Call Me Zelda (24 page)

WRITER becomes enraged and throws DANCER’s favorite vase—colored like the sky at twilight’s epilogue—right into the fireplace. DANCER says she wishes he would die. WRITER begins weeping like a child.

WRITER jumps up from the table and strikes DANCER across the face. The party gasps and blows away into the night and the storm. DANCER feels the blood leaking out of her nose as it mingles with the perspiration from her practice. She wipes the blood away and watches it blur in the sweat on her arm, giving color to her skin from the outside in.

June 1933

M
y mother’s hair danced in the breeze that moved through the wind shed. Her eyes were closed and she wore a grimace of pain on her brow while a smile played at her lips. I watched her and made a mental portrait of her under the wind chimes.

“Please take Zelda a set,” she said. “They have healing powers.”

“I will,” I said. “I’d thought of bringing her here, but after that awful night at the opera I’ll never do that again.”

“Poor Anna. I’m so sorry to hear about that.”

“And after last Sunday I don’t know if the Fitzgeralds can ever be repaired.”

“What happened?”

“Scott had Dr. Rennie to the house so Scott could ‘document’ his grievances and instruct Zelda to stop writing. No understanding, no empathy, no love. Only bitterness.”

A crow flew by the barn door and rested in a nearby tree, making a noisy production of its presence.

“My God, if you had been there,” I continued. “If you had heard the terrible things Scott said to Zelda, you would have struck him. I wanted to strike him.”

“Was it that bad?”

“Worse than that bad,” I said. “Hours of listening to him belittle her, boast about himself, indulge in a tantrum about her writing.”

“What was the outcome?”

“They want to divorce each other. And Zelda no longer wants to live with him.”

“Is there any hope at all?”

“I really don’t know.”

For the first time, I began to think that Scott and Zelda should be separated. Not just because of how Scott put down Zelda for her faded beauty or failed attempts at ballet or writing, but because she was his cancer, too. She taunted him and tortured him every chance she got, was inconsistent in her relationship with her daughter, and sadly, was spending more and more time in her inner world than in the real world.

Days would pass without a coherent conversation between the two of us; then suddenly, it was as if she’d returned from a vacation. It was hard keeping up with her, and even in the best moments, I always felt as if we were at the threshold of disaster.

We heard a noise on the path and my father entered the wind shed. He walked over the dirt floor and kissed my mother on the cheek.

“You are beautiful,” he said to her. My heart melted.

She smiled. “Clearly, your sight is failing. Any goodies in the mail?”

He waved off her comment and thumbed through the letters he’d just picked up from the post office.

“Mostly bills,” he said. “But something for Anna.”

“Me?”

“Yes. From a Will Brennan.”

“Will,” I said. My hospital Will. Ben’s friend. My partner in grief. I took the letter.

“Who’s Will?” asked Mom.

“He was Ben’s best friend,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” she said. “Now I remember. The boy with the limp who wept for Ben.”

“Yes, the boy with the limp who wept for Ben after I told him about the MIA letter.”

I’m sorry to inform you that Sgt. Benjamin Howard went missing on or near the Argonne forest. All attempts have been made at rescue, but we are unable to locate any trace of him. We will keep you abreast of any discoveries made pertaining to his case.

When I had written to Will to tell him about the MIA letter, he’d written back the saddest note I’d ever received. He said it felt as if he had lost a brother. They’d grown up together. They wanted to marry girls and move home. Raise their kids. Then Will came to visit me here, saw Katie, who was still a baby, and broke down. His grief had deepened my own. A sharp pain went through my heart and I closed my eyes.

“I’m going to take a walk,” I said.

I left the shed holding the letter, curious to see what it said. Will and I had corresponded for several months following the day he’d visited. He had married and was back in Solomons, Maryland. He managed his father’s farm and a general store but had said that the town had lost so much for him now that Ben wasn’t there. After a while, I had stopped answering his letters. He always brought up Ben while I was trying to heal, and reminded me too much of what I’d lost.

But now, years later, things were different.

I opened the letter once I hit the path to the woods, eager to receive his news, and unafraid of any references to Ben.

June 1, 1933

Dear Anna,

I know it’s been a long while since we’ve been in contact, but I found myself thinking of you when I read a piece in the paper about Walter Reed Hospital. I love remembering that time when Ben and I hung around playing cards, full of carelessness and confidence, and when you and Ben fell in love. It was a beautiful thing to watch and be a part of, and I will always cherish that time in my life.

