finish this novel
4
soon. After everything he’s been through, every disappointment, every insult, this novel will restore him— not only to his readers but also to himself.
Th e other day, he wrote to me:
I’ve found a title: Th e Love of the Last Tycoon. What do you think?
Meanwhile, I fi nished Ernest’s For Whom the Bell Tolls. It’s not as
good as his last, which explains why Hollywood’s giving him over a
hundred thousand for it. Together with the fi fty grand he’ ll make for it
being the fi rst Book- of- the- Month selection, he’s really rolling in it like
we never were (though we did put on a good show). Quite a change
from when all he could aff ord were those awful rooms over the sawmill
in Paris, isn’t it?
Ernest. Scott thinks we are all on an even keel nowadays, he and Hemingway and me. He said the new book came to him inscribed, To Scott with
aff ection and esteem. He was so pleased. What I might have replied, but
didn’t, is that Hemingway can afford to be magnanimous; why wouldn’t he
tread the high road now that we are all in the places that, by his mea sure,
we’re supposed to be?
Scott went on,
I just came across my Montgomery Country Club membership card
from 1918, issued to Lt. F. S. Fitzgerald . . . do you remember that guy?
Bold and dashing and romantic— poor soul. He was wildly in love with
writing and life and a par tic u lar Montgomery debutante all the lesser
fellows said was ungettable. His heart still hasn’t fully recovered.
I wonder if we’re completely ruined, you and I. Th at’s the prevailing
opinion, but you’ve had eight pretty good months since you left the hospital, and my outlook’s improving too. Haven’t touched a drink since
last winter, can you even imagine that?
But Zelda, what wouldn’t you give to go back to the beginning, to be
those people again, the future so fresh and promising that it seems impossible not to get it right?
5
Lord help me, I miss him.
I wish I could tell everyone who thinks we’re ruined, who thinks Scott’s
beyond washed- up and I’m about as sharp these days as a sack of wet mice,
Look closer.
Look closer and you’ll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.
PART I
Picture a late- June morning in 1918, a time when Montgomery wore her
prettiest spring dress and finest floral perfume— same as I would wear that
eve ning. Our house, a roomy Victorian on Pleasant Avenue, was wrapped
in the tiny white blooms of Confederate jasmine and the purple splendor of
morning glories. It was a Saturday, and early yet, and cloudy. Birds had
congregated in the big magnolia tree and were singing at top volume as if
auditioning to be soloists in a Sunday choir.
From our back stairway’s window I saw a slow horse pulling a rickety
wagon. Behind it walked two colored women who called out the names of
vegetables as they went. Beets! Sweet peas! Turnips!they sang, louder even
than the birds.
“Hey, Katy,” I said, coming into the kitchen. “Bess and Clara are out
there, did you hear ’em?” On the wide wooden table was a platter covered
by a dish towel. “Plain?” I asked hopefully, reaching beneath the towel for
a biscuit.
“No, cheese— now, don’t make that face,” she said, opening the door to
wave to her friends. “Nothin’ today!” she shouted. Turning to me, she said,
“You can’t have peach preserves every day of your life.”
“Old Aunt Julia said that was the only thing keepin’ me sweet enough
1
10
to evade the dev il.” I bit into the biscuit and said, mouth full, “Are the Lord
and Lady still asleep?”
“Th ey both in the parlor, which I ’spect you know since you used the
back stairway.”
I set my biscuit aside so as to roll my blue skirt’s waistband one
more turn, allowing another inch of skin to show above my bare ankles.
“Th ere.”
“Maybe I best get you the preserves after all,” Katy told me, shaking her
head. “You mean to wear shoes, at least.”
“It’s too hot— and if it rains, they’ll just get soaked and my toes’ll prune
up and the skin’ll peel and then I’ll haveto go shoeless and I can’t,I have
my ballet solo to night.”
“My own mama would whip me if I’s to go in public like that,” Katy
clucked.
“She would not, you’re thirty years old.”
“You think that matter to her?”
I thought of how my parents still counseled and lectured my three sisters and my brother, all at least seven years older than me, all full adults
with children of their own— except for Rosalind. Tootsie, we call her. She
and Newman, who was offfighting in France, same as our sister Tilde’s
husband, John, were taking their time about parenthood— or maybe it was
taking its time about them. And I thought of how my grandmother Musidora, when she lived with us, couldn’t help advising Daddy about everything from his haircuts to his rulings. Th e thing, then, was to get away from
one’s parents, and stay away.
