Call Me Zelda (10 page)

I knocked before I had time to lose my nerve.

Thin, pale, their hair plaited and limbs entwined, the dancers answered the door together and looked at each other in surprise to see me there.

“Pardon me for coming so early, but I heard you were awake,” I said.

I blushed as I realized it must sound like I was spying on them.

“It’s okay,” said the taller of the two. “May we help you?”

“I have a question about a dance.”

They smiled. A pair of Cheshire cats.

“Come in.”

Their rooms had the ethereal quality of a dream. The scents of talc, sweat, and camphor hung in the pale pink mesh curtains that adorned the windows and doorways. Dried flowers rested in glasses and old cans covered in fabric, the relics of gifts from past performances. The gramophone sat near a wall, at rest, out of the faint morning sunlight that nudged its way into the cool room.

“I’m Anna,” I said as I settled on the sofa where they’d directed me—springs poking my back through the floral covering.

“Julia.”

“Rose.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I began. “I have a…friend who recently wrote to me. She told me she danced the ‘Dance of the Hours’ for someone, and I couldn’t imagine the scene, though it was one I wished heartily to imagine.” My voice trailed off. It seemed silly asking them instead of Zelda, but I wanted to ask Zelda only questions of deep importance so she did not get sidetracked. In case this was an incidental detail, I wanted to know before I saw her.

The smaller of the two, Julia, stood and walked to the large box next to the gramophone.

“Ponchielli,
La Gioconda
,” called Rose from across the room.

Julia leveled a gaze at Rose as if to say,
I know
. She fingered through the records until she found what she was looking for. Her eyes lit and she pulled the object of her search. She slid the record from its worn paper covering and set it upon the machine. She wound the crank, released the break with her ballet-slippered foot, and placed the needle about a third of the way onto the record. The scratch of the needle preceded a loud, vigorous chorus and she lifted it. She moved it slightly closer to the center and placed it down again. A chorus faded, there was a moment of silence, and then a gentle, lilting, almost playful melody began.

Julia did some halfhearted steps along with it, as if she were posing for stills, but when the music became swinging and somber she began to dance more seriously. Rose joined her and they danced with all of the poise of an onstage performance. The harp and violins quieted the mood for a few minutes, but the finish was sweeping and dramatic—almost frenzied. Then came the sound of a bell.

“A funeral bell,” said Rose. “Signifying the pretend death of a woman administered a sedative to take her away from her terrible husband to her lover.”

“Assisted by a woman who also loved the lover but whose purity and goodness longed more for his happiness than her own.”

“A beautiful tragedy,” finished Rose.

I was touched by the music and the story. The progression from light to somber to frantic seemed to carry some greater connection to the Fitzgeralds’ life that had been almost prophetic. What if they’d listened to the message of the song that first night at the country club? Would their story end well or with the frenzied dawn and the tolling of the bell?

Suddenly overcome by emotion and realizing I would be late, I excused myself to the confused and troubled faces of the ballerinas and hurried to catch the bus to the hospital.

Z
elda sat with her back to me as I entered the room.

“Anna,” she said.

“How did you know it was me?” I asked.

“Because you make almost no noise at all when you walk, and yet I could feel someone enter.”

“My mother used to reprimand me for that,” I said. “Said I used to scare her to death.”

“You couldn’t scare a mouse,” she said. “Sometimes I pretend I made you up. My imaginary friend. A ghost.”

I didn’t know how that was supposed to make me feel. She said it kindly, but it was strange to be told I was a quiet enough personality to almost not exist. I wanted to defend myself.

“I took up more space before the war,” I said.

She turned and faced me and patted the bed as an invitation to sit down.

My psychiatric nurses’ training came back to me, cautioning me to keep boundaries with my patient, but it felt so good to talk to her. As so-called mental nurses, we were encouraged to share a little of ourselves to inspire trust, but not to ever give our problems to our patients. I was sure I wouldn’t give her my past pain, since I couldn’t even face it directly myself. I would just tell her the good parts that wanted remembering.

“Who was Anna before the war?” she asked.

“I was musical, adventurous, passionate.” I leaned into her and widened my eyes. She whistled long and low.

“Tell me about your boys,” she said. “Did you have dozens of suitors or one smooth, handsome man who stole all of your interests?”

“One dark, handsome soldier. He had very expressive brown eyes and a full mouth. He was tall.”

“Is that how he kept your interest? Those eyes? That mouth?”

“Those hands, that kiss,” I said.

She “oohed” and leaned back with a deep, throaty laugh.

“My God, I wish he’d come to Montgomery,” she said. “The officers there were a dime a dozen. They stood in a neat line waiting for my attention. I kissed them all, and right in front of the others.”

“Until that one,” I said.

The smile left her face, and I regretted the reference to Scott. She became unreadable, but her eyes and mouth began working in response to a memory, an emotion she could not pin down. I saw a flash of anger, a softening, then exhaustion that made her eyes heavy and moist.

Since there was no going back, I pressed on. “I read your paper.” I held it out to her and she snatched it away, reading over it as if she’d never seen it before. Her features softened again and she pressed it to her chest when she finished.

“If I could just put that night and a couple others on a record
and play them over and over again,” she said, “everything would be okay.”

“You started well,” I said. “The beautiful young debutante. The handsome soldier. You understood each other immediately.”

