Call Me Zelda Read Online Free PDF Page A

looked as if it would snap. She looked out the window. The ticking clock reminded us it was there.
    “Not longevity,” she said. “Not peace. Not some chloroformed happiness. Not tranquillity. They are all such common goals, aren’t they, Dr. Meyer?”
    “Convention does not suit you,” he said.
    “No. I want audacity. High color. Total independence.”
    “No one can exist in a totally independent state, Zelda,” said Dr. Meyer. “Nor would I suspect that they would ever really wish to.”
    Zelda cleared her throat and sat up in her chair. “Do you know that I once called the fire department as a child and told them I saw a girl stranded on a roof, just before I climbed onto that roof and waited for them to come and get me?”
    We all sat in various states of unrest waiting for her to continue.
    “I could have climbed down from the roof at any time,” she said. “I enjoyed having them at my disposal.”
    The skin rose on my arms, and for the first time since she’d arrived I felt suspicious of Zelda, and my allegiance slipped back to its proper alignment.
    Zelda stood, scraping her chair against the floor and knocking her knee against the heavy wood of Meyer’s desk.
    “I must get back to work,” she said.
    “What work is that?” asked Dr. Meyer.
    “My novel.”
    “A writer,” said Dr. Squires. “Like your husband.”
    “No. He’s more like me than I’m like him.”
    I smiled at her confidence.
    “It’s wonderful to have two talents in the family,” said Dr. Squires.
    “Yes,” said Zelda. “But I don’t know how Scott will write with me locked up.”
    “Why is that?” asked Dr. Meyer.
    She spun toward him, piercing him with her glare, at oncefierce, vulnerable, proud, and angry. Her emotions were like a jewel whose facets caught the light in succession.
    “I am his words.”
    As if to punctuate her declaration, the clock struck the hour and she stormed out of the room.

    H er pen did not leave the page for two hours after her therapy session. Every time I checked in on her she was scribbling, the stack of papers accumulating like winter snow on top of her bedside table. After my morning rounds I was able to sit with her while she wrote, trying to pick up some of her mumblings, but none of it made any sense to me. She told me, however, that I was a comfort to her, so I was glad to sit with her and catch the intermittent smiles and offhand comments she’d throw me. In truth, her attention felt like the sun coming out from behind the clouds, for it revealed in brief flashes the woman she was before all of the hurt and pain and illness blotted her out.
    Lunchtime was approaching, and I wanted to warn her to give her some time to transition from the state she was in. I cleared my throat and reminded her of the schedule, anticipating that she would ignore me as she had during the last hour whenever I asked whether she needed anything. I was surprised when she dropped her pen and stretched her hands.
    “A good stopping place,” she said.
    Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes glassy, as if her writing had induced a creative fever.
    “You look well,” I said. “Your memories become you.”
    Her smile was luminous.
    “That night at the Champs-Élysées theater,” she said, “Josephine Baker arrived onstage wearing nothing but a skirt, breasts bare like ripe, caramel-covered apples, and we all were mesmerized by the beautiful grotesquerie of it.”
    “I’m afraid it would’ve caused me to blush,” I said, feeling heat in my cheeks at the mere thought of it.
    “We were too tight from the champagne cocktails to feel the burn of the blush,” she said. “That time in Paris in the twenties was the edge of when it all turned.”
    I felt suddenly alert. She was beginning her remembrances. I didn’t want to lead her at all, so I remained quiet and attempted to mute my expression. Perhaps if I could just blend into the walls she’d speak as if she were alone.
    “Those were the days we ran