Call Me Zelda (2 page)

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Second Act

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Acknowledgments

Bibliography

Readers Guide

Excerpt from FALLEN BEAUTY

“Ah! How rapidly descending,
Falls the avalanche of fate!”

—Tobia Gorrio,
La Gioconda

ONE

February 1932, Phipps Psychiatric Clinic

Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland

The ward was never the same after that February afternoon when Zelda Fitzgerald stumbled into the psychiatric clinic with a stack of papers clutched to her chest, eyes darting this way and that, at once pushing from and pulling toward her husband like a spinning magnet.

I opened my arms to her. She would not look at me, her nurse, or allow me to touch her, but walked next to me down the hallway to her room. We left Mr. Fitzgerald at the desk preparing to meet with the resident in charge of his wife’s case, when Mrs. Fitzgerald suddenly stopped and ran back to him, nearly knocking him over with her force. Her husband wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair with an intensity that filled me with longing and squeezed my heart. They both began to cry like two lost, scared children. They were not what I expected in any way.

As quickly as she’d run to him, she pulled herself out of his arms and came back to me. It was then that I met his gaze—ice-green eyes underlined by dark circles, his hair and clothing a
rumpled mess. I was overtaken by a sense of pity for the two of them and thought that he too might benefit from a stay with us.

“On my left, my left,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Pardon me?” I asked her.

“You must walk on my left. I can’t see out of the right eye.”

I knew the doctor’s notes said she claimed to have blindness in her right eye, so I obeyed her wishes as we walked down the hall. I noticed a red rash creeping up her neck that she scratched with her jagged nails. By the time we reached the room, she’d succeeded in making her neck bleed.

As soon as we arrived, she collapsed onto the bed, still clutching her papers as if they were a precious infant. She cried in a low moan. An orderly carried in her bags and placed them on the shiny floor next to the door.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald, I’ll need to look you over for admission,” I said. “Is it okay with you if I take your blood pressure and listen to your heart?”

“My heart,” she whispered. “My poor broken heart.”

I walked to her and gently pulled her to a sitting position.

“May I place your papers on the bedside table?” I asked.

She looked at me with fear in her eyes, and then out the door.

“Don’t show him. He can’t see it,” she said.

I wondered who she was afraid would see the papers. Was she referring to her husband? If so, why was she simultaneously distressed at being separated from him, but emphatic that he not see what she clutched in her hands?

“If you’d like to keep the papers with you,” I said, “I can work around them.”

She nodded with some reluctance and put the papers on her lap. I glanced down and saw pages of what must have been her handwriting, surprisingly straight but with the loops and embellishments of a young girl. I was curious about their contents but didn’t want to press her, especially since she began to wheeze.

“I have asthma,” she said while she gasped.

There was a note in the file about asthma, but here, watching her, I thought it more likely that she had panic-induced breathlessness. Her heart rate was elevated and her blood pressure high.

“There, there,” I said. “You are in a state. Let’s try to get you calm.”

The place on her neck that she’d scratched needed attention, so once she seemed more settled, I stepped away to fetch some antiseptic and a bandage. When I returned, she still sat on the bed, clutching her papers, crying out every now and then in anguish. I cleaned her wound, but she soon began to recoil from my touch and questions as if they were flames licking at her face.

I watched her eyes glass over and she entered into the catatonic state sometimes present with schizophrenic patients. She looked through me with her large gray eyes in the most unsettling way, and I had the distinct feeling of having encountered such eyes before, but could not place them. Her limbs were stiff, but I helped her to lie on the bed and moved the papers close to her heart. I covered her with a blanket, drew the curtains, and locked her in the room.

As I left her, dread pushed down through my shoulders and into my chest. It was as if someone closed a fist around my lungs, and sweat beaded along my brow. I stopped and leaned against the door to catch my breath, wondering whether I was suddenly becoming ill, when it hit me: Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes were like my own, reflected in the mirror across from my bed years ago, after the war and my great losses.

Memories of my husband and daughter roared up like waves in my ears, along with the crippling sensation that accompanied the remembrance of their absence. I could not think of them here in this place, so I wished them away and they retreated.

Later. Later.

Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes, however, would not leave my mind. I had no idea what those haunting eyes would lead me to do. If I’d known then, I don’t think I would have become as involved as I did.

No, I still would have.

