Call Me Zelda (30 page)

While we waited for Zelda in Meyer’s office, he would not meet my gaze. He spoke to Scott of Zelda’s condition, his expectations, and his advice for the future. The men were not parting on good terms. Scott still resented Meyer’s insistence that he stop drinking. Meyer was frustrated that he’d not made more progress; his authority had been challenged and he’d lost a nurse.

I watched the door, eager to see Zelda again, while trying to caution myself that she would be very changed, and might not acknowledge me. When she came around the turn, my deepest fears were confirmed. Her skin had lost its color. Her tawny hair was dull, her eyes blank. She was extremely underweight, and her motions lacked their usual grace. She refused to sit down or make eye contact with any of us.

She broke my heart.

I stood and placed my arms around her. “Come on, Zelda. We have a train to catch.”

She did not act as if she understood what I had to say, but she allowed me to guide her out of the doors of the Phipps Clinic for the last time.

D
uring the entire train ride from Baltimore to New York, Zelda didn’t say a word. She alternated between sleeping and staring out the window at the passing landscape. Scott paced from our seats to the bar for drinks, and passed out somewhere near Philadelphia. Zelda fell asleep shortly thereafter against him.

In sleep, without emotion, hysteria, intoxication, or motive, their faces softened to what their youthful countenances must have once been. Their long eyelashes rested below their eyes, their wrinkles disappeared, and their mouths pursed into little bows. The afternoon sunlight that glowed through the window lit their golden heads and put a touch of pink in their cheeks. They looked like two dolls, and watching them at rest, I was moved.

It was he who woke first. He gazed at her for a moment with great sadness and tears in his eyes. He traced the curve of her face with his fingertip and kissed her mouth. She stirred and met his gaze, offering her face to him, prolonging the kiss. He slid his hand in hers and they rested on each other for the remainder of the trip.

For just a moment, they could have been any other married couple on a train.

T
heirs was a tender parting, yet she did not acknowledge me. She kissed him passionately and promised him she’d try her hardest to get better so she could come home. He was emotional on the return train and tried to cry on my shoulder, but I was in
no mood to be a prop for him; nor did I want to spoil the beautiful image I held in my heart of the two of them sleeping.

He drank on the train ride from Beacon to New York City, where he got off to meet with Cary to complete plans for the gallery opening to which I would come back up and accompany Zelda at the end of the month, if she was well enough to attend.

I didn’t get home until very late that night, and I was so weary that I didn’t even undress before getting into bed, where I had nightmares all night of Ben and myself, and the train station in the war.

A
t Scott’s instruction, I escorted Zelda to An American Place, a gallery on Madison Avenue showing the work of Georgia O’Keeffe. I led Zelda past the haunting paintings of enlarged flowers, empty skulls, and landscapes that adorned the walls. We reached a painting of black water in the dark that made me shiver as I recalled that night when Zelda had saved me. We stood before it for many minutes, but Zelda did not address me. She had not spoken to me since that terrible night when she’d mimicked me and I had sedated her. How I longed for her to speak to me.

“It’s like that night in Bermuda,” I said.

Silence.

“When you saved me,” I said. I turned to look at her, but she would only stare straight ahead at the painting. I noticed her trembling, and saw that two small red hives had appeared at the base of her neck.

“Zelda, please talk to me. Acknowledge me. I’m so sorry if you’ve felt…abandoned? Hurt? I don’t know, because you won’t tell me. Please speak to me.”

She began to blink rapidly, and turned away from me. A wave of such pain and sadness engulfed me that I felt light-headed. Her coldness was torture. I wrapped my arms around
myself and watched her walk through O’Keeffe’s bizarre garden. Though Zelda moved slowly, she grew breathless. When I heard the wheezing begin, I knew she was too troubled to stay.

She allowed me to guide her out of the showing and back to Cary’s gallery, several blocks away, which was now full of people. As we walked through the door, Scott removed himself from the company of a woman, ran to greet us, and nearly drenched our coats with the contents of his glass of gin.

“You were gone so long,” he said, kissing her on the cheek and tugging off her coat. “All of our friends are here. Come, Zelda! Dorothy Parker! The Murphys!”

He pulled her away from me and she was swallowed by the crowd.

