Call Me Zelda (37 page)

“This place is a whole lot scarier without me than it is with me, but suit yourself.”

He turned away, and after a few moments I heard him slam the back door, leaving me alone. The silence intensified without another person there with me to occupy the space, and the air seemed to grow colder. I pulled my coat collar up around my ears and shook off the chill. I then returned my attention to the
room and snapped several pictures of it, including the mirror. When I finished photographing the first floor, I slipped the covers off the furniture to check drawers and cushions just to be sure, though I knew I wouldn’t find anything. My search turned up empty, of course.

The steady chop of the man’s ax outside began and gave me some comfort that he was nearby. I laughed at the irony of the presence of a gnarled old armed stranger giving me comfort, and wished Will were with me instead.

With renewed determination I continued my explorations downstairs, snapping photographs and inspecting what furniture and shelving I came across. The coming storm made shadows cover the rooms like a blanket, and I decided to hurry upstairs to see whether I could find anything of interest or value for Zelda.

The upstairs loomed dark and foreboding, so I began to hum Gershwin’s “Summertime” to myself to keep my mind off the house haunts, but they wouldn’t be ignored. The unmistakable sound of an old door creaking on its hinges stopped me midstaircase. I waited for a moment and, when I heard nothing else, continued up more slowly and without singing. My ears were alert and my heart pounded. The blood in my veins seemed to freeze as a gust of cold wind blew down the stairs and through me.

I stopped again and tried to tell myself it was just a drafty old house, but I was suddenly overcome with a feeling of great sadness and fear. Had Zelda felt this way here, in this place? She’d always had a terrible sense of the inevitable passage of time. Could she foresee the ruin of the house, empty, abandoned, once grand and now forgotten and crumbling?

The melancholy was so sudden and intense that I had to sit on the staircase and reorient myself to my own thoughts and feelings. The steady chop of the ax brought me back to the moment and reminded me of who I was and what I was doing. I
looked back up the stairs and stood, desperately wanting to leave but certain there was something up there that I should see, even if some
thing
didn’t want me to see it.

When I reached the top of the stairs I saw it. A shadow slipped into the room down the hall. Everything in my body said to run, but instead I strode toward it and opened the door. I gasped when I saw what was inside.

A grand dollhouse nearly filled the room—layers of painted papier-mâché crafted intricate doorways, staircases, beds, lamp shades, chairs. It was the most magnificent thing I’d ever seen, and I knew that Zelda had made it for Scottie. I remembered when Zelda had told me about the dollhouse. I could almost hear her whispering again.

For Christmas I made Scottie a dollhouse. When your husband thinks you unfit to care for your daughter you must find ways of staying in the child’s life. I crouched on the floor for months like some manic elf at Santa’s toy shop with the single-minded task of creating a world away from our world where Scottie could safely play. A place to preserve the sweet-hearted innocence of her imaginings, where I could meet her as if in a garden removed from our lives here, where no one could touch us, and where we could communicate as if through secret notes passed in class.

I photographed the dollhouse from every angle, overcome by the sheer enormity of Zelda’s expression of love for her daughter. It would be very good for Zelda to see this and to remember it.

But the bad thing in the house was back. Every nerve of mine stood on end, and the air felt…wrong. I heard a faraway door slam again, and my courage failed. I started walking swiftly from the room but felt the thing at my back and broke into a run down the stairs, through the hallway, through the kitchen, and out the back door of the house.

The old man with the ax seemed amused to see me run out of Ellerslie, breathless and troubled, but he didn’t have to ask
why. I thanked him for allowing me access and he nodded and waved me off. I went back to the car while an icy rain began, and started to pull away when I noticed the man stacking the logs between two trees. His coat was threadbare, and he had no umbrella. I had only one myself, but I felt I needed to make some kind of offering to him for letting me look around the house. I drove the car closer to him and got out while I left it running.

“Here,” I said, thrusting my umbrella at him. He looked at it for a moment as if he didn’t know what it was; then his eyes flickered with recognition and grew soft.

“No, thank you, ma’am,” he said. “I’ve got too much to carry to mess with that. I’m not worried about my hair.” He chuckled while he ran his hand over the greasy strands on his head.

I opened the umbrella over myself and started back to the car. I tried to think of something else I could give him for his time, and decided to offer him a little money.

I returned to him and held out a couple of bucks. “Here, at least take this for your trouble.”

He eyed it a moment, then looked back at me. “You sure?” he asked.

“Yes.”

He took the money and stuffed it into his pocket. “Thanks.”

I nodded and hurried back to my car, eager to get out of the rain and away from Ellerslie forever.

TWENTY-NINE

Within an hour, the icy rain turned to sleet, and finally to a gusty snowstorm. As I made my way out of Philadelphia, the car began to slip on the road, and I could barely see through the steam on the window and the assault of the flakes on the windshield. I’d planned on driving into New York City that night to stay, but knew I wouldn’t make it that far safely, and began to search for lodging.

As I passed into New Jersey, evening dropped and the storm let up a bit. It wasn’t long, however, before it returned. I was hungry, my back ached from driving and tension, and I desperately wanted a hot bath and to call home, but I wasn’t familiar with any of the town names I passed and was afraid to stop.

