"Mamma, I don’t want to go to school anymore// Why not// I seem to know everything...I want to go to New York, Mamma// What on earth for// To be my own boss...I scrubbed my cheeks with a nail brush.”
Judge Beggs entrenched himself in his integrity. He left no sloping path near his castle open either to the friendly goatherd or the menacing baron...Her father knew everything...if knowing is paring your perceptions to fit into the visible portion of life’s mosaic, he did. If knowledge is having an attitude towards the things we have never experienced and preserving an agnosticism towards those we have, he did.
The girl hung there on his words like a vestment waiting to be put on...Alabama thought her heart was a person walking. It was. It was everybody walking at once.
His legs were so long that the rest of him seemed merely a decorative appendage...Something unpleasant was bound to happen whenever the savior made an appearance in the dialog...Hearing little bits of things about the family characteristics that she too must have in her was like finding she had all five toes when up to the present she had been able to count only four...A person will imagine himself wittier than usual in an unfamiliar tongue.
Being in love is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the strings alone.
The vermilion hibiscus curved five brazen shields against the sun.
The altheas drooped in faded purple canopies against the barn.
The south phrased itself in engraved invitation
To a party without address.
The evening sun buttoned the pink folds of the sky and followed a busload of officers into town.
“There’s gonna be a war// Then the dance ought to be good tonight...Oh, Daddy. I’m so tired of just sitting on the porch and having dates and watching things rot”...Who is still panhandling in Beggs Street...“I’ve written a poem about you// It’s about West Point// That’s the same thing. I feel the same way about you”...Fear is nerves. Maybe all emotions are...Words were some unexpected encumbrance she found in her mouth and must rid herself of before she could communicate.
Some heavenly support
Beneath his shoulder blades
Lifted his feet from the ground
In ecstatic suspension,
As if he secretly enjoyed
The ability to fly
But was walking
As a compromise to convention.
They stood on the frosted porch in the sea of mist quite far away from each other, yet Alabama could have sworn she was touching him, so magnetic were their two pairs of eyes...Taking out his knife, he carved in the door post: “David, David, Knight, Knight, Knight, and Miss Alabama Nobody// Egotist// Can’t you trust me for three minutes// I do trust you. That’s why I want to go inside.”
“You are my princess and I’d like to keep you shut forever in an ivory tower for my private delectation”...She believed that one person should only be faithful to another when they felt like it...The biggest bed that both of them together could imagine. Broader than it was long: “Jesus! Oh Jesus// What’s the matter// It says in the paper we’re famous// How nice. Let’s see.”
Summer hurls its thesis and bursts against our dignity as explosively as the back of a Japanese
kimono.
Tanka was the Japanese butler. They couldn’t have afforded him without borrowing from David’s [art] dealer. He cost money...because he constructed botanical gardens out of cucumbers and made floral displays with the butter. He got the money for his flute lessons from the grocery bills. They had tried to do without him till Alabama cut her hand on a can of baked beans and David sprained his painting wrist on the lawn mower.
“Tomato juice. It sobers you up. I gave some to the guests. First I give them tomato juice and then I give them gin”...Alabama’s head felt as if someone had been making popcorn in her cranium...New York rivers dangled lights along the banks like lanterns on a wire; Long Island marshes stretched the twilight to a blue Campagna. Glimmering buildings hazed the sky...Bits of philosophy, odds and ends of acumen suicided in the sentimental dusk.
“Do you mean to say that you’re jealous of me// Of course. Aren’t you// Terribly. But I thought we weren’t supposed to be// Then we’re even.”
The dinner was one of those ship’s meals with everything tasting of salty mops...[Passenger dialog=] “There’s been so much suspicion of us about that I’m afraid to have children for fear of almond-shaped eyeballs or blue fingernails// It’s one’s friends. They rope you into dull dinners, cut you on the Riviera, devour you on the Biarritz, and spread devastating rumors about your upper bicuspids all over Europe...But there reports that the two of you have made a success of your marriage// We are going to present it to the Louvre. It’s been accepted already by the French government [=Alabama Beggs]."
Bonnie was two, priestess of obscure wisdoms and reverenced of her parents as if she were two hundred. The Knight household having exhausted the baby interest during the long months of weaning, her standing was that of a voting member.
Why am I this way, Why am I that?
Why do myself and I constantly spat?
Which is the reasonable, logical me?
Which is the one who must will it to be?
Selection is the privilege for which we suffer in life.
The deep Greek of the Mediterranean licked its chops over the edges of our febrile civilization...[Bonnie//Alabama=] “Where’s Nanny// She’s out collecting you some nice opinions”...The day enveloped them in an armor of sunshine. They hired a limousine stuffy with reminiscences of state occasions. Paper nasturtiums fading in the cubism of a cut glass triangle obscured the view along the coast. “Drive, Drive, why can’t I drive?” Bonnie screamed. “Because the golf sticks go there, and David, you can get your easel back here// Um-um-um,” the baby droned, content with the motion. “Nice, nice, nice”...A wooden cuckoo protested the gloom of the oak dining room.
David worked on his frescoes; Alabama was much alone. “What’ll we do, David, with ourselves?” David said she couldn’t always be a child and have things provided for her to do...“How can you be two things at once// Because, my daughter. I am so outrageously clever that I believe I could be a whole world to myself if I didn’t like living in Daddy’s better.”
As her eyes met those of the officer, Alabama experienced the emotion of a burglar unexpectedly presented with the combination of a difficult safe by the master of the house...“Do you think he really is a god?” Alabama whispered to David. “He looks like you–except that he is full of the sun, whereas you are full of the mooon”...Kissing the white linen stranger was like embracing a lost religious rite.
The Collected Works of Zelda Fitzgerald can be ordered from Apostrophe Books.
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