“Anyway, never mind,” I said as I went for the back door, sure that my
escape was at hand. “Long as no one here sees me—”
“Baby!” I jumped at Mama’s voice coming from the doorway behind us.
“For heaven’s sake,” she said, “whereare your stockings and shoes?”
“I’m just goin’—”
“—right back to your room to get dressed. You can’t think you were
walking to town that way!”
Katy said, “S’cuse me, I just remembered we low on turnips,” and out
she went.
11
“Not to town,” I lied. “To the orchard. I’m goin’ to practice for to night.”
I extended my arms and did a graceful plié.
Mama said, “Yes, lovely. I’m sure, however, that there’s no time for
practice; didn’t you say the Red Cross meeting starts at nine?”
“What time is it?” I turned to see that the clock read twenty minutes
’til. I rushed past Mama and up the stairs, saying, “I better get my shoes
and get out of here!”
“Please tell me you’re wearing your corset,” she called.
Tootsie was in the upstairs hallway still dressed in her nightgown, hair
disheveled, sleep in her eyes. “What’s all this?” she said.
When Newman had gone offto France in the fall to fight with General
Pershing, Tootsie came back home to live until he returned. “Ifhe returns,”
she’d said glumly, earning a stern look from Daddy— who we all called the
Judge, his being an associate Alabama Supreme Court justice. “Show some
pride,” he’d scolded Tootsie. “No matter the outcome, Newman’s ser vice
honors the South.” And she said, “Daddy, it’s the twentieth century, for
heaven’s sake.”
Now I told her, “I’m light a layer, according to Her Highness.”
“Really, Baby, if you go out with no corset, men will think you’re—”
“Immoral?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I don’t care,” I said. “Everything’s different now anyway. Th e
War Industries Board said not to wear corsets—”
“Th ey said not to buythem. But that was a good try.” She followed me
into my bedroom. “Even if you don’t care about social convention, have a
thought for yourself; if the Judge knew you left the house half- naked, he
would have your hide.”
“I was tryin’to have a thought for myself,” I said, stripping off my
blouse, “and then all you people butted in.”
Mama was still in the kitchen when I clattered back down the stairs.
“Th at’s better. Now the skirt,” she said, pointing at my waist.
“Mama, no. It gets in my way when I run.”
“Just fi x it, please. I can’t have you spoiling the Judge’s good name just
so you can get someplace faster.”
12
“Nobody’s out this early but the help, and anyway, when did you get so
fussy?”
“It’s a matter of what’s appropriate. You’re seventeen years old—”
“Eighteen, in twenty- six more days.”
“Yes, that’s right, even moreto the point,” she said. “Too old to still be a
tomboy.”
“Call me a fashion plate, then. Hemlines are goin’ up, I saw it in
McCall’s.”
She pointed at my skirt. “Not as high as that.”
I kissed her on her softening jawline. No cream or powder could hide
Time’s toll on Mama’s features. She’d be fi fty- seven on her next birthday,
and all those years showed in her lined face, her upswept hairdo, her insistence on sticking with her Edwardian shirtwaists and floor- sweeping
skirts. She outright refused to make anything new for herself; “Th ere’s a
war going on,” she’d say, as if that explained everything. Tootsie and I had
been so proud when she gave up her bustle at New Year’s.
I said, “So long, Mama— don’t wait lunch for me, I’m goin’ to the diner
with the girls.”
Th en the second I was out of sight, I sat down in the grass and pulled
offmy shoes and stockings to free my toes. Too bad, I thought, that my
own freedom couldn’t be had so easily.
Th under rumbled in the distance as I headed toward Dexter Avenue, the
wide thoroughfare that runs right up to the domed, columned state capitol,
the most impressive building I had ever seen. Humming “Dance of the
Hours,” the tune I’d perform to later, I skipped along amid the smell of
clipped grass and wet moss and sweet, decaying catalpa blooms.
Ballet, just then, was my one true love, begun at age nine when Mama
had enrolled me in Professor Weisner’s School of Dance— a failed attempt
to keep me out of the trees and offthe roofs. In ballet’s music and motion
there was joy and drama and passion and romance, all the things I desired
from life. Th ere were costumes, stories, parts to play, chances to be more
13
than just the littlest Sayre girl— last in line, forever wanting to be old
enough to be old enough.
I was on Mildred Street just past where it intersected with Sayre—
named for my family, yes— when a sprinkle hit my cheek, and then one hit
my forehead, and then God turned the faucet on full. I ran for the nearest
tree and stood beneath its branches, for what little good it did. Th e wind
whipped the leaves and the rain all around me and I was soaked in no time.
