The Women: A Novel Part 17

Frank never spoke with the man-no one did, as far as he knew. And if he found anybody opening his mouth-and he let them all know it, from Ben Davis and Johnnie Vaughn right on down to the casual laborers hired to haul things up the hill and fetch on demand-then that man would be looking for another job. No excuses. He expected loyalty, absolute and unwavering, and loyalty meant keeping your mouth shut, just like Billy Weston. Still-and it goaded him the way they goaded the Brahma bulls in the chute at the rodeo-the newspaper came out the next day with a page-one story under the header ARCHITECT WRIGHT BUILDING LOVE NEST FOR MRS. CHENEY.

It always amazed him how fast the days swept by when a job was going right, the mornings coming sweet and hot, the sun arching overhead by degrees to bake them all the color of mulattoes, thunderstorms rolling in of a late afternoon to drench the studs and make soup of the earth and all the while the house fleshing out over its ribs and growing into the snug low roofs and cantilevered eaves that would hang thick with icicles once winter came. He'd never needed much sleep to sustain him-five or six hours a night and leave the rest to the slugabeds-and he found himself up at first light, pacing the hillside, getting the feel and the smell of the place, eager to get going and Sundays off a kind of deprivation. He listened to the crows, the jays, the orioles, bent to the earth and sifted it through his fingers, picturing the flower gardens he'd plant in the spring, the cherries and peaches and apples, asparagus, rhubarb, melons.

As often as not Billy Weston was there to greet him with a laconic "Mornin'," his stoop-shouldered figure emerging from the mist of the fields, the cast gone now and his right arm tanning and strengthening under the sun, the tool belt dangling from his left hand and his hat c.o.c.ked down over his spectacles. They talked quietly over coffee and fresh-baked rolls until the others began to file in-or he talked and Billy listened-and it was the best sort of talk, the kind that freed his mind to see, and it wasn't long before Billy began to see too. Taliesin was rising and it wasn't just for him and his mother and Mamah but for Billy and all the rest of the community, a thing of beauty that would tip the balance sheet of the great buildings of the world and make people line up and marvel for years to come. He looked out over the misted fields and felt his own genius wrap round him like a cloak. He was the world's greatest architect. He was.158 The major part of the exterior was finished-or at least as finished as it was going to be for a work in progress-by the time Mamah's divorce came through at the end of the first week of August. The roof was up, the shinglers pounding away. The two Billys climbed like monkeys. The men shouted and joked and Johnnie Vaughn kept up a running patter over the curses of Ben Davis down below. Somebody produced the newspaper, which he declined even to glance at-more lies, innuendo, character a.s.sa.s.sination-and he had a few round things to say about the press at lunch that noon to the amus.e.m.e.nt of Billy Weston and some of the others, but after everyone had gone home he couldn't help unfolding the thing and at least taking in the page at a glance. And there was Mamah, in profile, with some sort of amateurish Valentine's heart sketched into the upper corner of the photo above a cameo of Edwin with his drawn mouth and scalped bulbous head. Her Spiritual Hegira Ends in His Divorce, the article announced, and then went on with all the authority of a blind seer to a.s.sure the diligent and disinterested reader that Mamah's "affinity" had grown tired of her even as he'd vindicated his wife's faith in him and returned happily to the bosom of his family.

He took dinner that night at Tan-y-deri with his sister and he never mentioned a word about it, nor did she. Dinner was exceptionally good and Jennie was good too-good company-and her husband, Andrew, as well, the conversation leapfrogging delightfully from one subject to another, just the way he loved it, repartee, thesis and ant.i.thesis, easy smiles and strong opinions, and the view of Taliesin on the ridge opposite was as fine a thing as he'd ever seen. But the newspaper was claptrap and the thought of it flared inside him like a bout of heartburn and he wanted to thrash the men who made their living sorting through people's dirty laundry, these so-called journalists, because they were nothing more than panders. The cretins. They knew nothing and never would.

The painful thing was the thought of what it did to Mamah and her reputation-or whatever they'd left of it intact. Bad enough that they should drag her through the mud over her divorce, but to make it seem as if she'd been nothing more than a pa.s.sing fancy to him was just plain cruel. And false, false to the core. For a moment, sitting there on the porch of Jennie's place and looking out over the hills draped in shadow, he entertained the idea of hiring an attorney-one of these real b.a.l.l.s of fire-and suing them for defamation. Let them crawl to him. Let them writhe and suffer and wring their hands. Let them print a retraction, tell the truth for a change. Of course, Mamah insisted that it meant nothing to her, that she-and he-stood so far above the gossipmongers it was as if they didn't exist at all, but still he could hear the hurt and uncertainty in her voice when they spoke on the telephone on a line open all the way to Chicago. (And if the mighty men of the press were so prescient and all-seeing, how could they not have known she was there, a mere two hundred miles from him? Being discreet. And private. And biding her time.) Three weeks later he left Taliesin and went into Chicago in the roadster, alone, maneuvering round the streets as inconspicuously as he could, given the coloration of the automobile and the way the tires seemed to cry out in surprise every time he negotiated a turn. He'd tried to dress inconspicuously as well, leaving the cape and jodhpurs at home and selecting the sort of narrow-brimmed hat and constricting tie he imagined any American Joe would have worn to a baseball game or fireworks display, but still he glanced round guiltily every time he had to stop for a pedestrian and twice he reversed direction for fear he was being followed. Eventually, after a series of evasive moves, he found his way to a nameless little boardinghouse where he was certain no one would recognize him-or the former Mrs. Cheney, who was registered there under her maiden name.

