Call Me Zelda (33 page)

May 1934

I waited anxiously in front of our building for Will’s arrival. I’d worked out Zelda’s travel arrangements with Scott’s secretary, Isabel. Zelda would return to Baltimore, but this time to the Sheppard and Enoch Pratt Hospital, a step down from Phipps, but not as bad as some other places. My stomach had been roiling about it, and I worried for Zelda. I prayed she’d thrive so she could eventually leave, but I tried not to set my hopes too high.

I spent the rest of the day painting the trim on the hall moldings. Now I stood pacing on the newly bricked front stoop that Will had repaired just last week. Will was handy and had worked out a deal with our landlord for a break on the rent in exchange for his services around the house, the way I had with cleaning. I found myself enjoying the time we spent together fixing up the building. With just the two of us living there, Will could leave open his door and blast his music into the stairwell while we worked.

We now had fresh paint in our rooms, in the hallways, and on the wrought-iron railings down the stairs; newly polished floors, reliable heaters, and electric lighting that didn’t flicker. I’d
replaced the light fixtures and switch plates with more modern coverings, and found some inexpensive prints that reminded me of Zelda’s or O’Keeffe’s flowers for the walls around the entrance.

I went back inside for a moment, grabbed a watering can, and took it outside to soak the phlox and irises blooming in the front flower boxes and beds. The evening sun warmed my back, and the laughter of children at the newly erected playground across the way eased my anxious anticipation.

It wasn’t long before I heard Will’s truck. He screeched to a halt in front of our building and was nearly out the door before the vehicle stopped. I turned in time for him to pick me up and swing me around in a circle.

“You got the job,” I said.

“I got the job!”

He swung me again, and kissed me. I could feel his heart pounding.

“I’m so proud of you,” I said.

He kissed me again, and then set me on the stoop. He suddenly looked very serious.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I just want to freeze this part, you know. This good feeling, here, with you. I haven’t had this in so long. I need to savor it.”

I knew what he meant, the dreadful shadow behind the good days we’d had. The threat of the passage of time. I shook my head. “No, this is our reality now. Don’t worry about a thing. Just enjoy this moment and be thankful for it.”

He nodded, but the sadness remained in his eyes, and I could see him thinking.

“What is it?” I asked.

He shook his head and smiled. “Nothing. This. I’m going to enjoy today.”

“Good,” I said. “Me, too.”

I put down the watering can and we sat on the front step, resting against each other, watching the children climb and swing. The playground seemed to have bloomed almost overnight, and now it was often filled with laughter and happy shrieking. I loved its beautiful music.

A little girl walked on the balance beam near the edge of the playground. I saw her there often, with her older brother and her young, worn mother. When the girl looked up at me, I waved to her and she waved back. She reminded me of Scottie.

“Tomorrow’s the day I’ll have to go to New York,” I said, “to help transfer Zelda to Sheppard Pratt.”

“I bet you’ll be relieved to have her so near to you again.”

I didn’t know how to respond. In some ways, yes, I felt connected to Zelda and wished to have her near me, but on the other hand, I worried that I would again allow myself to become consumed. I knew it was unlikely, since I did not work at the hospital and she wouldn’t speak to me, but I also knew that when it came to Zelda, I seemed to lose all reason.

“We’ll see,” I said. “I don’t know if this is the best move for her, but I think it’s the best he can do right now.”

“And how about you?” Will said. “Are you ready for your debut at the cathedral?”

“I think so,” I said. “I’m just playing traditional hymns this weekend. We’ll try to shake them up some other time. But enough about all this. Tell me about your interview.”

I let Will’s voice fill my head, with the chorus of children behind it, and pressed into him and listened to him talk about his new boss, and the paper, and his first assignment, while the sun set over the city.

I
was up and on the train headed north, with Scott, before the sun rose the next morning. I sipped coffee and tried to read the paper while we traveled, but I found it impossible to concentrate
on the words. I eventually gave up and watched the cities slip by while my sense of unrest grew.

Scott was a mess. He’d warned me about Zelda’s recent erratic and unusual communications. I steeled myself for a vacant, agitated, and possibly excitable woman, and tried not to think of Zelda, my friend, whom I desperately missed. I missed her unique views, her gorgeous poetic narratives, the way she made a sensory experience of every description, the way she spoke of art and dance as naturally as the weather. I missed her large gray eyes, her moments of clarity that outshone the rest of us, her grace.

And as I knew and had prepared myself, my Zelda was not there.

It was a blank woman whom we moved down the East Coast that day. I got nothing from her, not even a moment of time to spend with my friend. And yet her blankness, her nothingness seemed a construct, a dramatic stage of denial, a bizarre form of self-preservation. It was as if a barren tundra existed between us. I felt deeply that this woman gave us no access to her so that she had nothing to mourn at our parting.

Scott twitched with nervous energy, but to his credit he remained sober, and did not disturb her. He and I escorted her into the sterile ward that would become her home. There was no charm to the building, no kindness in its nurses, and no color anywhere. It was all I could do not to weep.

Scott took well the instructions that he was not to visit her for at least two weeks while Zelda acclimated, but by the time we’d kissed her stony face and walked out of the gray doors, we were both in tears. Once the doors shut, we cried in each other’s arms under a willow tree.