Since I couldn’t get any wetter, I just went on my way, imagining the trees
as a troupe of swaying dancers and me an escaped orphan freed, finally,
from a powerful warlock’s tyranny. I might be lost in the forest, but as in
all the best ballets, a prince was sure to happen along shortly.
At the wide circular fountain where Court Street joined Dexter Avenue,
I leaned against the railing and shook my unruly hair to get the water out.
A few soggy automobiles motored up the boulevard and streetcars clanged
past while I considered whether to just chuck my stockings and shoes into
the fountain rather than wear them wet. Th en I thought, Eigh teen, in twenty-
six days,and put the damn things back on.
Properly clothed, more or less, I went up the street toward the Red
Cross’s new office, set among the shops on the south side of Dexter. Th ough
the rain was tapering off, the sidewalks were still mostly empty— few witnesses to my dishevelment, then, which would make Mama happy. She
worries about the oddest things,I thought. All the women do.Th ere were so
many rules we girls were supposed to adhere to, so much emphasis on propriety. Straight backs. Gloved hands. Unpainted (and unkissed) lips. Pressed
skirts, modest words, downturned eyes, chaste thoughts. A lot of nonsense,
in my view. Boys liked me becauseI shot spitballs and becauseI told sassy
jokes and becauseI let ’em kiss me if they smelled nice and I felt like it. My
standards were based on good sense, not the logic of lemmings. Sorry, Mama.
You’re better than most.
Some twenty volunteers had gathered at the Red Cross, most of them
friends of mine, who, when they saw me, barely raised an eyebrow at my
state. Only my oldest sister, Marjorie, who was bustling round with pamphlets and pastries, made a fuss.
14
“Baby, what a fright you look! Did you not wear a hat?” She attempted
to smooth my hair, then gave up, saying, “It’s hopeless. Here.” She handed
me a dish towel. “Dry off. If we didn’t need volunteers so badly, I’d send you
home.”
“Quit worryin’,” I told her, rubbing the towel over my head.
She’d keep worrying anyway, I knew; she’d been fourteen when I was
born, practically my second mother until she married and moved into a
house two blocks away— and by then, of course, the habit was ingrained.
I looped the towel around her neck, then went to find a seat.
Eleanor Browder, my best friend at the time, had saved me a spot across
from her at a long row of tables. To my right was Sara Mayfield— Second
Sara, we called her, Sara the First being our friend serene Sara Haardt, who
now went to college in Baltimore. Second Sara was paired with Livye Hart,
whose glossy, mahogany- colored hair was like my friend Tallulah Bankhead’s. Tallu and herglossy, dark hair won a Picture- Playbeauty contest
when we were fifteen, and now she was turning that win into a New York
City acting career. She and her hair had a life of travel and glamour that I
envied, despite my love for Montgomery; surely no one told Tallu how long
her skirts should be.
Waiting for the meeting to start, we girls fanned ourselves in the airless
room. Its high, apricot- colored walls were plastered with Red Cross posters.
One showed a wicker basket overflowing with yarn and a pair of knitting
needles; it exhorted readers, “Our boys need SOX. Knit your bit.” Another
featured a tremendous stark red cross, to the right of which was a nurse in
flowing dress and robes that could not be a bit practical. Th e nurse’s arms
cradled an angled stretcher, on which a wounded soldier lay with a dark
blanket wrapped around both the stretcher and him. Th e perspective was
such that the nurse appeared to be a giantess— and the soldier appeared at
risk of sliding from that stretcher, feet first, if the nurse didn’t turn her distant gaze to the matter at hand. Below the image was this proclamation:
“Th e Greatest Mother in the World.”
I elbowed Sara and pointed to the poster. “What do you reckon? Is she
supposed to be the Virgin Mother?”
Sara didn’t get a chance to answer. Th ere was a rapping of a cane on the
15
wooden floor, and we all turned toward stout Mrs. Baker, in her steel- gray,
belted suit. She was a formidable woman who’d come down from Boston
to help instruct the volunteers, a woman who seemed as if she might be
able to win the war single- handedly if only someone would put her on a
boat to France.
“Good morning, everyone,” she said in her drawl- less, nasal voice. “I see
you’ve found our new location without undue effort. Th e war continues,
and so we must continue— indeed, redouble— our efforts for membership
and productivity.”
