The Women: A Novel Part 3

She didn't want to hear what he had to say, couldn't stand it, couldn't tolerate another word. She should have broken the connection right then and there, but she didn't-she held on, her whole frame gone rigid with the dread of what was coming, the certainty she'd contracted for, proof positive. "And I'm sorry to have to say it"-he insinuated his voice into the speaker, parceling out the words as if she were paying extra for each one-"but what I mean is in flagrante delicto."

Leora was watching her from the sofa. She knew her face had gone white, drained of color as surely as if she were the heroine of a Sat.u.r.day afternoon melodrama, the news they'd both foreseen come home to them, to her, long distance from Chicago. She wasn't kidding herself-she wasn't born yesterday. She knew Frank. She knew what he was capable of. But to hear it now, from the lips of a man every bit as odious as the one who'd slithered up the front walk and handed her the summons on that concussive day in July, shook her nonetheless. Frank didn't love her anymore. There was no going back. "No," she said, "no," not knowing what else to say.

"What I mean is he's at the Garfield Arms, right now-with her and the child-and you can catch him with his pants down, that's the beauty of it. You'd a thought he'd have the savvy to hide the whole business, but I guess not. He's even registered under his own name. And her too."

Leora mouthed something to her from across the room. Was it "guilty" or "got him"?

"Missus? "

All the blood was boiling up in her brain. You didn't register housekeepers at your hotel. Housekeepers stayed home and kept house. She felt dizzy suddenly-betrayed, betrayed yet again-and she could barely manage a response. "Yes?" she whispered.

"I'll tell you something else too-his consort or mistress or whatever you want to call her?"

"Yes? "

"She's big as a house. Out to here, if you know what I mean."

She was on the next train for Chicago, staring out the window of her sleeper at the naked mountains and the bleak dead midsection of the country, everything in shades of tan, no color anywhere, no life, no hope. She'd practically begged Leora to come with her, for support-she just didn't know if she could go through with this on her own-but Leora had been planning her Thanksgiving party for the past two months now, a fete for forty, black tie, the sort of thing that would make her neighbors stand up and take notice, and she couldn't just go and cancel at this late date, could she?

No. No, of course not.

And so Miriam was traveling alone, the pravaz her only companion. She didn't knit, didn't sketch. Cards bored her to tears. She had the latest Zona Gale with her and Lewis' Arrowsmith, an excellent book really, about a fine and n.o.ble man-an idealist like herself-but she was too anxious to concentrate and wound up spending hour after hour staring out the window on the rolling vacancy of America. A colored porter stuck his head in the door every once in a while and people nattered at her in the dining car and she tried to respond, if only for the sake of civility, but the conversation (the quality of the food, the ease and speed of rail travel, something that had happened to somebody's sister in Omaha) held nothing for her. Thanksgiving fell on the last day of the trip and though the chef went out of his way and the waiters did their best to make the turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy, chestnut stuffing and peas with pearled onions look and taste like something prepared at home with the family gathered round, it was a sad imposture and everyone in the dining car knew it. The laughter was brittle, the attempts at witticism as stale as the pie a la mode. She left the dessert untouched and retreated to her compartment.

That night she barely slept, her mind racing along with the incessant pounding of the wheels on the track, Frank's face rising up before her like a cork in a gutter, Frank grinning at her, mocking her, Frank superimposed over the very attractive single gentleman in the next compartment who'd trained a long look of wonder and sympathy on her every time she squeezed past him in the corridor because she was a desirable woman still, supremely desirable, with taste and cla.s.s and education, worth any hundred dancers, a thousand, whole troupes of them . . . Frank, Frank, Frank . . . Frank strutting along the sidewalks of Chicago in his arrogant c.o.c.k-of-the-walk way, Frank, his eyes shut tight in rapture, working his bare white b.u.t.tocks atop some other woman. Some dancer. Some foreigner.

