Call Me Zelda (21 page)

“Yes, Peter. My difficult little brother.” I couldn’t help but smile.

“Do you fight?”

“We do battle a bit, yes,” I said. “He knows how to set off my temper, but I still adore him. How about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

It was Sorin’s turn to smile. “Yes, I have two sisters and two brothers. I am the youngest.”

“How old are you?” I asked.

“Twenty-five,” he said.

I rolled my eyes. “So young!”

“How old are you?” he asked.

“It’s not good form to ask a lady her age,” I said, pretending offense.

“Surely a young lady like you does not mind a question like that,” he said with a devilish smile. I was tickled to see him acting playful.

“Surely,” I said. “But I can’t tell you everything the first time I have dinner with you.”

“So there will be more times you have dinner with me?”

He held me still with his dark eyes and I felt the pressure return. He did not flinch in his gaze, but I looked down at my hands. It took a moment for me to find my voice.

“You have a nice big family,” I said. “Is it hard for you to be away from them?”

He looked at me for a moment before he spoke but finally he answered.

“Yes,” he said. “But my mother is a great lover of music. She
wanted me to come here and study and make something of my life.”

There
, I thought.
A return to safe subjects
.

“You couldn’t do that in Romania?” I asked.

“In other parts of Europe, maybe, but it is not good in my village,” he said. “And my mother thinks I could be a world-famous musician.”

“I think you could, too, from what I hear.”

“I make a mess of noise here,” he said. “You should hear me in concert sometime.”

“I’d love to,” I said.

“Would you play ‘Anii’ for me?” he said.

I was taken aback and felt myself blush.

“It is okay if you do not want to,” he said. “But I have heard you, and you play beautifully. You do not have to be scared of anything with me.” He spoke the last words quietly.

I didn’t know what to say. The only man I’d played for in a private setting was Ben, and it had always aroused us both to distraction. I felt the heat rising on my neck when I thought of the way Ben would pull me onto his lap on the piano bench, or the way he’d run his hands over my hair and my back while I played until the last note hung in the air, and we wrapped ourselves in each other’s arms while we’d stumble to the bedroom, if we could even make it that far. The music had become such a part of my intimacy with Ben, I didn’t think I could share it with anyone else.

The music was not only about intimacy for me, either. It was about conjuring the past to remember and to heal. I’d learned from experience that playing old songs seemed to mend old wounds, but only with concentration. It was like prayer.

“I will play with you,” he said, a note of pleading in his voice. “I have a melody I can add with my violin that will complete the song.”

I met his eyes again and saw that he wanted this. In truth, I
felt as if I owed him something from when he’d saved me. All the baking in the world wasn’t what he wanted. It was the music.

I nodded and he broke into a smile and stood from the chair. “I will get my violin.”

He was out the door in a flash. I sat at the table for a moment trying to steady my nerves, reassuring myself that it was just a song. Sorin couldn’t know what playing meant to me. It would be okay.

I stood and cleared the plates, hoping the physical act of cleaning up dinner would soothe me and help me distance myself from my emotions. By the time Sorin returned, I had everything put away and felt in control of myself again.

“I am sorry,” he said. “A string broke and I had to rethread it. You did not change your mind, did you?”

“No,” I said.

“Good.”

We walked over to the piano together and I sat, willing myself not to look at my wedding picture, and acutely aware of a feeling of darkness around me. I stared out the window and noticed the streetlights hadn’t yet turned on. I reached for the lamp near the piano and pulled the chain, hoping to chase off any troubled spirits with its glow.

Sorin sat on the right side of the bench, and his back grazed my arm. I could feel the heat coming off him and flinched. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at him and he nodded.

“Whenever you are ready,” he said.

I took a deep breath and looked at the music, letting my fingertips rest on the keys that I was about to press. The keys were cold, and I left my fingers on them until I couldn’t feel the separation of my skin and the instrument. Once we connected, I began to play.

Sorin did not play right away. He allowed me to work through the introduction for eight measures before he eased into
the song. Then he began a high, slow vibrato that met the highest notes on the piano until it slipped into the lower register, resting between the lines of music, adding the final piece of what I hadn’t even realized was missing from the song. The music was rich and layered, and I found myself lost in it. When it ended I looked at Sorin and his eyes were closed. He opened them and turned his face toward mine.

I couldn’t describe the tangled feelings I had at that moment. I was aware of Ben in the picture, just inches away. I was hypnotized from the music. I watched Sorin place his violin and bow on the floor and felt his heat as he returned to my side on the bench. I thought how young he was as his face moved slowly toward me. And I was shocked by the sensation of his lips on mine.

Sorin gave me a soft, slow kiss and my body seemed separate from my mind, responding to him in spite of my confusion. His kiss was so unexpected it fascinated me. These feelings hadn’t been tapped in so long it was like waking up after a long, cold hibernation. I felt his hands on the sides of my neck sliding back into my hair, and our kiss became more intense. I dared to open my eyes, and Sorin’s were closed.

Suddenly the streetlights turned on and blazed through my window, illuminating the piano and shining on my wedding picture.

Sorin moved his lips off mine and started down my neck.

“Anna,” he whispered, and my eyes found Ben in the picture.

I slid out of Sorin’s hands, stood, and leaned, breathless, on the windowsill. Sorin looked like a drowning man who’d just lost his life preserver.