The street was all but deserted. A big soapy white cloud danced over the roof, sparrows clung to various appurtenances and a pair of rubber plants peeped out from behind the ground-floor windowpanes. If the house itself was a tricked-out eyesore that should have gone down in the great fire and the world a better place for it, he didn't care about that, not today. He even whistled a little song to himself as he went up the walk, and he was the most discreet and innocuous man alive as he loaded her bags into the car, escorted her out the door and settled her into the seat beside him. Then he put the machine in gear and drove with elaborate care through the familiar grid of streets, as restrained and circ.u.mspect as a judge-until he reached the city limits, that is, when he opened the throttle wide and let the Yellow Devil live up to its reputation all the way back to Wisconsin.

CHAPTER 5: MADE FOR THE AVERAGE.

It was snowing. Had been snowing, off and on, for most of the day. Frank was delighted, his face lit with the purest pleasure every time he sailed in and out of the room-boyish, brisk, talking of coasting, how they'd go coasting that night once the workmen had left, and was she warm enough, should he build up the fire for her?-and there was an easy slow languor to the course of the day that made her feel like a petted thing, like a cat in a spreading lap, though if it were up to her she'd rather be back in Italy, with the sun warming her shoulders and the trumpet flowers playing their bright colors off the wall behind her. It was cold. Cold outside and cold in here too. The carpenters and plasterers and all the rest were banging away in one of the back rooms-eternally banging-and the wind out of the north that carried those romantic snowflakes in suspension blew up between the cracks of the floorboards and pa.s.sed right through the windows as if there were no gla.s.s in them at all. She sat by the fire, a rug over her knees, and warmed herself through the day with tea, cocoa, coffee and hot broth, Ellen Key's The Torpedo Under the Ark in one hand, her lined notebook in the other, doggedly untangling the sense of the Swedish and letting her mind run free to find its English equivalent.159 At some point-it was late in the afternoon, the light fading, the clamor of the workmen gradually dying away till for long intervals the house fell mercifully silent-she found her attention flagging. She kept lifting her eyes from the page to stare out the window to where the snow obliterated the walls Frank had put so much time and effort into constructing, all that linearity-that maleness, the science of the object-smoothed out under the soft contours of the feminine. The fields were gone too. The black spikes of the trees dulled and softened. Roundness. The world had achieved roundness overnight.

A day earlier-just yesterday afternoon, though it seemed like an age-everything had looked harsh and sharp-edged, the gra.s.s a stiff hacked brown, the trees like daggers, and she'd asked Billy Weston to bring the car round and take her into Spring Green because she wanted to get out of the house for a few hours if only to see something new, anything. And of course Christmas was coming and she needed to find something for the children-that was the rationale, at any rate. She'd kept to herself most of the fall, striving to live quietly, productively, out of the glare of the press and out of sight of any of the rustic moralists who might tend to view her as a threat to decency. A scarlet woman. A husband hunter. A feminist. They had a hundred stock phrases at their command, as if they had the right to pa.s.s judgment, but she tried not to be bitter. For Frank's sake. He had his heart set on living here amongst them, living self-sufficiently, growing his own food and raising his own animals for slaughter, generating electricity from the dam he intended to build at the base of the hill where the creek pa.s.sed under the road, felling trees, diverting a stream for water and building, always building, and she wouldn't be the one to upset the balance.

She had Billy drop her on the outskirts of town-every man, woman and child within a hundred miles knew Frank's automobile as well as they knew their own buggies and farm wagons, and she wanted, above all, to be anonymous. A woman in ordinary clothes, wrapped up against the cold, taking tea at the hotel and browsing the shops for Christmas gifts. It wasn't to be. The minute she stepped out of the car the curtains parted in the house across the way and by the time she'd walked the three blocks to the general store every head was turned up and down the street. She selected a bow and a quiver of arrows for John, thinking he could practice target shooting in Oak Park and, looking ahead to the summer to come, perhaps hunt things in the fields at Taliesin-rabbits, she supposed, gophers, that sort of thing. She found a paint set and an easel for Martha, to encourage her in her artwork-she did seem to have a gift for composition, even Frank said so. That was fine. That was all right and pleasant enough in its way. But the woman who waited on her kept clenching her jaws as if it were a tic and wouldn't look her in the eye. There was no pretense of small talk or even civility. And while she did take tea and a sandwich at the hotel, keeping strictly to herself, there were whispers and guarded glances and every time she looked up someone seemed to be staring at her.

She didn't mention it to Frank-no need to upset him over nothing. But the experience made her more determined than ever to push forward with her work. The world was in desperate need of Ellen Key-not simply these pigheaded farmers and their prudish wives, but the world at large. People-women, especially-absolutely must learn to think for themselves instead of blindly following the dictates of a patriarchal society that would deny them not only the right to vote but the right to love in their own instinctual way. She had a fleeting fantasy of herself as a sort of Joan of Arc of erotoplastics, wielding a radiant sword and cutting them all down to size, and then, though she was exhausted and the house was as cold as an igloo, she turned back to the book in her lap and there it was, right before her, in Ellen Key's native tongue: till alska, to love. To love. There was no higher purpose in life, no greater duty-why couldn't they understand that? She was just reaching for her pen to note it down, the house gone still, the snow at the windows and Ellen Key on her lips, when she heard Frank's voice, raised in exasperation, drifting to her from the door that gave onto the courtyard. "No," he was saying, "no, she isn't."

