The Women: A Novel Part 11

They were in Chicago at the time, he on his business, she doing a bit of shopping, hoping to find something suitable for winter in this last dreary outpost of civilization, which was, at least, preferable to the sheer barbarism of rural Wisconsin, Spring Green, for G.o.d's sake-and no, she wouldn't go to see Norma, not on her life, because Norma was now apparently the moral guardian of the state of Illinois, excoriating her mother both by mail and over the telephone wires for living openly with a married man, as if such a child chained to such a joyless belittling marriage with a man who was her inferior in every regard could know anything about pa.s.sion and the higher life of the mind. She'd just come back to the hotel after stops at the milliner, her tailor and half a dozen of the less absurd shops that nonetheless featured things they were wearing in Paris two years ago, when there was a knock at the door. It was Leora.109 Looking flushed. "I must have missed you-I don't know how, I've been waiting in the lobby for hours . . ."

"But why? Whatever's the matter?"

She could only sigh and draw her face down, throwing a quick glance up the corridor to where two men in bright ties, their voices jocularly entwined, were just stepping into the elevator, before she ducked through the door and fell into the nearest chair as if she'd been stricken on the spot. "He's not here, is he?" she whispered, puckering her lips in a show of concern, her eyes jumping to the bedroom door and back again.

"Who? Frank?"

"He's not, is he?"

"Why, no-he's at the office. Working. You know that-he works all the time, works like a stoker, day and night, the vigor of the man"-and here she had to smile a not-so-private smile because she'd already informed Leora, in some detail, about their nights together.

"Have you a cigarette?"

Without answering, she went to where her purse lay open on the table by the window, extracted her cigarette case with an absent glance at the mosaic of sun-splashed roofs below her and the great blue void of the lake beyond, and came back across the room with her hand extended, thinking of the hats she'd bought-and the shoes-and thinking she might model them for Leora, because she respected her opinion, though if truth be told Leora was hardly original in her dress. In the next moment, she'd lit Leora's cigarette and one of her own-Frank be d.a.m.ned: she'd smoke if she pleased, anytime, anywhere-and settled into the armchair beside Leora's. "So," she said, exhaling a rich blue cloud of Turkish tobacco, "what is all this about Frank? Something in the papers?"

"It's that maid," Leora said, her voice a whisper still, as if she were afraid someone might overhear her, though Frank was gone and the walls were as reasonably thick as one could expect from an American hotel. "Mrs. Breen?"

"Yes? What about her?"

"It seems she's got hold of some letters, letters you wrote to Frank when you were separated? And gone to the press with them."

"But how would she-?" The answer came to her before the question was out of her mouth-and, of course, she was thinking aloud in any case-the hateful pinched face of the puffed-up little woman invading her mind's eye even as she saw her rifling Frank's drawers under the pretext of dusting or mopping or whatever it was she did at Taliesin when she wasn't presiding over her reeking pots of greasy bland overcooked victuals. But the treachery of the woman-and how could Frank a.s.sociate himself with people like that? Defend them, even? Mother Breen, he called her, and before she'd laid down the law for him he'd actually praised the woman for her efficiency and, astonishingly, her cuisine.

"I've got the clippings here for you, in the event you hadn't seen the papers." Leora, head bent beneath the stiff shelf of her hat, was digging through her purse. "Here they are," she said, handing her a neatly folded section of the morning paper and then focusing her big blinking eyes on her as if she expected her to collapse under the weight of a few lines of newsprint. "She's accusing Frank under the Mann Act.110 And reporting you as an undesirable alien, if you can believe the nerve of this woman-the newspaper says they want to deport you."

The fact was, she couldn't really make out much more than the headlines-NEW SCANDAL AT WRIGHT LOVE BUNGALOW-without her spectacles, but before she could rise from the chair to go search them out, she heard herself say, "Deport me? But my pa.s.sport states quite clearly that I'm an American citizen. It's ridiculous. I might have got the thing at the consulate in France, but . . . you know I'm an American. Everybody does. What in G.o.d's name are they talking about, deport me?"111 Leora's voice went cold. "Frankly, Miriam, I don't know. But they're dragging your name through the mud. And your reputation too." She cleared her throat, tapped the ash from her cigarette and reached for the clipping. "They're saying that you and Frank-they call you 'the noted sculptress from Paris,' by the way-have been cohabiting at his 'love bungalow' in defiance of any conventional notions of morality and that Mrs. Breen felt she had to come forward as a matter of conscience. She's quite devout, it appears. Roman Catholic-the worst, the very worst. And she said-" Leora hesitated. Blinked her eyes. Blinked till Miriam thought she must have developed some sort of tic like the dropsical old man who used to sit all day at La Rotonde, contorting his face and spitting into a handkerchief, and who was very likely dead by now, dead of blinking and quivering and spitting. Or maybe exasperation. Maybe that was what killed him.

