3

In mid-July, Sara Haardt and I were just leaving a Commerce Street hat shop when I heard a man call my name.

“Miss Sayre! Hello!”

Scott waved as he walked toward us through a throng of young women who turned to watch him. He tipped his hat and smiled at the women as he passed. Even dressed in civilian clothes—white shirt, blue sweater vest above crisp, cuffed brown pants—he seemed exotic, rare, desirable. I’d seen him twice since our first meeting, once when he brought me the typescript chapter from his novel, and then again after I’d read it. Both meetings had been too-brief exchanges of smiles and compliments enacted over cheese biscuits (Scott) and melon (me) at the diner, while Eleanor and Livye looked on from a booth nearby. Tempted as I was to clear my dance card and devote my weekends to this handsome Yankee interloper, as Tootsie called him, it was hard to know whether I should take his attentions seriously.

“How nice to run into you,” I said when he reached us.

“Do I give too much away when I confess it’s no coincidence? Your sister said I might find you here.”

“Well, gosh, we’re flattered, aren’t we, Sara? Oh—Sara, meet Lieutenant Scott Fitzgerald of Princeton University. This is Miss Sara Haardt, of Goucher College. Suddenly I feel undereducated—not that I have any use for college. I could hardly sit still long enough to finish high school.”

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Miss Haardt.”

“She’s brilliant, don’t let her fool you,” Sara said.

I pointed to the store’s window display. “Woman of the world that she is, Miss Haardt has been tryin’ to educate me on what up-to-the-minute ladies are wearin’ on their heads these days—which apparently is not these big feathered confectionaries you see here.”

Scott said, “I’d have to agree. The New York City shops were all showing smaller, less ornate styles last time I was there.”

“A fella who knows fashion!”

“I’m observant, that’s all. Writers have to be.”

Sara, tall and wiry and far plainer in appearance than in intellect, said, “Are you a writer, then?” She did this as innocently as you please, as if I hadn’t already told her everything I knew about him.

“Since about the time I could hold a pencil.”

“How fascinating,” Sara said. “I do a little writing myself. Zelda and I were on our way to get lunch; why don’t you join us, and you can tell us all about your work.”

“I’d love to, truly, but I have to get back to Camp Sheridan.” He turned to me. “Before I go, though, Miss Sayre—Zelda, if I may—I recall you saying a time or two that your birthday’s next week. If you’ll permit me, I’d like to arrange a little party at the Club in your honor.”

“You would? I don’t know what to say—”

“Say anything you like, except don’t say no.”

I laughed. “That narrows my options.”

“Just as I intended. I’ve got to run.” He grinned as he backed away. “I’ll phone you with the details!”

As we watched him hurry up the street, Sara said, “What a lovely gesture—too bad you’ll have to disappoint him.”

“Too bad I’ll have to disappoint Mama, you mean, when I tell her that her party is off—but I’ll make sure Scott invites her and the Judge, and maybe she can still do the cake.”

*   *   *

Upon hearing my news in the parlor after dessert that evening, Daddy said, “That boy obviously lacks good judgment. He hardly knows you. Where did you say he’s from?”

I hadn’t said, and wasn’t about to. “He did three years at Princeton before leaving to join up, and now he’s serving at Camp Sheridan.”

Mama said, “He’s enthusiastic, I’ll give him that.”

“He is,” Tootsie agreed. She was working a needlepoint American flag; I’d teased her earlier about turning into Betsy Ross. She said, “When he phoned this morning and I told him Zelda was out, he insisted that he had to know her whereabouts. ‘It’s extremely urgent!’ he said, as if his very life depended on it.”

“Frivolous is what he is—probably too much money and not enough sense. You see that a lot in carpetbaggers. Don’t be surprised if it comes out that his people are actually from the North.”

I said, “I think he’s terribly romantic, and it’s my birthday after all.”

Daddy reached for his cognac, the single drink he would allow himself, and only on Friday nights. “Be that as it may, your mother—”

“—understands the appeal of a handsome suitor,” she said, and smiled fondly at Daddy, which was enough to persuade him to relent.