Olgivanna Milanoff, that was the name the detective had supplied her. Olgivanna Milanoff. She said the name aloud in the dark, just to taste the bitterness of it on her tongue. The coach rocked and steadied itself and rocked again. Anonymous stations slipped past in the night, each one an outpost guarded by a single naked light, even as the wheels hammered out the tempo beneath her, Milanoff, Milanoff, and the sadness that gripped her then was like nothing she'd ever felt, not even when Emil came back to her in the hush of the alienist's parlor and laid a hand of ice on her shoulder. It was as if a cautery had been run through her heart. This woman-this dancer-was pregnant by him, pregnant. Carrying his seed, his child. Was that what he'd wanted-another child?

It was news to her. Because there'd never been any question of children between Frank and her-they were in their forties when they met, with grown children of their own, and from the beginning their union had existed on a higher plane. They were companions, soul mates. Not mere breeders like all the rest. Anybody could be a breeder-look at the peasants and their strings of ragged dirty children with their mouths hanging open and their hands outstretched in the undying expectation of a coin or a crust, the world already too small a place for so many mouths, so many hands. And Frank had agreed with her. Or was it just a matter of expedience?

But Jesus G.o.d he worked fast, glad to be rid of her, to cast her aside and find someone new, someone younger, someone pretty and naive and unformed to pour himself into, to mold and hammer and shape the way he never could have shaped her. Well, she pitied the woman. And she could have him, this Olgivanna, this Russian or whatever she was, have her Frank Lloyd Wright, the great man bestriding the world like a colossus for all to see when in actuality he was the most venal dirty insufferable little coward she'd ever known-and a lecher, a lecher to boot . . .

Chicago was cold and clear, the sun as pale as suet and hanging low over the houses and factories and the shadowy monoliths of the skysc.r.a.pers. The cab took her through quiet streets, cars drifting past like untethered boats, people gazing numbly from behind their curtains or trudging past one another as if speech hadn't been invented yet. She checked into her hotel, freshened up in her room and immediately went back down to the lobby to order a car (though in truth she was so worn-out and exhausted she could have slept for a week). Standing there at the curb, waiting for the doorman to a.s.sist her, she nearly lost her resolve. But the thought of the divorce settlement-how Frank had manipulated her, hiding everything from her, his deceit, his adultery, his Russian paramour (Paris, Paris indeed, and how convenient for him)-steeled her. There'd be no settlement now. She'd never sign-she'd tear the papers up and throw them in his face. The b.a.s.t.a.r.d. The son of a b.i.t.c.h. He would see-she would make him see-because the balance had turned and it was all in her favor now.

She had the car drop her off a block from the Garfield Arms34-it wouldn't do to get too close. She was on her way to the museum, that was the story she and the detective had concocted in concert with her Chicago lawyers, when she just happened to see her husband's car pulled up in front of the hotel where she'd stayed with him on occasion. She called out a greeting to his chauffeur. Exchanged pleasantries with him. And, curious, she'd gone into the lobby to inquire after her husband, only to discover, to her horror, et cetera.

The wind was in her face-and if she'd thought she was in California still, she was disabused of that notion, the cold a force of its own, bits of paper and refuse driven before her like drift, the manholes steaming, businessmen buckling under the weight of their scarves and greatcoats. She was wrapped in fur, her hair pulled back in a bun and imprisoned beneath her turban, her heels beating a martial tattoo on the pavement. Up the street she came, determined, her shoulders thrown back, her head held high. And it was just as they'd planned-there was the car sitting idle at the curb, and there was Billy, hunched over a cigarette and giving her a sheepish woebegone look. "Billy," she cried, bending to peer in the window of the car, "what a surprise. What are you doing here? Is Mr. Wright staying over?"

"Yes, ma'am."

She watched him wriggle a bit, and it was clear whose side he was on. "Down from Taliesin on business?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"Well, I've just come back, you know. California was lovely, but my place is here with my husband. I'd thought he was in Wisconsin still-but how convenient that he's here in Chicago. Perhaps I'll just stop in and say h.e.l.lo-"

He had nothing to say to this, but oh, he was wriggling now. Good. Good. Let him suffer, the apostate, with his false face and bugged-out eyes.

"-and then maybe we can all go up together, just like old times. Right, Billy?"

Still nothing. His face was set, one hand held fast to the wheel, the other working the cigarette at his lips. Finally, because the conversation was over-that much was evident, even to him-he raised a finger to his cap in salute.