I
didn’t get home until seven o’clock that night, and when I opened the door to the building, sad opera music filled the
foyer. For a moment I felt confused and then chilled at the thought of the ghosts of my ballerinas whispering and practicing upstairs, but the warm spill of light from Will’s room where his door was opened to me reminded me of my new building mate. As I shut the front door, he walked out of his rooms and opened his arms to me.

I gave up any thought of trying not to cry and let him hold me while I wet his shirt with my tears. Once I pulled myself together, I looked up at him and apologized. He wiped my face and led me into his apartment, where a plate of cheese, bread, and fruit and a glass of red wine waited for me at the place where I liked to sit at his table.

“What do you have to be sorry about?” he said.

“I didn’t want to be a mess when you saw me.”

“It would be strange if you weren’t a mess,” he said. “She’s your friend.”

I nodded and wiped my eyes, suddenly aware of how very hungry and tired I was. He saw me eyeing the plate and smiled. “I know it’s not much, but I wasn’t sure what time you’d be home, and I didn’t want to make anything that would spoil. Oh, and also, I can’t cook for shit.”

I laughed for the first time that day, and sat at the table.

While I began to eat I noticed that Will didn’t sit down. He darted around the apartment making meaningless adjustments to the couch, straightening his writing papers, hustling empty cups to the kitchen, washing dishes. I couldn’t catch his eyes, though he attempted small talk about the train ride, the weather, baseball, the price of milk.

I felt a coldness begin in the pit of my stomach.

Something was wrong.

I took a healthy sip of wine and dabbed my lips while he straightened a picture on the wall and arranged a stack of magazines on his bookshelf.

“Will.”

He stopped, but still wouldn’t look at me. It took every ounce of courage I could summon to manage two words to which I couldn’t imagine the answer.

“What’s wrong?”

He turned slowly toward me, his face a mask of pain. I stood, crossed the room, and grabbed his arms. “What is it?”

He moved away from me toward his writing desk, where a single envelope rested on the windowsill. I could see it had my name on it and it was not opened.

“That came in the mail for you today,” he said. His voice was very quiet.

I walked over to the window to see why he was so shaken, and knew once I saw the sender.

United States Department of Defense, Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Office.

It suddenly seemed as if all sound was silenced and I could hear only my pulse in my ears. The coldness in my belly had spread to my fingertips. I had an urge to take the letter and run up to my apartment, where I could be alone with it, but no part of my body would do what I wished of it, so I just stood there, focusing on controlling my breath.

After a moment, I became aware of my surroundings again: the melancholy song on the gramophone, the shush of tires on the road outside the house, Will standing just inches away from me. I also became aware of how quickly the cold in my body turned hot and rose up through me. I could feel the color hit my face as if I were a thermometer, and my hands began to shake.

“Anna,” he said. “Would you like me to open it?”

I knew he wanted to be there for me. I could feel his desire reaching out to me from the atmosphere between us, but I had to be alone.

“No,” I said, quickly grabbing the letter while my senses were in obedience of my mind. “No. I have to go.”

I turned toward the door and tried to leave, but he grabbed me by the arms and started to hug me.

“Anna, you shouldn’t be alone.”

I pulled myself from his grasp and continued to the door. He moved in front of me to block my path. I looked him in the eye and saw that there were tears.
No, not his grief again
—I couldn’t take the weight of his grief. Suddenly I felt as if we were back at my parents’ home all those years ago while he sobbed over Ben. I couldn’t console him again. I just needed to be alone with my own pain.

I knew my feelings were cold and savage, but I was in the midst of such a tumult of emotions that I couldn’t separate the anger—no, the rage—I felt at the Defense Department, Scott, Zelda, and Ben himself for shattering this thin, fragile happiness that I’d been trying to create. And then it dawned on me that I was most angry at myself for allowing myself to think that things could ever be okay, that just yesterday I could counsel Will into believing that everything would be all right when it never, ever would. The past would haunt when the present let up, and always, always the future would loom with its certainty of tragedy and pain.

But none of these thoughts made any sense, and I knew Will was hurt because he must have felt like a target of my anger. Maybe he was, because I resented him.

“Don’t tell me that I shouldn’t be alone,” I said. “I was doing just fine alone before all of this painting and hammering and organ playing and busyness tried to trick me into thinking
together
was better than alone.”

He turned bright red, and I knew I had hurt him, but I persisted in my mania and tore the letter open.

“Okay, Will, here I go. We both know what it says, but I’ll read it with you so I don’t have to be
alone
.”

“Stop,” he said.

“No, according to you, this is what I need. I need to not be alone when I read this,” I said. “‘Dear Mrs. Howard—’ Ha! Mrs.! See, I am still married.”

“Knock it off, Anna. You’re making it worse.”

“No, you should hear this. God knows I’ll burn it when I finish reading it, so now’s your chance to hear it. ‘We regret to inform you that on April the second day of 1934, French nationals fishing on the banks of the Meuse/Argonne River found a single set of human remains.’”

“Damn it! Stop,” said Will as he stormed to the kitchen and stood at the sink with his back to me, clutching the counter.