She could feel the metallic burn of outrage in the back of her throat, though she was elated too-the noted sculptress!-and she rose up out of the chair in a shiver of antic.i.p.ation and hate. "Said what?"

"Well"-another flurry of blinking-"that she felt she had to come forward because of the children."

"Children? What children?"

"Frank's children. She says they were there."

"Frank's children?" It took her a moment. A series of images ran through her head-Thomas in diapers, the girls nattering over their dolls, their hair in ringlets and their dresses spread out round them like parachutes fallen to earth, the glittering black eyes of a random infant in a perambulator, tiny immaculate fingers and toes, pink skin in a bubble bath-but none of them seemed to have anything to do with Frank. Children? Frank didn't have any children.

"That's what it says."

"But they're grown. They're adults. Two of them are married, for G.o.d's sake. And the youngest-he must be twelve or thirteen, at any rate-went back off to school the week I got there. In Chicago. Or Oak Park-at his mother's."

Leora gave an elaborate shrug. "You know that. I know it. But they're still his children."

Frank's response was to pack her into the car that very night and drive up to Wisconsin as if they were fugitives. The following day-it was early November now, the fields frost-burned, the windows aching with the cold-he gave a statement to the press denying everything. His attachment to Madame Noel, he said, was purely spiritual and to think of conducting a love affair under the eyes of his mother-who had been living at Taliesin for some months now-was preposterous. Madame Noel was a brilliant and highly sensitive soul who could only find solace in the company of her fellow artists and who was, accordingly, a member of the Taliesin atelier that included himself and a number of architects, draftsmen and artisans. Further, he and his attorney, Mr. Clarence Darrow, were looking into prosecuting Mrs. Breen-an embittered, discharged domestic who had written several letters threatening both Mr. Wright and Madame Noel-for the theft of his private property and misuse of the mails.

When the reporters had left, he sent his draftsmen out into the fields on the pretext of repairing the fences or raking up the stubble or some such thing and took her into the studio. "Miriam, I really do regret all this publicity," he said, sliding into the seat behind his desk as if he were easing into a bath. "It's the last thing we need, especially after-" he made a vague gesture. "And I'm sorry you've been dragged into it. But please, sit down, sit down, make yourself comfortable."

"No, I won't sit, Frank." She was irritated on a number of counts, not the least of which was having to cut short their Chicago sojourn in order to eat flapjacks and freeze her marrow out here in the dismal dull cloud-hung barn-stinking hind-end of nowhere. "And I won't hide myself away out of sight as if I have something to be ashamed of. I'm not ashamed of our love, Frank-are you?"

He picked up his spectacles and fiddled with them a moment before clamping them over the bridge of his nose as if to examine her more closely.112 He looked like a bank examiner, a livestock appraiser, his eyes distorted and rinsed of color. "Of course not, but that's not at issue, not at all."

She cut him off. "What is, then?"

"I simply cannot afford-and you know this as well as anyone, Miriam-another blowup. In this neighborhood especially, not after what happened here summer before last-"

"The dead woman again. It always comes down to her, doesn't it, Frank? Well, I tell you, I am not going to hide myself away. I'm going to proclaim the truth of what we are and I don't give two figs for what anybody thinks. Including you."

"d.a.m.n it, Miriam!" He stood so abruptly the chair pitched over behind him. In his excitement he began waving his arms as if he were trying to shoo a cow out of the garden and the gesture froze her inside. She wouldn't be intimidated. She wouldn't. "You don't understand. You talk about-"

"I love you, Frank."

"-love, yes, love, but that's not what this concerns. This concerns scandal, Miriam, the kind of scandal that will destroy all the goodwill I've patiently built up among my neighbors here . . ."

She held herself perfectly rigid. "That's the only truth, Frank. That's all anyone needs to know."

"No, Miriam, no, it's not. They're going to publish the letters and Clarence says it's too late to stop them."

The letters. To b.l.o.o.d.y h.e.l.l with the letters. She never flinched. Never took her eyes from his. "Good," she spat. "Let them. Let the whole world know what I feel for you. Let them see what a true and good and n.o.ble love is, a love for the ages, a love that shines like the brightest star in the firmament."

And then (was she catching cold?) she brought her handkerchief to her face to dab at her eyes-and let him fume, let him rage at her-and very gently, very softly and delicately, blew her nose.113

CHAPTER 6: THE SERPENT OF HYPOCRISY.

