Call Me Zelda

by Erika Robuck

Genres: Biographical; Historical Fiction; Literary Fiction

Synopsis

From New York to Paris, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald reigned as king and queen of the Jazz Age, seeming to float on champagne bubbles above the mundane cares of the world. But to those who truly knew them, the endless parties were only a distraction from their inner turmoil and from a love that united them with a scorching intensity.



When Zelda is committed to a Baltimore psychiatric clinic in 1932, vacillating between lucidity and madness in her struggle to forge an identity separate from her husband, the famous writer, she finds a sympathetic friend in her nurse, Anna Howard. Held captive by her own tragic past, Anna is increasingly drawn into the Fitzgeralds' tumultuous relationship. As she becomes privy to Zelda's most intimate confessions, written in a secret memoir meant only for her, Anna begins to wonder which Fitzgerald is the true genius. But in taking ever greater emotional risks to save Zelda, Anna may end up paying a far higher price than she intended.

Release date: May 7, 2013

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 352

Sample

Praise for
CALL ME ZELDA

“You thought you knew everything about the Fitzgeralds, their drama, delight, dazzle, and despair? This gem of a novel spins a different, touching story, drawing you right into their intimacy and fragility through the eyes of Zelda’s caring nurse, Anna. You will love it, as I absolutely did.”

—Tatiana de Rosnay, New York Times bestselling author of
Sarah’s Key and The House I Loved

“A Jamesian sense of the uncanny haunts Erika Robuck’s poignant, compassionate portrait of Zelda Fitzgerald’s desperate dance with mental illness. Call Me Zelda is mesmerizing, page-turning, and provides us with a fresh, very human look at two literary icons.”

—Maryanne O’Hara, author of Cascade

“In this richly imagined story, Erika Robuck has captured the creative brilliance and madness of Zelda Fitzgerald. Told through the eyes of a compassionate psychiatric nurse, Call Me Zelda is an unsettling yet tender portrayal of two women inextricably bound by hope and tragedy.”

—Beth Hoffman, New York Times bestselling author of
Saving CeeCee Honeycutt and Looking for Me

“In this haunting and beautifully atmospheric novel, Erika Robuck pulls back the curtain on the Jazz Age’s most shining couple and offers up a sobering account of the casualties of genius and celebrity. She brilliantly brings Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald to life in all their doomed beauty, with compelling and unforgettable results.”

—Alex George, author of A Good American

“Set in the hazy hangover of the Jazz Age, Call Me Zelda intertwines the stories of the quietly grieving psychiatric nurse Anna with the postglitterati relationship of F. Scott Fitzgerald and his vibrant, disturbed wife, Zelda. Robuck writes with an open and sympathetic heart about the dark side of the psyche and how friendship and healing are found in the unlikeliest ways. I was utterly absorbed and eager to return to the story. This is going on my reread shelf.”

—Margaret Dilloway, author of The Care and
Handling of Roses with Thorns

Praise for
HEMINGWAY’S GIRL

“Robuck’s breathtaking alchemy is to put us inside the world of Hemingway and his wife Pauline, and add a bold young woman to the mix with a story uniquely her own. Dazzlingly written and impossibly moving, this novel is a supernova.”

—Caroline Leavitt, New York Times bestselling
author of Pictures of You

“Robuck drops the fictional nineteen-year-old Mariella Bennet into the life of Ernest Hemingway in her richly realized newest…. Robuck brings Key West to life, and her Hemingway is fully fleshed out and believable, as are Mariella and others. Readers will delight in the complex relationships and vivid setting.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Writing in clear and supple prose, Erika Robuck evokes a setting of the greatest fascination—Hemingway’s household in Key West in the 1930s, where we see her captivating heroine growing in insight and beginning to learn about love. This is assured and richly enjoyable storytelling.”

—Margaret Leroy, author of The Soldier’s Wife

“Hired as a maid in the Hemingway household, Mariella learns to navigate the complicated allure of his interest while maintaining her own fierce heart. She weathers many storms with feisty strength and a memorable clarity, coming to recognize the many faces of true love.”

