David Marshall Jamesby David Marshall James
First published in November/December, 2008, Volume 5, Issue 4, The Hatchet: Journal of Lizzie Borden Studies.
The touring car sprang to life. She smoothed her navy gabardine skirt and touched the clasp of her sapphire brooch, pinned to the lace ruffle extending from the neck of her blouse. Kid-gloved fingers adjusted the mesh attached to the brim of her otherwise unimposing straw hat, the color of which matched her dress and light traveling coat.
By all appearances, she could have been en route to a funeral. Her intent on this first day of August, however, was to escape death, not to embrace it. Specifically, she sought sanctuary from the memory of two violent deaths that had occurred thirty years before. This being a few days shy of the significant anniversary of that late, unfortunate affair, the press could be well relied upon to resurrect the brouhaha with particular relish. Every yearly reminder of the morbid event proved an ordeal. This one could be counted upon to produce even louder bells and whistles.
Thankfully, most persons were still gathered around breakfast tables as they—she and her driver—set off, although the day seemed improbably sticky, even at its dawning. She cracked the windows and waved her fan, which proved even more handy, as Mrs. Fortescue stood at the curb, gaping, as she ostensibly waved down the fruit monger’s cart. Between the mesh veil and the fully extended fan, she hoped in vain that Mrs. Fortescue would not recognize her.
If she had, she still had no way of knowing that Miss Lizbeth Borden was bound for the Providence railway station to catch the 7:45 train to Manhattan, where she planned to pass the week at The Plaza hotel on Central Park South. She could have made the connection to Providence through Fall River, but she did not care to risk prying eyes so close to home. As the years rolled by, gathering into decades, her tolerance of furtive glances, breathless murmurs, and the occasional pointing finger had decreased dramatically. Indeed, she could no longer bear to see any creature caged. She knew how it felt to be behind bars, and being on unwanted display felt far worse.
Lizbeth closed her eyes. Sometimes, she wished she had not remained here. Then, if she dwelled upon that condition, her defenses invariably arose, prompting her to think: “Why should I retreat? Let them leave, if they’re so out of sorts about me.”
Besides which, if one had the means to travel at one’s whim, what did it matter where one lived? Lizbeth pulled the mesh veil onto the brim of her hat, then extracted a tin of lemon drops from her purse. She slipped one into her mouth, smiling: “Sour grapes, Mrs. Fortescue.”
At the Providence station, Lizbeth secured her ticket, while her driver saw to the unloading and boarding of her trunk. Never one to under pack, or to suffer without her home comforts, she detested valises. “After all, I’m not a traveling salesman,” she thought.
With ten minutes to spare, she stopped by a newsstand for several magazines, including the latest issues of The Smart Set and Scribner’s Magazine, not that she planned to read during the train ride. She much preferred gazing at the passing scenery; moreover, reading in-motion did not sit well with her head or stomach. Rather, she looked forward to perusing her periodicals at leisure, during the course of her stay.
Lizbeth located a window seat in a car that was not even half full. To be sure, most persons were headed out of the city at this time of year, and many of the gentlemen who were journeying toward their business concerns were smoking cigars and reading newspapers in the club car, or drinking coffee in the dining car. As the locomotive gave a lurch, then started forward, her spirits lifted. The unpleasantness would not touch her. It was only an abstract, receding into the distance. Mrs. Fortescue and her ilk back in Fall River would surely revel in it, would partake of it over teapots and garden fences, a highlight of their humdrum lives. Well, if they could pack a trunk and take off for New York on a lark, as she could, they would not be so concerned with yesterday’s headlines.
When the train ground to a halt in Grand Central Terminal, Lizbeth jolted to her senses, wondering how long she had been dozing. The warmth of the day, the rhythmic clacking of wheels on track, and her arising at an earlier-than-usual hour: these factors had combined to lull her into a haze. Lizbeth noted, too, with increasing remorse that—with each passing year—events seemed to be over and done with as soon as they were commenced. She recalled how, as a young girl, it felt as if it would take ages to reach the family farm in Swansea from Fall River. Now, she had just traveled several hundred miles in a span of what appeared a few minutes.
