Call Me Zelda (9 page)

The next day, Zelda pressed papers into my hands and told me I was not to share her remembrances with anyone.

“Not even Dr. Squires?”

“Not even Dr. Squires.”

It pleased me to be in her confidence. I realized this was not healthy, but I had no way to stop my feelings. I wished I could write to Peter that I was someone’s confessor. Perhaps we could discuss it when he came home. I was sure he would have much insight for me.

I waited for the bus outside the hospital. Since my attack I’d been unable to walk home alone. Even though the dark of winter was crowded out a bit each day by the impending equinox, and in spite of my knowledge that my attacker was in jail, I still couldn’t enjoy my city walks—not yet. After the war I didn’t think I could ever be frightened of anything again.

I was wrong.

The bus dropped me very near my apartment, and I walked briskly through the fading light to my building, pausing just a moment to glance at Sorin’s window and see whether he was there.
He was and nodded at me. I waved and hurried in the door to show him how responsible I was. No more nighttime walks for me.

I heard the faraway pounding of the ballerinas on the third floor to a brisk mazurka. I loved how it competed with Sorin’s violin, and privately imagined my piano nudging into the atmospheric score. This thought made me smile. In fact, after I opened the door and locked it behind me, I walked over to the piano and played a quick scale. I could swear that all musical life outside my apartment stopped with my playing, but it soon resumed, making me wonder whether my imagination was running away with me.

Anxious to get to Zelda’s papers but wishing to savor them without distraction, I hurried through a scrambled egg, a slice of toast, and a small can of peaches. I washed my face, brushed my teeth, and slipped into my flannel nightgown. I tucked myself into bed and started reading.

Dear Anna, I’m writing my confessions for you alone. I am no victim. I am no saint. Yet he has paid me back more than he owed and does not know how to stop.

Montgomery, Alabama, 1918

Can you hear the faraway music coming from the faded country club? It is old and the daylight isn’t kind, but the night and the lights along the lip of the roof and the winks of the fireflies and the delicious pines framing it give it an air of romance and mystery. The scent of honeysuckle hangs in the darkness like the thick glop of sugar at the bottom of a glass of lemonade.

Do you see her as she dances the “Dance of the Hours” for the admiring soldiers and the scowling, envious women? She moves with grace and suppleness, and she should have stayed with the dance, but that’s for later.

There was one soldier who looked out of place. It was his large, sad eyes she noticed first, the heavy fringe of lashes. He was pretty enough to be a woman. She could see that she had him already, which was a shame, because she did like a challenge, but he’d do. At the time he was just another stub in her scrapbook, a pressed flower, a name on a dance card: “Scott Fitzgerald.”

“And how do you do, Mr. Fitzgerald?” she asked. “Have you ever seen so fine and beautiful a dancer?”

He was taken aback but pleased. A slow smile spread across his face. Ooh, she could love that face.

“I don’t think I ever want to see someone dance again after such a swell performance,” he said. “Do you think she’d dance with me if I asked her?”

Do you hear how he played with me? I always loved when people played with me.

“I don’t know,” I said. “She is awfully fast. You’d best stay away from her.”

And I pirouetted away, counting in my head to see how long it would take for him to follow.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

“Excuse me,” he said, touching my arm with his slender fingers like a sweet little breeze. “Tell her I’m not afraid, would you? And tell her I can keep up.”

And then he walked away and I was shocked. How dared he walk away? I certainly couldn’t go after him, but the challenge was placed. I was on unsure footing and it excited me. I did not want to lose the advantage, however, so I quickly made eyes at the nearest male and had a partner in no time at all.

One. Two. Three. Four. Five.

Scott interrupted the dance, much to the dismay of the soldier.

“May I?”

“You most certainly may not,” said the soldier.

I turned and took Scott Fitzgerald without hesitation, leaving the soldier sad and wounded on the dance floor. I imagined him a seared pile of ash behind me, and it dawned on me that my imaginings were in poor taste, since he was soon shipping out to become a pile of ash. But that was no matter. I was the salamander.

“What is your name?” said Scott.

“Formally, Miss Sayre, but you may call me Zelda.”

“Zelda,” he whispered.

“You’re a fiver,” I said, slipping comfortably into the cradle of his arms.

“Pardon me?” said Scott.

“A fiver. One, two, three, four, five. That’s how long you took to come after me.”

“How does that compare to your sad beau you left over there?” He nodded in the direction of the sulking soldier. I smiled my sweetest sugar-baby smile and waved, enjoying the cruelty of the gesture.

“He’s a two-er, so you don’t have to worry a bit,” I said.

I enjoyed the vibration of his laugh through my body, though it made me clench my teeth. My, how I felt him as if he and I were the same being. That scared me, because sometimes I could barely keep up with myself. My breath caught as he stroked my neck under my hair. He started singing along with the music in my ear as he led me all around the dance floor. I let him, intoxicated, vaguely aware of the stir we created. Sulking men, green women. His voice in my ear.

