Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald (36 page)

I am conquering age and gravity with a new ballet teacher, Lubov Egorova, who came recommended by the Murphys—Honoria takes lessons at her studio, and now Scottie’s going, too. Egorova is also
Princess Nikita Troubetska
, isn’t that wonderful? And even better, she is a formidable teacher and the most lovely and lyrical of ballerinas. When I grow up, I want to be her.

Things are otherwise much the same, though Paris is not—there are hardly any French people left here. Every boulevard is packed with Americans whose mispronunciations make me sound like I’m native. Scott and I had a row last weekend and haven’t spoken since—but as we are going to Sylvia Beach’s dinner for James Joyce tonight, I’ll once again have to put on my
Mrs. F. Scott
costume and try to play nice with him and the other children. Whose life is this, anyway? Only when I’m sweating rivers perfecting my pliés in the studio do I feel like a whole and real person. Is this how you felt when you were reaching the end with John?

Enough of that. Pray tell, when do you return to Paris? We’re here until September, then back to Ellerslie for the winter, during which Scott may or may not finish his novel.

Yours as ever—

Z~

*   *   *

Plus!

Etirez-vous!

Plus haut!

Encore!

A ballerina’s training looks nothing like the result of her work, her performance. In training she is bludgeoned repeatedly by words that have every bit the impact of a cudgel, if not more. She’s a prisoner, a slave by choice. She asks to be tortured; she tortures herself. More! Stretch! Higher! Taller! And at the end of every series of commands comes the most dreaded one: “Encore!”

Do it again!

In Madame Egorova’s studio, I spent my hours lined up at the barre next to fourteen other women, all of them clustered at the cusp of twenty years of age. The day my twenty-eighth birthday came, I observed it silently except for the huffs and grunts and sighs that corresponded with my motions. The other girls all knew I was older than they were, that I had a husband and a child. But if my arabesques looked like theirs, if my jetés were executed as crisply, if I could turn, and turn, and turn, and turn, and turn, and turn, and turn, I wouldn’t be bullied more than anyone else was, and I’d be allowed to stay.

The regimen was brutal—we were allowed no poisons in our bodies (meaning alcohol), no pollutants (meaning drugs), not if we wanted to be professionals. I loved it. I loved the strict rules, the strict diet, the aching muscles, the bleeding toenails, loved it all because Madame had answered my question “Pourrai-je devenir danseuse professionnelle?” with “Mais oui.” She said that if I
hadn’t
shown the potential to dance professionally, she would never have allowed me into the advanced class.

And I loved the regimen because it had done what the appendectomy had not quite managed to do: it cured me. My colitis was now completely gone.

Scott, however, was convinced that I adhered to the rules as a selfish excuse not to go out socializing with him. For example:

On that birthday afternoon, I arrived at the apartment twenty minutes before he did and collapsed facedown on the bed, clothes still damp, hair escaping wildly from the tight bun I forced it into for lessons. He’d been asleep when I left that morning and, as far as I knew, had then spent his afternoon with his friends watching fights at the American Club. He was wild about boxer Gene Tunney that summer, who he’d latched onto through playwright Thornton Wilder, that’s how these things went.

“Hello, birthday girl,” he announced when he came in. “I got us a dinner reservation at La Tour d’Argent, how about that? We’ll eat like royalty, watch the sunset color the Seine, see Notre Dame in twilight … The Murphys want us to come by afterward—Sara’s got a cake for you, and then they’re leaving again for Antibes tomorrow.”

Too much effort for too little reward,
I thought, silently apologizing to Sara. I rolled onto my back. “What I would really like for my birthday is a bath.”

“A quick one, then.” He stripped off his tie and went to the wardrobe. “Fowler is going to meet us at the Ritz at six o’clock.”

I watched him take his shirt off. His undershirt was doing a poor job of hiding his fleshiness, which looked all the worse when compared with the lean body I saw in my reflection.