That night they ate a subdued meal, latterly shot-gunned duck in its own oleaginous juices, with half a dozen insipid side dishes, the only recognizable one of which seemed to be some sort of potato concoction buried in strips of what looked to be roadside weed, prepared by the lumbering swollen wife of one of the workmen and served in uncovered tureens by the graceless little sixteen-year-old. There were just three place settings at the table, which would make this the smallest group she'd presided over since coming to Taliesin. Not that it mattered to her one way or the other, simply that a larger party made for gayer conversation, and gay conversation helped fight down the crushing tedium of the place. Frank's sons had long since returned to their wives, as the major part of the construction was completed now, and the visiting architect and his wife had gone back to Germany-or was it Austria? Paul Mueller was overseeing things in the Chicago offices and Russell Williamson and the other draftsmen had gone off to a concert in Madison. The third setting was for Frank's mother, but Frank's mother was in a funk over the newspaper reports and wouldn't come out of her room.

"Well, I guess it's just the two of us, then," Frank said, lifting his gla.s.s-of plain unadulterated eau de vie-for a toast. "To us," he offered, and she dutifully clinked her gla.s.s against his, making her best effort to hold on to a smile. In her gla.s.s, which she'd seen to personally before Frank came into the room, was a crisp dry Chablis she'd got from her wine merchant in Chicago, the palate and aroma of which momentarily took her back across the Atlantic to the vineyards of Burgundy on a long-ago autumn day when she was newly in love with Rene,114 who'd been so wonderfully kind to her after Emil's death. Until he turned rotten, that is. And unfaithful. Like any man, if you gave him half the chance. The thought soured her and her smile abruptly vanished. She gave him a hard look.

"As I was saying earlier, we can't afford to stir up the press any more than we already have, thanks to Mrs. Breen-and d.a.m.n that woman. I'm sorry to have to say it, but there it is. She's the one at fault, clearly, and these Mann charges will certainly be dismissed as the absurdity they are. What rankles me-no, what infuriates me-is this sordid effort to impeach your character, and it's got to stop." He looked up from his duck, the worry lines lashing at his eyes, and let out a sigh. "Which is why I've asked my mother to stay on. At least until this has blown over."

"It's false, Frank, and you know it."

"False or not, I won't have the press making sport of you-and me. Me, all over again. If I'm to get work, and you know perfectly well how tight things are for me right now, then there simply cannot be any more talk or even the breath of a scandal. G.o.d knows the letters will be embarra.s.sment enough."

She was calm, utterly composed, and she sipped her wine and watched him over the rim of the gla.s.s until he was done. "I want to speak with them," she said, setting the gla.s.s down and taking up knife and fork. The duck lay there before her. She gave it a single glance-folds of luteous fat and dull dun flesh, steam rising, gravy-and laid down the fork, carefully realigning it with the plate, before going on. "I'll explain it all. I tell you: I will not hide."

"You will." His tone was curt and despotic and she didn't like it at all. He might have been speaking to one of his draftsmen over a poorly executed section or a farmhand who'd dared to express an opinion on the application of fertilizer. "You'll stay here at Taliesin, away from the reporters, until I say different. Do you understand me?"

Understand him? He was speaking English, wasn't he? But did he understand her? She didn't like to be dictated to. Emil had tried it and she was just a girl then. He lived to regret it. And Rene too. She lifted the gla.s.s to her lips, let the taste of the cold clear liquid-the taste of France, of civilization-soothe her throat and her nerves and her temper too. She didn't bother to answer.

The next morning they saddled up two of the horses and rode out over the hills together and everything seemed new-made and fine, the air and exercise dispelling the bad odor of the day before. He was a splendid horseman and that made her proud of him all over again. They cantered across the fields, the breeze in their faces, absolutely removed from the world, and they might have been Heathcliff and Catherine pounding over the turf in all the wild excess of their fraught and doomed love. It was bracing. Exhilarating. And when Frank's mother crawled out of her burrow to take luncheon with them she barely minded. The afternoon was pleasant too. She spent most of it reading before the fire while Frank and one of the men went into Madison to run errands, and she was so engaged with her book, so caught up in the momentum of the unfolding story (two men and a woman, the midnight a.s.signation, blood and honor and the fierce crack of the vaquero's lariat as the lovers fled into the fastness of the Argentine night)115 she hardly glanced up when he returned. It took a moment, a minor irritation, his shadow falling across the page as he stood there silently in front of the chair, before she acknowledged him. He was still in his hat and coat. His face was grim. "They've printed the letters," he said, dropping the newspaper in her lap. Then he turned on his heel and stalked out of the room without another word.