Some of the girls cheered. Th ey were the younger ones who’d only just
been allowed to join.
Mrs. Baker nodded, which made her chin disappear into her neck briefly,
and then she continued, “Now, some of you have done finger and arm bandages; the principle of the leg and body ban dages is the same. However,
there are some significant differences to which we must attend. For any
who have not been so instructed, I will start the lesson from the beginning.
We start, first, with sheets of unbleached calico . . .”
I squeezed rainwater from my hem while Mrs. Baker lectured about
widths and lengths and tension and began a demonstration. She handed
the end of a loose strip of fabric to the girl sitting nearest and said, “Stand
up, my dear. One of you holds the bulk of the fabric and feeds it through as
needed— that person is the rollee.The roller’s thumbs must be on the upper
aspect of the fabric, the forefinger beneath, like so. As we proceed, the forefingers are kept firmly against the roll, thumbs advanced for maximum
tautness. Everyone, up now and begin.”
I took a loosely tied bundle of fabric from one of several baskets lined
up along the floor behind me. Th e fabric was pure white at the moment,
sure, but it would soon be blood- soaked and covering a man’s whole
middle, crusted with dirt and irresistible to flies. I’d seen photographs of
Civil War soldiers suffering this way, in books that depicted what Daddy
called “the atrocities done to us by the Union.”
It was my brother, Tony, seven years older than me and now serving in
France, who Daddy meant to educate with the books and the discussions.
He never shooed me out of the parlor, though. He would wave me over
16
from where I might be picking out a simple tune on the piano and let me
perch on his knee.
“Th e Sayres have a proud history in Montgomery,” he’d say, paging
through one of the books. “Here. Th is is my uncle William’s original residence, where he raised his younger brother Daniel, your grandfather. It
became the first Confederate White House.”
“So Sayre Street is named for us,Daddy?” I asked with all the wonder of
my seven or eight years.
“It honors William and my father. Th e two of them made this town
what it is, children.”
Tony seemed to take the Sayre family history as a matter of course. I,
however, was fascinated with all of these now- dead relatives and would continue to ask questions about which of them had done what, when. I wanted
stories.
From Daddy, I got tales of how his father, Daniel Sayre, founded a
Tuskegee paper, then returned to Montgomery to edit the Montgomery Post,
becoming an influential voice in local politics. And Daddy told me about
his mother’s brother, “the great General John Tyler Morgan,” who’d pummeled Union troops every chance he got, then later became a prominent
U.S. Senator. From Mama I came to know her father, Willis Machen, the
U.S. Senator from Kentucky, whose friendship with Senator Morgan was
responsible for my parents’ meeting at Senator Morgan’s New Year’s Eve ball
in 1883. Grandfather Machen had once been a presidential candidate.
I wondered, that day at the Red Cross, if our family’s history was burdensome to Tony, oppressive, maybe. And maybe that was why he’d married Edith, whose people were tenant farmers, and then left Montgomery
to live and work in Mobile. To be the only surviving son in a family— and
not the first son, not the son who’d been named after the grandfather upon
whose shoulders so much of Montgomery’s fate had apparently rested, not
the son who’d died from meningitis at just eigh teen months old— well, that
was a heavy yoke.
Untying the calico bundle, I redirected my thoughts and handed Eleanor the fabric’s loose end. “I had a letter yesterday from Arthur Brennan,”
I said. “Remember him, from our last trip to Atlanta?”
17
Eleanor frowned in concentration as she tried to form the start of the
roll. “Was it thumbs under, or forefingers under?”
“Fingers. Arthur’s people have been in cotton since before the Revolution. Th ey’ve still got old slaves who never wanted to go, which Daddy says
is proof that President Lincoln ruined the South for nothin’.”
Eleanor made a few successful turns, then looked up. “Arthur’s the boy
with that green Dort car? Th e glossy one we rode in?”
“Th at’s him. Wasn’t it delicious? Arthur said Dorts cost twice what a
Ford does— a thousand dollars, maybe more. Th e Judge would as soon dance
naked in front of the court house as spend that kind of money on a car.”
Th e notion amused me; as I continued feeding the fabric to Eleanor, I
imagined a scene in which Daddy exited the streetcar in his pin- striped
suit, umbrella furled, leather satchel in hand. Parked at the base of the
broad, marble court house steps would be a green Dort, its hood sleek and
gleaming in the sunshine, its varnished running boards aglow. A man in a
top hat and tailcoat— some agent of the dev il, he’d be— would beckon my
father over to the car; there would be a conversation; Daddy would shake
his head and frown and gesture with his umbrella; he would raise a finger
as he pontificated about relative value and the ethics of overspending; the
top- hatted man would shake his head firmly, leaving Daddy no choice but
to disrobe on the spot, and dance.