“Let’s do this on the weekend,” I said. “Class was really hard today. We did a lot of center work—you know, away from the barre, nothing to support you but you. Fouettés, mostly—a whipping sort of turn that begins with a plié, then a—”

“It’s your birthday
now
. You need a night out; no excuses.”

“Exhaustion’s not an excuse, it’s a reason.”

“Whatever it is, it’s interfering with our life. I’m glad you like dancing. It’s nice that you’re still good at it. It’s taking over, though. Maybe you don’t see that. Which is why,” he said, tugging my arm, “you need to listen to your husband and get yourself ready for a
birthday celebration
.”

I pulled my arm from his grip and sat up. “Since it’s
my
birthday, I ought to have the say—and I say all I want is a bath and then dinner here with Scottie and you.”

“You see!” I thought he might stamp his foot. “
This
is why—”

He stopped, so I said, “What? This is why
what
?”

“This kind of thing is why men like Pound and Ernest take up with other women.”

“Their wives were the opposite of me! I’m
doing
something—”

“Yes, something all about
you
. Pauline, she understands where she should be placing her extra attention.”

“Hadley was a slave to him! Don’t you go tryin’ to make it like his affair was her fault.”

“Regardless. Never mind. The point is, men need compensation for the pressures they face every day. They need to know that all their effort
matters
to the woman in their life. We give up our freedom, devote our entire selves to
one
woman—”

“—at a time, maybe—”

“—so is it too much to want that woman to make us her favorite activity? To accept our attentions and offerings with pleasure?”

I said, “What about Lois?”

He looked confused.

“Don’t you remember? ‘She’s so organized and focused,’ you said. ‘You could learn something from her, Zelda.’”

“Completely different situation. I wasn’t suggesting you take up a
career
.”

“What, then?”

“She was … There was something … fresh about her. I admired her spirit.” His voice was wistful. “I
wanted
to admire yours, but you were always criticizing me, or the help. She looked up to me, just like you used to.”

She never had to live with you.

Tired of the argument, I got up and, as I passed Scott on my way to run my bath, said, “Please give Ludlow and Elsie my love and regrets. As for Sara, I’ll phone her and explain.”

“No, I won’t, and no, you won’t. I’m tired of this, Zelda. You’re not a ballerina, you know; you’re my
wife
. You need to start devoting your time to your actual duties.”

In the bathroom, I started the water and then returned to the doorway. In my most guileless voice I said, “
Actual duties,
right. We all should tend to our actual duties, that’s a good philosophy. Tell me, darling, how much writing did you get done today?”

He looked hurt, then angry. “You know, I always defend you when Ernest says that your jealousy and disruptiveness is ruining me. But he’s right. Jesus, he’s been right all along.”

Then he turned and left the room, slamming the door as he went.

Still in my clothes, I stepped into the tub, got down on my hands and knees, and put my head under the faucet, letting the noise and the rush of the water on my head cancel everything out.

42

Ellerslie again; early December 1928. I was in the chintz-bedecked southern parlor reading an article Sara Haardt had sent about Virginia Woolf’s recent Cambridge lectures, after I’d told her I’d been writing some new things—

Are women not subjugated, prevented by fathers and husbands from having the wherewithal to produce the stories of their experiences? Mrs. Woolf says, too, that so long as men are the primary voices of women’s experiences, Woman shall remain powerless in her own society. “False constrictions deny fulfillment of one’s talents,” Woolf claims, “and the world is poorer for it.”

Sara, ever urging me to become a feminist. But I was writing pretty much whatever I wanted to write; I had no dog in this hunt.

Scott was … well, he might actually have been upstairs writing something. One of his Basil Duke Lee stories, probably; the novel remained stalled where he’d left it before we’d sailed for the States—which is to say at chapter four or five.

Scottie was playing on the parlor floor with a set of Red Riding Hood paper dolls I’d made for her, but leapt up when a knock sounded on the door. She went running to answer it. Now seven years old, she had lost most of the little-girl chubbiness I’d loved so much and was becoming a leggy little colt who wanted to be involved in everything.