Irritated, she tried to read on, but the words began to meld and elongate so that she could make no sense of them, and after a moment she set down the book and took up the paper.

The headline-it exploded across the page, sending sparks and rockets high into the farthest reaches of her scrambled brain-made her catch her breath: "MIRIAM" LETTERS TO WRIGHT RANGE FROM JOY TO DESPAIR. It was like nothing she'd ever experienced. To see her name there, reproduced in canonical ink, was a shock-of course it was-but it was something more too, something indefinable, and even as she glanced over the subt.i.tle (The Shunned Woman: Her Cry, Her Pains) she could feel the glow of it. Suddenly, overnight, in a single stroke, she was famous. Known to thousands, hundreds of thousands. She was Frank Lloyd Wright's love and all the world knew it, shunned no more. She thrilled with the knowledge, every cell and fiber alive with it, and if she was in exile, if the sky outside the window was as dull and dirty and depressing as an old tin pot in the kitchen sink, what did it matter? These were her words, her very words, broadcast to the world!

Of course, as she read on-and she did have a literary gift, a real way with the turn of a phrase, she had to credit herself there-she couldn't help regretting certain small infelicities. Had she really called Frank "a pathetic, bitter, aging man"? Had she actually said "I am going-the 'menace' to your safety no longer exists. Live your life as pitifully as you desire"? Or this: "You do not wish to be POSSESSED (OWNED) by love, by tenderness, kindness, devotion, but you ARE possessed by a tyranny whose sway is disastrous to the happiness of those who love you." The words hardly made sense. And she would have taken them back if she could. But she'd been overwrought at the time, spurned, cast out of the fold, people had to understand that-and the thought of it, of how beastly he'd been, how sharp-tongued and sarcastic and purely petty and mean, made her anger shine out all over again. She read through it all, column after column, weighing each word with a mixture of euphoria and heartache, and then she read it through a second time.

When she was finished she sat a long while staring into the fire, struggling to get hold of her emotions. The initial elation was gone now, replaced by doubt. This wasn't right-it wasn't right at all. The overall impression a casual reader of the Tribune would take away with him would be ungenerous, she could see that now. Instead of a true and n.o.ble cri de coeur from one great and giving soul to another-stars equally aligned and equally potent-these letters, these very private and personal letters, would be seen as the maunderings of a scorned woman, defeated in love, desperate and pitiful. Some people-the mean-spirited ones-might even laugh at them. And if that wasn't bad enough, she'd signed herself "Thine," and even worse, "Love me all you can."

Finally, the windows gone black with the fall of night and the house settling into a quiet that dwindled down to nothing but the tick and crepitus of the fire, she pushed herself up and went looking for Frank. He wasn't in the bedroom and she traced her way back through the loggia to the dining alcove and on to the living room, but she didn't encounter him along the way. There was a smell of cabbage emanating from the kitchen-peasant fare, as poisonous as it was bland-and the cook and serving girl, busying themselves over chopping block and stove respectively, barely glanced up when she peered through the door. No one else seemed to be stirring. And that was odd-or maybe it wasn't. Maybe this was the way it was out here in the country, everyone battened down to survive the interminable winter, all human hopes and joys and aspirations buried under a heap of quilts, to bed at dark and up with the cows. The thought made her seize with anxiety, and where was Frank? Didn't he realize that she needed him, that the letters were all wrong, that she was the one who'd been exposed to public censure and maybe even ridicule-that it was she who bore the burden, not he?

She thought perhaps Frank had gone outside-whenever he was wrought up, no matter the weather, he'd pull on his boots and go tramping round the place, as if he were impervious to heat, cold, rain and snow alike. Frank the farmer, Frank the Welshman, the manure spreader and hog appraiser, a peasant for all his genius. She'd actually stuck her head outside in the intemperate air and bleated his name down the length of the courtyard before she thought of the studio. Which was where she found him, seated at one of the drafting tables beneath the oil portrait of his mother-the sole picture in the room-and the motto he'd affixed to the wall: WHAT A MAN DOES, THAT HE HAS. And what does a man do? she was thinking. Lock up his amante in a dungeon? Silence her? Let the newspapers make a mockery of her spirit, her love, her life? "This won't stand, Frank," she said.

He looked up from what he was doing-his eternal drawing, and he was like a child, exactly like a child, an infant, that was what he was-and gave her a sour look.116 "I know it, Miriam. Believe me, we're doing everything we can to put a stop to it."