In this vision I allowed my father the dignity of being at a distance from
my vantage point, and facing away from me. In truth, I hadn’t yet seen a
man undressed— though I’d seen young boys, and Re nais sance artwork,
which I supposed were repre sen ta tional enough.
“Speaking of nakedness,” Eleanor said, leaning across the table to take
the end of the ban dage from me, “last night at the movie house, an aviator—
Captain Wendell Haskins, he said— asked me was the rumor true about
you parading around the pool in a flesh- colored bathing suit. He was at the
movies with May Steiner, and asking about you, isn’t that sublime? May
was at the concession just then, so she didn’t hear him; that was gentlemanly, at least.”
Sara said, “I sure wish I’d been at the pool that day, just to see the old
ladies’ faces.”
18
“Were you at the dance last winter when Zelda pinned the mistletoe to
the back of her skirt?” Livye said.
“You should’ve been down here with us on Wednesday,” Eleanor told
them. “Zelda commandeered our streetcar while the driver was on the corner finishing a smoke. We just left him there with his eyes bulging and went
rolling on up Perry Street!”
“I swear, Zelda, you have all the fun,” Sara said. “And you never get in
trouble!”
Eleanor said, “Everyone’s afraid of her daddy, so they just shake their
finger at her and let her go.”
I nodded. “Even my sisters are scared of him.”
“But you’re not,” Livye said.
“He barks way more than he bites. So, El, what’d you tell Captain
Haskins?”
“I said, ‘Don’t tell a soul, Captain, but there was no bathing suit at all.’ ”
Livye snorted, and I said, “See, El, that’s what I like about you. Keep
that up and all the matrons will be calling you‘wicked,’ too.”
Eleanor reached for a pin from a bowl on the table, then secured the
ban dage’s end. “He asked whether you had a favorite beau, who your people
were, what your daddy did, and whether you had siblings—”
Sara said, “Might be he just wanted some excuse to make conversation
with you,Eleanor.”
“In which case he might have thought of one or two questions about
me.” Eleanor smiled at Sara fondly. “No, he’s most certainly fi xated on Miss
Zelda Sayre of 6 Pleasant Avenue, she of the toe shoes and angel’s wings.”
Livye said, “And dev il’s smile.”
“And pure heart,” Sara added. I pretended to retch.
“He said he’s not serious about May,” Eleanor said. “Also, he intends to
phone you.”
“He already has.”
“But you haven’t said yes yet.”
“I’m booked up ’til fall,” I said, and it was true; between the college
boys who’d so far avoided military ser vice and the flood of offi cers come to
19
train at Montgomery’s new military installations, I had more male attention than I knew what to do with.
Sara took my hand. “If you like him, you shouldn’t wait. Th ey might
ship out any day, you know.”
“Yes,” Eleanor agreed. “It might be now or never.”
I pulled my hand from Sara’s and lifted another pile of fabric from the
basket behind us. “Th ere’s a war, in case you haven’t heard. It might end up
being ‘now and then never.’ So what’s the use?”
Eleanor said, “Th at hasn’t stopped you from seeing a military man before. He’s awfully handsome. . . .”
“He is that. When he phones again, maybe I’ll—”
“Chatter later, ladies,” Mrs. Baker scolded as she strolled by, hands
clasped behind her back, bosom straining forward like a warship’s prow.
“Important though your affairs may be, our brave young men would appreciate your giving their welfare more speed and attention.”
When Mrs. Baker was past, I tilted my head and put my forearm to my
eyes, mouthing, “Oh! Th e shame of it!” as if I were Mary Pickford herself.
Th at eve ning, the Montgomery Country Club’s high- ceilinged ballroom
was filled to capacity. Along with the young men and women from the
town’s top families were a handful of chaperones, and dozens of uniformed
offi cers who’d been given honorary memberships while assigned to nearby
Camp Sheridan or Taylor Field. Th ose fellas would soon be joining their
army and air corps brothers in the skies or on battlefields in places like
Cantigny and Bois Belleau— but right now they were as youthful and happy
and ready for romance as anyone there.
My ballet troupe readied itself behind a bank of curtains. Shoes snug,
ribbons tied, skirts fastened and fluffed. Lipstick, rouge— though not one
of us needed it, as warm and excited as we were. A final costume check.