I’m still in southern Maryland, running the farm and store for my dad and writing a column for the local paper. I hope you received my card when I heard about Katie all those years ago. I’m sorry as hell for your loss. I don’t have any kids, myself, so I can’t imagine what you went through. I lost my mom a little while after the war, but I know that doesn’t compare.

Anyway, I pray that you’re in good health and doing well. I’d love to hear from you if you get a chance.

Sincerely,
Will

I smiled at the thought of our card games on Will’s hospital bed, with Ben teasing Will about his phantom fiancée and the
two of them teasing me to death about everything. I wondered about Will’s wife and about his life in the quiet town where he and Ben had been raised.

I decided I’d send him a letter when I got home from my parents’ house, and update him on my life and my work. My letter would be sadly brief. I needed to actually live more to call it a life.

W
hen I returned home after the weekend, Sorin saw me through the window. We’d been waving politely for months, but I couldn’t stand how we’d left things that night, and wished to make amends with him. I knocked on his door before I could change my mind, and he invited me in.

The first thing I noticed about his apartment was how clean it was. There were no papers strewn about the floor. The walls were bare. No empty cups littered the table. Three boxes were stacked near the couch. He followed my gaze.

“I am leaving,” he said.

Was he leaving because of me? How had I let so much time pass without coming to him to assure him it wasn’t his fault?

“Why?” I asked.

“I graduated,” he said.

Of course.
The ballerinas had left late last week.

“Congratulations,” I said. “Are you returning to Romania?”

“No,” he said. “I am off to New York to audition for the New York Philharmonic.”

“I’m so happy for you,” I said. “And I’m sad I haven’t heard you play with the orchestra.”

“I did not think you would really want to,” he said. “After that night.”

I don’t think I could have felt any worse than I did at that moment. He looked pained, too.

“Sorin,” I said, “I need to apologize to you.”

“No,” he said. “I should not have done that to you. After your attack. With your husband’s picture.”

“Stop,” I said. “You did everything right. That dinner with you. That kiss.”

I blushed, but I continued, determined to assure him.

“You reawakened something in me,” I said.

Now it was his turn to blush.

“I wish there could have been more. It was my fault, not yours. I realized how young you were and felt my husband looming over us.”

“But, Anna, he has passed on,” said Sorin.

“Probably,” I said. “But all I have is a piece of paper that says he’s missing and he was never found. And he is a part of me and I’ve never felt that part of me lose its grip the way I would if he was really dead. So I still feel married, and that isn’t fair to you. He’s always there.”

Sorin looked at his feet. “I see.”

“I know I’m foolish,” I said. “I can’t explain it, and I haven’t been able to get over it after all these years. I’m held prisoner by the idea that he’s just missing and not dead.”

“I am very sorry for you,” he said. “You deserve someone, Anna.”

“And you deserve someone who can give you every part of herself.”

I reached for his hands and he took mine. I pulled him closer to me.

“But you helped me, Sorin. You wrote that song in which my name means
helper
, but it is you who shook something loose in me. You gave me healing that night, and I’ll never forget you.”

He lifted one of my hands to his lips and kissed it. I had to will myself not to step toward him and kiss him, but I knew I had
to let him go. Instead, I wrapped my arms around him and held him until he pulled away and kissed my forehead.

I played his song over and over that night. I hoped he heard and understood how very much I meant what I had said to him.

EIGHTEEN

It was only eight o’clock in the morning and the heat was nearly unbearable. Maryland gave us only two weeks of spring that year and jumped mercilessly into a humid Southern summer. As I stepped off the bus and wiped my forehead, I thought Zelda would probably want to swim today and that I’d tell Scottie to join her mother. I was always looking for ways to bring them together.

I had packed a set of wind chimes for Zelda and was eager to give it to her. I knew she’d love the gift. I just hoped we’d get a little wind to stir their music. The air was so thick and still. A fly landed on my leg and bit me, as if to emphasize my musings. As I reached down to slap it, the sound of a fire truck siren called me from my thoughts. It got nearer and nearer until it slowed to turn down La Paix Lane. I jumped out of the road so I wouldn’t get run over and soon saw another truck racing in behind the first. As the smell of the smoke hit me, I felt a sudden panic in my heart. With only a few houses on the lane there was a very good chance that there was trouble at the Fitzgeralds’ place.