"A stop to it? It's too late already, isn't it? Do you know what those letters make me seem like?" He was watching her out of his shrewd little eyes, glaring at her, blaming her. "Like a ruined woman, Frank. Like a fool. A fool for loving you."

And what was his response? The little man, the cold fish who wouldn't even rise from the stool to take her in his arms and swear his love to her, who couldn't take a cue? "I can't help that, Miriam. What's done is done."

She woke next morning to a dull changeless light and a preternatural silence, as if the whole world had lost its hearing. The bed was empty beside her. Beyond the windows, a slant of gray wet snow, and of course there were no curtains to shut it out-Frank didn't believe in curtains-so that the outdoors plunged right into the room. She might as well have been camped in Alaska or some such place, the fire dead in the hearth, her breath suspended before her face and a rime on the water gla.s.s she'd set out on the bedside table. It was too cold even to get up and use the bathroom. Too depressing. The thought of the letters came to her suddenly, the shame, the stupidity, and then she thought of her pravaz, but she never moved, and if the housemaid came in to see to her she never knew it. Sleep was like a stone pressing down on her chest. She closed her eyes. When she woke again it was still snowing, still cold, but someone had lit the fire and her bodily needs spoke to her in a way she could no longer ignore. She found her slippers and her robe and made her way to the bathroom.

And this was primitive too, despite the bronze Buddha and the Han vases and the Oriental carpets, because the water from the tap was like liquid ice and if she wanted to bathe-and she did-she'd have to send someone out to fetch wood and fire up the boiler in the cellar. She made her toilette as best she could, feeling out of sorts, thinking she might have some tea and toast to settle her stomach, but as she brushed her hair before the mirror-a hundred strokes, morning and night, just as her mother had taught her-she felt the weakness in her bowels and had to sit down a moment. Almost accidentally-idly, certainly-her hand came into contact with the cosmetics case in which she kept her pravaz and it took only a moment to decide that what she needed was an injection to set her right. It was the cold, she told herself, the dreary unrelenting winter that gave everyone chilblains and ague, the same as in Paris, but at least there she could find refuge in a gallery or a concert hall or one of the cafes or salons artistiques. Paris, she was thinking, Paris, and felt the warmth spread through her.

It was then that she heard the voices. Frank's voice and another man's-or no, two others-twined and murmurous. They seemed to be drifting across the loggia from the direction of the living room, and that struck her as odd-Frank hadn't mentioned anything to her about guests arriving, though with one thing and another it may have slipped his mind. Suddenly her heart leapt up-here was the possibility of a reprieve, a release from the nullity of country life if only for an hour or two. But who could it be? Frank always surrounded himself with stimulating people, artists, musicians, architects and writers, many of them quite well-connected, and if his gatherings never quite approached the brilliance of the Parisian salons, they were often charming and diverting. And diversion was what she needed right now, above all else.

She cracked the door to hear better. Frank's voice predominated-he seemed to be delivering some sort of speech, but then he was always giving extempore speeches on an inexhaustible range of subjects, "pontificating," as one of his ex-draftsmen liked to say, and not very charitably she was sure-his fine mellow tenor sharpening now, even as the voices of the two men broke in to challenge him, and what was going on? Was he showing some of his prints for sale, was that it? Could Clarence Darrow have come all the way out from the city? A client? And then suddenly, through some trick of the air currents, one of the stranger's voices rang clear-"So what you're saying is that there is no romantic attachment whatever between you and Madame Noel? She's merely a spiritual affinity like Mrs. Borthwick?" -and she understood. Reporters. The reporters were here.

Frank said something that she couldn't quite catch-he must have been pacing up and down the room-and then his voice came clear too. "Yes, that's right, I've hired on Madame Noel in the capacity of housekeeper, as Mrs. Breen has been dismissed, as you know-"

Housekeeper? She a housekeeper? What was he thinking?

"But surely," the voice returned-a thin voice, reedy and wheedling-"you can't deny that these letters give quite the opposite impression."

She didn't hear what Frank had to say next because she was in motion suddenly, hurriedly dressing-the silk gown, the white one, a pearl choker and her rings-thinking that this was her chance to make them see the truth of the matter, to know what she was in her deepest self, in her heart, and to let the world know too. She felt almost as if she were dreaming as she drifted through the loggia with its windows giving onto the gray frozen drifts, her feet bare as a maid's and the gown flowing across her abdomen and her limbs with the simple elegance the Greeks had brought to perfection. Cytherea. She was violet-crowned Cytherea, the foam-risen, a G.o.ddess gliding across the carpet and into the living room where the two strangers, one bald and one not, their eyes flying to her, practically ruptured themselves jumping up out of their chairs to make obeisance to her, and "Yes," she was telling them, enchanted by the sound of her own voice. "Yes, it's all true: I love him!"

