Call Me Zelda (11 page)

I felt a wave of gratitude for Dr. Squires. She could have easily placed the blame on me. It was my interference that had escalated their troubles. I looked at the floor in shame.

“But she knows that I pay the bills,” he said, “so it is my right to use our lives and our stories. She knows that my novel centers
on her breakdown. By writing it she stole the freshness from my work. I don’t know if Scribner’s will even take my novel now.”

“With all due respect to your wife,” said Dr. Meyer, “you are the great novelist. She is just looking for a mode of expression.”

Dr. Squires and I both turned to look at Dr. Meyer. I thought she must be thinking what I was thinking: How dared these two men belittle Zelda’s rather magnificent achievement of creating an entire novel in six weeks by making it sound like a hobby or amusement? Dr. Squires looked at me and widened her eyes, confirming that she and I were of one mind.

Fitzgerald seemed appeased by Meyer’s words, as I was quite sure Meyer intended, and he sat in the chair he’d recently tried to overturn. Two red blotches formed on Dr. Squires’s cheeks. She was quivering, but unable to challenge the men. Her frustration seemed to fuel some sort of courage within me, and a desire to fix what I had broken.

“Might I suggest a collaboration?” I said.

They all turned their eyes toward me. I hesitated a moment, but again found my voice. “Mr. Fitzgerald, why not work with your editor to promote Zelda’s novel?”

“Don’t you understand why I don’t think it should be published?” said Scott.

“I do, but I have a different view,” I said. “It’s possible that readers will want to hear both sides of the story.”

“Nurse Howard,” said Dr. Meyer, “we aren’t here to debate Mrs. Fitzgerald’s literary career, but rather the best treatment for her that will enable her to live in the real world without incident.”

“With all due respect, Dr. Meyer,” I continued, “I feel that recognition of her creative impulses might satisfy a craving that will enable her to function more normally.”

I looked at Scott, and his eyes bored into me with an intensity that made it hard to concentrate. It would have been easier
to speak if he looked indignant instead of gazing at me with what seemed like adoration.

“She might be right,” he said quietly.

Now I really didn’t know what to say. Dr. Squires rescued me from my sudden muteness.

“Yes, I agree with Nurse Howard. Have you ever finished one book on a subject and suddenly longed to read more about it?”

“All the time,” said Mr. Fitzgerald.

“So why not give readers more? Start with Zelda’s novel; then release yours. They will still be very different novels, so even if the subject or themes overlap, you each have a unique way of presenting them.”

He nodded his head in the affirmative.

I looked at Dr. Meyer and saw that he was more stoic than ever and refused to meet my gaze.

“Can I see her?” asked Mr. Fitzgerald.

“I’m afraid that would not be advisable today,” said Dr. Meyer. “If you’ll pardon my interference, you appear somewhat inebriated. I cannot allow you to visit Zelda unless you’re sober.”

Anger flared across Fitzgerald’s face.

“Let’s get this straight, Meyer,” he said. “I’m paying you the king’s share to make my
wife
better. You leave me out of it.”

“And you need to understand that your health—mental and otherwise—is tied to that of your wife. I would suggest that you stop drinking altogether if her recovery is truly what you wish for.”

“A man is entitled to a drink if he chooses. My drinking has nothing to do with her condition.”

“Perhaps it does not,” said Meyer, “but her condition requires stability and peace. In your current state you will not be able to provide that. If you wish to see her, you will not drink before you visit.”

Fitzgerald stood and started out of the room. Before he left, he met my gaze and gave me a slight nod. He passed me like a storm, leaving an alcoholic wind in his wake. I couldn’t imagine that he’d ever see his wife again.

B
efore I left that evening, I went to Zelda’s room to wish her a good night. She sat with the curtains drawn, with the smoke from her cigarette encircling her head. Only the light in her bathroom was on, and it cast an eerie glow in the room.

I did not tell her that Scott had been there earlier that day. I didn’t want to upset her more than his letter had already done. I did feel as if I owed her an apology for assisting in her submission to Scott’s editor without fully thinking through the consequences.

“Zelda, I’m sorry how all of this turned out. If I’d had any idea how he’d react, I would never have allowed it. I hate that I’ve added in any way to your marital discord or stress.”

She gave no indication that she heard, only inhaled and exhaled the smoke from her cigarette.

“Dr. Squires is hopeful that Scott might consider relenting on his opposition to your novel,” I said.

She stubbed out her cigarette in the ashtray on the bedside table. Her hands began to crawl and twist over each other.

“I don’t want to excite you,” I continued, “but you should know that the idea has been introduced that publication of your novel might feed readership of his.”

She turned her attention to the curtained window and then looked from the floor to the dresser and to the bed, as if she’d lost something. She looked terribly confused.

