The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald by David Handler

and family heirlooms in every room. Like growing up in a museum, really. … Mother was a beautiful woman.
    Hoag: She’s dead?
    Noyes: They’re both dead. My parents died within a week of each other when I was fourteen. … She was a tall, fine-boned blonde. An only child. Jane Abbott. Knott was her maiden name. She studied at Miss Porter’s School, of course, being that it was right around the corner. And a family tradition.
    Hoag: So did Merilee.
    Noyes: Did she? Mother could have become an actress herself. She was that beautiful. But she was much too devoted to her own special brand of pretense. The Mayflower Society. The Daughters of the American Revolution. The local historical society. Horse and flower shows. She lived in a permanent state of artificial grace. She insisted upon proper speech and dress. Proper manners at the dinner table at all times. If I pushed my food too close to the edge of my plate, she’d sweetly say, “Danger zone, Cammy. Danger zone.” I never saw mother perspire. And I never could imagine her taking a shit. Still, I shouldn’t be unkind. Mother believed in me. Loved me. Father never did. He always treated me like a stray someone had brought into the house. I often did outrageous things just to get his attention. I remember once, when I was perhaps five, he promised to buy me a penknife. I’ve always been fond of knives. He forgot. So to remind him I got a nail and ran it over the length of his Mercedes. He had to repaint the entire car.
    Hoag: Did you get the penknife?
    Noyes: No, but I got his attention. (laughs) He was of beef-baron stock. His great-great-grandfather built one of the big Chicago slaughterhouses in the mid-1800s. A multimillionaire who used to go on those expeditions out onto the plains to hunt buffalo. That bowie knife I have on my writing table belonged to him. Father’s grandfather married into the Main Line and settled in Philadelphia. Father was named for him — Sawyer Noyes. He and mother met when she was at Wellesley and he at Yale. He was quarterback of the football team, a handsome, fearless campus hero. Father was the sort of man for whom college was the pinnacle of his life. Everything afterward was a gradual process of slipping away into ordinariness and disappointment. Once in a great while he and I would toss a football around in the yard. One time he caught the ball and stared at it, and continued to stare at it, and then he just laid it down softly on the grass and walked inside. He was an unhappy man. Had some family money left in a trust, but not much. He used his looks and mother’s connections to sell real estate. Played a lot of golf at the country club. Drank, of course. So did his older brother, Jack … Smilin’ Jack Noyes was father’s idol. Had been a race car driver and flyer in his youth. By the time I came along he was little more than a sot and a bore — twice divorced and without a proper job. Hung out a lot at the Essex Yacht Club. Uncle Jack always had yachts of one kind or another. But he was nice to me, since he had no children of his own. Once, when the two of us were out on the Sound, he told me that it was vital for a man to have a place of his own — a hideaway where he could think and be himself and that when he died he intended to leave me his. It was a tiny fishing shack on Crescent Moon Pond in Old Lyme. Very remote. Had to row across the pond to reach it. He said no one else in the family knew of it, and that I wasn’t to tell father, that it was our secret. (pause) I still have the damned place. It’s little more than a tree house, really, and falling down at that. Town won’t let me rebuild, because it’s on state forest land. But I’ve kept it. And like Uncle Jack, I’ve told hardly anyone about it.
    Hoag: So he’s dead, too?
    Noyes: Yes. (pause) Yes, he’s dead, too.
    Hoag: Something?
    Noyes: (long silence) No, nothing.
    Hoag: What sort of boy were you?
    Noyes: Restless. Dissatisfied. I was a head-banger.