Inside, the lobby was busier than she would have expected, and she had to wait a moment behind a couple checking in (with enough baggage to mount an expedition to Timbuktu) before she could catch the desk clerk's attention. The clerk was a man in his thirties with a toothbrush mustache and blue-black hair greased to a seal-like phosph.o.r.escence, no one she recognized, but then staff turnover was scandalous these days, not at all like it used to be when you could count on seeing the same faces down through the years. He showed his teeth. "May I help you, madam? "

"Yes, I'm Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright. It's my understanding that my husband is currently in residence here."

There was a flurry of activity at the door behind her, bellhops, baggage, people sweeping in from the cold. A great fat man in a beautifully tailored wool suit sank into an armchair on the far side of the room and then immediately rose again with a roar of laughter to greet a smart young woman in a fox coat. There was a sound of music drifting in from somewhere, two bars of a popular tune, and someone out on the street was impatiently honking an automobile horn. The clerk gave her a blank look. "Mrs. Wright, did you say?"

"Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright," she repeated, and the man checking in beside her at the long marble-topped counter gave her a covert glance, "and I have reason to believe that my husband is here under suspicious circ.u.mstances. Now, I'd like to have a look at the register, please."

"I'm afraid I can't allow that, madam. It's against our regulations."

"That is his automobile pulled up to the curb out there. That is our chauffeur at the wheel. Again, I ask you: let me see the register."

The man beside her-she had a vague impression of whiskers, starched collar, the flush of the alcoholic-was staring openly at her now. Had she raised her voice? She hadn't meant to. She'd told herself to stay calm at all costs, to avoid making a scene-or too big a scene at any rate-and here she was, losing control of herself. The clerk's eyes were locked on hers, dismissive eyes, eyes that reduced her to an aggrieved nonent.i.ty, a nuisance and nothing more, and she felt a wave of emotion rising in her throat as if it would choke her-she hadn't thought it would be this hard, this disorienting and tragic, but the fact of the matter was undeniable: Frank was upstairs with his paramour and she was left stranded at the desk like a beggar.

"I'm sorry," the clerk said, and all at once the wave broke in a flash of anger that consumed her like white phosphorous. She made a s.n.a.t.c.h for the register, his hands there, the cuffs of his shirt shooting back, and they were actually tugging on it like two children fighting over a bauble on the playground and somebody-was it she?-was shouting, "Call the manager! Call the manager!"

Yes, it was a scene-she'd created a scene and she wasn't sorry about it at all. She heard the clerk let out a yelp-a squeak, the sort of sound you'd expect from a rodent in a cage-and the register slipped from her grasp. People stared. All the ice of the place melted and then refroze again. And here was the manager coming up the corridor in a stiff-kneed jog, coattails flapping, eyes wild, a pale sprinkle of cake crumbs lodged in the corners of his mouth. "What is it?" he gasped, throwing the clerk an exasperated look. "What's all this, this"-he seemed to take her in then, his eyes making a quick revolution from her shoes to her skirts to her furs and jewelry and the rigid furious compression of her face-"confusion? Is there anything amiss, madam? May I be of a.s.sistance?"

Oh, they were watching now, everyone in the place, though the more discreet tried to cover themselves by making a pretense of consulting watches or newspapers or counterfeiting a conversation, but they weren't fooling her. She might just as well have been perched on the proscenium of the Apollo Theater, the curtain poised to come down, the revelatory words on her lips. "Yes," she said, teasing out the sibilance of that sematic little s till the room hissed and crepitated with it, "yes, you may." She paused to draw in a breath. "You can start by ringing up the police."

His eyes jumped round the room. He was terrified, whipped already, she could see that, his only desire to soften, placate, give in. There was the hotel's reputation to consider. The other guests. His own scrawny worth-less neck. "The police?"

The fury came over her again, a surge of the blood and its secret hormones that had her trembling as she s.n.a.t.c.hed off her glove and pointed a single accusatory finger at the clerk. "I want this man arrested."