“Anna,” he said. “I am sorry.”

I put up my hand and shook my head. “No. Don’t apologize.”

My eyes returned to the picture and then to Sorin. He saw where I was looking and understood. He reached down, picked up his violin and bow, and stood.

“I should go,” he said.

I didn’t glance at him, but nodded and crossed my arms across my chest.

Sorin walked over to the door.

“Thank you for dinner,” he said. “Good night, Anna.”

He closed the door and left me in my apartment, alone.

SIXTEEN

I saw very little of Sorin in the coming weeks, which left me confused and frustrated. When he left that night I felt as if I would explode. As ridiculous as it sounds, I even felt something like anger at Ben for interfering. Like the coward I was, I ended up writing Sorin a note expressing how glad I was that he had come over and how much I had enjoyed the music. I apologized for the abrupt end to our dinner and asked that he tell me when his next concert was so I could hear him play.

He did not write back.

In the meantime, Zelda’s novel,
Save Me the Waltz
, was released by Scribner’s, and met with a lukewarm response. Scott had assumed an I-told-you-so air but seemed satisfied that at least she could not be crowned queen of his domain. It gave him a surge of confidence and a dictatorial place in the house regarding both Zelda’s care and Scottie’s rearing.

Under Scott’s strict observation, Zelda became more and more unglued. Dr. Squires had left, and Zelda would no longer open up to Meyer during their weekly therapy sessions at Phipps. She had become hostile and unresponsive, and Meyer was finally finished with her during the session in which Zelda kept
repeating over and over that the word
therapist
was actually
the rapist
when you spread out the letters.

Dr. Meyer assigned Zelda to a new doctor, Dr. Thomas Rennie, though Meyer would still consult. Rennie was a handsome young bachelor with whom Zelda bonded immediately. She began to dress well for her sessions and flirted shamelessly with the young man. He blushed and seemed a bit in awe of her celebrity, but overall, he was a good fit for her. He had empathy for her situation that allowed her to trust him, and she took great delight in teasing Scott about her new beau Rennie, as she liked to refer to him.

“Do you think Rennie’d be a two-er or a fiver?” she asked one fall afternoon while she and I walked under the autumn trees.

“Excuse me?” I asked.

“You know, how long the boys took to come back to me once I left them.”

“Ah, yes, I’ll have to think about that.”

“I think he’d be a three-er,” she said. “He has a look of the Trinity about him.”

I smiled a little, amused at her bizarre yet arresting use of language.

We circled back to the house and found Scott on the front lawn throwing a football with Andrew while Scottie stood on the front porch reciting lines of poetry. She had tears running down her face, and Andrew was noticeably uncomfortable. We could hear Scott’s voice as we drew closer.

“Again,” said Scott, with all the emphasis of an army sergeant.

“Daddy, please,” begged Scottie. “I can’t stand it anymore.”

“You will recite it again until it’s perfect. Next time, get a better grade in speech and this won’t be necessary.”

“I got an A!” she cried.

“But only a ninety-seven percent,” he said. “You can do better than that.”

Zelda sighed loudly as we approached, and he looked at her with daggers in his eyes.

Scottie continued her recitations.

“Funny,” whispered Zelda in my ear. “He was an appalling student.”

When we got closer, Zelda called to Scott, “Is this really necessary? Girls should care about parties and dresses and dance cards. You’ll turn her into a damned spinster.”

I cringed inwardly at Zelda’s assessment of what should concern girls, but kept my mouth shut.

“A lot of good that did you,” he said. “You’re nothing but a lapel decoration that’s lost its bloom.”

Zelda’s face turned pale. I could not contain my anger.

“How could you say such a thing to your wife in the presence of your own daughter?” I said.

Andrew looked from me, to Zelda, to Scott and then took off running down the path to his house. Scottie stared at all of us with a dark, unreadable expression. Scott slammed the football to the ground.

“How am I wrong?” he asked. “Tell me.”

“You are wrong to abuse her, especially when she’s vulnerable,” I said.

“But I am not wrong,” he said. “It is you who encourages us to speak the truth, but I think you’ll agree that it is not always best.”

He turned back to his daughter. “Again!”

Scottie looked from her father to her mother and back to her father. She began to recite the poem with a full, clear voice, all trace of tears gone.

A
curious calm settled over Zelda at the start of winter. Preceding her argument with Scott about her “usefulness” as a woman, she’d become so unwound that she would no longer
write about her past for me. She also wouldn’t speak of her past, and had difficulty sustaining any conversation. But strangely, since the fight Zelda had stopped trying to interact with her husband and seemed to accept that they would never again see eye to eye.

As she gained strength from the distance she placed between herself and Scott, he deteriorated more and more. He relapsed shortly after drying out at Hopkins, and his drinking was worse than ever. They’d been through several maids and cooks because he’d corner them, recounting all sorts of inappropriate stories from his youth with Zelda, and ask the poor, shaken women questions too personal in nature. Like me, his secretary, Isabel, remained in their service. She, too, seemed attached to the family, and practically speaking, regular pay in such a burdened economy was not to be taken lightly. Isabel helped him meet deadlines, typed and retyped his work, paid bills to creditors before they took action, and was kind and nurturing to Scottie.