One more hamstring stretch, ankle flex, knuckle crack. Instructions to spit
out our gum.
“Two minutes, ladies,” Madame Katherine said. “Line up.”
One of the younger girls, Marie, moved a curtain to peek out at the
audience. She said, “Look at all those offi cers! I sure wish Ihad the solo.”
Another replied, “If you were as good as Zelda, maybe you’d get one.
Plus, you better quit eating so much cake.”
“Hush,” I said. “It’s baby fat. Time and practice is all you need, Marie.”
She sighed. “You look like a princess.” Mama had pinned my wavy hair
2
21
into as neat a bun as it would tolerate, then encircled it with a garland of
tiny tea roses from her garden. Th e roses were the same deep pink as my
costume’s satin- trimmed bodice, and a shade darker than my diaphanous
skirt. I wasa princess, for right now anyway— and right nowwas all I ever
cared about.
Th e orchestra began and I waited anxiously for my cue, glancing down
once more to make sure my shoe ribbons were tied, that a bit of my skirt
wasn’t tucked into my stockings. Would I remember the one- more fouetté
the professor had added last minute? Would the two new girls remember to
split the line when I came upstage from behind them?
When I took the stage, though, all of that disappeared, and I felt so light
that I wondered if I’d been specially charmed by one of our Creole laundresses. Or maybe the lightness owed to the fact that I was finallydone with
school. Maybe it was the energy of war time, the sensation that all of time
was faster now, and fleeting. What ever the case, my body was supple and
tireless. It seemed I’d hardly begun the dance when the orchestra played the
final strains and the per for mance ended to cheers and applause.
While taking my bows, I noticed some officers at the front of the crowd.
Like others I’d met, these fellas were a little older than my usual beaux. Their
uniforms, with those serious brass buttons and knee- high leather boots, gave
them sophistication that the local boys— even the ones in college— were
lacking. Th e soldiers wore an air of impending adventure, the anticipation
of travel and battles, of blood and bullets and, possibly, death, which made
them more vibrant and alive.
A pair of tall boots paler than the others caught my eye. As I straightened, I followed the boots upward to olive- colored breeches, a fitted uniform tunic, and, above it, an angelic face with eyes as green and expressive
as the Irish Sea, eyes that snagged and held me as surely as a bug sticks in
a web, eyes that contained the entire world in their smiling depths, eyes
like—
Something bumped my arm. “Go,Zelda,” one of the young ballerinas
said, and nudged me into line for our exit.
That offi cer was nowhere in sight when I returned to the ballroom after
changing into my dress— corset included in the ensemble; shoes, too— and
22
dabbing on Mama’s own rose perfume. So I danced a tango with a boy I’d
known my whole life, then followed it with a half- dozen more dances, a
new fella for every new song. Sweaty brows, sweaty hands; sweat trickling
down my back as I moved from one partner to the next, indulging no one
of them more than another. Th ey were useful accessories, these fellas were.
Good dancers. Good company. Nothing more— though I wouldn’t have
said so to them. It was far more fun to let them think they had a chance.
Finally I took a break to catch my breath and get something to drink.
As I stood near the doorway, cooling down and waiting for my latest partner
to return with refreshments, here came the offi cer with the fawn- colored
boots. Now I noticed the crisp white collar inside his tunic, his softly squared
chin, the perfect almond shape of his eyes, and the long, feathery lashes that
shadowed them. Oh, my.
He bowed. “Lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald, hoping to make your acquaintance.” His voice was deeper than I’d expected, with no trace of Alabama
or any place Southern.
I pretended to be shocked by his forwardness. “Without a proper introduction?”
“Life is potentially very short these days—and,your latest partner might
return at any moment.” He leaned closer. “I’m wiser than I am impetuous
or improper, rest assured.”
“Well. General Pershing ought to be consulting you on strategy. I’m
Zelda Sayre.” I offered my hand.
“Zelda?Th at’s unusual. A family name?”
“A Gypsy name, from a novel called Zelda’s Fortune.”
He laughed. “A novel, really?”
“What, do you think my mother is illiterate? Southern women canread.”
“No, of course. I’m impressed, is all. A Gypsy character— well, that’s
just terrifi c. I’m a writer, you see. In fact I’ve got a novel being read by
Scribner’s right now— they’re a New York City publishing house.”
