Free Call Me Zelda by Erika Robuck Page A

strange to be told I was a quiet enough personality to almost not exist. I wanted to defend myself.
    “I took up more space before the war,” I said.
    She turned and faced me and patted the bed as an invitation to sit down.
    My psychiatric nurses’ training came back to me, cautioning me to keep boundaries with my patient, but it felt so good to talk to her. As so-called mental nurses, we were encouraged to share a little of ourselves to inspire trust, but not to ever give our problems to our patients. I was sure I wouldn’t give her my past pain, since I couldn’t even face it directly myself. I would just tell her the good parts that wanted remembering.
    “Who was Anna before the war?” she asked.
    “I was musical, adventurous, passionate.” I leaned into her and widened my eyes. She whistled long and low.
    “Tell me about your boys,” she said. “Did you have dozens of suitors or one smooth, handsome man who stole all of your interests?”
    “One dark, handsome soldier. He had very expressive brown eyes and a full mouth. He was tall.”
    “Is that how he kept your interest? Those eyes? That mouth?”
    “Those hands, that kiss,” I said.
    She “oohed” and leaned back with a deep, throaty laugh.
    “My God, I wish he’d come to Montgomery,” she said. “The officers there were a dime a dozen. They stood in a neat line waiting for my attention. I kissed them all, and right in front of the others.”
    “Until that one,” I said.
    The smile left her face, and I regretted the reference to Scott. She became unreadable, but her eyes and mouth began working in response to a memory, an emotion she could not pin down. I saw a flash of anger, a softening, then exhaustion that made her eyes heavy and moist.
    Since there was no going back, I pressed on. “I read your paper.” I held it out to her and she snatched it away, reading over it as if she’d never seen it before. Her features softened again and she pressed it to her chest when she finished.
    “If I could just put that night and a couple others on a recordand play them over and over again,” she said, “everything would be okay.”
    “You started well,” I said. “The beautiful young debutante. The handsome soldier. You understood each other immediately.”
    “Immediately,” she echoed. “It’s almost as if we share a mind or a soul, except there’s not room for both of us. We’re forever nudging each other out of the space allotted to us and it wears us out.”
    “And when did you show him your diaries?”
    “He saw them early on, I think,” she said. “Listen, I was a narcissistic girl. If he wanted to read my diary it was fine, because it was about me. And he seemed enthralled by my words. Imagine, a writer being enthralled with the words in my diaries.”
    “Did you give them to him?”
    “Yes, no, I don’t know.” She was quiet for a moment. “I think I first showed him the diaries to make him jealous. If he saw all the dance cards and soldiers’ photos, letters, and mementos, he’d see how desired I was, and it would make him want me more.”
    “Did you quarrel often?”
    “Oh, yes,” she said. “Big, messy, bawling quarrels in the parlor, with my father asking him to leave and my mother sighing on the stairs. We were always making a scene. Still are, I guess.”
    “Were there ever quiet moments?” I asked. “Sipping lemonade on a porch, taking a walk on a lane, sitting together in silence?”
    “Yes,” she said. “The night was a great friend of ours. In bed. Not in the way you think, but in the quiet dark where we could curl around each other in a drowsy embrace and let our words and thoughts and breath mingle. I’d put the night on that repeating record of mine.”
    She laid the papers in her lap for a moment as we allowed herwords to sit in our thoughts. I wanted Scott to hear her say this. These were words that could restore a marriage: sweet balm and remembrance to help them reclaim what they had lost. I