There was the sound of stamping feet, someone knocking the snow from his boots in the anteroom, then a man's voice, a stranger's, rang clear: "But isn't it true that she's living here? Rumor has it-or more than rumor, reports, eyewitness reports-that she is. Just yesterday-"

"That's none of your business. Or anyone else's."

"But will you at least confirm or deny it?"

"I won't say a word."

"The fact is that Mrs. Cheney is living here under this roof even as we speak, is it not?"

There was a sudden sharp whine as the door pulled back on its hinges and Frank's voice riding over it, firm but consolatory: "I'm very sorry you had to come all the way out here in this weather for nothing, but I'll remind you that it wasn't at my invitation and I'm sorry too that I can't ask you in-I do hope you'll find your way back to town in the midst of this glorious winter weather. Spirit of the season and all that, eh? Old Charles d.i.c.kens' sort of weather."

"There isn't anything I can do to induce you to-?"

"I won't say a word."

Then the door slammed shut and she heard a single set of footsteps coming down the hall-Frank's, the rhythmic clack of his elevated heels giving him away. She set aside her work and got up from the chair as he strode into the room and bent automatically for the poker to stir up the fire, though she'd been tending it all afternoon and it was more than sufficient. "Did you hear any of that tripe?" he asked over his shoulder.

She didn't know why she should be upset, but she was. All at once she felt lost and abandoned, filled with a sorrow that ate right through her, Julia dead, her children estranged from her, her marriage wrecked, and for what? For this cowardice? This hiding behind a locked door? "Why can't they just leave us alone?" she said, her voice catching in her throat. She was waiting for him to wrap her in his arms, but he didn't, so she went to him and held him awkwardly, one arm draped round his shoulder, the other at his waist. "I feel like a criminal, like I'm being hunted. Persecuted. Like Jean Valjean."

"I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

He was sorry. Well, so was she, but what did they have to be sorry about? They were together, living true to their principles. It was the reporters-they were the ones fomenting this atmosphere of hate, and on Christmas nonetheless; they wouldn't even let them celebrate Christmas in peace. She wasn't thinking, didn't even know what she was saying till the words were out of her mouth: "Why don't we just tell them the truth?"

She felt him stiffen and then he slid out from under her arm and bent again to poke needlessly at the fire. "I don't know," he said. "We should. G.o.d knows we should. But the neighbors . . . they're such . . . they're so locked into their self-righteousness, so rigid and just plain ornery-there's no telling what they'd do."

She s.n.a.t.c.hed at his wrist, made him look at her. "But don't you see-that's exactly the att.i.tude that's kept women down all these centuries. We have nothing to be ashamed of-are you ashamed? Because I'm not."160 His face lost its expression. He shifted his eyes away from her. "No, of course not. It's just that-we need to be cautious, go slow. Give the neighbors time to adjust."

But she wasn't listening. She was in the grip of an idea. "Why not, I don't know, why not call them here-the reporters, all of them-make a statement, a formal statement? That way we could at least get our version in the papers, let Ellen Key speak for us, lay out the principles we stand for. Educate them. Isn't that what this is about, at root?" She was elated. Her eyes were burning. "You do love me, don't you?"

He nodded.

"Well, let's do it, then. Let's trumpet it to the world."

He nodded again, but she could see he wasn't convinced. For a long moment he stood there with the poker in his hand, as if he'd forgotten what to do with it, then he set it down carefully and excused himself to wash up for dinner.

She wasn't daunted. The feeling of euphoria carried her through the meal, Frank chattering away, the incident with the reporter already forgotten as he spun out his plans for half a dozen projects and Christmas dinner too-and they would go coasting, that very night, they would-but she was only half-listening. She knew what she was going to do now, what she had to do-she was going to take the initiative, step from the shadows, reveal herself to the world. She was already making speeches in her mind, addressing an audience that wasn't there, shadowy men, their legs crossed, notepads balanced on their knees . . .

The cook served dessert. Frank was still talking. Outside, the snow spun down out of the sky. It was a moment to treasure, domestic and true and loving and peaceful-until it was broken by the sudden sharp bleat of the phone. "You sit, Frank," she said. "I'll get it."

She made her way across the room, lifted the receiver from the hook and answered, "h.e.l.lo?"

"Mrs. Cheney?" The voice on the other end of the line purred at her, an oddly familiar voice, a man's voice, and before she responded she identified it-this was the man who'd been to the house earlier, the newspaperman playing a little trick on them. She could have said "no" or "there is no such person here," could have played right along. But there was no point in that, not anymore. "Yes," she said, "this is she."161 On Christmas morning they were up early, stoking the fires, sweeping the rugs and dusting the statuary. She made breakfast herself, though the culinary arts were something of a mystery to her (eggs, ham and fried potatoes, the eggs runny, the ham seared and the potatoes blackened), and when the cook came at eight she helped her roll out the dough for three pies and then followed a recipe for two trays of raisin cookies. They'd had their Christmas at dawn, a simple exchange of gifts beneath the tree-a jade pin set in platinum for her and a new hat and scarf for him-and while it wasn't exactly perfunctory, their first Christmas together in their new home, they were both hard at work within the hour. Frank must have spent half the morning arranging and rearranging the living room, twice stamping off through the snow to cut yet one more holly sprig or evergreen branch, and he was in a state, she could see that, flying from one room to the other, very nearly barking at her every time he tore through the kitchen. He was a perfectionist, she knew that-it was one of the things she loved about him, a testament to his artistic sensibility-but there were times when he could be just a bit excessive. Like this morning. Which only made things more difficult for her. And then there was the matter of what to wear, Frank settling finally on his country gentleman's outfit of tweed jacket and matching knee breeches, with his artist's tie and a pair of heavy woolen stockings, and she choosing a simple embroidered blouse in a shade of ecru over a skirt just a tone darker-she wanted to appear fashionable, of course, but proper too. Sober. Relaxed. The gracious hostess at ease in her own home.