"Please," the manager was saying, "let's just step into my office and I'm sure-"

"For aiding and abetting a crime in progress, a crime of venality, vice-and I'll have you arrested too-"

"Madam, please"-and was he going to touch her, was he going to dare reach for her arm?-"be reasonable. Whatever it is, we can rectify it, I'm sure, if you'll just give us the opportunity. In my office. Wouldn't you feel more comfortable in my office?"

She stepped back from him, jerked her arm free. "Don't you touch me," she hissed, and she was glowing, glowing. "My husband is up there, don't you understand?" She lifted her chin, forced her eyes to sweep the room, people turning away now, murmuring, embarra.s.sed, caught in the act of eavesdropping, gaping, staring. "He's up there," she said, fighting to steady her voice even as the tears-real tears, true and spontaneous and blood-hot-erupted to sting her eyes and stain her cheeks, "up there . . . with his . . . with his wh.o.r.e."

By the time she swept down the stairs to the lobby of her own hotel an hour and a half later, she was as composed as could be expected under the circ.u.mstances. She'd had an opportunity to put something on her stomach-the oysters Rockefeller and a handful of crackers, and that was about all she could tolerate given the state of her nervous system-and she'd changed into something a bit more demure than she'd worn to the fray (a low-waisted calf-length dress in violet with emerald satin collar, cuffs and hem and a bow of the same color at her hips, set off by a broad-brimmed felt hat in a lovely pale green to bring out her eyes. And her scarab ring, of course. And her beads and lorgnette).35 Her lawyer had restricted her to two champagne c.o.c.ktails, as a calmative, and she'd strictly avoided the pravaz-at least for the time being-because the point of this, the first press conference she'd given in years, was to produce an effect of fashionable languor combined with the wilting distress of the abandoned wife, and she understood that an excess of languor-or wilt-just might play against her.

For all that-and for all her experience of photographers during her years with Frank-the flash powder startled her so that for a moment she lost consciousness of where she was, the speech she'd mentally prepared vanishing along with the drift of white smoke.36 She must have put out a hand to steady herself-blinded, absolutely blinded-because her lawyer, Mr. Jackson, an a.s.sociate of Mr. Fake, took her by the elbow and whispered encouragement to her even as the next flash went off. "It's all right," he was saying, "this is fine, fine. Look aggrieved. That's right. Good."

When she came to herself she registered the faces ranged round her in a rough semicircle-eight or ten men, with their pencils poised-and she caught the reflected dazzle of the chandelier overhead and the pure gleaming expanse of the marble floors, the plush weave of the Oriental carpets and the exotic herbage of the potted palms, and felt a thrill run through her. She was the focus here-the star, the cynosure-not Frank. These men were waiting for her, to hear what she had to say, to record and broadcast her words to the nation.

"I want to remark," she began, drawing in a breath so moist and deep it was as if she'd been underwater all this time and was only now coming to the surface, "how sad an occasion this is for me and how much I appreciate your coming here today." She paused, let her eyes rest on each face in succession. They were staring at her, rapt. No one moved. No one said a word. "And I'd like to make it clear no matter what my husband might say in contradiction, or how skillfully he might manage to twist the truth, that I never left him. He is my husband. My legally wedded and lawful husband in the eyes of G.o.d and man-and the true and shining love of my life."

One of the newspapermen, a boor in a cheap suit and an asymmetrical haircut, interrupted her: "I'm sorry to have to ask this, but we didn't know that you were married-weren't you both advocates for free love?"

She waved a hand in dismissal. "We were married in the most romantic moonlight ceremony anyone could imagine, even the greatest poets of the ages-at midnight, on the bridge at Taliesin. It was the crowning moment of my life."37 There was a pause while they scribbled, heads bent, pencils sc.r.a.ping.

"Still"-and she was in command now, absolutely, the thrill of vindication running through her like a new kind of drug-"there are some things a woman simply cannot abide no matter how faithful she may be."

