Gatsby's Girl

By Caroline Preston

Just as Jay Gatsby was haunted by Daisy Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fizgerald was haunted by his own great first love — a Chicago socialite named Ginevra. Alluring, capricious, and ultimately unavailable, she would become his first muse, the inspiration for such timeless characters as Gatsby's Daisy and Isabelle Borge in This Side of Paradise.

Caroline Preston's astute perceptions of her characters and the cultural landscapes they inhabit have earned her work comparisons to to that of Anne Tyler, Alison Lurie, and Diane Johnson. Now, in this richly imagined and ambitious novel, Preston deftly evokes the entire sweep of Ginevra's life — from her first meeting with Scott to the second act of her sometimes charmed, sometimes troubled life.

Ginevra was sixteen, a rich man’s daughter who had been told she was pretty far too often for her own good. Scott was nineteen, a poor boy full of ambition. They met at a country club dance in St. Paul, Minnesota, in January 1916. For almost a year they wrote each other letters — so long, breathless, and yearning that they often required more than one envelope.

But despite their intense epistolary romance, the relationship wouldn’t last. After throwing him over with what he deemed “supreme boredom and indifference,” she impulsively married a handsome aviator from the right society background.

Ruminating over what might have been had she picked the writer instead of the flier, she furtively reads the now famous Fitzgerald’s work. When she sees herself — much to her surprise — in his characters, it’s not just as the spoiled debutante he’d known; he’s also uncannily predicted the woman she’s become, cracks and all.

An affecting story of two people, one famous, one known only through her portrayals in enduring works of fiction, Gatsby’s Girl is a tremendously entertaining and moving novel about the powerful forces of first love, memory, and art.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Jun 27, 2013
• ISBN: 9780544276536

Caroline Preston

CAROLINE PRESTON is a graduate of Dartmouth College and earned her master’s degree in American civilization at Brown University. She has worked as a manuscript librarian, both at the Houghton Library at Harvard and the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. She is the author of two previous novels, Jackie by Josie (a New York Times Notable Book of the Year) and Lucy Crocker 2.0. She is married to the writer Christopher Tilghman, and they live with their three sons in Charlottesville, Virginia.

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Table of Contents

Title Page

Table of Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Prologue

PART ONE

St. Paul Girl

Bob Party

Letters

Nobody Home

Houseguest

Dismal Swamp

Pockmarked Moon

Luau

Poor Boys

PART TWO

Red Cross Cadet

The Triumph of Youth

Honeymoon in Key West

Who’s Who and Why

Stork Scissors

House Party

The Professor

Shakespeare and Company

PART THREE

Century of Progress

Myrna

The Tutor

Matinee

The Crack-Up

The Wilshire Grill

Chronicle of the Lost Generation

Property of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Epilogue

Historical Note

Acknowledgments

A Reader’s Guide to Gatsby’s Girl

About the Author

First Mariner Books edition 2007

Copyright © 2006 by Caroline Preston

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhbooks.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

Preston, Caroline.

Gatsby’s girl / Caroline Preston,

p. cm.

ISBN 13: 978-0-618-53725-9

ISBN-10: 0-618-53725-2

1. King, Ginevra, 1898–1980—Fiction. 2. Fitzgerald, F. Scott (Francis Scott), 1896–1940—Fiction. 3. Rejection (Psychology)—Fiction. 4. Authors—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3566.R397G38 2006

813'.54—dc22

2005026166

ISBN-13: 978-0-618-87261-9 (pbk.)

ISBN-10: 0-618-87261-2 (pbk.)

eISBN 978-0-544-27653-6

v1.0613

For my mother,

Sylvia Peter Preston

He talked a lot about the past and I gathered that he wanted to recover something, some idea of himself perhaps, that had gone into loving Daisy. His life had been confused and disordered since then, but if he could once return to a certain starting place and go over it all slowly, he could find out what that thing was . . . .

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD, THE GREAT GATSBY

Prologue

Scott Fitzgerald’s daughter called long distance, out of the blue. Her voice sounded apologetic, as if she was afraid I wouldn’t remember who he was. She explained that she had had no idea how to get in touch with me. She decided to give the number in his old telephone book a try, even though Scott had been dead for ten years. I can’t believe you’re still in the same place, Mrs. Granger.