The first of the reporters came up the drive in a buggy from the Spring Green station just before eleven and she tried to make him feel welcome as Frank paced up and down the length of the room and the fire sparked and jumped and the fields lay icebound beyond the windows. Then two more appeared, sliding along the county road like skaters before edging their way gingerly up the slick incline of the drive. She served the cookies and fresh-brewed coffee, asked them about their families-Christmas morning, and here they were away from them, but it was all in the line of duty, wasn't it?-and before long the entire contingent had arrived, eight men in all, of varying ages and temperaments, and each of them drinking in every detail of the place they'd be pressed to re-create from memory back at their desks in Chicago, Madison, Spring Green.

When they were all gathered and comfortably seated, Frank, who'd been dissertating on some of his art pieces in his usual disarming way while she played the hostess and the exquisite beauty of the room exerted its spell, called them to attention and began reading from a prepared statement in his fine clear voice. It was a statement of principle, without apology, beautifully reasoned and presented and laying out the ideas of Ellen Key in the most practical way, as a method of living and loving truly. They'd worked it out together through half a dozen drafts the previous night, Christmas Eve dissolving in an intense fugue of diction, syntax and revolutionary rhetoric-he was a beautiful writer, really, and he would have made a striking politician too-and they both agreed that he would speak for the two of them and that what they had to say would once and for all put an end to the rumor and speculation. As she stood by his side, watching the reporters' faces as he spoke, she felt so full of pride and vindication she could have led a parade from one end of the country to the other.

He spoke frankly of his first marriage-how he'd married too young, how he'd grown apart from his wife intellectually as he matured into his art and how he'd always tried to live honestly and by the highest precepts. One of the men-and she immediately fastened on him, the narrow-shouldered one in the sagging blue-serge jacket with the soaked-through boots and running nose-nodded in approval. Good, she was thinking, bravo! And then Frank talked of her and the principles on which their love was founded-"Mrs. E.H. Cheney never existed for me; she was always Mamah Borthwick to me, an individual separate and distinct, who was not any man's possession"-and she felt a thrill run through her, because this was it, this was it exactly: no man's possession but an individual in her own right and the equal of any man on earth. And Frank standing there in public and declaring it. He used his walking stick to underscore his points, as fierce and a.s.sertive as any orator on the floor of the senate. Finally, in conclusion, he talked at some length of his art and what it meant to be held up before the public and judged by standards he'd never made or agreed to adhere to.

Afterward-and they were interested, oh, they were, in the most engaged and broad-minded way, every one of them a potential advocate for Ellen Key-there were questions, both for Frank and her, probing, earnest calls for clarification and instruction. She felt these men wanted to understand, wanted to help, wanted, above all, to send her message out to the world, and she let herself go till she was speaking purely from the heart. And so did Frank. He grew more magnificent by the moment, extemporizing now on the rigidity of the loveless marriage and the strictures society attempts to impose on the middling and the great spirits alike. "On the general aspect of the thing," he said at one point, striding up and down the length of the room while all their eyes followed him as one, "I want to say this: laws and rules are made for the average. The ordinary man cannot live without rules to guide his conduct. It is infinitely more difficult to live without rules, but that is what the really honest, sincere, thinking man is compelled to do."

And now the little blue-serge man raised his hand and interjected a question-blew his nose piteously, wrung and wiped it in his handkerchief, and asked in a thick dredging voice, "But what of your families, your children, separated from you on Christmas day, of all the days of the year? " He paused to blow his nose once more while everyone waited patiently for him to go on. "Is this the way 'the honest, sincere, thinking man' creates rules for himself? What of them? What of the little ones?"

There was a silence. One man stood up abruptly. Another, his voice ragged with emotion, echoed, "Yes, what of them?"

She felt something clench inside her. Suddenly she saw John in his pajamas and Martha in her nightgown, tumbling out of bed to race through the house chirping like birds and the tree standing there in all its array and the looks on their faces as they saw revealed what Saint Nick and the magic manipulations of his airborne sled and flying reindeer had brought them. Her children. Christmas. She didn't know what to say.

"We're in contact with them, of course," she heard Frank say at her shoulder.

"In contact?" the blue-serge man threw back at him and there was no mistaking the sarcastic thrust of it.

"And we've sent them gifts. And cards and the like. And my sons, my two eldest, Lloyd and John, will be coming to work in the Chicago studio with me before long-and Mrs. Borthwick's children, uh-"

Another of the reporters, a fleshy man with disarranged hair and a face the color of week-old grits, supplied the names for him: "John and Martha."

"Yes, John and Martha," Frank went on and she felt stricken all over again. "We plan to have them up here to Taliesin this summer once school lets out. For a month, a month at least. Isn't that right, Mamah?"