And now the room fell silent. Here was the real meat of the story, the scandal they were all waiting for. Very softly, in her steadiest voice, she explained that he had left her no recourse but to sue for divorce, in spite of all the love she held for him. He'd been cruel to her, had physically abused her-and here she began to falter, she couldn't help herself, all her sorrow, all the humiliation of her position and the raw hurt of it pressing down on her like the weight of some medieval torture. "I went west," she continued, and she had to pause again to gather herself, "for my health. On doctor's orders. The pure dry air of . . . of Los Angeles . . . and then I come back to my husband only to find that he, that he-"

Mr. Jackson held an arm out to her-and what was he doing, patting her on the back, was that it?-and her voice thickened in her throat till she didn't think she could go on, all those eyes locked on her, the man with the flash saying All right, boys, ready, one more, and there was that coruscating explosion of light all over again. "All I want," she managed to say, "is what is . . . what is . . . rightfully mine." Her chest began to heave, no holding back, not now, and suddenly she was sobbing, sobbing so hard she had to turn away and let Mr. Jackson help her to the nearest chair, a gla.s.s of water-"Will someone get her a gla.s.s of water!"-but she still had the strength to turn her face to them once more.

Her eyes were br.i.m.m.i.n.g, her lashes gone to paste. She couldn't see their faces-they were just a blur to her-but something else rose up in her field of vision, some transient imagined presence, a figure out of a dream, gravid, round of abdomen, full of breast, smiling with the soft satisfaction of the Madonna, a false Madonna, a Russian Madonna, unwed and f.u.c.ked, f.u.c.ked, f.u.c.ked, and she heard her voice lash out in a tinny yelp: "I want him back. I just want my husband back!"

That night, late, she sat up in her room and tried to filter out the sounds of the street below. She was too exhausted to read, too alive in her thoughts to sleep. Someone kept pacing the floor of the room above her. There were odd thumps in the walls, a melange of voices murmuring somewhere, the drawn-out mechanical torment of the elevator down the hall-and was the operator playing on the cables with a horsehair bow just to drive her to distraction? Was it a plot? She didn't smoke-or hardly at all, not anymore, because Frank didn't approve, or hadn't approved-but she smoked now, one cigarette after another. She rose from the bed and went to the window, thinking a little fresh air might help.

For a long while she stood there at the open window, oblivious to the cold, the automobiles and delivery trucks tapping out a secret code below her, a language of squeals and rattles and the rising pitch of engines straining against the gear, and then there was the deluge of the trolley washing down the avenue like a tidal wave. A clanking, a banging, an a.s.sault. She turned to the comfort of her pravaz then-just left the window open behind her and drifted into the bathroom, where she kept her kit-for the second time that night. Over the past few days she'd gradually increased her usual dosage, and there was a danger in that, she knew it, but she was so fraught and torn and run-down she just couldn't help herself.

She sat on the edge of the bed and fanned back her robe to inject herself high up on the right thigh where the blemish-la tache-wouldn't show. And she was careful there too, because she'd known too many women in Paris who'd developed ulcers as a result of carelessness, repeatedly injecting themselves in a favorite spot, creatures of habit, their needles gone dull from use, their flesh ripe as rotten fruit. But tonight she needed comfort. Tonight was terrible. When she'd cried out to those hard men with their dog-eared pads and quivering pencils that she wanted him back, her husband, Frank, her man, her love, she hadn't known what she was saying, but in some part of her she knew it was true. He was her husband. They'd been in love-all those years they'd been in love, burning up with it, clinging to each other through the sweat-soaked nights in Tokyo, the sere clarity of Los Angeles, the icehouse of Wisconsin. He'd been gentle with her, he understood her, their temperaments equally matched-they were artists, artists together in defiance of the world and its conventions.

She lay back and closed her eyes and tried to think only those thoughts that brought her closer to him, but it was no use. There was that thumping, that clamor, footsteps in the hall, and the other Frank came back to her, the hateful one, the beast, the mocker and belittler, the cheat and fraud and womanizer. At some point she tried to get up to shut the window, shut out the noise, but the potion the bald little Mexican had mixed for her was just too potent to overcome and she slept on and on in a dreamless void till the sun was pushing through the curtains and all the noise was focused in a sharp peremptory banging at the door.

It was Mr. Fake's a.s.sociate, Mr. Jackson-"Harold, call me Harold"-and he'd been worried about her. It was getting late. Could she come to the door?