That made me sit down, hard, on the hall bench. Scott had bounced around from St. Paul to New York to Paris to Baltimore to Hollywood, and here I was, still in the same house where he’d come for a visit, back in 1916. I’m not Mrs. Granger anymore, I said. Now I’m Mrs. John Pullman. At least that part had changed.

She told me her name had changed too, to Scottie Lanahan, and she lived on a farm in Chevy Chase. Judging from all the racket in the background, she had a couple of small children and a dog. My father always used to talk about you. He said you were the first girl he ever loved.

I’m afraid I wasn’t very nice to him, I said lightly, as if I hadn’t had years of regrets about the way I treated Scott.

He said you threw him over without a second thought. She let out a merry little laugh, as if she didn’t take any of her father’s heartbreaks too seriously. Anyway, that’s why I’m calling. I’m sorting through Daddy’s papers to give to the library at Princeton, and I found something I know he would want you to have.

What? I asked, thinking maybe it was one of my letters, even though he was supposed have destroyed them all.

Let’s just say it’s something unusual. You’ll have to see for yourself, she said in a teasing way. It reminded me of the game Scott used on girls at parties. I’m thinking of two words that describe you, he’d say, can you guess? I’m going to be in Chicago next week and I was hoping I could give it to you in person. I’ve always wanted to meet you.

I tried to think of someplace cheerful and uncomplicated to meet, in case Scottie was prone to cocktails and mournful moods like her father. How about the Walnut Room at Marshall Field’s? You’ll be my guest, of course. The Welsh rarebit is famous.

My favorite. There was a huge clatter in the background, like a stack of pots and pans falling off a top shelf.

Uh-oh, said a small voice.

Better go, Scottie said. See you next week. At the Walnut Room. I want to hear all about you and Daddy. Your version.

I hung up the phone and studied the front hallway, trying to remember what it had looked like that summer Scott visited. The house was brand new then and still had all the fripperies my father had insisted Mr. Shaw include. The iron balusters had been gold-leafed, the black-and-white marble tiles were hard-waxed and buffed once a week by Mrs. Coates, the privet by the front door was clipped into poodle balls. Daddy had bought a second-rate salon portrait at auction to hang in the stairwell—three sons of some unknown Austrian aristocrat, dressed in ostrich feathers and satin pantaloons, with oddly enlarged heads.

My image of Scott when he’d stepped through the front door came in disconnected fragments. His white linen suit was rumpled across the back, and his collar had a ring of grime from the long train ride. His hair was bright blond, like a Dutch boy’s. The chin and nose were strong, but hadn’t firmed up into the famous profile yet. He dropped his battered suitcase on the marble floor with a bang and surveyed the hallway as if it were a cathedral—first staring up at the ceiling and then rotating slowly to take it all in. Then his girlish mouth pulled back into a tight grin, as if he was trying not to laugh. Even though Scott’s family lived in a rented flat in St. Paul, he could see that an Italianate villa smack-dab in the middle of the prairie was pretentious. Later, after he’d had a couple of my father’s gin and tonics, he announced that Lake Forest consisted of nothing more than the palaces of meatpackers.

I could remember Scott’s letters more clearly than his face, which wasn’t surprising. I saw Scott only a few times, but there had been dozens and dozens of letters. Each sheet stamped with the Princeton seal, the letters so thick that the envelopes bloated like a puffer fish and needed extra stamps. For a while, I found one every day in my wooden mail cubby at Westover. The letters seemed clever at first, filled with the flattery and clippings of his latest in the Tiger Lit.—he was the only boy I’d ever met who fancied himself a writer. But then he came for a visit to Lake Forest, and under Daddy’s judgmental gaze, Scott and his avalanche of love letters began to seem foolish, tiresome. And I’d met someone more dashing, at least in my sixteen-year-old opinion—Billy Granger.