—Booklist

“Robuck pens a love letter to all of us who ache to have more Hemingway. Set against the enchanting, tempestuous landscape of Key West in the 1930s, Hemingway’s Girl imagines the powerful and resilient women behind the mythical man. An inspiring story of heartache and renewal. Readers will be sure to enjoy this ode to a literary icon.”

—Sarah McCoy, author of The Baker’s Daughter
and The Time It Snowed in Puerto Rico

“Historical novels rise or fall on how believably they portray their eras and the characters who populate them. Ernest Hemingway comes to life in Hemingway’s Girl, but he meets his match in Mariella, a tough, smart nineteen-year-old making her way in a vividly realized Key West. Erika Robuck’s novel is colorful, atmospheric, and a pleasure to plunge into.”

—Joseph Wallace, author of Diamond Ruby

“Even if you aren’t a Hemingway aficionado, you’ll love this robust, tender story of love, grief, and survival on Key West in the 1930s. And Hemingway fans should agree that because of its strong heroine and writing, Hemingway’s Girl is a novel of which Papa himself would approve. Addictive.”

—Jenna Blum, New York Times bestselling author
of Those Who Save Us and The Stormchasers

“I read Hemingway’s Girl in a single sitting—I couldn’t put it down. I fell in love with Robuck’s Hemingway and with the fiery Mariella Bennet, but what I loved most was the novel’s message: that we can inspire each other to be better human beings.”

—Ann Napolitano, author of A Good Hard Look

“Erika Robuck brings to vivid life the captivating and volatile world of a literary legend. Like a Key West hurricane, Hemingway’s Girl gains power and momentum, destroying much in its path, and reminds the reader of the strength found in healing. Fans of Ernest Hemingway will devour this book!”

—Kristina McMorris, author of Letters from Home
and Bridge of Scarlet Leaves

“Fans of Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife will adore Erika Robuck’s spellbinding tale of Hemingway and the fiercely independent Cuban girl he befriends in 1930s Key West. Robuck is a gifted storyteller, and in Hemingway’s Girl, she brings the literary legend to life: his passions for boxing and fishing, the tumult of his second marriage, his curious tenderness toward Mariella, whose beauty he is enthralled by and whose grit he admires. Evocative and taut, Hemingway’s Girl is an irresistible, exhilarating story of love and adventure, impossible to put down.”

—Dawn Tripp, bestselling author of Game of Secrets

OTHER NOVELS BY ERIKA ROBUCK

Hemingway’s Girl

Receive Me Falling

ERIKA ROBUCK

Table of Contents

“Ah! How rapidly descending,
Falls the avalanche of fate!”

—Tobia Gorrio, La Gioconda

ONE

February 1932, Phipps Psychiatric Clinic

Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore, Maryland

The ward was never the same after that February afternoon when Zelda Fitzgerald stumbled into the psychiatric clinic with a stack of papers clutched to her chest, eyes darting this way and that, at once pushing from and pulling toward her husband like a spinning magnet.

I opened my arms to her. She would not look at me, her nurse, or allow me to touch her, but walked next to me down the hallway to her room. We left Mr. Fitzgerald at the desk preparing to meet with the resident in charge of his wife’s case, when Mrs. Fitzgerald suddenly stopped and ran back to him, nearly knocking him over with her force. Her husband wrapped his arms around her and kissed her hair with an intensity that filled me with longing and squeezed my heart. They both began to cry like two lost, scared children. They were not what I expected in any way.

As quickly as she’d run to him, she pulled herself out of his arms and came back to me. It was then that I met his gaze—ice-green eyes underlined by dark circles, his hair and clothing a rumpled mess. I was overtaken by a sense of pity for the two of them and thought that he too might benefit from a stay with us.

“On my left, my left,” said Mrs. Fitzgerald.

“Pardon me?” I asked her.

“You must walk on my left. I can’t see out of the right eye.”

I knew the doctor’s notes said she claimed to have blindness in her right eye, so I obeyed her wishes as we walked down the hall. I noticed a red rash creeping up her neck that she scratched with her jagged nails. By the time we reached the room, she’d succeeded in making her neck bleed.