Her voice was weak in her own ears, the voice of an invalid, an old woman croaking out her days in a rocker: "No, I'm afraid I can't. I . . . I'm just bathing and I won't be-what time did you say it was?"

"Twelve-thirty."

She pushed herself up from the bed, feeling cored-out, ashen, as if there were nothing left of her but a husk. And where were her slippers? Her robe? "I must have overslept, what with the journey, and the, the-"

He projected his voice, leaning into the crack where the door met the frame. "Have you seen the papers?"

She hadn't.

"Well, you've made a sensation. The press is on our side in this, no doubt about it-and you look magnificent in the photographs. Very proper and attractive, very put-upon. And they've printed just about everything you've said. Verbatim." There was a pause and she could hear him shuffling his feet, shifting something from one hand to the other-the papers, he had the papers with him. "You must see this," he was saying-or no, he was crowing, his voice ringing with triumph. "Won't you open up?"

She didn't respond. She'd begun to cramp again and she was thinking she had to eat something, a soft-boiled egg, toast, a cup of coffee, anything, because she wasn't feeling right, not at all, and the distance from the bed to the door might just as well have been a mile for all she was capable of. He shuffled his feet. Rattled the doork.n.o.b. "Mrs. Wright? Miriam-are you still there?"

"Yes, I'm here." The papers. She was in the papers.

He was saying something about meeting with her-soon, as soon as she was able, because time was of the essence, strike while the iron is hot, that sort of thing, but she wasn't listening. There was more, his voice pinched with the strain of talking through the crack of the door, and she didn't catch much of it, not that it mattered. She was in the papers. And then he came clear again, his parting words, stirring, redemptive, vengeful: "Because we're going to go after separate maintenance and full payment of legal fees and there isn't a doubt in my mind that we'll win. Not after this. Not after the show you've put on."

When he'd gone-footsteps fading down the hallway like the tread of an angel taking flight, her angel, Mr. Harold Jackson, Attorney at Law-she pushed herself up and went to the door. She looked through the peep-hole, listened a moment to be sure no one was present, then unlatched the door and bent to s.n.a.t.c.h up the newspapers. And it was all there, just as he'd said. She read through each of the articles twice and for a long while stared at her photograph-she did look charming and sad and tres chic too, and she'd have to clip it out and send it to Leora-and then she ordered up breakfast and began to think about what she might wear for her next press conference.

Five days later the newspapers ran another sort of article altogether, a simple birth announcement that had somehow been trans.m.u.ted into the stuff of headlines, and she didn't even know about it, didn't even see it till late in the afternoon and then only because Leora called her long distance from Los Angeles. And then her daughter Norma called. And then Mr. Jackson. And then a man from the press, wanting her reaction, but by that time she'd got hold of the Tribune and the Daily News both and she cut the connection and left the phone off the hook.

She'd been eating a late lunch or early dinner or whatever you wanted to call it when Leora phoned and she'd been out earlier for a walk in the frozen air hoping the exercise would clear her head, but as it happened she'd felt utterly drained when she got back to the hotel and laid her cheek down on the pillow for a nap that must have stretched on for hours. She was exhausted, run-down, miserable. Because she wasn't sleeping well at night. Wasn't eating well either. And so she was in her rooms, staring numbly at a plate of supreme de volaille and stewed carrots when Leora's call came through.

"Oh, hon," Leora blurted without waiting for any of the usual blandishments, and it was as if she were right there in the room with her. "I'm so sorry."

"Sorry? For what? What's happened?"

A pause, just to let her heart skip a beat. "Haven't you seen the newspapers? "

"No. Not today. Not yet. I was out walking and then I, well, I-why, what did they say?"

What they'd said was burned into her brain now, in eighteen-point type: DANCER GIVES BIRTH TO WRIGHT'S LOVE CHILD.38Gives birth. Love child. Frank's love child. Six pounds, seven ounces. A girl. They'd named her Iovanna. And what kind of name was that? Iovanna, Olgivanna, Russian names, names with treacly little foreign suffixes as if this were some suburb of Moscow-but this wasn't Moscow, not the last time she'd looked. This was Chicago, in the U.S.A. There was no Volga here, no windblown steppes and Bolshevik revolutions-and what was he thinking? What was Frank thinking?

