Zelda (57 page)
Authors: Nancy Milford
Look! I have begun to write something that is maybe great, and I’m going to be absorbed in it four or six months. It may not
make
us a cent but it will pay expences and it is the first labor of love I’ve undertaken since the first part of
Infidelity
[a movie starring Joan Crawford].… Anyhow I am alive again…with all its strains and necessities and humiliations and struggles. I don’t drink. I am not a great man, but sometimes I think the impersonal and objective quality of my talent and the sacrifices of it, in pieces, to preserve its essential value has some sort of epic grandeur.
Dr. Carroll had answered Scott’s plea by trusting him and waiting. He assured Fitzgerald that he would not let the Sayres talk him into releasing Zelda to their care. Scott thanked him and wrote explaining that his first allegiance (and therefore what little money he had or could raise) was to Scottie; he could not back down on her education. “For better or worse Scottie and I form a structure.… For me, life goes on without very much cheer, except my novel, but I think if there is any way to stop this continual nagging through Zelda it will be a help.” Scott sent
Collier’s
magazine the first section of
The Last Tycoon
and a synopsis; if they liked it they might back him. (As it turned out they wanted to see more before they paid him.) He also sent it to Scribner’s, and as soon as Perkins read the first part of the manuscript he committed himself: he told Scott it
was wonderful writing, and he sent him $250 out of his own pocket. Although Scott’s finances were still tight, under these improved circumstances some of his old feeling for Zelda crept back into his next letter to Dr. Carroll. “She doesn’t complain… in fact her last letter is awfully sweet, and not restless and demanding, which I know indicates that you have talked with her and which I
hope
indicates that the Sayres have found some other mischief with which to occupy their idle hands. My God, how I detest ‘good people.’ I mean people that are good and think it is quite sufficient as a career.” Zelda wrote him: “I’m sorry about our present estate. So many years ago when we were first married and making Holiday about the Biltmore corridors, money was one of the things one simply stated the necessity for, went through the requisite ritual and waited.”
She truly had very little idea how difficult life was for Scott; she lived in isolation, insulated by her illness. But she let him know that she tried to understand, that she was not fighting against him. “Dearest: I am always grateful for all the loyalties you gave me, and I am always loyal to the concepts that held us together so long: the belief that life is tragic, that a mans spiritual reward is the keeping of his faith: that we shouldn’t hurt each other. And I love, always your fine writing talent, your tolerance and generosity; and all your happy endowments. Nothing could have survived our life.”
Late in November Mrs. Laura Guthrie Hearne at last met Zelda, about whom she had heard so much from Scott during the summer she was his secretary. There was a tea party in Asheville to which they were both invited. In her diary she described her impressions of Zelda.
Zelda does not wear a bit of make up, which she needs. Her eyes have a sad and haunted look. She wears a straight bang and the rest of her dark hair falls just to her shoulders where it ends in a little curl. She wore a very simple black thin suit and white blouse with a black felt hat turned up all around. She had no overcoat though the rest of us wore our fur coats and did not feel too warm. Zelda began to talk brilliantly when I got her started on her greatest love, the ballet, and told how she studied with the Russians in Paris long ago. She has a brilliant mind and as we ate we all listened to her and watched her use her graceful arms and hands to illustrate what she was saying. She believes that all is rhythm, and that the ballet is the best exponent of life, also that we only need four hours of sleep a night, which is all they
[dancers] get. The rest of the time we should work or practise and get more and more tense—or rather, full of the vibration of living.
The other women listened respectfully, but, privately they considered Zelda’s opinions somewhat bizarre.
At Highland she was considered well enough now to go into Asheville alone shopping or visiting; and she was also asked to assist in directing the morning gym classes. This reduced her expenses and made her feel that she was contributing something of value. Staff members remember Zelda at her best as an appealing person who could exercise considerable influence on other patients. It was amazing how well and patiently she worked with those patients who were mentally retarded or extremely ill, but she was not so good with those less ill than herself.
That winter Dr. Carroll asked Zelda to paint large floral screens for the windows of the new assembly building at Highland. He would furnish the necessary materials and pay her something for her work. Zelda was extremely pleased, the more so when she learned that Duke University would eventually take over Highland Hospital and thereby ensure her work a larger audience. But she was edgy about being taken advantage of. She wrote Scott: “I sent word that I ultimately would not subscribe to the commandeering of a professional talent. The fact that an artist is temporarily incapacitated ought not to make him fair game to anybody who is able. My talent has cost a lot in heart-ache and paint-bills; and I don’t want to compromise myself on such a major project that will make it difficult to get away, should such opportunity arise.” Still, the idea intrigued as well as flattered her, and she began preliminary sketches for the design. Within a few weeks she found out that the screens would not be used in the assembly building, but instead in the patients’ bedrooms. She protested bitterly to Scott: “To waste a professional talent, the cumulate result of years of effort, aspiration and heartbreak on a venture which will never see the light of day but most probably will be maltreated by every manifestation of psychosis is, to me, an abuse of the soul, human faith, and metier that is almost beyond my capacity to envisage.”
Of course she was still to be paid for her work, but even that irritated her, for what “the authorities” promised to pay her would be applied to her bill. Frustrated and hurt by what she considered to be the real motive behind asking for her work, to contribute to
payment of hospital fees, she told Scott: “I feel that this is your obligation, as I myself have vent every resource towards getting out of here and have, to my most honest estimate been well able to leave for a year. I don’t want to pay these bills, because I do not need what they buy.” But what could she do? she asked him; she was afraid that if she flatly refused to paint the screens her refusal might “come under one of their heads of psychosis.”
