Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (8 page)

“Me, too.”

“It just feels awfully fast.” He shifted so that he could sit up, then lit a cigarette.

I sat up, too, pulling the sheet up to cover us both. “I know, it does.”

“Too fast. There are ways of … of managing the situation. Do you know about the, er, treatments? The pills and such?”

“Of course.”

Tallu’s sister, Eugenia—Gene—had informed us girls on this topic, along with all sorts of other salacious things that we were forever asking her to repeat. I did also learn some important things. To
prevent
pregnancy, there were devices and herbal teas and special rinses—none of which were considered fail-safe, and none of which I’d ever considered trying. Like Scott, I’d thought that getting pregnant would more likely take multiple exposures. It’d taken Marjorie years, after all, and Tootsie seemed to be on that same path.

And, Gene told us, to
undo
pregnancy there was another class of herbal teas and special rinses, along with a variety of pills that I’d seen advertised as providing “feminine relief.” No girl I knew had used any of these things, but we all talked about them. There were, we all agreed, certain kinds of women and certain kinds of situations that would benefit from such things. For example, really poor women who had too many children already. And of course prostitutes.

Scott said, “So that’s what you’ll do, then.”

“Hold on. First of all, I haven’t even seen a doctor yet—”

“It’d be better to have a year or two to ourselves. I really need time to get established. A baby in the house … I can’t imagine being able to concentrate on anything.”

“Well, sure, but since we’d eventually have ’em anyway—”

“Eventually I hope to afford a nurse and a nanny and whatever other help you want. But that can’t happen until I’ve got more things written, more things sold. You understand.”

“There’s still seven or eight months before the baby’d come,” I said, “and then when they’re first born, they pretty much sleep all the time. So that’s at least a year.”

Scott was shaking his head. “If I can’t write, I don’t make more money, and if I don’t make more money, none of our plans will work out—and any money I’ve made already would go for the baby. I’ve paid in blood to get where I am, Zelda. You’ve got to take care of this. This isn’t what we want right now.”

“You have paid, I know. But a whole year should be—”

“Zelda.” He shifted to face me. His eyes were stern, but fearful, too. “I’m so close. Everything I ever wanted, it’s right
there
.” He stretched out his arm as if literary success dangled like an apple on a tree.

“My father was a failure,” he went on, getting out of bed to pull on his undershorts, then pour drinks for us both. “When he lost his job in Buffalo and we had to go back to St. Paul, only the charity of Mother’s family kept us afloat. There we were, living in this grand house, acting as if we were as well-off as our rich neighbors, and it was all a farce.”

He handed me my drink. “I can’t be
almost
successful. I can’t get this close to the life I’ve been witnessing, my face against the window like the Little Match Girl, and then see it dissolve like a mirage. When I get back to New York, I’ll see about some options, and we’ll get the matter taken care of. You understand, don’t you?”

“I guess I do.”

The solution to my still-missing monthly arrived a week later wrapped in a paper packet tucked inside an envelope. The small, pale yellow pills looked innocent as aspirin. It would be easy enough to swallow them fast and then just not think about it anymore—until the effects came, at which time it’d be too late for anything but regret. I held them in my palm for a moment, then slid them back into the packet, tucked it underneath my mattress, and went downstairs.

At the piano, I paged through the pile of sheet music, rejecting the jazz piece I’d been working on, rejecting my father’s favored tunes like “Dixie” and “On to the Battle,” which I’d often played to get his attention and coax a smile. Then I saw “Dance of the Hours.” I put it on the stand and began to play.

How simple everything had been that night I’d danced to this song. How easy. Nothing but laughter and the enchantment of a charming officer in his crisp dress uniform. Now everything was a tangle of hope and circumstance and connected fates.

Scott’s happiness is my happiness,
I thought
. ’Til the end of time, amen
.

But … if I took the pills, if I ended a pregnancy just because it wasn’t convenient, wasn’t that the same as declaring that what we’d done was dirty and wrong? That I was no better than a whore?