As soon as we arrived, she collapsed onto the bed, still clutching her papers as if they were a precious infant. She cried in a low moan. An orderly carried in her bags and placed them on the shiny floor next to the door.

“Mrs. Fitzgerald, I’ll need to look you over for admission,” I said. “Is it okay with you if I take your blood pressure and listen to your heart?”

“My heart,” she whispered. “My poor broken heart.”

I walked to her and gently pulled her to a sitting position.

“May I place your papers on the bedside table?” I asked.

She looked at me with fear in her eyes, and then out the door.

“Don’t show him. He can’t see it,” she said.

I wondered who she was afraid would see the papers. Was she referring to her husband? If so, why was she simultaneously distressed at being separated from him, but emphatic that he not see what she clutched in her hands?

“If you’d like to keep the papers with you,” I said, “I can work around them.”

She nodded with some reluctance and put the papers on her lap. I glanced down and saw pages of what must have been her handwriting, surprisingly straight but with the loops and embellishments of a young girl. I was curious about their contents but didn’t want to press her, especially since she began to wheeze.

“I have asthma,” she said while she gasped.

There was a note in the file about asthma, but here, watching her, I thought it more likely that she had panic-induced breathlessness. Her heart rate was elevated and her blood pressure high.

“There, there,” I said. “You are in a state. Let’s try to get you calm.”

The place on her neck that she’d scratched needed attention, so once she seemed more settled, I stepped away to fetch some antiseptic and a bandage. When I returned, she still sat on the bed, clutching her papers, crying out every now and then in anguish. I cleaned her wound, but she soon began to recoil from my touch and questions as if they were flames licking at her face.

I watched her eyes glass over and she entered into the catatonic state sometimes present with schizophrenic patients. She looked through me with her large gray eyes in the most unsettling way, and I had the distinct feeling of having encountered such eyes before, but could not place them. Her limbs were stiff, but I helped her to lie on the bed and moved the papers close to her heart. I covered her with a blanket, drew the curtains, and locked her in the room.

As I left her, dread pushed down through my shoulders and into my chest. It was as if someone closed a fist around my lungs, and sweat beaded along my brow. I stopped and leaned against the door to catch my breath, wondering whether I was suddenly becoming ill, when it hit me: Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes were like my own, reflected in the mirror across from my bed years ago, after the war and my great losses.

Memories of my husband and daughter roared up like waves in my ears, along with the crippling sensation that accompanied the remembrance of their absence. I could not think of them here in this place, so I wished them away and they retreated.

Later. Later.

Mrs. Fitzgerald’s eyes, however, would not leave my mind. I had no idea what those haunting eyes would lead me to do. If I’d known then, I don’t think I would have become as involved as I did.

No, I still would have.

Mr. Fitzgerald’s strain was palpable in the room.

We sat near Dr. Meyer’s desk in his warm study—young resident Dr. Mildred Squires, Scott Fitzgerald, and I. We let Mr. Fitzgerald talk while we took notes, each of us judging him in spite of ourselves, and trying to understand his broken wife.

It was clear that Mr. Fitzgerald was near a breaking point himself. His hands shook and he chain-smoked. He often stood to pace the room while he gathered his thoughts. Then he would sit abruptly, cough, and continue. I listened to him with great interest, for he spoke like a storyteller.

“She was born and raised a free and indulged child in Montgomery, Alabama,” he began. “Her mother allowed her at the breast until she was four years old and never told her no. Her father was a stoic and admired judge.”

“Was her relationship with her father difficult?” asked Dr. Meyer, a stern, spectacled German in charge of the Phipps Clinic.

“Yes, I’d say so,” said Mr. Fitzgerald. “Judge Sayre was a practical sort of old Southern gentleman. He didn’t understand his daughter.”

“But Mrs. Sayre did?” asked Dr. Squires.

“I don’t think she understood Zelda, either,” said Scott. “She encouraged her, especially as a wild debutante.”

He stood again, walked to the window, and lit a new cigarette. His nervous energy disturbed all of us. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught the usually steady and solid Dr. Meyer squirming in his chair.

“Zelda is strong willed and stubborn. Hates taking instruction,” continued Fitzgerald.