The subject of Scott’s letters was bound to come up when I had lunch with Scottie, and I’d have to admit the truth. That a week after Scott’s visit in August 1916, I’d gathered his letters into a heavy, wobbly stack, carried them down the back stairs, and dumped them in the trash can outside the kitchen door. I could still see the cream envelopes with the black-and-orange crest landing on a mound of coffee grounds and eggshells. My excuses would sound lame. He asked me to destroy his letters, said he was afraid I’d use them as incriminating evidence, which was such nonsense. How could I have ever guessed that the Princeton boy who wrote silly songs and poems would turn into a famous author?

Scottie had probably read the description of our meeting in This Side of Paradise: She paused at the top of the staircase, like a diver on a springboard or a leading lady on opening night—something like that. So typical of Scott, to take a punch party at a shabby country club and fill it with flickering lamplight and romantic interludes. To take a stuck-up pre-debutante and turn her into a noble creature capable of deep feelings.

I wondered what memento of our romance Scottie had found in her father’s papers—a clipping about the party at the Town and Country Club in the St. Paul paper, a ticket stub for Nobody Home, the sash from the Hawaiian costume I’d worn the night I broke it off with him? I had my own secret collection of mementos about Scott, hidden away on the back shelf of a cedar closet behind a pile of unused evening bags. But I wouldn’t share those with anyone—not his daughter, and certainly not the Princeton library.

I would tell Scottie my version of F. Scott Fitzgerald, without the moonlight.

The story began in the dormitory of Westover School, second floor, last door on the left. I could see myself then, a girl strolling jauntily down a long, dim hallway, her high heels clacking on the bare wood floor, a pale blue moiré jacket slung over one shoulder like a college boy. I was two months shy of my sixteenth birthday and stood a pinch below five foot four. I had been told I was pretty far too often for my own good, but my only unusual features were a thick coil of dark hair and large, doe-brown eyes that could turn wistful. Dramatic coloring was my claim to fame back in the days when girls weren’t allowed to wear rouge or lipstick.

I was still bristling from the injustice of my father’s words as he put me on the train. He’d said that Westover was my final chance to prove my character and warned me not to dilly-dally at Grand Central or I’d miss my connection to Middlebury.

I do have a good character, I fumed. I am good on the inside, and I never say things I know aren’t true. Sometimes I’m too emotional and don’t think things through, but why is that such a character flaw? But I had dawdled for a few minutes, to have some cinnamon toast in a real English teashop with organdy curtains and to window shop, and missed my connection. I caught the next one, but I was three hours late.

PART ONE

1

St. Paul Girl

I found my roommate hanging her uniforms in the left-hand side of the closet. She had gotten there first, and had already spread her satin comforter on the bed by the window and appropriated the top two bureau drawers. The second bed was pushed against a bare white wall, two battered desks stood side by side against the other.

She whirled around and gave me an open-mouth, friendly-girl grin. I’m Marie Hart. From St. Paul. She had a pretty, round face with light brown hair springing loose from a sagging pompadour. She was the kind of sensible girl Daddy had probably requested for my roommate—someone who played on the field hockey team and sang in the glee club, and would exert a good influence on me.

In Minnesota? I asked. Even though I was from the Midwest, I was a little hazy about anywhere west of Chicago.

What other St. Paul is there?

St. Paul’s.

What’s that? Her freckled brow furrowed.

Better not get off on the wrong foot with my roommate, have her think I was stuck-up. It’s a school in New Hampshire. That’s a pretty blouse, I added. It was just a candy-stripe middy, but she looked pleased.

She sat on her bed and watched as I unpacked my school uniforms—the four khaki skirts to wear to classes, and four white dresses for dinner. Then I pulled out two evening dresses in case I got invited to a prom, a green wool suit for shopping trips to New York, a beaver coat for Yale football games. Unfortunately, they took up so much of the closet that Marie’s dresses got shoved into a corner. Then I arranged my silver dresser set, jar of hairpins, and a jewelry box across the dresser top.

There, I said.

Marie sat on the foot of her bed, swinging her heels. Ginevra. That’s a funny name. Is it after a relative?

I stood on tiptoe so I could see myself in the tiny mirror above the bureau, pulled out my combs and hairpins, and started brushing out the tangles. My father named me after a woman in a painting by Leonardo da Vinci he saw in some old book. He seemed to think she was pretty. I shrugged. Frankly, in the smudged illustration I’d seen of Ginevra de Benci, I thought she looked a little horsey.