The denouement wasn't quite everything she'd expected. Frank was angry with her, at least at first, but he stood by her and the two of them, the fire leaping and the storm raging beyond the windows to produce an air of romance even the most gifted scenarist would have been hard-pressed to duplicate, made their defense of a love that defies the conventions, that dares strive for the sublime no matter the niggling concerns of the hidebound and unenlightened. First she made her thoughts known, then he, back and forth in counterpoint until they were both singing the same sweet song and the newspapermen scratched at their pads till their fingers went numb. Of course, the photograph they ran beneath the headline "I LOVE HIM!" SAYS MRS. MAUDE MIRIAM NOEL OF FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT, beautiful and doe-eyed though it was, revealing one bared and lovely shoulder and a faraway look of the most fetching appeal, left something to be desired. Namely, despite the fact that the caption read This is her first published photograph, it wasn't her likeness. Amazingly. Though she was certainly the equal of this model, whoever she was, and the accompanying article was flattering in the extreme.

But how could they have made such a gaffe? Anyone who knew her would see in an instant that this wasn't she-and yet, and yet, the picture was blown up to a full page and it might have been an idealized representation of her, a year or two younger, perhaps a bit firmer beneath the chin, and it was fine. Very fine. People would envy her and that was what she wanted more than anything at this point because she was no castoff and she was not in the least lovelorn-no, she had her man, one of the truly great figures of the age, and no one else did.

Two days later, on the tenth of November, the Chicago Tribune ran a story in which Nellie Breen denied attempting blackmail, but which seemed to catch her up in her own machinations.117 Her back against the wall, the woman had apparently given the reporters a fair copy of her letter dated October 22 in which she warned Frank that he and Miriam were liable to arrest under the Mann Act on evidence in her possession (clearly the letters she'd stolen out of Frank's desk drawer), evidence so d.a.m.ning that it was unlikely they would even be released on bail. But she didn't stop there-she made demands. What did she want in return for suppressing this evidence? She wanted them to separate. Separate. And never see each other again. Oh, and she was very specific on this, the meddling arthritic broken-down old b.i.t.c.h: "That is, you cannot keep her at Taliesin or Cedar Street, nor have her to visit you or live with her."

If that wasn't blackmail, then what was? Miriam-and she was furious with Frank for having kept the letter from her, no matter how loving or charitable his intentions-could scarcely believe the audacity of the woman, who was, after all, no better than a common thief. In fact, when she first saw the article she was so enraged she flung the paper across the room, where it struck the wall in full flight and fell to the carpet like a crippled bird.

It was still there when she went to her writing desk, so absolutely rigid with hate and distaste and mortification that she'd taken a bit of sherry to calm herself-and if it had any effect at all she couldn't feel it, not in her present state. She was back in Chicago now, at least there was that-they'd taken the train in on the morning after the photograph of the wilting doppelganger had been printed ("No need to hide me away now, Frank," she'd remarked acidly, holding tight to his arm as they strode up the platform in a flurry of newspapermen and gaping pa.s.sersby)-but the scene out the window was as close and gray and bleak as it had been in Wisconsin. Well, she welcomed it-it would only feed her mood. Which was dark, dark, dark. And thirsting for blood. How dare she, how dare that lace-curtain b.i.t.c.h set out rules for her-or for anyone, for that matter? Who appointed her moral guardian of the world?

In the lower drawer, locked away from Frank, was a sheaf of the stationery she'd ordered over his objections, the Hicks coat of arms glowing from the page beneath their conjoined initials. She produced a pristine sheet and smoothed it out on the blotting pad, taking another long sip of sherry as she brooded over it. Then she took up her pen, a new Waterman, a gift from Frank, so smooth and delicate and pretty a writing utensil it might have been a supernumerary finger, and without thinking let her ideas flow across the page as if she'd been writing letters to the newspaper all her life. The reporter-the bald one, and for the life of her she couldn't seem to recall his name-had taken her aside that day at Taliesin and encouraged her to give her side of the story. Her philosophy, her desires, something of herself the public could grasp hold of. Who was she behind the enigma, that sort of thing. It would be so much more gratifying than anything he or his colleagues could write because it was she who was at the center of things here, she who knew the real truth not only of Chicago and its ostensible mores but of the Continent too.