“I know she was previously at Malmaison and Valmont clinics in Switzerland and diagnosed as schizophrenic,” said Dr. Meyer. “What precipitated her first collapse?”

“There was a”—he faltered a moment—“relationship of mine with a young actress when we were in Hollywood in ’twenty-six or ’twenty-seven that affected her. Entirely chaste, mind you, but Zelda wouldn’t hear otherwise. This was following a relationship Zelda had with a Frenchman. Then there was her suicidal practice of ballet. She’d dance six, even eight hours a day until her feet bled and there were pools of sweat on the floor. That’s the pattern, you know. She gets manic about some form of art, becomes closed off from me, aggravates her asthma and eczema, then breaks down.”

I was fascinated by his justification of his affair and her behavior patterns. Was either of them unfaithful? Was Zelda punishing herself through art or trying to find herself? My thoughts again returned to the stack of papers she’d guarded so closely.

“What are the papers she brought?” I asked.

His laugh was bitter. “Her latest obsession: a novel. She thinks she will outdo me.”

His pretension could not hide that he felt threatened by her. Did he wish to be the only one in their marriage with any accomplishment? Did he undermine her attempts at expression? Or perhaps she antagonized him.

“Once she gets an idea in her head she won’t change it for a stack of Lincolns,” he said. “Do you know she thinks I dallied with Ernest Hemingway?”

We all looked up from our notepads.

“I did not, of course, but she’s convinced.”

His weary tone caused me to believe him, though I wondered what made her make such an assumption. I began to pity him again.

He returned to his chair and asked for a glass of water. His skin was pale, and sweat formed along his upper lip. I poured him some water from a pitcher on Meyer’s side table, and Fitzgerald met my eyes directly when he thanked me.

“That is enough for today,” said Dr. Meyer. “It’s clear that you both need rest. Will you be staying in Baltimore long?”

“No, I’ll return to Montgomery tomorrow. My daughter, Scottie, needs me. I don’t want to uproot her again. Not yet, anyway.”

I knew in some vague way that they had a ten-year-old child. The fact was in a file somewhere in black and white, and at the time I’d read it, I did not internalize that information. Now, however, seeing the emotional state of the two of them, my heart went out to the young girl. How did she manage with parents like these? Inevitably, I thought of my own daughter, Katie, and that she would have been thirteen this year. Just a bit older than Scottie.

Suddenly the room seemed very small and full of people. Mr. Fitzgerald’s wool coat on the chair next to me scratched my arm, and the pungent aroma of his cigarettes made me nauseous. The clock on the wall behind Meyer’s desk showed two o’clock. I still had three hours in my shift.

I had to get out of the room.

I stood and placed my notebook on the desk. The others stood around me. The meeting was over. There was a shaking of hands, discussion of a call, and an exchange of addresses. Mr. Fitzgerald picked up his coat and again looked into my eyes.

“You’ll take good care of her,” he said. It was not a question, but a reassurance to himself.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “The very best care.”

His face relaxed and he even smiled. I saw a hint of what he must have been in his younger days. He kept his gaze on mine and reached for my hands.

“Thank you,” he said.

With that, he was gone.

I walked out after him and watched him move down the hall and out the doors. The afternoon slipped in for a moment, then was shut out. Everything in the ward seemed different now, and I no longer felt its calming presence. The Fitzgeralds stirred something in me that had been dormant for a long time, and I was not prepared to face it.

An hour later, I returned to Mrs. Fitzgerald to reassess her vitals and begin a relationship with her. It was Dr. Meyer’s philosophy that people with mental illness needed a comforting place of physical and emotional calm to work out their disturbances. He was revolutionary in the practice at a time when sanitariums often involved starched areas of decay and neglect, overcrowded dormitories polluted with the noise of people with not only mental illness, but all forms of physical handicaps, sexually transmitted diseases, or simple homelessness.

But this was not a public institution. It was an expensive private clinic connected to a research hospital, for those with the means to afford it. The wall hangings and tapestries were warmly colored and calming. There were moldings, chandeliers, and various rooms of amusement for billiards or bridge. It had the look of a posh hotel, and I’d felt an enormous sense of relief since I’d begun working here, years ago. The schedule and routine framed my existence in small, manageable blocks the way Walter Reed General Hospital had done at the start of the war, and the clean, muted environment soothed me.