A Red Cap hoisted her trunk from the baggage car and carried it to the cab stand, whereupon she tipped him a generous thirty-five cents, enough to buy a decent meal at any soda-fountain counter in the city. As the cab headed uptown, skirting traffic, Lizbeth noted the marquees of Times Square. First, they passed the Hotel Astor, with its famed roof garden. Movie palaces abounded, among them Loews Capitol and Loews State. The Palace—the mecca of the vaudeville trade—featured Al Jolson, Elsie Janis, and Sophie Tucker on its bill. Fanny Brice and Marilyn Miller were starring in the latest edition of the Ziegfeld Follies at the New Amsterdam. Lizbeth’s heart leapt with joy.
Upon her arrival at The Plaza, a bellhop hastened off with Lizbeth’s trunk, so that she lost sight of him. Having entered on the Central Park side, she maneuvered the winding corridors, inadvertently passing the entrance into the main lobby, proceeding into the Oak Bar, where she encountered a young man with a knitted brow, pencil poised over paper at a tabletop, a cup of coffee beside him. When he lifted his head, there was no mistaking the large blue eyes, the fine nose, and well-formed chin. His photographs scarcely did him justice. He appeared in full blush from the Muse’s kiss, to glow with something Olympian.
“Mr. Fitzgerald?” Lizbeth spoke, although he stared blankly, as if remaining in a trance. “I read ‘A Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ in The Smart Set, earlier this summer.”
“Oh,” the author replied, as if his mind had yet to focus fully on Lizbeth.
“I admired its lapidary polish.”
At that time, the bellhop breathlessly relocated Lizbeth: “Ma’am, I do apologize. Your trunk is by the desk in the lobby, if you’ll just follow me.”
“Thank you. I’ll be along momentarily, if you’ll wait for me there.”
Upon the employee’s exit, Fitzgerald asked Lizbeth, “Are you a guest of the hotel, then?”
“Yes, and for a week at that. And you?”
“Yes, I’ve come in from vacation for some meetings and work.”
“I trust I’m not distracting you.”
“No, Mrs. ….”
“Miss—Miss Lenore Morse.” Lizbeth preferred traveling incognita, and this pseudonym joined two family names.
“Miss Lenore Morse, of?”
“Of Swansea, Massachusetts.”
“In town to seek your fortune?”
“In town to seek my pleasure.”
“And, dare I ask the nature of that?”
“It is found chiefly in the finer things, such as your writings.”
“If I were not a married man, I believe I should ask you for a date.”
“And I should accept, wholeheartedly. This being modern times, might I ask you, Mr. Fitzgerald, for the pleasure of your company this evening, for supper?”
“A deux?”
“A trois, or else your wife may cease speaking with you. Or, are you alone on this trip?”
“Whither I goest, so goeth Zelda.”
“I should very much like to meet her, as well. As the invitees, you will be my guests, at the place of your choosing.”
“I’ll meet you here, then, at seven—for a cocktail.”
“Cocktails at seven, Mr. Fitzgerald,” Lizbeth agreed, then she bid him adieu.
Following the formalities of registering—completed in a cash-advance transaction, under the appellation ‘Lenore Morse’—Lizbeth ascended to the fourth floor with her patient bellhop, whom she tipped her customary thirty-five cents. She occupied a standard suite overlooking Central Park, consisting of a small sitting room, a large boudoir, and a glorious bathroom with marble countertops and a barrel-vaulted ceiling, a veritable temple in which cleanliness was indeed close to Godliness.
Lizbeth’s arrival could not have been more auspicious. What a stroke of fortune: Not five minutes in The Plaza, and she had a dinner engagement with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald. How opportune that she had brought her beaded lavender gown, along with amethyst pieces, and the velvet chapeau with violet plumes.