For hours, Zelda tried to pry herself from conversations with people who seemed so important to Scott, but who only confused Zelda. She walked to the door several times, but Scott kept ushering her into new groups. I finally overheard Scott say that Ernest Hemingway would be arriving soon, and Zelda gasped aloud. She pulled away from Scott and hurried over to where I stood. My heart raced at the thought of her finally speaking to me, but she would not. I could see a lacy red rash tearing up her throat, and without a word I knew she had to leave immediately. Scott tried to guide her back, but I put my hand on his arm.

“Look at her,” I whispered to him.

He glanced at her face and then her neck.

“I’m taking her back,” I said.

He gave me a little nod and helped me with her coat.

I pushed her out the door and we nearly ran into a man I recognized as Ernest Hemingway, with his strong build, mustache, and penetrating eyes. He smiled wryly and put out his arms as if to embrace Zelda, but she rushed out onto the street without acknowledging him. He raised his eyes at me, gave me a wink, and walked into the gallery without a second glance.

Though we had only a couple of blocks to go, it felt as if I would never get her to the train station. Then she was shaking her hands and pacing beside the track while we waited, and I feared the conductor wouldn’t let her on in this state. I guided her behind a pillar and talked quietly to her until our train pulled up, whereupon I promptly shoved her into her seat and sedated her.

One week later, I received an envelope from the Craig House addressed only to “Nurse” in Zelda’s handwriting. Inside were two slips of paper. One torn sheet said, “Burn.” The other said this:

AUCTION: ART GALLERY—1934

It started as my idea, became his idea, and returned to my idea: a showing, an art sale, a way to earn some money for my “hobbies.” But when the paintings went on display I realized what it was: an auction of the fragmented bits of my soul—shards of jagged emotion chiseled like sparkling limestone from cave walls, a palette of my moods from the dullest, creamiest days to the most red-violent nights.

He was to invite our friends, or rather, those who were in our acquaintance, a smart set of poets, artists, writers, mistresses, and misogynists. The room suddenly became too tight, so I drifted down the avenue to a gallery showing a fine flower woman, a real artist, whose tender, rounded magnifications caused my nerves to stand on end and my heart to ache with their beauty and my envy to burn green at the thought of her in the desert in solitude, in full creative power and in full control of it.

Then I returned to my exhibition in time for the sales.

See here, a fine oil on canvas,
Chinese Theater.
Can you imagine the acrobatics? Can you feel the swollen muscles in symphonic concentration? Twenty-five cents from the couple once in charge of orchestrating all of us. Sold.

Look at this here,
Arabesque,
dancers at the barre—no, not the bar, Mr. Fitzgerald, a ballet barre. You there, Parker, mistrustful woman of words, how much say you? Fifty cents. Sold. And why don’t we throw in this lovely art of Scott disguised as a coronet player so you may admire him even when he’s not sharing your bed.

And oh, the crowning glory, the portrait of the man with the crown of thorns. Not the historic man, but rather, the one who wishes to be historic, who betrays his wife with a kiss and exorcises her demons just enough to hold him over until next time. Do you want it? One dollar. Sold.

Thank you all and good night.

I read her piece twice, stuffed it back in the envelope, and placed it on my bedside table. It was the only attempt she’d made at communicating with me in so long that I hated the idea of burning her writing. I sent her a letter telling her how much I missed her and how much she meant to me, and each night I reread her piece, but soon it kept me from sleeping. My guilt over not burning it blurred into my dreams turning them to nightmares. After a week of insomnia, I finally got up at two in the morning, crept down the stairs of my chilly, half-abandoned building, and pried open the door to Sorin’s old apartment. I placed Zelda’s papers in the sooty fireplace, lit a match, and watched the edges curl inward with fire until everything was erased.

TWENTY-THREE

April 1934

The spring was stubborn in its arrival that year, and maintenance at my apartment building was scarce. The landlord tried to keep up with the peeling paint, crumbled front stoop, and wiring issues, but with no other boarders, it was hard on him. The depression was drowning everyone, and I was going down the drain with it.

One Sunday night, just home from my parents’ house—where I now went every weekend to escape the empty misery of my life in the city—I sat in the fading light at the piano, playing “Anii” and working myself up for a good cry, when there was a knock at the door.

I was alarmed. I hated being alone in the building, and thought, more than once, that I should consider moving back in with my parents, where I could at least be of help to my mother. Of course, I’d mentioned this to her last weekend and seen the worry etch her forehead. She had gently explained that while I was always welcome, I needed to keep living my life outside of them. She was probably right.