Oh, she'd known it was coming-she'd been bracing for it since that weasel of a detective called to annihilate her afternoon, her holiday, her autumn, her winter, her year-and yet she'd never dreamed it would come to this, cheap headlines, cheap sensation, a mockery of everything she was in her deepest self. Everyone she knew would be laughing at her now, Maude Miriam Noel, wife of the adulterer, the woman who couldn't satisfy the great architect or even appease him, who couldn't give him a child because she was too old, because she was broken down, over the hill, cast out and abandoned. She was dirt. Lower than dirt. She was nothing.

Even as she flung the papers across the room and took up the first thing to hand-a vase, a hotel vase with an arrangement of dried flowers that infuriated her, that made her feel as if she were dried up and dead too-just for the satisfaction of seeing it explode against the near wall, she knew that the pravaz would give her no release, not today, not the way she was feeling. It took her no more than five minutes to see to her face in the mirror and wrap herself in her furs, and then she was downstairs and out on the street in the air that hit her like a dose of smelling salts. The whole world opened up then. The doorman. The cabbie. Streets, pigeons, a crust of snow. And where to? The hospital. The one named in the paper, where mother and child were reported to be doing well. And resting. Resting comfortably.

She'd show them rest, oh, yes, she would, and already she could picture it, another scene like the one in the hotel lobby, and let them come, let the reporters come. I want to see the baby!, she would scream until there was no one in all that towering edifice with its gleaming corridors and sheltered rooms who couldn't hear her loud and clear, I want to see my husband's baby!

CHAPTER 5: THE RICHARDSONS.

There was a taint of antiseptic-of carbolic acid or rubbing alcohol or whatever it was-emanating from every corner of the room, suffusing the air, choking her till she felt she could barely breathe. The shades were drawn. There was a dull hum of electricity, lights flickering and brightening and flickering again. Infants mewled, trays rattled, someone somewhere was stewing tomatoes, beets, cabbage. And meat. Meat that stank of the pan and the icebox and the slaughterhouse. She kept asking the nurse to open the window and the nurse kept telling her to lie back and rest and not to worry herself-rest, that was what she needed. "Just close your eyes now," the nurse whispered in her liminal tones. "You want to regain your strength, don't you? For the sake of your baby? And your husband?"

Olgivanna couldn't help smiling. Her husband was the last person she wanted to see, but how would the nurse know that? Unless she read the papers. But of course she did read the papers. They all did and they all knew that Iovanna-p.u.s.s.y, her p.u.s.s.y39-the most perfect and exquisite infant in the world, in the history of the world, was born out of wedlock, an illegitimate child, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d, a b.a.s.t.a.r.d for people to sneer at and revile. Olgivanna didn't read the papers. And she didn't want her husband. Her ex-husband. She wanted Frank, but Frank was working in his studio and he'd promised to be back to see her in the evening, yet wasn't it evening now? And why was it so stifling in here and why, why, why couldn't anyone throw open the window or even raise it an inch, half an inch, anything-anything to dissipate the staleness of the air? "Nurse!" she called out, and she tried to sit up but felt nauseous, felt weak, and let her head sink back into the pillow.

Later-how much later she couldn't say, but it seemed to be darker now, didn't it?-the nurse appeared at the door with Iovanna. Her daughter. Her newborn. The light of her life, the reason for all of this, for this room with the flowers Frank had sent over, a private room with a window and a reek of carbolic acid, and the weakness she felt too. She could barely lift her arms to accept the baby, the bundle of her, light as a thought and yet heavy suddenly, impossibly heavy, miniature hands clenching and flying open again, and then the feel of the suction at her breast, a long sweet release that brought her up out of the bed and the room and out into the ambient night, soaring.

In her dream she flew high over the embracing roofs of Taliesin, the baby clutched in her arms, and there was Frank, dwindling below her, and he was shouting to her, his hands cupped to his mouth, Look out, watch out, be careful . . . And then there was a noise, a sudden sharp thump and rattle, something clattering in the hall, a woman's voice rising up out of a confusion of voices, and what was it? "I'm sorry, ma'am"-her nurse, Alice, straining against a whisper-"but visiting hours are over."