“I must have something to eat now, or I’ll be making a hog of myself at supper,” she thought. “Or, worse yet, I’ll pass out from my preprandial cocktail.” She telephoned the front desk and was connected to Room Service, from which she ordered: “A plate of tea sandwiches, cucumber and pate, and a strawberry tart. Two, if they’re smallish. And a pot of Orange Pekoe, please.”
Lizbeth removed her traveling coat and kid gloves, then unpinned her navy hat. She stepped to the bedroom window, raised it, and looked down upon the comings and goings on the sidewalk and the street, and, beyond that, into the park, which was abuzz with summertime activity from those without the means to escape the blanketing August heat in the city. Presently, her tea tray arrived, and she refreshed herself with the daintily cut sandwiches and exquisite tarts, with crisp, buttery pastry, custard filling, and layers of sliced strawberries glazed with molten apricot jelly.
Afterward, she drew a steaming tub, into which she poured a liberal sample from the chamomile bubble bath she had carefully wrapped and packed in her trunk. After a lengthy soak, she covered in a lightweight cotton wrapper and stretched across the bed, thoroughly relaxed, for an afternoon nap. Almost three hours later, feeling restored, she dressed in her finery then rode the elevator downstairs to the Oak Bar, where Scott—resplendent in black tie and a white dinner jacket, with a red carnation in the lapel—stood at the bar, smoking a cigarette and drinking a Gin Rickey. “Miss Morse ….”
“Lenore, please.”
“Lenore it is. Would you like a libation?”
“A champagne cocktail, please.”
He placed the order, then retrieved a small cardboard box, tied with pink ribbon, from the counter. “For you, Lenore.”
Lizbeth undid the ribbon and opened the lid of the box to discover a corsage of lavender orchids with deep-purple speckling. “Why, Mr. Fitzgerald ….”
“Scott, if you please.”
“They’re lovely, Scott, and they match my gown.”
“Somehow, I knew purple was your color. Well, here’s Zelda.”
Mrs. Fitzgerald possessed the gleam of a bronze goddess with her perfect tan, her brushed-out bob of brunette tresses flecked with golden highlights bestowed by her sun worshipping. Her bee-stung lips were painted the red of the finest rubies. Her beaded purple dress resembled Lizbeth’s, except that the youthful matron’s skirt was cut just below the knee, and her bodice was supported by thin shoulder straps. A deep-violet silk shawl was draped over her shoulders, and her shimmering locks were ensconced in a beaded headband that matched her dress, with several fresh lilacs attached.
“Lenore, I’m just so thrilled to meet you,” Zelda, in all her Southerness, embraced Lizbeth. “Now, let me pin on those orchids. If you leave it to Scott, he’ll draw blood. Now, there, just look at the two of us—sisters under the skin.”
“That’s very kind of you, Zelda. However, I’m more of an aubergine. You’re a clutch of violets.”
“Hush, dahlin’, hush. Scott, I’d love a champagne cocktail. And a cigarette.”
Her husband obliged, ordering champagne for himself, as well. When they were all supplied with libations, Zelda announced: “We must have a very gay toast. Oh, I know—here’s to immortality.”
“Oh, dear, believe me: no one wants to keep on living in an aging body.”
“Lenore, my sweet, I don’t mean literal immortality. I mean figurative immortality. As in a constellation.”
“Only Zelda would presume us into the heavens,” Scott exhaled a stream of smoke.
They touched glasses to immortality.
“I believe in wishing big. Don’t you, Lenore?”
“Most definitely,” Lizbeth sipped her champagne.
“You know, Lenore—and forgive me for being so bold, but you can tell from my toast that I’m rather bold-natured—but I believe you’re a woman with a secret or two about her.”
“Not more than you have, I’m sure, Zelda. However, I have lived long enough to accrue a past.”
“Dahlin’, I’d be positively depressed if you hadn’t.”