“Immediately,” she echoed. “It’s almost as if we share a mind or a soul, except there’s not room for both of us. We’re forever nudging each other out of the space allotted to us and it wears us out.”

“And when did you show him your diaries?”

“He saw them early on, I think,” she said. “Listen, I was a narcissistic girl. If he wanted to read my diary it was fine, because it was about me. And he seemed enthralled by my words. Imagine, a writer being enthralled with the words in my diaries.”

“Did you give them to him?”

“Yes, no, I don’t know.” She was quiet for a moment. “I think I first showed him the diaries to make him jealous. If he saw all the dance cards and soldiers’ photos, letters, and mementos, he’d see how desired I was, and it would make him want me more.”

“Did you quarrel often?”

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Big, messy, bawling quarrels in the parlor, with my father asking him to leave and my mother sighing on the stairs. We were always making a scene. Still are, I guess.”

“Were there ever quiet moments?” I asked. “Sipping lemonade on a porch, taking a walk on a lane, sitting together in silence?”

“Yes,” she said. “The night was a great friend of ours. In bed. Not in the way you think, but in the quiet dark where we could curl around each other in a drowsy embrace and let our words and thoughts and breath mingle. I’d put the night on that repeating record of mine.”

She laid the papers in her lap for a moment as we allowed her
words to sit in our thoughts. I wanted Scott to hear her say this. These were words that could restore a marriage: sweet balm and remembrance to help them reclaim what they had lost. I thought that he should come to Baltimore.

That is, until Dr. Squires showed me the letter he had sent to her.

EIGHT

March 1932

Mr. Fitzgerald had a tantrum that started in Alabama on paper, continued as he crashed through the doors of the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic, and exploded as he thundered, gin-soaked, into Dr. Meyer’s office.

“This is my material,
my material
,” he insisted, as he smoked and paced around the office. “How could she go behind my back with
your
doctor and submit to
my
editor before I had a chance to read it? I’ve been working on my novel for years, stopping over and over to shit out these short stories to pay the bills and keep her in comfort, and not only does she steal my material, but you help her to do it!”

He shoved a chair, rocking it dangerously until it settled back on its four legs.

“Mr. Fitzgerald,” said Dr. Meyer, “I would be glad to have a discourse with you on the subject, but if you continue to act out in a violent manner, I will have you escorted from my hospital.”

Fitzgerald’s breathing began to slow. His gaze shifted from the chair to me and then to Dr. Squires at the door. I could barely
make eye contact with him, because I was afraid I’d betray my loathing of him at that moment.

And my guilt.

Zelda and I had talked long past my shift one night. She told me that Scott wouldn’t approve of her novel, but that she was desperate to send her voice into the world. She told me that she wanted Scott’s editor, Max Perkins, to see it without Scott’s edits, to tell her what he thought. I knew that Dr. Squires said
Save Me the Waltz
needed editing, but the meat of the story and Zelda’s knack for sensory detail and figurative language were unlike anything she’d seen.

I had encouraged Zelda to go through Scott first, but she insisted that I send it directly to the editor. She said if Scott touched it, it would be stained, and she would never know whether her writing was worthwhile on its own. She told me that Perkins wouldn’t mind, and if Scott found out he would be only a little mad. I caved in to her pleadings, which was a horrible mistake. I should have anticipated Scott’s response, but I didn’t know him well then, and thought it would be a harmless way to gain Zelda some validation outside of her husband.

I had helped Zelda package the novel with a short note to the editor and told Dr. Squires I’d post it for Zelda. I did not mention that I was sending it to Perkins and not Scott, but Dr. Squires did not ask, so I told myself it would be all right.

But it wasn’t.

To think of the terrible things Scott wrote to Dr. Squires and to Zelda about his outrage at them for not sending him Zelda’s novel first. To think that he demanded his wife ask permission from him before submitting her work to the editor.

I stood in the doorway of Meyer’s office, feeling layers of unsettling emotions and shaking in my white shoes, wishing I could sneak away, but fascinated to watch Mr. Fitzgerald in
enough of a state of disarray to qualify him for admittance to the clinic.

“Look,” Scott said, turning back to Dr. Meyer, “I am not an unreasonable man. You know how devoted I am to her—you
know
it. You have to understand the betrayal I feel. To have my greatest novel yet begging for my attention while I’m forced to slave over these little vignettes for the
Post
or
Collier’s
or whoever will take the goddamned things for Zelda’s care. To try to keep my daughter three states away in some sort of stable environment while her mother is here sinking deeper and deeper into madness. Then to have Zelda take my novel and turn it into hers. Can’t you understand why I’m frantic? Am I so unreasonable?”

His eyes darted from Dr. Meyer to Dr. Squires and then to me. When he met my gaze, I recognized his anguish. The stress he was under was enormous, and he did an enviable job of keeping his wife in comfort. Yet he referred to the events that inspired her novel as
his
material. It was her life—her story. The material he thought he owned was Zelda’s life. But perhaps I’d made a mistake in interfering.

Dr. Squires spoke. “Mr. Fitzgerald, I must apologize for angering you so. I do understand your frustration, and I regret that we didn’t speak about this before the manuscript was sent to her editor. I had assumed the manuscript was being sent to you. But even if I had known its true destination I can’t help but think I would have argued on Zelda’s behalf. She’s worked on her novel tirelessly for the past month and a half, and it is her life story. Surely she has the right to tell her own story.”