“They’re all looking at us,” he said. “That’s good.”

Good, good,
I thought.

They kept looking at us.

I placed the pages on my lap, imagining the humid Southern night, the beautiful young woman and man. The foreshadowing of trouble. The onlookers. I wished she’d written more.

When I read back over the material I was struck by her change of tense from
her
to
I
, as if she’d become more fully herself once he arrived. But that didn’t make sense, given that she now needed to be away from him to calm herself. I needed to ask Zelda about this.

Patience
, I reminded myself. This was just the beginning of the story. I reread the anecdote, placed the papers on my bedside table, and turned out the light.

Patience.

“P
atients!”

I was confused. Where was that voice coming from?

“Nurse Howard! Patients!”

The doors of the hospital train scraped open and we were suddenly engulfed in a wave of bleeding, crying, screaming men. Nurses rushed about clearing areas, making space where the
sterile white would soon be red and brown and all shades of pain and suffering. I quickly snapped out of my daydreams and started on triage as voices rose and fell all around me.

“Name?” I asked the medic.

“Unknown.”

“Injury?”

“Skull.”

I paused and looked at the patient. His lower mandible was gone and his eyes were wide. He’d die before the hour was up. His eyes were blue. It wasn’t Ben.

I’m ashamed to admit that was what I always checked first. We all did, though none of us would have admitted it out loud. It was clear by the gasps when names matched or hair color worried us, or something in the look of the eyes reminded us of our men. How badly we all wanted them to show up in the base hospital with a survivable sprinkling of bullets across the surface. Pin on a medal. Send him home. God, how we wanted that, but it was not to be.

Ben hadn’t written to me in over three weeks. He’d never gone this long without some kind of contact. I knew he was in a terrible area, and I heard from medics and wounded soldiers that it was hell. I was somewhat reassured by the fact that none of the other girls with men in Ben’s unit heard anything. They couldn’t all be dead, was what we told ourselves. Also, I had peace because I knew that if Ben had died I’d feel some kind of wrenching in my gut, and that wrenching hadn’t yet occurred.

My patient gave a gurgling, guttural cry, and I sent him to surgery with a look of reassurance I did not feel and a prayer, and wondered whether prayers were triaged.

Ridiculous
, Peter would have said.
God has no limits.

Then where the hell was—

“Next!”

The medics brought in what could only have been a boy,
underage but in uniform, and in possession of tremendous dignity in spite of his years, with the lower half of his legs missing. He did not cry but he was a ghastly shade of green.

“Name,” I said.

The patient answered for the medic. “Private John Bates Junior, ma’am.”

“Injury.”

“Loss of limbs,” said the medic. Private Bates’s face contorted into a sob. I felt my heart ache for him. He should have been home at some northeastern college, talking sports and wooing pretty debutantes. I reached out, squeezed his hand, and ran my fingers over his strong shoulder.

“We will heal you, Private John Bates Junior,” I said. “Surgery.”

I nodded at the nurses and they wheeled him away. I turned my attention to the door. The next soldier came through.

“DOA,” I said. The medics seemed surprised as they looked down at their patient, blue as an icicle and already showing signs of rigor mortis. They wordlessly carried his stretcher to the morgue.

“Next. Name?”

“Gavin Murray.”

I looked at him and saw his face hanging open like a flap where metal had slashed through it. He, too, was just a boy.

“Injury.”

“Is my buddy okay?” he asked. “Is John gonna be okay?”

I thought of the boy who’d just come in with missing limbs and the massive quantities of blood staining his sheet.

“We’ll do our best,” I said. “He looks like a fighter.”

“He is,” said Gavin. “We both are.”

“You just worry about yourself and we’ll take care of your friend,” I said, squeezing his hand for reassurance, before he was wheeled away to be cleaned and stitched.

“Next. Name?”

“All we got was Ben.”

I felt my head go dizzy and slowly turned to look at the patient. Red hair, green eyes. Not my Ben. I had never felt so disheartened and relieved at once.

“In…injury?”

“Shrapnel.”

I gestured over to the bed nearest the door for surgery, where a nurse would be able to handle the picking and cleaning. I suddenly saw stars in the corners of my field of vision and thought I’d faint. I grabbed the stretcher and squeezed my eyes shut.

“Nurse, are you okay?” I felt a hand on my arm. I breathed in and out, and opened my eyes when the world steadied. I nodded and released the stretcher.

After the last of the men was admitted, I walked out into the cold, away from the base hospital, crunching over the frozen grass with my arms wrapped around myself. I ended up at the edge of the forest, bare of leaves, vacant of animals, and held up by sopping cold earth. I searched the growth with my eyes, yearning for a small sign of life, something that belonged in a forest and remained untouched by war, something to buoy me up in this barren wasteland. But there was nothing.

SEVEN