Somehow-and she was having difficulty breathing all of a sudden-she managed to answer in the affirmative, but even as she did she could see that every man in the room was studying her as coldly as they might have studied a corpse laid out for dissection at the morgue.

As soon as they'd left, Frank retreated to his studio and she buried herself in the kitchen, working side by side with the cook to prepare the goose, the gravy, stuffing, pudding and side dishes, determined to make a holiday of it despite the disaster of the morning. And it was a disaster, she had no doubt of that. She let the cook go at five to be with her own family and willingly took on the burden of the meal herself-she was glad for the activity, for anything to take her mind off the way those men had looked at her as if she were some sort of female Scrooge. Or worse, another species altogether-the mother who couldn't seem to muster any affection for her children, even on the most sacrosanct day of the year. She took out her frustration on the chopping block, on the cutlery and the cookware. She rinsed and chopped and mashed and prodded the goose and poured the wine and did her best to braise the vegetables in the pan without burning them, and when they sat down to dinner, Christmas dinner (they were twelve, with the Porters and their children, Frank's mother, a few of the workmen and a couple from Chicago who seemed to be the last of Frank's friends who would have anything to do with him under his present circ.u.mstances), she tried her best to be equable and pleasant and to let her laugh conquer all, but it was the most miserable Christmas she'd ever spent.

She tossed through a sleepless night, dreading the outcome-she was a fool to have gone to the press, an idiot, a dreamer; she should have hidden in the cellar, should have poisoned their coffee-while Frank, as unconcerned and artistically removed as ever, snored in his own distinctive way, as if a great wall of water were tumbling into a pit and then rising up to inundate a solitary man breathing through a piccolo. The next day's papers gave a full accounting, and it was worse even than she'd imagined. The Spring Green Weekly Home News was savage, inflammatory, labeling Frank and her "a menace to the morals of the community and an insult to every family therein," and the Tribune, right from the maddening qualifiers inserted into the headline-SPEND CHRISTMAS MAKING 'DEFENSE' OF 'SPIRIT HEGIRA'162-managed to combine a tone of high dudgeon with outright mockery. They were seen as ridiculous. Pompous. Self-serving. And worse: unfit and uncaring parents.

By the following day, it had turned ugly.

She'd been working on her translation since early in the morning, working so intently she skipped lunch altogether and very nearly let the fire burn itself out, when Frank came through the door with her ice skates dangling from one hand. "Enough work for today," he announced. "Time for some physical activity, something robust, eh? How about a little turn on the ice? What do you say?"

It took her no more than ten minutes to dress and then they were out the door and crunching their way along the path Billy Weston had shoveled down the center of the courtyard. Everything was still, the air new-made, the house as settled and comfortable under its spreading eaves as a chalet in Kitzbuhel. Smoke spiraled from the chimneys. A crow beat heavilyoverhead, its wings creaking like unoiled hinges. Frank led the way, dressed in lederhosen and a Tyrolean cap, the great trailing swath of his scarf slicing right and left with the sway of his shoulders, and he was in such high spirits he dodged away into the drifts to break off one of the great rippling icicles depending from the roof and prop it over his shoulder like a mock artillery piece.

They made their way down the drive, crabwise, ice underfoot, the pale disk of the sun settling into the trees at their backs and the river opening out before them, and then they crossed the road and went down the narrow path on the other side, everything pristine and perfect under the sculpted banks of snow. She breathed in the scent of the pines, saw the way they stood ranged along the river like sentinels, rugged and alive and giving up their color to a monochromatic world, and felt a surge of joy. This was it exactly, the life she'd envisioned, work and play united, self-sufficiency, the out-of-doors, Ellen Key, Frank. It was too perfect. The ideal of any woman, of every woman. Every woman should feel like this.

She paused a moment to brace herself against the bole of a tree and kick the snow from her boots, wanting only to shout out her joy to the world, and Frank stopped to look back at her. "Are you all right? " he called. "Out of breath already?" He was a picture, a framed picture, and where was the camera to record it?

"No," she said, "not at all. In fact, I can scarcely wait to get down there on the ice and challenge you to a race, twice round the rink, and let no man-or woman-stand between us." Her blood was singing. Her eyes jumped at him.

"You're on," he said, and here was his grin. "It's a bet. The winner-and I'm sorry to say it's sure to be me-will receive one back rub, gratis, at the hands of the loser. Agreed?"

Oh, yes, yes: even if she lost she couldn't lose. "Agreed," she said, and let her laugh carry the freight.

As they came down the slope and through the trees she could see the figures of the skaters out on the river, dark forms sailing free or locked in tandem, their cries echoing across the ice. There was a bonfire going on the far bank, families gathered there with wieners, soda pop, flasks of something stronger. An Irish setter spun round in circles in the middle of the rink they'd cleared, yapping, while two boys flew past and then doubled back, urging it to chase them. It was a scene out of Brueghel. Or maybe Currier and Ives. She was just strapping on her skates when a black-haired man with fierce black eyebrows, in a bulky homemade sweater and patched trousers, sailed in close to the bank and growled something at her before shooting off again. And what had he said? Who was he?