I wish my parents had named me after a painting. I’m named after my Great-Aunt Marie, who tried to close all the saloons in St. Paul.

The bedroom door banged open and in stepped a large gray woman—iron-gray hair raked into a tight twist, sallow skin, a gray worsted dress with a high starched collar.

Marie leaped to her feet, clasped her hands in front, and dropped a small curtsey. Good afternoon, Miss Hillard.

The woman snapped open the watch hanging off her belt. Late afternoon. Five-fifteen to be exact. You must be Miss Perry, she said, her pale squint zeroing in on me. My letter to your father said no later than two o’clock.

I dropped my hairbrush and spun around to face her. I considered making an excuse—the connection to Middlebury was late, the trunk was misplaced. But I could already tell that Miss Hillard was the type who wanted you to try an excuse so that she could bat you down with the back of her witchy hand.

I’m sorry, I said in a meek voice, dropping my chin.

Her fierce glare swept from the closet to the bureau, and then landed on my earlobe. Are you wearing earrings, Miss Perry?

Only pearl drops—my tiniest pair. Yes.

"Yes, Miss Hillard."

Yes, Miss Hillard.

Westover girls are not allowed to wear jewelry. I am sure you know that already, Miss Perry, from your close reading of the Student Rule Book. Her voice was heavy with sarcasm. Items like silver brushes and makeup of any kind are not allowed. I can’t imagine what you think you might need a fancy dress or a fur coat for. New girls are on bounds. Please pack all that nonsense back in your trunk and carry it down to the basement storeroom. And be quick about it. The dinner bell is in twenty-two minutes, and you will get a half a conduct mark for every minute you are late. With that, Miss Hillard replaced the watch under her belt and marched out of the room.

She sure has it in for you. Marie’s voice was trembling.

My parents sent me here because I got in trouble back in Chicago. Hillard finally agreed to accept me on probation. Twenty conduct marks and I’m fired. I grabbed an armful of clothes and slung them back into the trunk.

Let me help. You can’t get a conduct mark your first night. You get dressed while I pack your trunk.

Thanks, I said, surprised and grateful. Most girls didn’t like doing me favors.

I changed into my uniform while she carefully folded my dresses, and then I wrapped the jars and brushes in tissue paper. Together we dragged the trunk down three flights to a dank basement storeroom, and stumbled into the dining hall just as the bell was ringing, our dresses wrinkled and faces flushed, choking back giggles during grace.

The senior proctor, a weak-chinned girl who carried a watch on her belt like Miss Hillard’s, checked to make sure we were in bed at the ungodly hour of eight-thirty. Half a conduct mark if you are caught talking after lights out, she warned, snapping off the light.

I lay in the darkness and listened to her footsteps retreat as she made her rounds down the hall, the stern voice and slamming doors growing fainter and fainter. I made out the ghostly shape of my desk chair in the slit of light seeping under the door, and listened to Marie’s raspy breathing.

Mother had warned me that I would be homesick. I’m sure you’ll cry yourself to sleep the first night, she said. You’ll be sorry you misbehaved, her tone implied. You’ll miss your bedroom with its rose-sprigged bedspread and the balcony with potted geraniums. You’ll miss being able to scatter your clothes all over the floor for Edith to pick up. You’ll miss having Mrs. Coates serve coddled eggs and toast on a breakfast tray at whatever hour you feel like waking up. You’ll miss your father caving in to your every whim—the dressing gown you saw at Field’s, the beaded handbag just like Weezie Ryerson’s, the weekend trip to Lake Geneva for a house party you could not miss. Mother was right, I was feeling blue but I pinched the palm of my hand so I wouldn’t cry.

Marie cleared her throat. Ginevra? Are you still awake? she breathed in a tiny whisper.

Yes.

What did you do? To get sent here? Her voice was timid, as if she wasn’t sure she should hear the answer.

My parents found out I was secretly engaged.

At sixteen? she squealed.

No. I paused for dramatic effect. Actually I’m only fifteen.