Until today.

With Mr. Fitzgerald gone, at least the air seemed lighter. Mrs. Fitzgerald was standing at the window when I knocked and opened the door. Her bags were open and she looked as if she’d brushed her hair and washed her face. She continued to hold the papers.

“White February, with the crispness of a paper envelope,” she said in her graceful Southern drawl, nodding to the snow-sprinkled garden outside her window. “Sugarplum fairies were playing in the bushes there, but your knock scared them off.”

She gave me the smile one would give a child. I returned it, relieved to see her lightness and feel my own.

“It’s the white uniform,” I said. “Intimidating.”

Mrs. Fitzgerald’s smile touched her eyes, and she regarded me warmly, seemingly happy that I played along. This was a very good sign and one I’d not expected.

“He’s gone,” she said. “My husband?”

“Yes, Mrs. Fitzgerald, he left to tend to your daughter.”

“But he can’t really leave if we don’t drop his name, can we?” she said. “Call me Zelda.”

Her gentle voice, which had been so light just moments before, grew as sharp as an icicle. I’d meant to address her formally and as a lady of some position, but she clearly resented the shadow his name cast.

“I’d be glad to call you Zelda,” I said. “I’m glad we can cut the pretense. I’m Anna, and I’ll be your nurse while you stay with us.”

“‘Had I on earth but wishes three, the first should be my Anna,’” said Zelda. “Robert Burns. The poetry of ballet is something to consider but seems so far from this cold, weary desert.”

Her thoughts flitted through her mind and out of her lips in a tumble I had trouble following, though her words suggested her brilliance.

I needed to reassess her vital signs, and she allowed me to lead her back to the bed, but the shift from personal to professional conversation once more set the emotional barrier between us. She wouldn’t look me in the eye, but kept her gaze fixed at the window.

I slid her blouse open to listen to her heart and noted her prominent collarbones and the eczema that continued to splotch her skin. She suddenly grimaced, then broke into an enormous smile. I couldn’t help but look over my shoulder at what she saw, but was greeted with only the window. Her face must have been reacting to a film of memories I could not yet access.

“Your blood pressure is much improved, as is your pulse,” I said.

She blinked and directed her large eyes at me, again unnerving me. She slid her gaze over my face and down my arms to my hands, where it lingered there a bit.

“Long, graceful fingers with short blunt nails,” she said. “The hands of a piano player. Chopin, Debussy, Beethoven.”

Patients rarely noticed me so closely, and commented on me even less, so her scrutiny felt strange, though not unpleasant.

“I do play a bit. I used to a lot,” I said, allowing my thoughts of Ben to hover at the edges of my consciousness, teasing me. I had a sudden memory of him behind me as I played, his fingers along my collarbone, his arms lifting me off the bench, my hands in his hair—

I snapped the memory shut, but a faint heat remained in my neck. She saw the flush, stood abruptly, and walked back to the window, again recoiling from me.

I was astonished by the height of her perception. It was clear that she read others well—maybe too well. Dr. Meyer would not be pleased. He often spoke to us about the emotional sensitivity of his patients to the feelings of others. I had never seen anything to this degree, though.

“Dinner will be served in the dining room at five thirty,” I said. “Your evening nurse will arrive at five o’clock to introduce herself and escort you there. Tonight you may rest and read if you’d like. Tomorrow we’ll begin counseling with Dr. Meyer and Dr. Squires. Do you have any questions for me before I leave?”

She looked at me and shook her head in the negative.

“Then good evening, Zelda,” I said. “I’m glad to meet you, and I look forward to working with you.”

She continued to stare at me and it was difficult to remove myself from her gaze, but I managed a nod and turned to leave the room.

“Play again,” she said.

I turned back to her. “Pardon me?”

“The piano. You should play again.”

I forced a smile.

“Good advice,” I said. “Thank you.”

She turned back to the window, and I locked her in on my way out.

It was waiting for me when I pushed open the door to my apartment. The piano, that is. Stiff, upright, accusing.