*   *   *

On the night of my birthday, the party took place in one of the Club’s parlors, a high-ceilinged room lighted by a wide crystal chandelier overhead and smaller crystal sconces along the walls. For the occasion, I’d persuaded Mama to shorten a spring-green, scoop-necked silk dress so that the hemline would stop midcalf. I wore it with a new narrow-brimmed straw hat and a pair of sleek high heels like some I’d seen in Picture-Play. “Tell me more about this boy,” Mama had said while pinning up the dress, but I put her off. “You just have to meet him,” I said. “Then you’ll see.”

I loved the Club, it being the site of so many entertaining times, but the gaslights seemed a throwback now that electric lights were being used in all the modern buildings. Its elegantly shabby Oriental rugs and its creaking floorboards and its silent, colored staff were the antithesis of modern, too, and proudly so. This was my daddy’s South, my daddy’s club—not literally, but it might as well have been.

Now Scott stood in the center of the room, hands raised, and announced, “Ladies, gentlemen, welcome to Miss Zelda Sayre’s eighteenth birthday fête! I’m Scott Fitzgerald, your host and Miss Sayre’s most ardent admirer.”

He looked distinguished in a nicely cut pearl-gray suit. His tie was pale blue with gray stripes. His eyes, grayish green in that light, reminded me of the rare icicle in Montgomery, or a pebbled creek’s rushing stream in early spring. They revealed his intelligence in a way that made me want to dive inside his head and swim in its depths.

My friends cheered, and then Scott went on, “Jasper, our bartender, has created a drink in Zelda’s honor. I described her to him, and this gin-and-soda-and-apricots concoction is the result. You’ve got to try it, it’s outrageously good.”

“How about all this?” Sara Mayfield whispered, watching Scott consult with Livye, who was at the piano. “He’s wild about you, isn’t he?”

“I guess he is.” My chest was strangely tight.

“This must be costing his whole month’s salary. Does he have family money?”

“I have no idea. He went to Princeton, so I suppose there’s some.”

“How old is he?”

“Twenty-one,” I whispered. “He’s a writer; he’s already written a novel. I read part of it, and it’s awfully good. He plans to be famous.”

“There are worse things to plan on.”

“The Judge says anyone who’d throw a party like this for a girl he just met must be frivolous.”

Sara looked over at Daddy, whose stiff posture and expression said he was there under duress. She said, “There are worse things to be.”

The music began, and then Scott joined Sara and me. “I’ve persuaded your friend Miss Hart at the piano, there, to play us a fox-trot. Shall we dance?”

“Seeing as you’ve gone to all this trouble, I s’pose I’d better say yes.”

“Is she always this fresh?” Scott asked Sara.

“Hold on to your hat, mister,” was Sara’s reply.

A little while later, he told a story about a train trip he’d taken from Princeton, across the country through Chicago to St. Paul. In his telling, the land was blanketed in sparkling diamonds, his vivid fellow travelers were wise or funny or sad, the cities were cornucopias spilling over with ambition and industry.

He’s so worldly, I thought. Whereas I was the opposite, having never been farther from home than the North Carolina mountains. Worldly, but just as warm and eager as a golden retriever …

I was about to ask him whether he didn’t have golden retriever in his bloodline somewhere when Daddy pulled me aside.

“Baby, it’s time you made your good-byes.”

“It’s early.”

“Regardless. Mr. Fitzgerald asked us three times to have one of those cocktails. He might show a bit more restraint.”

I thought the cocktail was well worth the attention Scott was giving it—not that I could let Daddy know this. I laughed and said, “No, I’m pretty sure he won’t.”

Daddy’s eyes narrowed. “I’m certain you gave him your regrets as well.”

“Yes, sir,” I lied. “Well, I did have a sip of champagne—so’s not to be rude to our host. I’d hate for anyone to think you didn’t raise me right.”

He wasn’t fooled. “It’s plain he’s unsuitable; I won’t have you wasting any more of your time with this boy.”

Mama said, “Now, Judge, it’s her birthday,” and laid her hand on his arm.

“I’d really like to stay, Daddy,” I said. “All my friends are here. How would it look if I left so soon?”

He thought this over, then sighed heavily, as if his being sixty meant invisible forces like time or gravity pressed harder on him nowadays. “Tootsie will escort you home, then,” he said, eyeing Scott, who was now using empty champagne glasses to build a tower atop a table. “Are we clear about that?”

“Yes, Daddy—but he’s a good person, you have to get to know him better is all. Things are different now than when you were our age.”