Was the boy fifteen? Marie sounded relieved. Fifteen-year-olds pretending to be engaged—that probably happened in St. Paul too.

Nope. He was twenty. A junior at Harvard. His parents made him leave school for a year and he’s working on an uncle’s ranch in Montana. We’re forbidden to write.

Do you miss him?

Of course. I made pudgy, asthmatic Aldus Hutchinson sound much more romantic than he was. How was I to know that no girl had ever paid him any attention before, and that he’d go over the edge after a little mild flirting at the Winter Club Christmas Dance? He wrote me lots of boring letters, then withdrew two thousand dollars from his trust fund and presented me with a four-carat sapphire ring over Fourth of July weekend. He seemed desperate and the ring was pretty, so I said yes, we could be engaged, but made him promise to keep it a secret. But then his trust officer informed his father, and all hell broke loose.

Even though Aldus was five years older and should have been the one to know better, my parents seemed to think I was partly to blame. You must have led on him somehow, my father said. All I did was show him how to do the Castle walk, I insisted, and act interested when he said he’d seen Jupiter through the new telescope at the Harvard Observatory. I was just being polite.

Ever since I turned thirteen and boys started paying attention to me, I’d been accused of being false. No one believed that I was always truthful about my emotions—I would never tell a boy I liked him or allow him to steer me into the butler’s pantry if I didn’t care. Sometimes I changed my mind later, but I never knowingly told a boy a lie.

Golly. That’s so sad, Marie sighed. I twisted my comforter tight around my shoulders and closed my eyes. Marie was going to be a true friend, I could just tell, who wouldn’t misjudge me like the rest.

It was the first time I’d ever been in New England in the fall. The snap in the air and the desperately bold colors of the leaves as they swooned onto the brick paths filled me with a new resolve. I’d become a model Westover girl—I’d show Daddy and Miss Hillard that they’d underestimated me.

Every Sunday and Wednesday we had services in the mock-medieval chapel, with new girls banished to the back pews with no cushions. Miss Hillard, decked out in a velvet robe with a fake ermine collar that she’d gotten from some English women’s college about fifty years ago, delivered the homily from the pulpit. Hillard’s talks usually started with stories about unfortunate people. Once it was about poor Armenian children who had been chased by Turkish Cossacks into the desert without any food or water. Another time it was about the mothers in France who were willing to let their sons get gassed in muddy ditches because they loved their country. Sometimes the stories were about long-suffering people in the Bible, like the Israelites who were held as slaves in Egypt. Then the talk would work its way around to how lucky Westover girls were by comparison, and how many of us didn’t appreciate the advantages we’d been handed by our parents and teachers.

I’d heard this kind of lecture before, but now that I was trying to become a proper Westover girl, I hung my head and tried to open my heart. Even if I did get cross at Daddy, I realized he’d showered me with everything a girl could possibly want and I should count my blessings. I signed up to donate fifty cents of my allowance every week to the starving Armenians, and when Adele Craw, the head proctor, came around with a box for used clothing to send to the poor Frenchwomen, I tossed in a navy wool skirt and two shirtwaists. Mother would probably have a fit, since she’d just bought them from Marshall Field’s, but it wasn’t my fault that I didn’t have any old clothes.

Adele Craw decided that as the official wayward girl of the junior class, I was in need of a role model, and offered her services. At her suggestion, I joined the French Club and helped with their fall play, Jeanne d’Arc. My French accent wasn’t considered good enough for me to have any lines, so I played an awestruck peasant who fell to his knees and a soldier in a cardboard breast shield painted silver.

Adele also urged me to go out for intramurals, the Wests and the Overs, and I was glad to oblige. I’d always been keen on sports. Racing around on a tennis court till my heart pounded seemed like a much more productive way to spend time than plodding through some useless book in study hall. Marie and I played doubles tennis for the Wests, and we made it to the semifinals. We would have won if Marie knew how to serve overhand. I tried to be a good sport. After we lost, I stayed on the bench and bellowed our fight song.

Watch out, Overs!

We’ll run you over.

Here come the Wests.

And we’re the best!