That Christmas of 1939 Zelda was well enough to travel alone to Montgomery for the first time since her hospitalization. When she returned she renewed to Scott her pleas for release. “There isn’t forever left to either of us; and now, for the immediate instance I have a home to turn to while I organize an existence—which will not always be the case… I now have no resources left; can’t go to the movies because there isn’t any money. Under such circumstances, wouldn’t it be wiser and more economical that I should be at home.… I ask you to acknowledge not only on the basis of your obligation to me—as your wife—but also on the terms of your social obligation:…Meantime; it’s good to be able to receive uncensored mail—I do believe I’m growing up.”
Fitzgerald tried to soothe her, tried to suggest that she make friends within the hospital. But she wrote him: “… a person
could
, as long as they followed the hospitals somewhat bigoted stipulations—I want to leave there. It’s a hospital for those who want to be absorbed into Dr. Carrolls, feudal, picturesque, and most restrictive formulas. Not that I am not grateful for all that he’s done for me:
“because I am most deeply grateful of even the possibility of entering the world again—”
Once after Scott had called her she told him: “Darling, you were sweet to ‘phone me. I am learning a speech to say when telephoned to. It is to be very formal and will include many invitations to parties which will never be given and balls that are long since over. And the response will be yes, yes, yes—”
On Valentine’s Day she sent Scott a plain card, neglecting to sign it. A week later she sent him another, perhaps having forgotten about the first one, underlining a line in the text that read,
“Here is my heart.”
Beside it Zelda wrote, “The last thing you said to me before you left for the port of embarkation—”
At Highland she and Dr. Carroll reached a compromise over the screens; they were to be in tempera and decorative only, “which
is a less distressing entertainment than having to think of my best and most exacting talents being buried within the confines of psychotic morass.” She told Scott she had a hunch Carroll was going to let her out soon.
On March 4, 1940, Dr. Carroll tentatively suggested to Scott that Zelda might be ready to fend for herself; he said she had spent a week on her own in Montgomery at Christmas and had held to her routine admirably. Mrs. sate wrote the doctor that Zelda might be able to find a part-time job in Montgomery if she continued to improve, adding as always that Zelda could live with her if everyone concerned was amenable. Dr. Carroll wondered what Scott’s attitude toward this arrangement might be—if a letter was sent to Mrs. Sayre outlining the danger signals of an approaching breakdown, so that it could be recognized and avoided.
Scott replied, “Your letter was a complete surprise, but of course I am delighted.… The news that she had been home alone in December was a complete surprise to me though as you know I would have been in agreement if you had ever thought before that a journey without a nurse was desirable.” Inevitably he worried about Zelda’s ability to maintain her present level of sanity, “but since I am utterly unprepared to take on the job again I suppose it is lucky that there is any sort of home where she will at least be loved and cherished. The possibility of dissipation frightens me more than anything else—which I suppose is poetic justice.”
Scott wired Zelda immediately about Carroll’s recommendation. Zelda’s reaction was that of a prisoner who has been punished and is now relieved beyond belief at her pardon. “I will be very, very happy to escape the spiritual confines of medical jurisdiction. Also, I will be very meticulous in my social conduct and promise not to cause any trouble: I will be able to have vacation with Scottie, maybe and do all sorts of half-forgotten pleasant things from such a long time ago.… This has been an awful time for you; and maybe, at last, we begin to emerge.”
She then began to make plans for her life outside the hospital. It took no little courage to form these plans, for she was not completely unaware of the obstacles she would have to face. “As soon as I have renewed associations and found all the trees where I used to make play-house again, I will try to find a job. Needless to say I am conversant with the difficulties which will probably confront me: Middle aged, untrained, graduate of half-a-dozen mental Institutes.
However, there may be something blow[n] in on a box-car or one of those things like that.”
Four years and one week after Zelda’s admission to Highland Hospital she was released. Dr. Carroll wrote the letter concerning her case that he had mentioned to Scott. One copy was sent to Mrs. Sayre in Montgomery and another to Scott for safekeeping. The final paragraph stated the precariousness of Zelda’s mental condition: her history showed a tendency to repeat itself in cycles. She could be irresponsible and suicidal. Zelda might well be unable to face what was ahead of her in Montgomery. At present she was gentle and reasonable; her capacity for making mature judgments was, however. permanently reduced.
.… Scott, the bright hotels turn bleak; The pace limps or stamps: the wines are weak; The horns and violins come faint tonight.
E
DMUND
W
ILSON
, “Dedication”
C
AREFULLY SCOTT EXPLAINED TO
Zelda the terms of their limited finances: “…you will be a poor girl for awhile and there is nothing much to do about it.” He would send her $30 a week, half of which was to go to Mrs. Sayre for Zelda’s board. The other half he would give her in amounts of $10 or $20 in alternating weeks; she would therefore receive $25 one week and $35 the next. He said it was away of saving for her so that in alternate weeks she’d have a larger sum for pocket money. He knew that she would be cramped, but he owed the government a considerable amount and he was deeply committed to having Scottie complete her education. He wrote Zelda that if Scottie were forced to leave Vassar, “I should feel like quitting all work and going to the free Veterans Hospital where I probably belong.”
Alone at dawn Zelda boarded a bus for Montgomery. She believed that this was her chance for another beginning, and balancing a sheet of paper on her lap she wrote Scott: “I think of you and the
many mornings that we have left believing in new places to-gether. This country is so nostalgic with its imperative possibilities of escape from the doom of the mountains.…” She did not know that she had been released with a letter which paroled her to her mother; she rode toward Montgomery completely unaware that it was the cul-de-sac of her life, that for her there were to be no more fresh starts.