By the time she came back to herself she'd covered some five pages, hardly a letter blotted, her graceful hand undulating across the page with all the authority and elegance that had won her first prize in penmanship at the Thornleigh Academy for Women when she was a girl. She spoke of marriage as a worn-out dead letter, at least when it's loveless, a mere shadow of what a true and loving pact should be, but then she a.s.sured them-her audience, all the shining people of Chicago, and the little people too, the butchers and carters and whoever-that she and Frank weren't denouncing marriage per se, but simply obeying a higher law. For there was only one real loyalty and that was reflected in conduct consecrated to a living, lofty concept of life and love. That was what people should aim for, that and nothing less.

And then, with all the eloquence she could summon, she went about demolishing Nellie Breen, a hired domestic, a thief, an exemplar of false middle-cla.s.s morality that stoops to dishonesty, to thievery, in order to uphold its own spuriousness, the very serpent of hypocrisy that was slowly dying out around the world as people listened to their hearts and not the dictates of men dead and gone. Finally, her pen moving so swiftly it was as if a spirit had risen from the grave to take her hand and guide it-Emil, with all his literary talents intact, or perhaps it was her father-she cried out to the world, "Do not pity me. I am no victim of unrequited love. Well might any woman proudly stand in my place and count the cost as nothing."

When she finished, she went to the window to stare out into what remained of the day. She felt unburdened at last, free of it all, and though she was bursting to show the letter to Frank (but he was at the office) or to Leora, to anyone, she sealed the envelope, affixed a stamp and went to the closet for her coat. She watched herself in the mirror as she did up the b.u.t.tons, adjusted her hat and pulled on her gloves, staring into her own eyes, but not too deeply. There was a glow about her, certainly, and as she went out into the cold and made her way up the street to the postbox on the corner, she could feel people's eyes on her and she turned to them gracefully, men and women alike, and smiled.

CHAPTER 7: IN THE LONG SHADOW OF MOUNT FUJI.

Frank was shouting, his voice booming out till the house rang with it, and everybody, not least Miriam herself, had been on tenterhooks for three days now and counting. Guests were coming. He was always impossible when people were expected, arranging and rearranging his prints and screens and pottery over and over, grouping the furniture first in one corner and then another and finally dragging it into the center of the room, where it would remain for all of fifteen minutes before he changed his mind yet again. He devoted hours alone to the floral arrangements or to draping his Chinese, Turkoman or Persian carpets over one chair or the other so that they fell just so, and on this occasion-the j.a.panese were coming and he was so wound up you would have thought the Emperor himself was about to breeze through the door-he went to a rosewood chest in the vault to dig out his eighteenth-century j.a.panese robes118 so that he could display them beside his prints. But what was he bellowing about now?

Whatever it may have been-a spot of tarnish on a serving spoon, lint on the carpet, an insufficient fire in one of the guest rooms-it was no concern of hers. He had half a dozen of his lackeys running around the place as if they'd been scorched, the cook had her instructions and another housemaid had been taken on to oversee the arrangements. No, her concern-her only concern-was to see to her dress so that she could stand beside him and greet the guests with a pure ethereal serenity and the daintiest of Oriental bows. And certainly Frank had harangued her on this latter point-the form, duration and posture of the bow-till she wanted to scream.

Now, in the privacy of the bedroom, with a good bed of coals in the fireplace and two fresh splits of oak laid atop them because it was cold as a tomb in this rambling stone and stucco citadel with its leaks and drafts and the windows that might as well have been made of transparent paper for all the good they did at keeping the weather out, she practiced before the mirror, dipping her torso and rising again with her eyes radiant and a full-lipped smile spreading across her face till her dimples shone like a girl's, How nice to meet you, Hayashi-San, enchantee-or no, that wasn't the right note at all. She should keep silent, letting her eyes do the talking for her-wasn't that the way the Oriental women did it? Of course, they were nothing but chattel, no better than dogs, unless they were the painted courtesans who coquetted the night away with a pa.s.sel of leering old men who had nothing more to recommend them than the yen in their pockets. And that horrible rice wine. She'd known a few j.a.panese in Paris-j.a.ponisme was all the rage in those days; she imagined it still was-and they'd been decent enough, she supposed, with a good command of French, but then they were the artistes and by all accounts Hayashi-San was certainly not artistic in the least. No, he was a businessman. Manager of the old Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. And he was coming to be wooed. Well, all right, she thought, bowing before the mirror, she would woo him, then. For Frank's sake.119 She was just cinching her blue shantung silk wrapper over an emerald-green V-necked chemise that would show prettily at her throat, thinking with some satisfaction that this was the very quintessence of the Oriental look, perhaps with the addition of a string of pearls and the jade pin of a smiling tumescent Buddha she'd picked up as a curiosity in a stall on the avenue d'Ivry some years back, when Frank came hurtling through the door. He was in a state. His hair was standing out from his head like a collapsed halo and his eyes were so inflamed he looked as if he'd been up all night long. But he hadn't been. She could testify to that.