I didn’t know publishing houses from Adam. What I did know was
that he held himself differently from the other boys— other men,I thought;
he had to be in his twenties. And his speech had that dramatic flair you
23
find in people accustomed to playacting in theater, as I was. When you’d
spent so much time performing onstage, the habit bled into your life. Or,
possibly it was the other way around.
I said, “I thought you were an offi cer.”
“My secondary occupation.”
“Th ere’s not one bit of South in your voice, Lieutenant; where’s home?”
“Prince ton, before my commission,” he said. “I did prep in New Jersey.
My childhood was spent in Minnesota— St. Paul.”
“A Yankee in every single way.” I glanced beyond him; thirsty as I was,
now I hoped my partner might forget to return.
“Yes—though I’ve developed quite an affection for the South since my
assignment to Camp Sheridan. A growing affection, in fact.” In those captivating eyes was what Mama would call “an intention.” A spark, or sparkle;
a glint or gleam. Th e fairy tales I’d read throughout my childhood were full
of such words for such looks.
I said, “Well, that should make you more pop u lar in these parts.”
“I’m hopeful.”
He smiled then, and I felt that smile like a vibration moving through
me, the way you might feel if you walked through a ghost or it walked
through you. “Hopeful,” he repeated as the orchestra struck up a waltz, “and
compelled to ask you for this dance.”
“Well, I am waiting for that nice fella from Birmingham to get back
with a whistle- wetter. It is so blazing hot. I don’t know how you all can stand
to wear all that”— I indicated his uniform—“and not want to just strip down
and jump into some creek.”
“I think it’s because creeks are lacking somewhat in music and beautiful
young women. Dancing, I’ve found, provides a good distraction from the
discomfort of all this wool. Won’t you help a fellow out?”
He offered his hand. How could I refuse? Why would I want to?
“I suppose it wouldbe a ser vice to my country,” I said, just as the Birmingham boy returned with my drink. I took the glass from his hand,
downed the punch, then returned the glass, saying, “Th ank you somuch,”
and let Scott lead me offinto the ballroom.
24
He danced as well as any of my partners ever had— better, maybe. It
seemed to me that the energy I was feeling that night had infused him, too;
we glided through the waltz as if we’d been dancing together for years.
I liked his starched, woolly, cologned smell. His height, about five
inches taller than my five feet four inches, was, I thought, the exact right
height. His shoulders were the exact right width. His grip on my hand was
somehow both formal and familiar, his hand on my waist both possessive
and tentative. His blue- green eyes were clear, yet mysterious, and his lips
curved just slightly upward.
Th e result of all this was that although we danced well together, I felt
off- balance the entire time. I wasn’t used to this feeling, but, my goodness,
I liked it.
Two hours later, we stood facing each other in the pink glow of a driveway post lamp while the Club emptied out behind us. Any second now,
Eleanor would come out, and then her daddy’s driver would be there to
ferry us home in the old phaeton I’d once decided to drive myself. I was
twelve at the time, and the horses nearly ran away with me before the whole
thing went sideways and I was flung into a hedge.
“Tell me more about this book business,” I said. “I’ve never known anyone who could write more than a news article— well, Mama wrote a short
play once, but that hardly counts ’cause it was a musical and it only ran
some fourteen minutes— it was for a charity ball, we’re always having charity balls here, do y’all do that, too, up North?”
He laughed. “Do you want to know about my novel, or St. Paul’s society habits?”
“Th e novel! Both! Tell me every single thing about every single thing
until El drags me off.”
“How about this: I’ll send you a chapter, and you can see for yourself
what I’m about. Th en you’ll be able to say you were among the first to read
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s phenomenal first book.”
“F.Scott?”
“Francis—after my cousin Francis Scott Key—The Star- Spangled
Banner?”
“Not really!”
25
“Oh yes. Besides which, F. Scottsounds weightier, don’t you agree?
Authoritative.”
“Absolutely.” I nodded. “Why, I respect you more already and I haven’t
read a word. Imagine how much I’ll admire you when I’m done. And then
once it’s an actual book. . .” I let the sentence hang like that, allowing his
imagination to fill in the rest.
I wanted him to tell me more about how he’d done it, written a whole
entire novel, and about what he liked to read, and I wanted to tell him what
I liked to read, and then we could talk about things from those books.
India, for instance; I’d been reading Kipling since forever. And Joseph
Conrad’s made- up Costaguana, from Nostromo— had he ever heard of it?
Where exactly did he think it was? Tar zan of the Ape s— had he read that
one? Africa, now thatwas a place to talk about!
