Call Me Zelda (46 page)

I strained to hear the sad ghosts’ cries, but heard only the water. According to legend, an Indian woman had been sent over the falls in a canoe to her death for committing adultery, followed by her daughter years later by suicide because she could not have children. Their spirits were said to haunt the shallow pools of the falls, and because people had died by slipping on the rocks or diving into the shallows, many thought this place held a curse.

I felt no curse that night. I felt only my lover’s arms around me as I fell into him. He grabbed my waist and pulled me close. Our passion, left smoldering by months of stealth and guilt, had finally ignited from our excursion of drinking, adventure, and abandon. I threw my arms around his neck and gave him my love without reserve. No caution or wariness held me back now. No one was around to judge me, and at that moment, I didn’t care for the opinion of another soul in the world. I only knew that this night was a gift we had agreed to give to each other, and by God, we gave it—the fullest expression of our love. We joined ourselves forever in ways we hadn’t taken time to consider or weigh. We knew only that we had to consummate our love, no matter what the cost.

Vincent

Our guests’ train arrives late, so we are already tight when they come. My husband, Eugen, holds up a torch he’s made of hickory, parading the party up the walk and through the sleet. I carry the gin outside and make each of them take a healthy swig from the bottle before gaining entrance.

Elaine runs her hands up the sides of my costume, grazing my breasts before pulling me into her. She suddenly pushes away and says with fierceness, “How I’ve missed you.”

I do not embrace her back, but instead, give her my cruelest smile. “Tonight, I am an houri
,
so I’m for the men. Not you.”

She pouts, while Floyd, one of my old lovers, pushes around her and lifts me off the ground. I wrap my legs around him as he pretends to ravage my neck. I laugh and allow him to carry me into the house and to the parlor, where he drops me on the settee, and I drop the empty bottle of gin on the rug. He kisses me full on the mouth, and I feel him stir through the thin fabric of my dress.

“I must stay pure,” I say, “if I’m to escort you to paradise.”

He laughs with wickedness as the poet Elinor Wylie pulls him off me and exchanges her body for his between my legs. She nuzzles me and I feel
myself
stir.

“Surely you’ll make an exception for me,” she whispers.

I look into her eyes from inches away. I want to tell her that I’ll always make an exception for her, but my demon returns. “Time shall tell.”

Her face hardens and she stands, allowing me up from the couch. I adjust my headdress and climb onto the sofa so I can see all of them. The rest of the group comes singing and tumbling into the room, and once they are in, the small crowd gazes up at me. I know I am impressive in my costume, and I can feel the desire humming in the room as so many of my lovers, current and past, male and female, watch me, wanting to possess me.

Using the flaming bundle of hickory in a daring and dangerous fashion, Eugen, dressed as the Maharaja, lights sticks of incense we brought back from our Oriental travels, and then tosses the bundle into the fire place. While my guests warm themselves, I jump down from the settee, approach my old lover Margot, and slip my arm through hers.

“Come,” I say. “Let us fetch the costumes. Dressing
up
allows inhibitions to fall
down
.”

Margot smiles at me with downcast eyes, and I see a blush creeping up her neck. I reach up to stroke her skin with the back of my right hand, and feel Elinor’s gaze fixed on us. I speak just loud enough for Elinor to hear.

“There is nothing as captivating as a woman who still knows how to blush,” I say. “You are remembering that night at the Rotunde in Paris, when we were introduced and ended up spending the night with each other.”

“How can I forget?” says Margot.

“Why would you want to?” I reply. I look sideways at Elinor and she turns away. Margot and I giggle as we run up the stairs to the trunks of Chinese trousers, Turkish silks, sarongs and slippers, and carry them back down as an offering to the party. My lovers remove their clothing and dance around the fire like devils, telling stories, acting parts, making love and mayhem, and rising to the most delightful level of intoxication, and when the night and our tightness begin to press on us with their weight, Floyd talks of the good old days in Greenwich Village when the war had ended, and we performed plays, and were poor and young and free.

“I’ll never forget the day we walked into Vincent’s apartment,” says Floyd, “and she and her sister Norma sat like two old ladies sewing while the most magnificent swearwords tumbled from their mouths from around the sides of the cigarettes they smoked.”

“I had to teach her to curse out loud, and smoke, and walk around without a corset,” I say. “It took two days of nonstop debauchery to break her. I was positively ill.”

“Such a family,” says Margot. “In Paris, Vinny’s mother would sit in the corner—a true old lady, smoking and swearing—and watch us drink and fall all over one another without judgment.”

“I love my dear mother,” I say, “and it’s been too long since I’ve seen her. Uge, we must visit her soon.”

“Yes, love,” says Eugen. “We shall as soon as the roads clear.”

“Now we’re so damned conventional,” I say, killing the last of my gin and my good spirits. “I’m thirty-six years old. One day bleeds into the next. We are alone up here at Steepletop. Utterly.”

“But our friends are here tonight,” says Eugen, slurring his words in his thick Dutch accent. “And I’m going to bed because I’m appallingly drunk, so any of you may have your way with my wife.”

The group protests his leaving, and Elinor pulls Eugen to her. “No, don’t make this night end.”

He kisses her on the lips, and she caresses his face.

“It has ended for me,” he says, “but you all keep it alive. Don’t let the old Maharajah spoil your fun.”

He uncoils himself from Elinor’s arms and stumbles up the stairs, leaving a subdued group in his wake. I am suddenly overcome with guilt for how long it has been since I’ve seen or written to my mother or my sisters. Our Greenwich Village and Paris remembrances have depressed me and make me long for that time again. The stark winter weather that refuses to leave us in our isolated mountain estate has seeped into me for so long that I don’t know if I will ever again bloom.

And I am drunk—dreadfully inebriated and spewing nonsense and musings on the decline of man and my loss of hope in civilization since the execution of those Italian immigrants, Sacco and Vanzetti, framed for murders they did not commit.

The cry of a bobcat in the distance silences me, and I feel the terrible thrill of dangers lurking outside our doors, and inside too. The cat’s cry sounds savage and predatory, and I wonder what she’ll kill for herself tonight.

Elinor reaches for me with her elegant fingers and I slap them away and stand, caring not that I’ve offended her at every turn this evening, from my rejection of her physical advances, to my poetic arguments, to now. Why do I do this to her, when I would like nothing more than to take her upstairs with me? I don’t know what evil chills my heart, but I know I have to go before I further poison the room.

As I am about to leave, I catch the eye of the ebony bust of Sappho in the corner, that ancient love poet whose black gaze reflects the light of the fire, and I feel a rekindling. My enchanting power has been stoked, reminded of itself in the company of these old lovers from Vassar, where fifteen years ago my power first pulsed within me. I inhale the energy to feed the dry well of words and love and beauty inside me, and remember that it is fresh, savage love that gives me power. I meet the gaze of the marble bust across the room, and implore her to return my strength after this bitter winter so I may complete this poetry collection whose construction continues to elude me. I’m nearly frantic to know if she’ll grant my wish—if she’ll lay a new love at my feet and allow me to burst forth again and reclaim the power that I am born to possess.