"My G.o.d, Miriam, what are you thinking?" he shouted, and he was so agitated she could see the flecks of spittle leaping from his lips. "Get dressed. They'll be at the station any minute now, don't you realize that? I give you one task only-to dress yourself so you don't look like a, a"-he couldn't seem to find the properly insulting term and ran on ahead of himself-"and what do you do? Are you intentionally trying to ruin this for me? Is that it?"

She tried to ignore him, slipping into the seat at her vanity to see to her hair, which she'd pulled back with a comb so as to mimic the pictures of the geisha in Frank's woodblock prints, and her eyes, which she'd extended vertically with two triangular slashes of kohl, but she felt herself hardening. "Look like a what, Frank?"

"I haven't time for this, Miriam," he warned, and as if he couldn't help himself, he went to the chair in the corner and moved it three inches closer to the writing table. "Just get yourself dressed. Now!"

She was watching him in the mirror, his erratic movements, the twitching of his limbs and the pent-up tarantella of his feet on the carpet, trying to sympathize-the j.a.panese were coming for an extended stay and he would have to be on his mark the entire time if he hoped to nail down the biggest commission of his life, she understood that and she wanted to give him all the love and support she could-but she didn't like his tone. Not one bit. "Ah am dressed, Frahhnk," she said, protracting each syllable in her best high-Memphis drawl.

He whirled round on her suddenly and took the room in three strides, dipping low so that his face loomed beside hers in the mirror. She was sure he was about to make some sort of nasty comment, his lips curling, eyes gone cold as day-old coffee, when there was a sudden crash from the other room, a muted curse and the clatter of running feet. Frank flinched, threw an angry look over his shoulder, and then came back to her, his hands sinking into her shoulders like the claws of a bird. "Don't you start," he hissed, his face right there, his breath hot in her ear. "You dress yourself and be there to greet them at the door-the door, do you hear me?-when I get back from the station. And for G.o.d's sake, maintain yourself."

Icily, with as much command as she could summon, she reached up to remove his hands, then twisted round and rose to face him. "I thought I would go along with the Oriental theme, this robe, my Buddha pin-I'm trying to please you, Frank, that's all. You should see that." A tearful note crept into her voice and she couldn't help it. "There's really no call for cruelty."

"You're ridiculous!" he shouted. "Look at yourself. A wrapper, for G.o.d's sake? And that preposterous makeup? You're like a parody-No, I mean what I say. Are you trying to insult these people?"

She observed, as quietly and steadily as she could, that he was in Oriental costume-the absurd linen trousers that billowed out from his thighs and clung tight to his ankles like something out of an ill.u.s.tration for The Arabian Nights, the wooden clogs, the cutaway tunic that fell to his knees and a risible hat that looked like a cross between a cardinal's biretta and a Russian ushanka-and so why shouldn't she follow suit?

"What I wear is none of your business."

"I could say the same."

And now a voice was calling from the other room, some fresh crisis erupting: "Mr. Wright, Mr. Wright, could you come here a moment, please?"

"Listen," he said, "Miriam, I beg of you-you're the most charming woman in the world, the most brilliant, and I just need for you to dress as you normally would, as if we were going out to the theater or to dine on Michigan Avenue. Not Tokyo. Not Yokohama Bay. But here, in the United States."

She was uncertain of herself now-perhaps the silk wrapper was too informal, perhaps he was right, and she supposed the eye shadow was a bit garish-but she couldn't help contradicting him nonetheless. "I'll dress any way I please," she said.

"Mr. Wright! Mr. Wright!"

"Yes, I'm coming," he shouted over one shoulder before turning back to her. "What I want, Miriam-what I require, what I need more than anything-is an adornment." He paused, glaring at her, trying to stare her down, intimidate her, and the insolence of him, the lordliness, was infuriating-as if he could preach to her, as if she would listen to one word. "An adornment, Miriam, not an anchor."

Still, when the carriage, followed by the automobile, came up the drive and into the courtyard half an hour later, she was there at the door, in her choker and beads and a gray peau de soie dress cut at mid-calf beneath her midnight-blue cape and a matinee hat that presented her perfect face as if it had been framed. And when she saw Hayashi-San in his Western suit, spats, mustache and slicked-back hair, she bowed as deeply as the hat would allow her and whispered "Komban wa" in the most delicate voice she could muster, just as Frank had taught her.