Frank was off to her left, as eager as a child to get out on the ice, entirely oblivious, one skate already on and now the other, and in the next moment he was gliding past her, crowing, "Come on, come on, what are you waiting for? " Then she was up on her skates, unsteady yet, and he had her by the hand and the wind was in her face and here they were, weaving through the crowd, one grand circuit of the rink and then she began to understand-or no, she was made to understand. People-and she recognized some of them-were skating to the far sh.o.r.e, singly and in groups, bunching there on the foot-worn snow to remove their skates before climbing up the bank to the road. They were leaving, en ma.s.se. Turning their backs on them. Snubbing them. And then, just as the apprehension of it began to sink into Frank's features, the black-haired man glided up to them and said, quite distinctly this time, "You should be ashamed."

"Ashamed of what? " Frank shot back at him, but the man looped away from them and sailed far out across the river, only to come rocketing back a moment later, moving so fast she was afraid he meant to collide with her-she'd actually raised her hands to cushion the blow-until he pulled up at the last moment in a slashing spray of ice. "Go back where you come from, you old pervert," he shouted, his face red and his eyes bugged with rage. "You and your conkabine both." Everything evaporated then, all the joy she'd felt in the simple pleasure of the day and all her hopes too, and though Frank cursed him and left her side to chase after him in a fury of his own, the man danced on ahead of him, just out of reach-by far the superior skater. "Pervert, pervert!" his voice rang out till the fire fell into itself and the banks were deserted and the two boys took their dog and ambled up the road and out of sight.

When she and Frank got back-he'd insisted on skating till he'd had his fill, just the two of them alone on the ice with the scowling man-Billy Weston was waiting for them, looking like Doom and his brother. He had the newspaper in his hand and he laid it out on the kitchen table for them. ASK SHERIFF'S AID TO OUST WRIGHT, the headline read, and though she tried to ignore it, tried to recapture the feeling she'd had going down the drive and through the woods with Frank at her side, she couldn't help herself and took it off into the bedroom to confirm what she already knew: the whole community had risen up against them. And worse: they'd pet.i.tioned the sheriff to arrest her and Frank on a morals charge. A morals charge, for G.o.d's sake. It was like something out of the Dark Ages. Or Salem. A Salem witch hunt.

She was devastated. She sat there in the armchair by the window, a blanket pulled up to her throat, staring at the cheap newsprint till the words no longer made any sense. The house ticked and groaned. The wind came up through the floorboards. Cold, so cold, the fire nothing more than a glow against the blackened stones of the hearth and the boiler in the cellar below might as well have been in another country for all the good it did.

So much for Ellen Key. So much for enlightenment. She and Frank turned in early that night, listening for the errant footfall in the courtyard. For the second night running she couldn't sleep. She lay awake for hours, staring into the darkness, thinking of that man on the ice, seeing him, the twisted lips, the burn of hate. Finally, at first light, she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

There were no backrubs. Not that night. Or for many nights to come.

As it turned out, the sheriff never did come for them.163 Nor did anyone else. The winter crawled on, Taliesin married its design and grew beyond it and Mamah remained quiet and productive and she gave up newspapers in all their complexity of motive and purpose and vowed that if she ever laid eyes on a reporter again she'd cross the street to avoid him. As for the townspeople, she drew back there too, scarcely leaving Taliesin for any purpose, even to go to the market. If they weren't ready for advanced thought, if they felt compelled to insult her in the local paper and fulminate against her from the pulpits of their churches, well, so much the worse for them. They were the ones losing out to the forces of fear and ignorance and there was little she could do about it but pursue her work and let Ellen Key speak for herself-in as accurate and direct a translation as she could manage to produce.

Very gradually, as the new year broke and wore on, people began to concern themselves with other things, their own families, the weather, with the lives of their farms, with milking and calving and the tilling of the fields and raising of the crops. She began to meet in a quiet way with a few of the more receptive women-an invitation to tea or to go for a hike over the hills, to pick wildflowers or portray them in watercolors-and though she might mention Ellen Key in the most casual way, she tried not to proselytize and no one, not even Diana Milquist, married to the dentist and her closest friend in the neighborhood, ever mentioned her living arrangements. John and Martha came for a month that summer-of 1912-and she tried her best to be a mother to them, though it was clear that Edwin had done his all to turn them against her and that they had little interest in country life. As she confessed to Diana, as much as she loved having them at Taliesin it was something of a relief to see them go, and did she think she was an awful mother for feeling that way? No, Diana said (childless Diana, whose reproductive organs had been damaged as a result of a childhood accident), no, not at all.

In August, The Torpedo Under the Ark was published in an exquisite little edition by Ralph Fletcher Seymour of Chicago, and the press was largely favorable, though a number of papers invariably recycled the old news of her elopement with Frank and all the rest of the bilge that went with it (Former Mrs. Cheney, Who Eloped with Wright, Has New Book; Adopts Views of Ibsen and Swedish Author on Loveless Marriage). Still, the repercussions were relatively minor and Ellen Key went out into the English-speaking world all the same. She and Frank celebrated with a trip to Milwaukee and raised a toast (she with a gla.s.s of Liebfraumilch, he with a gla.s.s of eau vive, straight from the tap) to the success of the book and to the translations to come-and the book of her own, the ideas of which were just beginning to coalesce, a volume that would address questions of love, marriage and freedom in a plainspoken American way. For American women, women like herself and Diana and all the beleaguered Oak Park housewives forced into living a lie day after day through the fruitless course of their empty lives. And while she didn't consider herself heroic or ambitious or even especially radical, the more she thought about it the more it grew in her mind. She couldn't see the book's t.i.tle yet-it was just a blur of letters, like a word puzzle-but she saw her own name beneath it, Mamah Borthwick, or maybe Mamah Borthwick Wright, and she pictured a shifting series of ageless women in fashionable dresses absorbing her words in their parlors, kitchens and screened-in porches, their eyes shining, their faces rapt.