On the other hand, if I had this possible baby and our life afterward proved to be nothing but misery, he’d be resentful forever, and what kind of life would that be?

But it wouldn’t be misery, I was sure. He was overdramatizing—

“Zelda, for heaven’s sake,” Mama called from the library. “You needn’t pound the keys!”

“Sorry, Mama!”

I’d never compromised on anything important, damn it. Leaving the piano for a minute, I ran upstairs for the pills, then returned to the parlor and put the packet into the fire.

As luck would have it, a few days later the matter resolved itself. I wrote to Scott,
Things have a way of working out for us, and this is just one more sign
.

I believed it, too. Who wouldn’t have when, from about this time onward, nearly everything Scott had written in the previous year began to turn to gold?

*   *   *

“So his novel will be out soon,” Daddy said. We were in the parlor, where Mama and I had been discussing my trousseau. “Good for him, but it’s not a
job
. How long will it be before he can sell another, and what will you two live on in the meantime?”

I explained that Scott had begun selling his short stories. “
The Saturday Evening Post
bought one called ‘Head and Shoulders’ for four hundred dollars—and they liked it so well that they paid
nine hundred
for two more.” When Daddy still didn’t look impressed, I said, “Add that to how much he got for his novel and it’s already as much as he’d have earned in
two years
at his old job. And he’s got a pile of stories already done.”

“I don’t like it,” Daddy said. “It’s not a plan, it’s luck. And when his luck runs out—”

A knock on the door interrupted him, and a moment later Katy came into the parlor to hand me a telegram.

I opened it quickly and read the short message, and then I whooped! “How about this, Daddy: the Metro Company is paying
two thousand five hundred dollars
for movie rights to ‘Head and Shoulders’!”

For a girl who needed irrefutable proof that her father was plain wrong in his thinking, nothing could have been better. I danced around the parlor waving the telegram before me, and didn’t care a bit that Daddy left the room in disgust.

*   *   *

Later that week, I was in my bedroom working on a story of my own when Mama came in with a small package. I was glad for the distraction; the story, which Scott had encouraged me to write, was going nowhere. I could give the most detailed examinations of my characters, but then couldn’t seem to make them do anything interesting.

“This just came for you,” Mama said.

Inside the plain brown paper was a short, square box, and inside that box was a hinged, velvet-covered one. I opened the lid and gasped.

Mama said, “Lord!”

It was a watch unlike anything I’d ever seen before. Its narrow rectangular face was set inside a perimeter of sparkling square-cut diamonds, with a band made up of diamonds laid out in an intricate, almost floral design.

I took it out. Beneath the watch, Scott had tucked a card that read,
To wear at our wedding—just a little “something new
.”

“It’s heavy!”

“I’ll guess it’s platinum,” Mama said.

Engraved on the back was
From Scott to Zelda
. I turned it over again and again, marveling at the design, the shimmer, the very fact of it.

“Baby, do you have any idea what an extravagance this is? It had to have cost hundreds of dollars. He really ought not to spend this way; it’s irresponsible. This is a time to
save
.”

I fastened the watch onto my wrist. “I know how it seems. But he’s earning a lot now, and his book’s not even out yet. He’s making his place in the world, Mama. It’ll only get better from here.” Everything he’d promised was coming true.

My mother sighed. She looked suddenly ancient, as if she’d aged ten years in one. Her hair had gone steely gray. Her skin had grown crêpey and was so pale—paler, even, than wintertime could explain. She didn’t seem ill, just tired and worn. I felt I could disregard anything she said because what could such an old woman know about modern love and life?

I said, “It’s different for us, Mama. We’re not going to do things the same old ways.”

She sighed again. “Honestly, I don’t know whether to envy your optimism or pity it.”

I took off the watch and turned it again to see the inscription, then flipped it back to admire the diamonds. As I did, I caught sight of Daddy standing in the doorway.

“When the novelty wears off,” he said—and I got the feeling he was referring to more than just the watch—“you can trade that for a down payment on a house.”

8

“Just think,” Eleanor said, the night before I was to leave home, “New York City! Did you ever imagine?”