After another round of cocktails in the Oak Bar, the triumvirate caught a cab downtown to The Biltmore hotel, which housed one of the Fitzgeralds’ favorite restaurants, The Cascades. Being who he was, as well as a preferred patron, Scott commanded a window table under the long, overhanging row of ivy. As soon as they were seated, Zelda commandeered the occasion, ordering a split of champagne, summer crudités with Roquefort dip, and warm baguettes with butter. From there, she took them to Veal Milanese with Potatoes Lyonnaise, and braised haricots verts. And the champagne continued to flow.
“Now, there can be only one dessert,” Zelda declared, when the dinner plates were cleared.
“Your tastes have proved impeccable thus far, Zelda,” Lizbeth dabbed the corner of her mouth with a crisp white napkin. “I’m in your hands.”
“Well, I’m all for Orange Fool. And, encore de champagne.”
“There’s no fool like an Orange Fool,” Scott, a bit in his cups, observed.
“Scott, honey, would you mind guarding the table while Lenore and I powder our noses?”
“Powder away, if you must.”
As they strolled toward the ladies’ lounge in the Biltmore lobby, Zelda informed Lizbeth: “Tomorrow, Lenore, you and I will frolic about the city, just like tourists. Scott really must hunker down and finish a story this week, before the September issue of The Smart Set goes to the compositor’s. They’re holding space for him, as it is.”
“I’m sorry he’s in such a bind, and I wish there were some way I could be of service.”
“You can help him the most by getting me out of his hair.”
When they rejoined the author in the dining room, they settled over plates of Orange Fool: a twist on trifle, consisting of sponge cake soaked in fresh orange and lemon juice, topped with whipped cream. “This is quite one of the most spectacular desserts I have ever sampled,” Lizbeth proclaimed. “I can see why you love The Cascades so much. Now, please excuse me just a moment.”
As discreetly as possible, she approached the maitre d’, who signaled their waiter for the check. Lizbeth settled the bill, which came to almost twenty-five dollars. She then returned to the table, where Scott had just filled her champagne glass. “I’m afraid I shall quite float away on these glorious bubbles,” Lizbeth laughed.
“Nonsense, Lenore. You’re drinking to immortality,” he replied.
On the morning after, Lizbeth was partaking of a sweet breakfast in the sitting room of her suite—coffee, orange juice, and scones with clotted cream and strawberry jam—when Zelda rang her room: “Lenore, honey, put on something light and free. We’ll catch the streetcar at Broadway and hit Times Square.”
For the next three days, the twosome roamed the city arm-in-arm, from one spree to another. They watched picture shows in air-cooled movie palaces, took in matinees and evening theatricals, and even ventured out to Harlem one evening for some hot jazz. They had cheeseburgers and ice-cream sodas at drug-store fountains; corned beef, cabbage rolls, and cheesecake at delicatessens; and goopy, chili-laden frankfurters from street vendors. They wandered through Central Park and explored neighborhoods; they took afternoon tea at the Palm Court of The Plaza.
On their third evening out, as they swirled up pasta in an all-night trattoria in Little Italy, following a performance of the Ziegfeld Follies, Lizbeth grew reflective: “You know, Zelda, I was you when I was your age, but my circumstances wouldn’t permit it.”
“Oh, dahlin’, did you have a bad marriage?”
Lizbeth sipped her Chianti. “No, I was of society, but not in it, if that makes any sense.”
Zelda finished a bit of meatball. “Lenore, honey, you should have seen my Daddy: strict and straight as a line—a judge in Montgomery, Alabama. Still, I just took off, fast as lightning, and had myself a spanking good time.”
“How did you feel free to do so?”
“It was a leap, Lenore, but you don’t become homecoming queen and prom queen at three universities by sitting and knitting with Ma and Pa, as much as they’d like you to do just that.”
“My Father would have murdered me first,” Lizbeth stated.
“Oh, the Judge was none too thrilled, I can assure you. However, I ran with a crowd. That helped shield me somewhat. I was on a mission to find a man who could take me out of Montgomery.”
“You didn’t care for it, there?”