“Daddy!” she yelled from the foyer. “Telegram for you!”

Curious, I went to the foyer while Scott came down the stairs.

He opened the telegram and read it. “Oh, hell,” he said, then handed it to me and went to get his coat.

PHILADELPHIA PA 6 DEC 1928

MR. SCOTT FITZGERALD ELLERSLIE, EDGEMOOR DE REGRET ASKING. FATHER DIED AM STUCK IN PHILLY WITH BUMBY NEED CASH TO SEND HIM ON TO FL. ME TO OAKPARK. WIRE ME C/O NORTH PHILLY STATION THANKS ERNEST

Scott put on his coat and hat, saying, “I’m going to drive up to Philadelphia—I’ll probably stay overnight.”

“What? It’s at least two hours to Philly, why would you
go
there? Just wire it to him like he says.”

“My God, Zelda, are you heartless? The man’s father just died.”

He went off toward the back of the house where the kitchen and servants’ rooms were located, yelling for his so-called manservant, Philippe, a former boxer and taxidriver Scott had met in Paris and had imported here to work for us. “Get the car! Allons-y! We need to go help our friend Ernest!”

Scottie tugged my arm and whispered, “Mama, are they going to bring a dead man here?”

“No, lambkins. Daddy’s just going to lend money to Mr. Hemingway,”
who always knows just who to ask when he’s short of funds
.

I hated Philippe almost as much as I hated Hemingway. He was surly, Scott’s man only, as much a drinking buddy as a butler/chauffeur/handyman. When I practiced ballet at home, he sometimes lurked at the doorway, his expression unreadable. May and Ella, the maids, said he watched them, too; they’d begun keeping a pistol in their room, and I’d have done the same, except that if Philippe was home, Scott was, too, so there was no real danger for me. There wasn’t for the maids, either, so much as we all knew, but who could blame them for assuming the worst?

Between Philippe and haughty Mademoiselle Delplangue, the new governess Scott had hired, I felt like an unwelcome guest in my own home. Even Scottie complained that she didn’t like Miss Del, earning a stern lecture from Scott about having proper respect for adults.

When I later told Scott that I wanted him to send Philippe back and to replace Delplangue with someone who wasn’t a tyrant, he said, “If you’re forever too busy
dancing
to manage your own home, you’ll just have to live with the selections I make.”

I was starting to worry that I hated Scott, too.

43

January 30, 1929

Dear Zelda,

We’ve just finished reading the article by you and Scott in the latest
Harper’s Bazaar
. “The Changing Beauty of Park Avenue” is a brilliant essay, just beautifully done! We always felt you possessed underutilized literary talents, and this proves it. We hope you’ll keep writing. Congratulations to you both!

We Murphys have all been suffering greater or lesser versions of cough, fever, and malaise. Patrick’s lingered, but he’s well now. I’m to tell you that he misses Scottie—and will she be at Villa America this summer?

Will she? We heard from Scott that he’s setting his novel in Paris and that you’ll be returning this spring, in order to make sure he gets the details right. As it appears that Scott is mending his ways, we will be only too happy to see all of you wherever, whenever.

Much love to you and Scott and Scottie too—

Sara

Feb. 13, 1929

Dear Sara,

Your praise was very much welcomed—but despite the byline, the article is all mine, how about that? I have another coming in June in
College Humor
, and have just sold them one more. Scott and his agent feel the joint byline is what enables me to place my work with these national magazines—which I agreed to, so as to use the money to pay for my ballet lessons. It’s an uneasy compromise but a necessary one.

Yes, we’ll be in Paris in March or April, depending on our route. I’ve been maintaining my dance lessons here, and I’m writing Madame Egorova to ask for a place again in one of her classes. I can’t afford to interrupt my training for yet another season of debauchery. Tell Patrick that Scottie can’t wait to see him—as we are awfully eager to see his parents.