It was April 1, 1920; my wedding was set for April 3, one day before Easter and one week after the publication of
This Side of Paradise
. Eleanor and I were sitting cross-legged on my bedroom rug while I practiced how to look more sophisticated when I smoked. Along the wall were three new trunks filled with what little I’d take with me into married life: clothes and linens and shoes and books, a handful of photographs and a box of mementos, my diaries and my old doll, Alice. “Tilt your chin up a little more,” Eleanor directed.

I did, saying, “New York’s goin’ to be grand. Scott made us a reservation at the Biltmore Hotel for our honeymoon.” I handed Eleanor the advertisement Scott had torn out of a magazine and sent to me.

She read, “‘The Biltmore is the center of international social life in New York.’ Just the place for you, then.”

“He said there’s nothing like it in Montgomery, not even close. Millionaires stay there.”

“You can get room service.”

“And swim in the indoor pool!” I said. “And he says there’s a big ballroom on the twenty-second floor
—
twenty-two, and that’s not nearly the tallest!—with a roof that opens up when it’s warm out and you can eat under the stars.”

Eleanor was speechless.

“And, I’m going to see the
Follies.
” I took a sophisticated drag on my cigarette.

“And the Statue of Liberty.”

“And skyscrapers!”

“And you’ll be the wife of a famous man.”

“Not
so
famous, not yet anyway; his book has only been out for a few days.”

“Well, handsome then, and famous as soon as enough time has passed for people to know his name. Next thing you know, I’ll be adding
rich
to my list of adjectives and everyone will say, ‘Finally he’s good enough for our Zelda.’ Now show me that watch again.”

*   *   *

My folks said their good-byes in our front hall. Not one of us mentioned that they weren’t making the trip, too, or why that was. Mama and Daddy said little, in fact, beyond “Travel safely” and “Write soon” because my father had already said, “We think this is a poor choice and we won’t condone it. Marry him, if that’s what you think you want to do—we can’t stop you. But we won’t stand there and see it done.” Mama had only sat nearby trying to be stoical, tears pooling in her eyes.

All the preparations had been made at Scott’s end, with aid from Tootsie and Newman, who were now living nearby. There was no role for our parents and, really, little role for our siblings—and so Scott had told his folks and his sister to just stay home. My sisters were mainly participating because it was convenient for Marjorie to accompany me on the train, and convenient for Tootsie and Tilde, who’d also moved to New York State, to come into Manhattan. The three of them could enjoy a rare visit, and Marjorie could see the city; nothing more was necessary, or desired. Certainly I didn’t yearn for any further oversight. Excited as I was to be going, I’d hardly given the separation from home a thought. I could easily have hurried out the door without even a formal good-bye.

My friends had all gathered at the station for a surprise send-off. Here, the scene was emotional as they saw me onto the train with kisses and tears and flowers. I hugged everyone, dispensed jokes and advice while continually wiping my eyes, and promised I wasn’t leaving forever—if only so that Eleanor and the Saras would let me go.

Once aboard the train and settled in our Pullman, I began to relax a little. As the engine chugged away from the station and Montgomery unspooled behind us, I drew a deep breath, exhaled, and tipped my head back against the seat. The car was new, sleek and modern-looking compared to the plush, older ones we’d taken before the government had commissioned all the trains for the war. There were window screens now, and dust deflectors. The carpet was unpatterned, and plain, smooth seats had replaced the old tufted ones.
Out with the old,
I thought,
and away goes the new
.

“I guess this will be a kind of adventure for you, too,” I told Marjorie, who still looked startled by all the commotion in the station. Marjorie often looked startled, as if she was far more comfortable staying shut away in her simple little house, sewing and reading and cooking and tending Noonie, her daughter.

“Yes, I’m looking forward to seeing New York City. Tootsie thinks it’s grand.”

“I’m sure you all are going to excuse Scott and me from your tourin’ schedule.”

Marjorie smiled. “Honeymooners are excused.” Then she added, “Now, Baby, I know you’ve had a lot more experience with boys than I ever did at your age—”