“It’s fine and dandy if you want to join clubs and church circles and pour tea all day long, as a good and proper matron is wont to do. Giving and receiving gossip. Hoping to bid a slam and make it at Thursday afternoon bridge. I didn’t want to act old before my time, and then wake up one morning and find out I was old for real.”
“You met Scott when he was stationed down there, during the War?”
“That’s right.” Zelda pushed her plate aside and lit a cigarette. “Nevertheless, I wouldn’t marry him till he’d finished Paradise.”
“This Side of Paradise?”
“Yes—till it was published, actually. Scott’s got so much in him, Lenore, but it’s like cracking pecans and pulling them out in perfect halves, getting it out of him. He’s pulling two to three thousand a story, but they don’t come easily. On top of that, he believes he ought to be publishing a novel every other year.”
“Striking while the iron is hot.”
“And partying while the champagne is chilled.”
“The two sort of go hand in hand, don’t they? I mean, that’s in a lot of his writings.”
“Yes, Lenore. Scott and I go hand in hand.”
Several hours after the dawn of her fourth full day at The Plaza, Lizbeth noticed a note had been slipped under her door from the hall into the sitting room. Composed on a sheet of hotel stationery, it read:
Dearest Lenore,
Scott finished his story during the wee small hours. We are off to drop it at the magazine, then we’re taking the first train out to Great Neck for an extended stay.
I do hope I can get him to work out there.
Please correspond with us through Scribner’s, on Fifth Avenue. Sad to say, we’ve no fixed address, and Scott keeps thinking about Paris. It’s so much cheaper, and it’s becoming where it’s “at,” if you know what I mean.
We shall meet again!
Oh! Scott has left you something at the desk.
“Hand in hand.” Always, Zelda
Lizbeth sighed. Another something special, over as soon as it had begun.
Following coffee and cinnamon rolls in her sitting room, she embarked on some window shopping, but not before pausing in the lobby. At the front desk, the concierge produced Scott’s remembrance, a book wrapped in brown paper—a copy of The Beautiful and Damned, inscribed: “To Lenore, For more than you know. Gratefully, F. Scott Fitzgerald.”
Three days afterward, Lizbeth returned to Fall River under the cover of darkness, having hired a cab for transport after deboarding a late train. Fortuitously, Mrs. Donavan was giving her customary birthday soiree for her husband that evening, several blocks away on French Street. Lizbeth was painfully aware of the event, having never been asked. Therefore, she employed the knowledge to her advantage in timing her arrival. The party would be in full swing, and everyone on French Street would be either in attendance, or keeping themselves behind closed shutters, not to betray the lack of an invitation.
As she passed the Donavans’ handsome manse with a mansard roof—Japanese lanterns lining the walkway, with the orchestra in the third-floor ballroom audible from the street—Lizbeth reminisced pleasantly to herself: “I wonder how many of you have ever attended a champagne supper with Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald?”
Almost one moth later, the September issue of The Smart Set arrived. Lizbeth had read her inscribed copy of The Beautiful and Damned during the interim, and had been eagerly awaiting her authorial acquaintance’s latest literary effort. She turned immediately to his story, “A Woman of Means, with a Past,” which began:
She came down to New York to seek her pleasure. Somewhere, somehow, some years before, she had made her fortune. Nevertheless, nothing of a world-weary aura attended her. It was as if she possessed the means, yet seldom the impetus, to escape a cloistered existence. She trailed a secret beyond revelation. She left a hint of it in the summer’s already memory-laden air, similar to the wafting of gardenias’ fragrance across the rolling lawn of a formidable homestead, at twilight.
As soon as she finished reading the story, Lizbeth located a plain piece of stationery, and addressed the author in care of Scribner’s, Fifth Avenue:
Dear Scott,
I shall treasure so much about stumbling into you at The Plaza: the champagne, the orchids, the image of you in your white jacket, dressed for dinner. And—of course, Zelda.
And, lately, your story. My best to you both.
And, To immortality. – A Woman of Means, with a Past.