"Don't be ridiculous. Get out of my way!"

"I'm sorry, but-Dinah, Dinah, would you come here, please?"

"Which room? I insist you tell me which room-"

"Please, please, ma'am, won't you hold your voice down? The infants are-Dinah, will you please tell this lady that we just cannot accept-"

p.u.s.s.y began to stir, kicking out her legs in a spasm even as her eyes flashed open, two pinpoints of light in the muted darkness of the room. She wasn't fussing, not yet, just lying there orienting herself, awakening to the world once again. Olgivanna's eyes went to the door. Which stood ajar-or half-open, actually, because the nurses liked to be within earshot in the event of an emergency, but this wasn't an emergency, was it?

The voices rose, tangled, fell back again. There was a brief tap dance of heels on the linoleum flooring, renewed protests, and then the sounds receded down the hall in the opposite direction. Though she wasn't feeling particularly alert-it was as if she'd been drugged, and why couldn't she regain her strength, what was wrong with her?-she had a moment of clarity that allowed a single pulse of alarm to flash through her. What if it was Miriam? Frank's wife. Miriam. The madwoman. He'd warned her about how irrational Miriam could be, how violent and unpredictable.40 And she could still hear the tortured cry that had come at her over the telephone wire, that choked mad searing expostulation that was like no human sound she'd ever heard. She drew Iovanna to her and held her breath.

Suddenly there was a clatter of footsteps, bold and rapid, hurrying down the hall toward her. She heard Alice cry out "Stop!" in a breathless gasp and then there were more footsteps and a man's voice was repeating the injunction even as the door of the room across from hers was flung open and a woman entered her line of vision, all skirts and hat and angry flailing shoulders. A thought darted in and out of her head-should she try to hide the baby, tuck her in under the bedclothes, the pillows, slip her down on the floor beneath the bed?-and then the door flew back and there she was, Miriam, her face bloated and red, her eyes set close as an animal's, Miriam in the flesh, her mouth twisting round the only word she could summon: "You!" she shouted. "You!"

By the time Frank arrived-out of breath, his hair windblown, his face drained-the danger had pa.s.sed, or the immediate danger, at any rate. The orderly had seen to that. Miriam was gone now, long gone, ushered out the door in a whirlwind of threats and insults, and the corridors were hushed as in the aftermath of some natural disaster, but Olgivanna could see her still. Feel her. Feel her hate and envy and fear radiating out of the very atmosphere itself. There'd been a moment of suspended time as the door struck the wall and rebounded in slow motion, this woman, Frank's wife, poised on the threshold of the room, her features working through the shadings of her emotions, a moment in which Olgivanna, as weak as she was, as terrified and humiliated, could see into her, the abandoned wife come face-to-face with her successor, her bugbear, the succubus that had stolen her husband away. She felt something move inside her. Not aggression or the will to defend herself-though there was that if it came to it-but something akin to pity.

It was short-lived.

Because even as the orderly vaulted into the frame, even as he seized Miriam by the arm and Miriam turned on him like a cat tossed in a bag, the vile words began to spew out. "s.l.u.t!" she shrieked, jerking away from him and thrusting her face back into the room. "Vampire! Wh.o.r.e! You leave my husband alone!" But then Alice was there, slipping past them to secure the door and press her weight against the impervious slab of oak while Iovanna, compromised on the third day of her inchoate life, began to cry with a sharp sudden intake of breath, her face suffused with blood and her hands grasping at the air as if she could possess it.

"I know you're weak," Frank was saying. He was pacing the room, five steps to the right and pivot, five steps to the left and pivot again. "It was a difficult birth. You need your rest. But I can't let this sort of thing go on-it's just too risky. And the newspapers-"

"She has frightened me. And the baby. The baby has started crying."

"d.a.m.n her. d.a.m.n that woman."

The bedclothes pressed down on her like the lid of a tomb. She'd never felt wearier in her life. "She is your wife, Frank. But how could she be? How could you have loved her?"