A neglected wife, I thought.

Where have you been? it said with its posture.

My fingers longed to touch its keys, but sound is memory, so I resisted the urge. I was of no mind to raise old ghosts.

I closed the door behind me and placed my bag on the table next to the door. I could hear pats and thumps from the girls above me, two ballerinas from the Peabody Institute. The muffled melancholy of an opera singer conjured by the point of a needle on a gramophone competed with the scrape of strings on a violin in the apartment below me, where an intense Romanian musician lived.

I had fallen in love with the building in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon neighborhood on a walk after my shift at the hospital years ago, when my mother had encouraged me to find a place of my own. Its rounded, swirled, and layered woodwork, chimneys, and impressive leaded windows gave it the appearance of a Victorian dollhouse. The little colony of artists felt safe, though I did feel a bit out of place. When I had asked the landlord whether he was sure a psychiatric nurse fit in with dancers and musicians, he laughed and said I couldn’t be a more welcome addition.

When he’d shown me the room, the piano was the only thing in it. It was covered with a sheet, but its presence was heavy. I flinched when I saw it. He must have seen, because he said, “We can have it moved if you’d like. It’s been in the house forever, though. The last one who lived here was a painter, so it never got used beyond being a prop for canvases.”

“I do play,” I’d said.

“See, you’re a good fit,” he had said. “These rooms were waiting for you.”

I thought of this as I stood by the window and stared outside. Winter’s dark muted the city and left me feeling tired to my bones. Hoping to ward off any illness that might be trying to nestle into my body, I had a bowl of chicken soup for dinner and retired early.

Sleep had long been an antagonist that thrilled as well as tormented me, so I fell into it easily, the way one would opium. The dreams were getting further apart until entire months went by without Ben or Katie in any of them, but I knew from my experiences with the Fitzgeralds that day and the emotions they’d stirred in me that someone from my past would be waiting in my dreams.

It was Ben.

It was the day at the train station when he had to return to the front. Emotion had rendered me speechless all morning. Ben’s eyes were dark and heavily lashed, and his newly shorn brown hair made him look so young. He brushed a tear away gruffly with the back of his hand.

“I’m not doing this to you,” he said. “I have to do it for them.”

This stirred me enough to shake loose the hold on my throat.

“For whom?” I said. “To them you’re just a speck on a map. A number. To me…” I wouldn’t continue. I couldn’t say it any more.

“If I didn’t go back, I couldn’t live with myself—not with all of them fighting. I have to go back.”

I looked down the platform at the women and men kissing and embracing one another. I saw a man nearby chuck his little son under his chin. He saluted the boy, who saluted back. A brave little soldier for his mother, who struggled with an infant on her hip.

Ben’s eyes followed mine down the platform and rested on the family. We looked back at each other and at once, I understood. I finally allowed myself to hug him.

He felt so warm in his uniform. I buried myself in his neck, clean and shaved. It would soon be covered in grime and stubble. I wanted to press myself into him so I could go with him, but the departure whistle blew, and I pulled away.

“I’ll be back,” he said.

“I’ll be waiting.”

He stepped up into the train and slid into the seat nearest the window. Our lips formed I love you at the same moment. This made us smile. He put his hand on the glass.

Then the bomb slid through the air with a scream, destroying the train and everyone before me in a ball of fire and smoke.

I woke up, sweating, with my heart hammering in my chest.

I hadn’t had the dream in so long, and it took me some time to recover, to tell myself that he didn’t get blown up at the train station, to allow the little bird of hope, which had weakened through the years, to continue to flutter in my heart that he might still come back to me the way my daughter never could.

TWO

“I can’t continue with Mrs. Fitzgerald,” I said. Zelda had been in my care for only two weeks and already I could see that I needed to be shaken free from her.

Dr. Meyer regarded me with a sharp eye. When he looked at me I could feel him assessing all the time. I closed my mind and emotions to him as much as possible, willing a sturdy wall of confidence. He mustn’t see my unease. He allowed only those with the strongest, steadiest mental health to work in his ward, and I couldn’t bear to lose my place there.

“Might I ask why that is your opinion?” he said.

I faltered a little. I couldn’