My reputation as a woman with a past proved hard to leave behind. Even though I had sworn her to secrecy, Marie eventually broke down and told the other new girls on our hall about my tragic engagement. After that I was considered an expert on the wild side of love, and girls would gather in our room after evening study hall for details.

Did he write you poetry?

Was the sapphire round or square cut?

Did you kiss?

Of course. All engaged couples kiss, I said in a wise tone, even though I’d only kissed Aldus three times, all fairly unpleasant because he perspired so much.

The girls, with their bony knees poking up under their baggy uniforms, looked shocked. My older sister’s kissed two boys. But she’s a senior at Miss Porter’s, said a girl with chapped cheeks.

Girls in Chicago get kissed early, I explained.

Once we glanced up to find Adele Craw standing in the doorway, arms crossed over her erect chest, eavesdropping. When her clear no-nonsense gaze met mine, it seemed to film over with disappointment. I’m sure you girls can think of better things to do than bother Ginevra, she said mildly, and the cowards jumped to their feet and scattered.

After that, Marie’s and my conversations about boys took place after lights out. Since Marie was now my official best friend at Westover, I was careful to be just as interested in her life and love prospects as she was in mine. She told me that she lived on something called Summit Avenue in St. Paul, which she implied was a fancy address. Their house had over twenty rooms, and three bathrooms that had just been modernized. Her father was a lumber exporter, which she said was a pretty big business, since Minnesota’s got a lot of trees. That’s where Paul Bunyan’s from, you know.

Tell me about the boys in St. Paul, I said.

There’s Reuben Warner and Tubby Washington. They both go to the U.

I guessed that the U. must mean University of Minnesota, if such a place existed. Do any of them go east for college?

One does. Scott. He’s a sophomore at Princeton.

Everyone in Chicago says that Princeton men are clever. I’d love to meet him.

Maybe you could visit after Christmas. Scott will probably be back in St. Paul. And my friends are all dying to meet you.

It gave me a little thrill that Marie had written nice things about me to her friends back home. The more I thought about it, the more I warmed to the idea of a trip to St. Paul after Christmas. Maybe Marie’s friends in St. Paul didn’t gossip or make snap judgments like Lake Forest girls.

In truth, the misunderstanding with Aldus Hutchinson hadn’t blown over yet. Sally Swift admitted in a letter that her mother had called me nothing but a showoff, and had suggested that Sally branch out into new friendships now that I was away. Weezie Ryerson didn’t answer my letters at all. The only Lake Forest friend who wrote me on a regular basis was Millie Jordan, but that was only so she could give me a hole-by-hole description of her latest golf game. Was shooting a 49 on the front nine until the last hole. Then a turribel wind carried my ball right into the ditch. Rats!

Two weeks later, Marie’s mother sent a proper invitation to my mother, who accepted eagerly. Your father and I are very relieved that you are choosing to spend time with a serious young woman your own age, she wrote. I think a quiet visit to St. Paul after Christmas will be more constructive than the tiresome round of holiday parties at home.

I wrote back: Marie says that St. Paul winters are so bad that the police find two or three frozen corpses on the sidewalk every day! I think a fur hat with a matching muff might be wise. Since the Harts live on Summit Avenue (the Astor Street of St. Paul), I might need a new formal dress as well. As the Boy Scouts say, Semper paratus! You will be glad to know that I am being more conscientious in Latin this year.

2

Bob Party

On New Year’s Day, I boarded a mustard yellow car with CHICAGO, MILWAUKEE & ST. PAUL lettered on its side. As the train pulled

Reviews for Gatsby's Girl

[alphawoman_1 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Ok book. Very frivolous character but good story.

[amandacb_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A fairly well-written novel about the "what-ifs" of our youth, and specifically of "Scott" Fitzgerald's first love. Ginerva is a thoroughly unlikeable character and historical personage, so I do not and still do not understand her pride at being showcased in Fitzgerald's novels (as unlikeable women). However, it was a very entertaining read and one I would probably read again.

[kathywoodall · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ginevra King was a rich young girl from Chicago who stole the heart of F. Scott Fitzgerald. It doesn't take long before she is head over heals in love with another and dumps poor Scott. This is a story basically about Ginevra life after Scott. Very interesting story.