The dog days set in. Haying time came and went. Color struck the trees. She found herself falling easily into the routine of life at Taliesin, writing at her desk in the morning, joining in the work of the household through the afternoon and early evening-trying to a.s.sume as much of the load as she could in order to free Frank to pursue his architectural projects 164-and contenting herself with quiet evenings at home. With Frank. With the man she loved. In fact, it got to the point, through that fall and into the winter, where she felt so at home she no longer had any desire to leave Taliesin at all.

When Frank came to her about a trip to j.a.pan in the spring, her first instinct was to deny him, not that she had anything against the j.a.panese. Quite the contrary: the Oriental culture intrigued her, with its iconography of dragon and crane and the exquisite sensitivity of its artistic design set against the fierceness of its samurai tradition and the bizarre subjugation of its women in their lacquered clogs and clinging robes till they were nothing more than playthings for men (and certainly they could use a dose of Ellen Key).165 It was just that she was settled finally. And content. She tried to tell Frank that but he wouldn't listen. He needed the work, that was what it was. Needed to acquire his prints and screens and statuary in order to trade in them and make a profit to channel back into Taliesin because there were precious few commissions coming in. Because of her. He gave a long speech-a series of speeches-tiptoeing around the issue of blame, which was mutual, of course, and he a.s.sured her he had no regrets but there was the fact of it: he was being pa.s.sed over, boycotted. And there was the promise of the biggest commission yet, the biggest of his life, a project that would erase all their financial concerns forever-a hotel, a Tokyo hotel to dwarf anything in Asia-and he simply had to go. Had to. And he wasn't going anywhere without her. Ever again.

The whole time they were away she missed Taliesin with an ache nothing would soothe, though the j.a.panese women were far different from what she'd supposed-the society very nearly matriarchal in some respects, the wives and mothers firmly in control while the men went off like so many schoolboys to play with their painted little geisha and drink rice wine till they lost consciousness-and the food, especially the fried dish they called tempura, appealed to her more than she'd thought it would. She was open-minded. She even asked for the recipe and tried to duplicate it once they got back home to Taliesin, but the coated vegetables and strips of fish she dropped into hot oil in the cavern of her deepest pot seemed only to bloat up and absorb grease like miniature sponges till the blandest fritter or heaviest doughnut would have been a gourmet item in comparison.

"The Asiatic experience was intensely interesting," she said, summing it up for Diana Milquist over soggy fragments of what was meant to be tempura, "truly enlightening-if you could only see the way those people live. Nothing like here. Or Europe." She poked at a limp bit of carrot that had shed its batter, thinking how primitive conditions were, especially in the countryside. She thought of the wooden pallets, paper walls, the toilet that was little more than a hole in the ground. "Nothing at all."

Still, if she'd found j.a.pan a bit of a trial, Frank was invigorated. He bought up prints till their rooms were filled with them, working with money he seemed to draw out of a hat like a magician,166 and when they returned he began making preliminary sketches for the hotel project, though nothing had been confirmed. Another year-a blissful year-rolled by at Taliesin, and then, from an unexpected source, a major project for Chicago pleasure gardens modeled on those in Germany and Scandinavia came his way and he plunged into it with all his characteristic ferocity of purpose and vision. Spring came that year on a dizzying wave of perfume from the blossoms of the hundreds of fruit trees he'd planted, pear, apple, peach, apricot, plum, and if the pleasure gardens-Midway, they were calling the place Midway-kept him away from Taliesin a good proportion of the time, it was only for the better. Truly. It was. Because she loved him all the more now that he needed her in a practical way, not merely as soul mate and avatar, but as mistress of the house-she was in charge now that he was away so much of the time, and she consulted with the employees and worked to her utmost to make the place shine as it rightfully should, as a testament to him.

It was glorious. She was his right hand and his left hand too and everything fell into place as the days lengthened and warmed and the vines climbed up the sunstruck walls and the honeybees charged the air with a current so alive she could feel it in her veins. Glorious. Just glorious. Until the housekeeper abruptly quit. And then the cook.

"I won't come to work here no longer," the cook told her, "not for no pay-or pay whenever he feels like giving it out. And not with what people are saying." The woman stood there before her in the kitchen that had been her exclusive domain, arms akimbo, big-bosomed and thick-waisted, with her sagging chins and loveless marriage, thankless and heedless both. "It's sinful, that's what it is. And sin and pay is one thing, but sin and no pay I just can't abide, and I'm sorry, ma'am, I truly am."

Mamah went straight to her desk and sc.r.a.ped together every coin and bill she could find there, wrapped it all up in a handkerchief and dropped it into the woman's hands, but still she wouldn't stay and she wasn't about to beg her, that was for certain. But now suddenly she was the servant, she was the drudge-the daily acc.u.mulation of tasks far beyond her-and though she put out a call to the community, to Diana Milquist and the few women she could call friends, no one came up the drive to work for Slow-Pay Frank and his tarnished mistress.