M
r. Fitzgerald’s strain was palpable in the room.

We sat near Dr. Meyer’s desk in his warm study—young resident Dr. Mildred Squires, Scott Fitzgerald, and I. We let Mr. Fitzgerald talk while we took notes, each of us judging him in spite of ourselves, and trying to understand his broken wife.

It was clear that Mr. Fitzgerald was near a breaking point himself. His hands shook and he chain-smoked. He often stood to pace the room while he gathered his thoughts. Then he would sit abruptly, cough, and continue. I listened to him with great interest, for he spoke like a storyteller.

“She was born and raised a free and indulged child in Montgomery, Alabama,” he began. “Her mother allowed her at the breast until she was four years old and never told her no. Her father was a stoic and admired judge.”

“Was her relationship with her father difficult?” asked Dr. Meyer, a stern, spectacled German in charge of the Phipps Clinic.

“Yes, I’d say so,” said Mr. Fitzgerald. “Judge Sayre was a practical sort of old Southern gentleman. He didn’t understand his daughter.”

“But Mrs. Sayre did?” asked Dr. Squires.

“I don’t think she understood Zelda, either,” said Scott. “She encouraged her, especially as a wild debutante.”

He stood again, walked to the window, and lit a new cigarette. His nervous energy disturbed all of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the usually steady and solid Dr. Meyer squirming in his chair.

“Zelda is strong willed and stubborn. Hates taking instruction,” continued Fitzgerald.

“I know she was previously at Malmaison and Valmont clinics in Switzerland and diagnosed as schizophrenic,” said Dr. Meyer. “What precipitated her first collapse?”

“There was a”—he faltered a moment—“relationship of mine with a young actress when we were in Hollywood in ’twenty-six or ’twenty-seven that affected her. Entirely chaste, mind you, but Zelda wouldn’t hear otherwise. This was following a relationship Zelda had with a Frenchman. Then there was her suicidal practice of ballet. She’d dance six, even eight hours a day until her feet bled and there were pools of sweat on the floor. That’s the pattern, you know. She gets manic about some form of art, becomes closed off from me, aggravates her asthma and eczema, then breaks down.”

I was fascinated by his justification of his affair and her behavior patterns. Was either of them unfaithful? Was Zelda punishing herself through art or trying to find herself? My thoughts again returned to the stack of papers she’d guarded so closely.

“What are the papers she brought?” I asked.

His laugh was bitter. “Her latest obsession: a novel. She thinks she will outdo me.”

His pretension could not hide that he felt threatened by her. Did he wish to be the only one in their marriage with any accomplishment? Did he undermine her attempts at expression? Or perhaps she antagonized him.

“Once she gets an idea in her head she won’t change it for a stack of Lincolns,” he said. “Do you know she thinks I dallied with Ernest Hemingway?”

We all looked up from our notepads.

“I did not, of course, but she’s convinced.”

His weary tone caused me to believe him, though I wondered
what made her make such an assumption. I began to pity him again.

He returned to his chair and asked for a glass of water. His skin was pale, and sweat formed along his upper lip. I poured him some water from a pitcher on Meyer’s side table, and Fitzgerald met my eyes directly when he thanked me.

“That is enough for today,” said Dr. Meyer. “It’s clear that you both need rest. Will you be staying in Baltimore long?”

“No, I’ll return to Montgomery tomorrow. My daughter, Scottie, needs me. I don’t want to uproot her again. Not yet, anyway.”

I knew in some vague way that they had a ten-year-old child. The fact was in a file somewhere in black and white, and at the time I’d read it, I did not internalize that information. Now, however, seeing the emotional state of the two of them, my heart went out to the young girl. How did she manage with parents like these? Inevitably, I thought of my own daughter, Katie, and that she would have been thirteen this year. Just a bit older than Scottie.

Suddenly the room seemed very small and full of people. Mr. Fitzgerald’s wool coat on the chair next to me scratched my arm, and the pungent aroma of his cigarettes made me nauseous. The clock on the wall behind Meyer’s desk showed two o’clock. I still had three hours in my shift.

I had to get out of the room.

I stood and placed my notebook on the desk. The others stood around me. The meeting was over. There was a shaking of hands, discussion of a call, and an exchange of addresses. Mr. Fitzgerald picked up his coat and again looked into my eyes.