Her vagueness saddened me. It was painful to watch her slide suddenly from coherence to near catatonia. It was like losing an old friend each day and never knowing when she’d return.
I thought of Scott and felt shame for judging him. If I, her nurse, felt this way, how much more painful must it feel to be her husband or her daughter?

“Well, good evening,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

I started to leave when I heard the padding of her feet on the floor. I turned and saw her pull a pile of papers out from under her pillow. She rushed over to me and thrust them into my hands before scurrying to sit on the bed. I looked down and read the title: “Manhattan Baptism.”

My heartbeat quickened.

“I was hoping you’d written more today,” I said. “May I take this home?”

She nodded, allowing her nod to turn into a rocking motion that overtook her body. I looked down at the papers and then back to her as she rocked herself, soothing some old hurt that needed comfort.

A
s much as I longed to read the papers on the bus, Zelda’s confessions deserved my total concentration in the quiet of my apartment. I looked out the window, willing my attention away from the girlish handwriting, and noted with pleasure that the light hung in the evening just a bit longer than usual. Daffodils and hyacinths bloomed in tiny town house gardens, and buds swelled on trees that had looked like mere sticks just yesterday.

There was a new energy on the streets around my building. Art students painted in the park across the way. Musicians played on street corners. Small gangs of children ran along the avenues and alleys wearing unzipped coats. Cars slowed or stopped at corners so friends could wave and punch the bag about nothing at all. The city was reawakening after the long, cold winter.

When I arrived at my building, I hurried up the front steps and ran straight into Sorin, nearly knocking his violin case to
the ground. I was embarrassed at being caught bounding up the stairs like a girl with spring fever, and apologized profusely. He smiled and I noticed how very young he was. He had to be at least ten years my junior. I must have been so shaken the night of the attack that I hadn’t realized.

“It is all right,” he said. “I am glad to see you are feeling much better.”

“I am, thank you.”

“And thank you for the bread and everything,” he said. “I am sorry I did not answer the door when you knocked. I was midcomposition and I was afraid to stop and interrupt the flow, you understand?”

“I understand,” I said.

“Maybe I could play it for you sometime.”

“Yes, that would be nice.”

He nodded and continued around me. I watched him walk down the street. As he turned the corner, he looked back and grinned. I smiled in return and walked into the building feeling light and pleased.

MANHATTAN BAPTISM

The nuptials were an early blur of sweet sunlight, midnight blue suits, and Easter lilies we left in a pot, wilted, while we ordered spinach-and-tomato sandwiches the hour before midnight before our revolving-door, taxi-riding, jazz-club revelries began.

He’d taken my diaries by then, so I couldn’t record it all, though I wish I had.

I would have told of how they all desired me. You should have seen me walk across a lobby. I’d see women grabbing the faces of their men, turning them away from me, and I’d laugh to myself, with good reason, enjoying the halo of the cigarette smoke about my finger curls, my painted lips, the stockings with the line from heel to thigh, my squirrel coat—my God, that coat.

Scott watched me always.

He’d watch me while I bathed, asking me questions through the steam about the boys I’d kissed, my favorite boys, whether I plotted to make them love me or if they all just loved me. He’d watch me in the mirror while I fastened my garters and brushed my hair and picked through the piles of clothes on the floor for a clean slip, asking me why I didn’t keep up with the laundry, why I didn’t pick up the clothes, whether I ever intended to keep the rooms. His breath would be on my neck—a foul, alcoholic mist that encircled us both—while he’d beg me to behave, to make love only to him, to stay away from theater critics and lawyers and former college mates. We’d slide into the cab and he’d ask me what I thought of the night, and the driver, and the popular songs, and the Biltmore. He’d bring my drinks—one after another—and then scribble on slips of napkins while I hopped on tables, and danced with men, and smoked and smoked.

And when I’d drag him home to wring him out, he’d beg me to tell him that he satisfied me above all men, only I wouldn’t. I was vague in my cruelty: “Yes, yes, Goofo, you’re fine, just come up a little short,” I’d say. Then he’d cry and I’d say, “No, you misunderstand; you are my incomparable love,” and he’d kiss me feverishly, wishing to prove to me that he was the best man, but the knocking would begin, and a pile of men would be at the door with booze and noise.

He would sulk, but the lure of the drinks was too strong for him to ignore, so he’d have just one more until he couldn’t speak and I got so fed up with it all and frantic from the energy bouncing from the men into me that I’d have to leave. They’d follow me in confusion, misunderstanding me. I wished to flee, but they thought I wished them to follow and to watch.

And with their eyes watching me I charged into the fountain in my white clothes, looking for a baptism in the penny-stained water, opening my hands to God for release and to the water for purity, when the only thing that answered me was the siren on Fifth Avenue stealing the holy order of it all.

NINE