“Th e ‘actual book’ part may be a while, yet,” he said. “Alas. I’ll lend you
something else in the meantime, though, if you like. Do you enjoy reading?”
“I’ll read most anything. My friend Sara Haardt just sent me the strangest story, Herland,it was in a magazine, and it’s about a society that’s made
only of women. I wouldn’t like that much.”
He grinned. “Good news, all.”
None of the boys I knew had much interest in books. For them it was
football and horses and hounds. I looked at Scott there in the rosy light, his
hair and skin and eyes aglow with joy and ambition and enthusiasm, and
was dazzled.
“Hereshe is,” Eleanor said, slipping her arm around my waist. A
linebacker- size fella was with her. “I thought maybe you’d snuck off like last
time.”
Scott said, “Snuck off ? Had I but known—”
“To smoke,” El said the moment after I pinched her. “She’d snuck offto
smoke with a couple of the older girls.”
“Older than . . . ?”
“Seventeen,” I told him. “I’m seventeen ’til July twenty- fourth, that’s
twenty- six—well, nearly twenty- five, really— days from now, given how it’s
closing in on midnight. Twenty- five days, and then I’m eigh teen.”
26
“After which time she’ll be far less annoying, I hope. We don’t smoke
much,” El assured him. “But it’s good for preventing sore throats.”
“It’s good for making you feelgood,” I said, “which is why the law and
my daddy have always been against women doing it.”
“Who areyou, by the way?” El asked Scott. She pointed at her companion and said, “Th is here new friend of mine, who is about to be on his way,
is Wilson Crenshaw Whitney the Th ird.”
“Scott Fitzgerald, the one and only,” Scott told the two of them. Th en,
looking at me, he added, “Who very much wishes he didn’t have to do the
same.”
“I purely hate that I have to go home,” I told him. “If I wasn’t a girl—”
“—I wouldn’t insist you allow me to phone you tomorrow. All right?”
“Th ere’s my consolation, then,” I said. Th e phaeton was rolling to a stop
in front of us. I followed El to its door, adding, “Judge Anthony Sayre’s
residence. Th e operator will put you right through.”
g
Th e morning’s scattered clouds had, by afternoon, formed themselves into
great towering columns with broad anvil tops while I lay on my bed, diary
open, pencil in hand. I had one ear attuned to the thunder that might spoil
my eve ning plans, and the other waiting for the telltale three short rings
that indicated a telephone call for our residence. Scott still hadn’t phoned,
and now I was almost certain that he wouldn’t. He’s all words, no substance,
I thought. Writers are probably like that.
Tootsie appeared at my bedroom door. “Teatime. Katy’s got lemon pie,
or tomato sandwiches— and Ihave gin.”
“So Mama has gone out.”
“Baby, I’m twenty- nine. Not exactly a schoolgirl, Lord.”
“Yet you still wait ’til Mama’s gone to pour a drink.”
“I try to be considerate. Anyway, it’s Daddy we need to worry about
most . . . and God help me if he ever sees me smoking. I’m goin’ to muddle
up some mint and raspberries to go with that gin. Are you game?”
“Okay, sure.” I glanced at my diary, where I’d been writing about the
27
morning’s Ser vice League work. We volunteers had served doughnuts and
coffee to soldiers at the train station canteen, and a married offi cer had
taken an obvious shine to me. Th ough I knew I was supposed to discourage
his interest, I flirted with him anyway. He was attractive and funny, and
what harm was there in it? He was nothing more than a way to pass the time
until we finished, until I could return home, until that charming lieutenant
phoned.
I asked my sister, “Tootsie, how’d you know you were in love with
Newman?”
“Oh- ho!” She sat down next to me. “Who is he? Tell!”
Katy called up the stairs, “Miz Rosalind, what’d you all decide?”
“What did we decide? Pie?”
I wrinkled my nose.
“Th e sandwiches,” Tootsie yelled. “And rinse those berries for me, would
you?”
“Yes’m.”
Tootsie turned back to me. “Now tell.”
“Nothin’ totell. I guess I ought to be aware of what to look for, is all.
Th e signs of true love, I mean. Is it like in Shakespeare?” I sat up and took
Tootsie’s hands. “You know, is it all heaving bosoms and fluttering hearts
and mistaken identities and madness?”
Th e sound of the phone ringing downstairs made my heart leap.
“Yes,”Tootsie said with wide eyes, holding tightly to my hand as I jumped
up. “Yes, it is exactlylike that. Gird yourself, little sister.”
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