My windshield wipers froze and I slammed the steering wheel. “Dammit! You fool, you should have turned around after that dreadful house and gone home.” I spoke aloud to release my fear and anxiety, and to stay awake, since I was tired to my bones, but I realized how odd it was to talk aloud to myself. I slammed the steering wheel again, and then used my glove to wipe away the steam, but it was no use. The wiper had frozen and I couldn’t see a damned thing. I had to pull off the road.

The Plymouth slipped when I applied the brake, but I was able to steady it and come to a stop under a street lamp. I opened the car door into the swirling, freezing black night, bundled my coat tightly around my body, and walked to the front of the car. The snow had been falling here for hours, and it slid into my shoes, making my feet wet and numb.

The driver’s-side wiper was frozen in a mound of ice and snow, so I began to pick at it with my gloves. That wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I trudged through the snow, certain I could feel frostbite beginning on my toes, and hunted through the brush until I found a stick. I walked back to the car through my path, but tripped on a rock and landed in the freezing mud. I stood up and poked my knee through my coat, where I could see a cut bleeding through my ripped stockings.

I wanted to cry, but I tried to think calming thoughts: I would find a hotel. I would have a warm bath. Will and I would laugh about this on the phone. The boys would love to hear about my adventures. Sara would think I was so brave.

Thoughts of Will and the children made the tears fall fresh and fast, however, and I decided that after tonight, I’d head south to North Carolina and call off this whole dreadful business of bringing the past back to Zelda. I’d just try to bring myself to her—alive and in one piece—and see if that helped her.

As I got nearer to my car and the road, I noticed a sign on the other side of the highway and stopped short.

Princeton.

I began to laugh a wild, almost maniacal laugh. If anyone had been nearby, they would have dragged me—a frozen, wet, muddy, laughing mess of a woman—off to the sanitarium. I could almost imagine Scott’s ghost leaning casually against the sign with his hands in his pockets, his feet crossed, and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

“Thank you,” I whispered to no one.

A sharp wind reminded me that I needed shelter soon, so I hurried back to the car, used the stick to chisel the wiper out of the ice, and snapped a picture of the road sign for Princeton. I hoped it would turn out so I could tell Zelda how it appeared like a light at the end of a dock, leading me back to safety.

H
ot water surrounded me like a hug in the pristine tub of the Nassau Inn at Princeton. The inn was just across the street from the university, and the staff had checked me in with the kindest of manners in spite of the fact that I must have appeared from the storm like some kind of female yeti. I’d spent more than I wanted to for the room, but what could I do? I was too cold and shaken to search for another place, and I had no guarantees that I’d find something with a vacancy that cost less money.

I allowed the heat to thaw my skin to the bone and, once I’d relaxed and finished my bath, wrapped myself in my nightgown and a thick robe hanging in the closet, and went to use the telephone in the hallway. It was seven o’clock, so all of the children would still be awake. Will sounded frantic when he answered.

“Anna, thank God!”

“I know,” I said. “It’s been quite an adventure.”

“Are you okay?”

“I am,” I said. “I’m sorry to have worried you.”

He was quiet for a moment; then he replied in a tumble of words and nervous energy. “If you are going to be away from us in poor weather for the next few weeks, you’re going to need to communicate a little better.”

I was taken aback by his tone. Will was usually so even-keeled. It was jarring to hear him speak this way after I’d just calmed myself down. I felt my defenses rise, and in spite of a nagging feeling that I should just stay calm, I couldn’t help but snap back at him.

“I’ve just been driving in a blizzard for hours, by myself, on
roads I don’t know. I had to pull off into a snowbank to chisel ice off the wipers. I fell in mud, bloodied my knee, and ripped a pair of stockings. Oh, and I walked through an abandoned haunted house this afternoon with a scary man with an ax. I haven’t eaten anything all day except for some smashed-up crackers I found at the bottom of my purse. And I haven’t even been gone for twenty-four hours!” My voice had risen, and I hoped no one would come out in the hallway to see the madwoman with wet hair yelling into the phone.

“You should have turned around and come home,” he said.

“You encouraged me to take the trip!”

“Was there really anything else I could have said?”

I was about to strike back at him when I realized that what he said was true. I would have gone either way. He’d encouraged me to go because he knew it was something I needed to do, but not because he’d wanted me to go. Not at all.

There was a scuffling sound and Sara got on the phone. “Mommy, Ben refuses to take a bath, and Daddy said he’s not fighting with people about baths while you’re gone, but Ben stinks because he was in the snow all day—”

Her voice cut off, there was more scuffling, and suddenly Ben was on the phone.

“Hi, Mom. I don’t stink. She’s just weird. I’ll take a bath one of these days.”

“Benny,” I said, “please don’t cause your father any stress while I’m gone.”

“Okay,” he said. “See ya!”

Then Will Junior was on the phone.

“Hi, Mom,” he said.

“Hi, honey. Could you please help Daddy with those two?”

“Yes,” he said. “I practiced my piano for forty-five minutes after school today.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Thank you. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Mommy.” It was Sara again. “Can I go and live with Poppy while you’re gone? The boys are driving me crazy.”

“Sara, I need you to help Daddy. Can you do that? He’s a little frantic because I’m gone. Please.”