She did the best she could, but she began to feel as if she were out of breath all the time, as if dusk followed dawn without an interval, without surcease, and the first thing to suffer was her writing. She simply didn't have time for it. Or for reading either. Or reflection. Or even walks over the hills or a swim in the lake or anything else, her every waking moment focused on keeping the household from collapse while Frank ran to Chicago and back again. Somehow she managed to make it through the month of June, wielding mop, broom and scrub brush in a fury that took her right out of her body and doing her utmost to maneuver around the big pots in the kitchen and prepare the meals for Frank and the men he had working the place. But she was no cook and she'd be the first to admit it, her bread as flat as her flapjacks and her flapjacks charred and rubbery at the same time and the weather too hot for standing over the oven so that the chops were reduced to jerky and all the color seared out of the steak and rump roast. And then one evening in the middle of July, when she'd begun to despair, her hands coa.r.s.ening, her skin darkening like a peasant's, every joint and muscle aching day and night and the sweat thick at her hairline and gummed up under her arms and between her legs till she was permanently chafed and simply to move was an agony, Frank came in off the train from Chicago with his grin alight and said, "You know, I think I just may have a solution to this little domestic problem."

She'd gone down to the station to meet him in the automobile, with Billy Weston at the wheel, and it seemed to her even hotter at seven in the evening than it had been at noon. She brushed her hair away from her face, trying to look fresh for Frank-and she'd changed her dress, though it was already wet through where she'd leaned back in the seat. Frank was handing his suitcase into the car while Billy saw to his baggage-pottery wrapped in brown paper, yet another carved Buddha, the broad plane of the Oriental brow and the flat unresisting nose poking through the package. He was lively and full of himself and though he hadn't embraced her-he wouldn't till they were out of sight of prying eyes-he'd already managed to brush up against her twice and she could see he was in urgent need of her. He was grinning. Ducking his head and shuffling his feet on the pavement and tugging at the brim of his hat as if he meant to s.n.a.t.c.h it right out from under the crown.

"Yes," she said, letting out a long slow breath while fanning herself with the palm of one hand, "and what is it? What's your solution?"

"Say, Billy," he called, turning his head away a minute just to keep her in suspense, "I think I might want to drive tonight and you can climb in back or just go on home to your wife if you like. She's missing you, you know she is. And that boy of yours too. Doesn't he ever wonder where's his daddy? "

Billy was bent over one of the statues and he stood up now and gave an elaborate rolling shrug. "Sure, whatever you say, Mr. Wright. An evening at home? Well, I guess that'll just about hit the spot, then." He was grinning too now. "And Mother"-why did married men of a certain age insist on calling their wives Mother?-"I don't suppose she'll mind seeing me around. Or not too much, anyway."

"All right, then. Good," Frank said. "Careful with that, careful!"

It wasn't until they were in the car and he had the machine in gear and started hurtling up the street with a great tromboning blast of the exhaust that he returned to the subject at hand. "You remember John Vogelsang, the caterer down there at Midway?"

She did. Vaguely.

"Big fellow. Heavy build. Blond hair, cropped close?"

She made a noise of a.s.sent, but it didn't really matter. He could have been talking about the emperor of China and it was the surest thing in the world that he would fill in the details, all the details, without stint.

"Well"-his hand at the shift, the wind beating like a hurricane and she holding on to her hat for dear life-"I told him about your little problem, our problem, that is, and he recommended a couple to me, good workers, husband and wife. She cooks and he serves at table and does repairs and what have you. A kind of handyman/butler all in one."

"They're in Chicago?"

"Yes. They're Negroes. From somewhere in the Caribbean, he says. One of the islands."

"And they're willing to come up here and"-she let out a laugh-"cultivate the Emersonian virtues of country living?"

The roar of the engine, the startled looks on the faces of the cows, the clouds shredding overhead. He shrugged. "Apparently. But they're educated people-at least he is. Very well-spoken for a Negro. Name's Julius, I think it was. Or no, no: Julian. Julian something."

CHAPTER 6: ENTER CARLETON.

The man who met them at the station, all elbows and knees and dressed in denim trousers and an open-collared shirt, wore a mask for a face. No smile, no frown, no expression of any kind. He had dishwater eyes, and that was no surprise-all of them had that washed-out look to them up here in the country, like so many duppies, as if the gloomy dead ashpit of the sky had sucked all the life out of them, and this one hid his behind a pair of wire-rim spectacles. He wore a little sand-colored mustache under the jut of his nose and short-clipped hair the same color and all Julian could think of was river sand, dirty with the rains. At least it wasn't yellow. Yellow hair was an aberration on a human being and he swore he'd never seen so much yellow hair in his life all the way up on the train and everybody staring at him as if he was the freak and he never raised his eyes once except to look out on the unbroken scroll of green, too much green, green enough to bury anybody-they should have called this place Greenland and not that Eskimo island in Canada. But here he was, the dishwater man. He didn't say h.e.l.lo or welcome or anything at all civil or even human other than "You must be the new help" and "I've come to fetch you up to Taliesin," and he stood apart from them at the station, as if he was afraid the color of their skin would rub off on him.

In the rain that seemed to have started up the minute the train left them on the platform in a volcano of smoke and cinders, Julian struggled with the weight of the steamer trunk and Gertrude's overstuffed suitcase and when she went to help him, with that struck-dumb frog-eyed look of sympathy and hopefulness on her face, that look he hated because it demeaned him, made him into a puny slack little boy all over again, he shrugged her off. "I can handle it myself, woman. I don't need a bit of your help. Now you just stand over there at the wagon and then you climb in and see if you can't open that umbrella." That was what he heard himself say, simple instructions, but his voice was choked with a kind of awakening rage she recognized in the s.p.a.ce of one second and she stepped lively and that was that.