Seeing my parents in the doorway, Scott left his tower to hurry over and shake Daddy’s hand, then kiss Mama on the cheek. “Thank you both for being here. Zelda is fortunate to have such parents as yourselves. And what a fine job you’ve done with her!” he said, looping his arm around my waist. “She’s remarkable.”

“Hmph,” Daddy said.

“Happy birthday again, Baby,” Mama said, hugging me. “We’re very proud of you. It’s hard to imagine that you’re all grown up now.” Her eyes were misty. “All of my children are grown.” She turned to my father. “Judge, you’ll have to help me understand how this could have happened.”

“The usual way,” he said, taking her elbow. “Good night, Baby.”

As soon as Mama and Daddy were out the door, Scott turned around, took my hand, and called over to Livye, “Dear girl, play us a tango!”

*   *   *

Daddy’s space in our otherwise feminine house was the library, a small room lined with dark maple shelves full of books. He’d inherited a great lot of them from his own father, then added to them liberally. He read serious novels and biographies and philosophy and history books, all of which he said helped him better understand the plight of man, an understanding that, in turn, helped him be a better judge. A man with my daddy’s intelligence and love of books should, I thought, be impressed with Scott’s ambitions, so during supper a few days after my party, I mentioned Scott’s novel.

“He’s calling it The Romantic Egoist, and he hasn’t got a publisher yet, but a good one—Scribner’s—is considering it this very minute.”

“Writing is a good pastime, a sign of an active mind—but it’s no way to earn a living. What does he mean to do as a profession?”

“Writing books can be a profession,” I said, even though I wasn’t certain this was so. The only people I’d ever heard of doing it were very famous, and already dead. I said, “Charles Dickens—he did it. And Henry James.”

Daddy’s sour expression was his response.

Tootsie gave me a sympathetic smile. “Lieutenant Fitzgerald is a lively young man.”

“Lively,” our father said, “will not put food on a family’s table either—and especially not when a great portion of whatever income he does receive goes to drink. His name—Fitzgerald—that’s Irish, you know. And I’ll suppose he’s a Catholic. I’m a fair man, but there are good reasons those people have the reputations they do. Baby, you don’t want to get ensnared here.”

I bristled. “I’m not ensnared. He’s a good and talented person and I happen to like him is all, and I think it’s somethin’ that he’s going to get a novel published.”

“Speculation, at best,” Daddy said, gazing at me over his glasses. “Supposing they do publish anything by such an untested writer—unlikely, but not impossible, I’ll give you that—then he’ll be flush enough to buy himself a new topcoat or some such thing. Wonderful.”

Katy entered the dining room and began clearing the salad plates while I was saying, “Don’t you think we should credit him for having initiative?”

Daddy looked at me as if I was simple. “A man deserves credit when he accomplishes something of importance. Something that provides for the betterment of his life and his family’s life and, whenever possible, mankind.”

“But books can do that. I know you think so, or we wouldn’t have so many of ’em in there.” I pointed toward the library.

“Scott Fitzgerald is not Dickens, Baby. Nor is he James—who had family wealth, by the way, as do Edith Wharton and the rest of them. He’s not a scholar, he’s not a philosopher, he’s not a man of property or business or even politics. He’s—what? An Irish Yankee pup who enjoys liquor too much, didn’t finish college, and is about to be shipped off to the war with no apparent prospects afterward—assuming he comes back in one piece.” Daddy aimed his fork at me. “You had best set your feet on the ground and pull your head from the clouds, or one day you’ll find yourself living in a shack like some nigger, washing your clothes in the river and eating peas for dinner every night.”

“My goodness, Judge, what an image,” Mama said. Then she patted my hand while saying, “Katy, we’ll have the roast now.”

“Yes’m.”

I wanted to pursue the argument but was out of ammunition. As far as I knew or could otherwise prove, Daddy’s opinion was indisputable.

“You do not,” he continued, “want to ever have to work for your support.”

And he was right, I didn’t. No respectable married woman held a job if she had any choice about it, not in Alabama. We girls were trained up knowing there was only one goal to worry ourselves about, and that was marriage to the best sort of fella who would have us. As many rules as I was willing to break, I never gave that one a minute’s thought. So the only thing for it was to make sure Scott would turn out to be right, and Daddy would turn out to be wrong.